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Category: Google Shopping

7 Top Google Shopping Ad Optimization Strategies to Boost Your Sales

Google Shopping Ads are a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses to promote their products and drive revenue. With the right optimization strategies, you can take your Shopping Ads to the next level and generate millions for your clients. In this post, we’ll share seven top Google Shopping Ad optimization strategies that you can use to increase sales and drive revenue in 2023.

  1. Review Your Product Feed Regularly

The first step to optimizing your Google Shopping Ads is to review your product feed regularly. Some products may not perform well, and you’ll want to exclude them to avoid wasting your ad spend. Go into your product feed and review your products at 30, 60, and 90-day windows. If a product consistently shows poor conversion value, cut it.

  1. Use Ad Extensions

Ad extensions can help you stand out, create trust, and grab attention. Take advantage of whatever extensions are available to you, such as product ratings and reviews, merchant promotions, and shipping. Use these extensions to provide more information to potential customers and improve your click-through rates.

  1. Follow a Product-Themed Structure

If you have multiple product types, create a category or product-themed shopping campaign. This will give you more control over optimizations like targeting, device splits, and negative keywords. Some optimizations may be irrelevant across multiple product types, so a product-themed structure can help you focus your efforts.

  1. Review Irrelevant Traffic

Continually review your search terms report and remove any terms that have poor intent or low conversion rates. This is an ongoing process, and you should aim to add negative keywords regularly. Some brands have thousands of negative keywords to exclude irrelevant traffic.

  1. Use Targeted ROAS Bidding

Experiment with using target ROAS bidding. This bidding strategy adjusts bids at every auction to deliver more cost-effective conversions. Review your target ROAS every 2-3 weeks and make sure it is higher or similar to your actual conversion value. Otherwise, adjust your target ROAS.

  1. Optimize Your Product Feed

Optimize your product feed by filling in accurate and persuasive information like categories, titles, product descriptions, and more. Don’t let Google auto-fill or assign values, as you want full control over your feed.

  1. Use Device and Location Split Targeting

Different devices and locations may convert differently depending on your industry, niche, product, and target market. Find the devices and locations that perform well and split them into new campaigns or adjust your bid accordingly.

In conclusion, optimizing your Google Shopping Ads is an ongoing process. Use these seven strategies to increase your sales and drive revenue in 2023. Remember to take intellectual guesses, gather data, and keep testing to find the strategies that work best for your business.

Fix Untrustworthy pMax Data with Branded Standard Shopping: A 6-Step Guide to Maximizing Brand Visibility on Google Shopping

Are you tired of seeing heavily inflated results in your Performance Max campaigns? Do you want to learn how to maximize your brand’s visibility on Google Shopping? Then keep reading to learn how to fix untrustworthy pMax data with Branded Standard Shopping.

At first glance, Performance Max (pMax) results might look good, but when you dig deeper, you will often see that a significant part of your conversions comes from branded searches. Branded searches are the ones that were going to convert anyway, and pMax takes credit for them, inflating your results.

On average, we see that 10-20% of conversions come from branded searches. Therefore, excluding branded searches from your pMax campaigns is the best solution. However, if you exclude branded searches, you won’t be visible on Search and Shopping when users search for your brand.

To solve this problem, you can set up Branded Search and Branded Standard Shopping campaigns. Most people already have Branded Search campaigns live, but they don’t know how to set up Branded Standard Shopping campaigns effectively. In this blog post, we will show you how to do it.

Brand and non-branded traffic have completely different goals, so it’s essential to treat them differently. You need to split up branded and non-branded traffic into separate campaigns because they have completely different goals. With branded campaigns, you want to maximize visibility (impression share), while with non-branded campaigns, you want to maximize conversions or conversion value within your cost-per-action (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS) precondition. Splitting up branded and non-branded Search campaigns has been the best practice for years, and the same applies to pMax.

Here’s how to use Branded Standard Shopping to catch branded traffic on Google Shopping:

  • Step 1: Analyze the share of branded search in pMax

The first step is to analyze the share of branded search in pMax. On average, we see that 10-20% of conversions are branded. To analyze the share of branded search, click on your pMax campaign, go to insights, and scroll down to search term insights. Calculate the total conversions or conversion value that came from branded searches and compare that to the total conversions or conversion value of your pMax campaign.

