A Step-by-step Guide For Creating Your First Ecommerce Google Shopping Ads

For many eCommerce businesses, Google Shopping Adstands out as a top marketing channel. So, it is not surprising to see reports suggesting that Google Shopping Ad accounts for up to 18% of all e-commerce revenue. 

However, no e-commerce business jumps into the use of Google Shopping Ad without adequate knowledge of it. Jumping into it without adequate preparation is setting yourself up for failure. However, you shouldn't worry because we've prepared a guide that you can use. 

Google Shopping Ad is a pretty large platform with several options to choose from and this makes choosing the right option pretty difficult. However, this guide is designed to introduce you to useful steps you can adopt to set up a successful Google Shopping Ad on a generic level. 

Let's get started and you can also check our Google Shopping Ad Services!

1. Prepare Your Google Shopping Ad Campaign

Remember the popular saying, “Nothing beats proper preparation?” You’ll need to be sure about what you want to achieve before starting. We recommend creating an outline for your goals and preparing the necessary tools you'll need to complete the campaign. 

Below are some of the things you'll need to prepare at this point. 

• Decide the right call-to-action
  
  The first place to start your new campaign is to be clear with your definition of success. Answer relevant questions like, "where do I want my ad to direct users to?"
  
  It could be anything from being registered in an email list to placing an order. Whatever it is, just write it down. 
  
  
• Set Your Budget
  
  Of course, you know how impossible it is to launch a marketing initiative without a budget. It's crucial to have a concrete number in mind before starting because going on without one can cripple your campaign in a short while.
  
  We generally advise people to be realistic with their budget. You can't use a monthly budget of $100 to pursue sales of 50 × $10,000 products. 
  
  
• Create your landing page
  
  One of the first things to do is to create a dedicated landing page that users would be redirected to. Creating a clear enough dedicated landing page would help users to move around your website without feeling confused.
  
  You can also leverage your landing page to highlight a specific coupon deal or, in fact, anything else you would want your visitors to see.
  
  We also recommend ensuring that your landing page has a strong call to action that users can click on to complete your goal.

2. Research Your Customers

With your goals ready and your landing pages well designed, the next phase to turn to is learning more about your target audience and the message you'll need to impact them. 

Some basic strategies that can help you drive at this include:

i. Keyword Research

No doubt, you've heard about keyword research already, especially in content marketing. Let's mention that the process is almost the same here. However, you'll need to ensure that your AdWords keywords address the following areas:

addresses each stage of your potential customers' buying journey

is specific to your products or services

it is grouped into different lists that are relevant to each specific topic. 

3. Setup Your Google Shopping Ad Campaign

Now is the time to delve properly into your campaign. Of course, the last two stages were setting you up for this stage. 

How do you create your campaign? Here are useful steps for doing it.

i. Choose your goal

ii. Select your target locations

iii. Choose a bid strategy that will be relevant to your goal.

iv. Write out your Ad extensions.

4. Write Your Ads

At this point, you should aim more for clarity than cleverness.  Here, take a look at three elements that you must look at. 

• a compelling headline (typically about 25 characters)
• a two-line body copy (ideally left at 35 characters per line). 
• a URL for directing people to the pages you want them to go to. 

While writing your ads, we suggest creating between 3-5 ads for each of your keyword groups. You can also test different ads to know which ones would perform best. Leave the ads for a few weeks and screen out ads that are not performing as well as you would want. 

You can't overlook the need to experiment with ads, considering how paramount it is to the success of your campaign. One mistake many Google Shopping Ad marketers make is writing ads once during the start of their campaign and never testing or changing them. 

The best way to go about this is to constantly tweak existing ads or writing new ones to ensure maximum performance. 

5. Measure Your Success

We've talked a little about this already. After everything, you'll want to know how successful your campaign is. 

Unfortunately, AdWords is not the kind of campaign that you'll just set and forget. you'll need to continue reviewing your results to know how it works while taking relevant actions to correct unsuccessful ones. For new campaigns, we advise a daily review of ads.

Once the campaign starts picking pace, you can change your inspection routine from a daily to a weekly basis for maintenance purposes. 

Here, take a look at some of the things you should evaluate when reviewing your ads.

• Key metrics
• Profit rate
• Google's suggestions.

Conclusion

In the end, you want to stick to your main reason for running your Google Shopping Ad campaign. Most times, it's either to quickly scale your store or to add several bottom lines. 

Whatever it is, you must realize that it takes a lot to work. Optimizing, maintaining, and testing your new ads would cost you money and time. 

Thankfully, AdWords are not long-term strategies, so it won't take you too much time to see results. It's such a great addition to your marketing strategy and we expect you to leverage it in expanding your customer base.