I saw umpteen number of not so successful shopping campaigns during my tenure as Google Ads Merchant Center Specialist. Many companies seem to believe that showcasing their products via a shopping campaign is enough. Sales would automatically follow. Not all shoppers out there are browsing with the same intent though. They are in different stages of their shopping journey. And they might not even search for a specific product with the same phrases or words. It is just a fact that profitable shopping campaigns do not build themselves. So what do you need to do to optimize your shopping campaign to get the best ROI? I will in this article give you a brief introduction to the optimization of your shopping campaign.
There are different ways you can optimize your Shopping Campaigns. Depending on whether you have a Regular Shopping Campaign or a Smart Shopping Campaign.
One way to optimize the campaign is to place your products in different product groups. This way you can place different bids. Bids that will correspond to the different intentions of the buyers as well as to your ROI expectations. You can do this with a regular shopping campaign, not with a Smart Shopping Campaign. Do you prefer the automated bidding in Smart Shopping Campaigns? Then you have the choice to set up your products in different campaigns. This way you can set different Target ROAS for the campaigns. With a Smart Shopping Campaign which includes products with a big variety in price; it is advisable to split it into several different campaigns instead.
Another way is to have several campaigns with the same products but different campaign priorities. Again, this goes for a Regular Shopping Campaign but not for a Smart Shopping Campaign. This way you can make the most out of seasonal changes or if you want to clear out some stock. Use this method to filter out generic searches from more precise searches.
One part of optimization which companies often tend to forget is the optimization of product titles and product descriptions. Maybe because this task can be a tedious one. Especially if you have many products. Because you are so familiar with your own products, it is easy to forget that the more information you have about them the the better. The more likely it is that these ads will correspond to a customers search query.
Shopping Campaigns, unlike other campaigns, such as search campaigns or display campaigns, do not use keywords. The title and in the product description functions as keywords. You can add negative keywords to filter out unwanted results. The magic is though in how you describe the product, that is the key to success.
A customer might see 60-70 letters of the 150 letters available for the product title. Despite this, it is important to put as much important information as possible there. Product title and description weighs heavy when a search is paired with an ad. The same goes for the product description where you have as many as 5000 letters available to describe your product. Use them! If not all, because it is a lot, follow the recommendation of minimum 500 letters to describe your product. Think about it like this. The more you describe the product the bigger is the chance that a customer has searched with similar words.
Taking these measures and add negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic. Optimize product titles and product descriptions and you are on the path to success!
Tip! Never set up a Smart Shopping Campaign and a Regular Shopping Campaign with the same products and have them running at the same time. They will start cannibalizing on each other and both of them will slowly die. If you are interested in optimizing your shopping campaign or just want to hear more about the topic, send an email to tim@lunarstrategy.com and we can take it up from there!
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