  • Step 2: Exclude branded search terms from pMax

The next step is to exclude branded search terms from pMax, so it will no longer take credit for branded conversions. Create a negative keyword list specifically for Performance Max, contact Google support and ask them to apply it to your campaigns, and add negative keywords whenever you want inside the Google Ads interface.

  • Step 3: Set up a Branded Standard Shopping campaign

The next step is to set up a Branded Standard Shopping campaign. This campaign will help you maximize visibility (impression share) on branded searches on Google Shopping. To set up this campaign, you need to:

  • Step 4: Eliminate non-branded search terms from your Branded Standard Shopping campaign to ensure that your campaign is truly focused on your brand.

Unfortunately, Branded Standard Shopping isn’t a concrete concept, and targeting specific (branded) keywords isn’t possible. With Google Shopping, you’ll automatically be matched to relevant search queries based on your product feed, which includes both branded and non-branded search terms.

To address this issue, you’ll need to exclude every non-branded search term that appears in the search term report of your Branded Standard Shopping campaign. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Create a negative keyword list.
  2. Add the negatives to your Branded Standard Shopping campaigns.
  3. Go to your search term report and create a filter that excludes all non-branded search terms that were matched on Branded Standard Shopping. Use this filter: “search term does not include [branded search term + ALL misspellings]”, “added/excluded: none”. This will show you only the non-branded search terms that were matched on Branded Standard Shopping.
  4. Select all non-branded search terms and add them as negative keywords.
  5. Click “negative keyword list” and select the list you created in step 1, adding all as exact match negatives.
  6. Save this filter so you can easily use it in the future.
  7. In the first few days, add all non-branded search terms that were matched. Then, include them in your weekly checks.

Using a negative keyword list is recommended because it can be added to multiple Branded Standard Shopping campaigns if you have them. This is particularly relevant and simple if you have campaigns in different countries with the same language.

While this is a manual process, doing it consistently for a few weeks will make your campaign almost entirely branded. As time goes on, the number of search terms you need to exclude each week will decrease.

 

  • Step 5: Maximize impression share on Branded Standard Shopping with manual CPC

Now that you’ve set up your Branded Standard Shopping campaign, it’s time to maximize your impression share. We recommend using manual CPC bidding instead of smart bidding. Here’s why:

Smart bidding (like target ROAS) is aimed at driving conversions, but in Branded Standard Shopping campaigns, we’re looking to maximize impression share. Manual CPC gives you more control over your bids and is a better fit for this purpose.

To maximize your impression share, set your bids high enough to stay competitive, but not too high that you blow through your budget too quickly.

You can use the “Search Impr. Share” column in Google Ads to track your progress and adjust bids accordingly. Keep in mind that Google may not always show your ad, even if you have a high impression share, so don’t get too hung up on the number.

  • Step 6: Scale pMax with realistic CPA/ROAS targets

Now that you’ve excluded branded searches from your pMax campaigns and set up a Branded Standard Shopping campaign, it’s time to scale your pMax campaigns.

We recommend setting realistic CPA/ROAS targets for your non-branded pMax campaigns. Don’t expect the same CPA/ROAS as your Branded Standard Shopping campaign, since non-branded searches have a different intent and typically convert at a lower rate.

Instead, focus on increasing your impression share and optimizing for conversions within your target CPA/ROAS range. Use your Branded Standard Shopping campaign as a benchmark for what’s possible.

Conclusion

If you’ve been relying on pMax data to optimize your Google Shopping campaigns, it’s time to rethink your approach. Branded Search conversions can heavily inflate your pMax data, making it difficult to accurately assess your campaign performance and scale effectively.

By excluding branded searches from your pMax campaigns and setting up Branded Standard Shopping campaigns, you can maximize your visibility on branded searches and improve the reliability of your pMax data.

Remember to treat branded and non-branded traffic differently and use manual CPC bidding to maximize your impression share on Branded Standard Shopping campaigns. With these strategies in place, you can scale your Google Shopping campaigns with confidence.