Top 10 Tips for Google Shopping Campaign Optimisation
Top 10 Tips for Google Shopping Campaign Optimisation
If you want to create a campaign on Google Ads to promote your products or services, the right product feed is not just enough. A successful campaign relies on constant optimisation so that you can boost the sales and traffic to your site. You do not need to spend money on ads that are not performing well.
Here is the step-by-step guide to optimise your Google shopping campaign:
1. Creating the campaign
Create and log in to your Google Ads account using your Gmail credentials and start creating a campaign. Select shopping from the list of the types of campaigns available. If there are multiple merchant account IDs linked to a Google Ads account, you must choose a specific Merchant ID. It is important to note that you cannot use more than one target country when you are creating a campaign. You must choose a country where you can showcase the ad and would like to sell your product. If you have uploaded multiple feeds for different countries, Google will pick the feed for the country you have selected.
If you are planning to promote the same product using different types of campaigns, you can choose the priority of which ad should appear most of the time in the advanced shopping settings. This is what will let you decide which campaign Google must choose to showcase the product. You can set the daily budget for the ad and the maximum cost per click allowed. It is better to bid high so that it will be easy for you to collate the performance details about the ad quickly.
2. Create an ad group
Once you set all the values for the campaign, it is time for you to create an ad group. You must start to create a single ad group and segregate the products into categories, product groups, product types, brands, custom labels, and product IDs. If you are creating the campaign for the first time in Google Ads, create a new ad group for a product and divide the group into multiple product groups.
3. Improve the campaign structure
No company would like to have a single bid for all of its products. Each product will have a different profit margin. This is where Ads is used. It allows you to segregate the products by product groups. You can also segregate the products by brand, category, product type, custom label, item ID, and condition.
You can now divide a category into subcategories. If the product falls into different categories, you can select each category separately. For example, if you are selling apparel and accessories, you must first create a product category as apparel and accessories and with subcategories as jewellery and apparel. In the jewellery subcategory, you can create another subcategory as bracelets.
The attributes that you use to divide the product depend on the campaign. If you want to create a campaign for multiple products, and they belong to one category in Google, the attribute may not be of any use. It is ideal for you to use the product type. On the flip side, if you are selling all the products of a specific brand, the brand group must have all the products that are produced by that particular brand. For example, Nike produces T-shirts, sports accessories, and equipment. Therefore, you first divide the product with a specific attribute and then sub-divide the products with a different attribute.
There is another way to do this. First, you divide the product by category and type, and later, you categorize those products by brands. You can also create a product group with the products that you are selling. It allows seeing how many products your brand holds and the type of products you are selling.
4. Structuring the campaign
The structuring of a campaign will begin with the product groups. Use the Edit option to choose the attribute that you want to use to segregate the products. Here you can view the list of available values. These values are fetched from the data feed. You can create different values for each product group or create the values for all product groups at once by using the plus icon.
You can also subdivide the product groups. You can do this using the edit icon and select the attributes you would want to use. You can repeat the same process. The best structure that is available for the campaign would be ‘category’ followed by ‘product type’ followed by ‘Item ID’.
You can set the bids for the campaigns with a perfect campaign structure. You can try multiple bids for a single product by category, brand, and product type, and so on.
5. Top vs. others
It is not suggested to increase the number of bids. There are a few products that perform better despite showing them somewhere in the search results instead of on the top. You must navigate to the segments and select top vs. others to compare the conversion rate, CPA, and various other metrics. You can get this data for the ad groups, but not for the product groups.
6. Check the winners and losers
The winners in the campaign are the product groups. These groups increase transaction rates. The losers will offer you with a sea of traffic, but fewer conversion rates. The main aim of every company is to sell the product, rather than just showing them to the customers. Moreover, for every user click, the company has to pay Google. When you can successfully identify the losers and winners, it becomes easier for you to improve the sales and reduce the CPA.
You can do this by navigating to the Dimensions tab on Google Ads and then click View Shopping. Select an attribute to check for the losers and winners. If you are looking for losers and winners for a specific product, you can tailor the columns and show the product structure. This allows you to see the product group and modify to bid for winners and losers. When you filter the product, it becomes easy for you to filter out the losers. The filtering should be done according to the campaign and market. The T-shirt may have 100 clicks, but no conversions, whereas the luxury watch would have fewer clicks but good conversions. It is not the product with fewer conversions that would be marked as the loser, it would be the product that has more clicks and fewer conversions, which would mean you are wasting a lot of money on the ad.
Once you are done identifying the winners and losers, it is time for you to navigate to the Product groups tab and change the bids accordingly. If the bids are not set according to your campaign structure, you must start creating a different product target for those products. You must divide the categories, brands, product types, and so on. You need to bid high on winners and less on losers. Therefore, start thinking about removing the items that have more traffic and fewer conversions.
7. Remove products that are not reaping you the profits
It is better to stop bidding on the campaigns that are not reaping you with the best results. You can remove those products from the campaigns to save big on the marketing budget. To do this, you can exclude the products from the bid list. You can make use of the data feed tool to find out the losers using the same filter and remove them from the data feed with just a click.
8. Try not to make too many changes
Google shopping campaigns are highly sensitive. When you make a small change in the bid, it has a huge impact on the performance of the campaign. Try to just exclude the losers from the bid list and do not make too many changes to the campaign. It is recommended not to increase or decrease the bids by 20%. You can do this for the product groups that are not helping you get more than 20% of the traffic. For example, if your campaign is getting 1000 clicks, you should adjust the product group to allow 200 visits.
9. Use negative keywords
You can save money and maintain relevance by reducing the searches from showing your ads by adding negative keywords. When the users search these keywords, your ad will not show up. For instance, if you own a jewellery shop and are selling only gold bracelets, the users searching for the silver bracelets will click on your link. In this case, you can put silver in the negative keyword list. So, when a user searches for silver bracelets, your ad will not be shown.
You can add negative keywords to every product group or campaign. To do this, go to the Negative keywords tab and add all the negative words that you do not want to show in the ad.
Ads will show all the words for which the ads are displayed. You can use these queries to learn which products are bringing you traffic, but no conversions. The best way to avoid your ad been shown to the unwanted audience is to add the terms in the negative keywords.
10. Scheduling of the ad
If you want to check the performance of the ad at any point in time, you can go to the dimensions tab. This allows you to see when your ad is performing well. The data will help you learn when your ad is getting higher conversions, e.g. at weekends or in the evenings. If you want to segregate the ads for day or night, you can create an ad schedule. You can do this in settings by clicking on the ad schedule and then creating a new schedule. You can set the bids for multiple times in a day. When the schedule is ready, you can either increase or decrease the bids.
Finally, keep track of the changes you are making
Ensure that you are making the right changes. When you increase the bids, it is not assumed that you will get higher conversions. The same goes for when you reduce the bids. It does not mean that your conversions would reduce. The best way to check whether the changes made to the ad are effective or not is to wait for a week or two. You can track the performance of the last 7 to 14 days to the previous performance. You can click the plus button to compare the data of selected metrics. You can also check the bids that you have made adjustments to by going to the change history. If the changes you made are unsuccessful, you can reverse the changes with just a single click.
