Numerous customers are searching for products on Google. This is a great opportunity for business owners to get discovered by potential new customers!
To get target customers into stores from Google Channel, there are different ways to optimize your Shopify store.
First, let’s talk about the requirements of Shopify for the Google channel. Then we will go over ways to optimize your Shopify store for Google Channel in 5 steps.
Let’s dive in.
Google Channel Requirements of Shopify
To use Shopify’s Google Channel there are some requirements for businesses.
Store Requirements: Online stores must meet google merchant center requirements.
Shipping Requirements: You might need to set up shipping rates depending on where you ship your products.
Product Requirements: Google asks for specific information about your products before you upload them on Google.
To learn more about it, visit here.
Optimize Google Channel for Shopify in 5 Steps
1. Run Smart Shopping Campaign on Google
Google Channel dominates the retail search market with 76.4% of retail search ad spend in the US, and 82% of retail search ad spend in the UK.
Google in their 2018 Economic Impact report says ‘’We conservatively estimate that for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they receive $8 in profit through Google Search and Ads.”
Don’t be intimidated by those numbers. These figures show that Google ads are still offering a good value in terms of high click ratio and opening a door for growth in some key areas for businesses.
Businesses can create campaigns for Shopping Ads in Google Ads. Shopping campaigns will allow merchants to manage, optimize and organize Google Ads. Google Shopping Ads uses your product data and then decides where and when to show your ads. And Google allows you the flexibility to promote and organize your campaign from the Merchant Center.
Sales and merchant promotions trigger customers’ buying habits! A Google study showed that Google Shopping Ads can cause a 28% lift in conversion rates.
A good way to observe ads and sales promotions effects is after setting up your campaign you can track the user while he’s seeing your ad. Google Analytics is a good tracking system. It’s a free platform that provides you with in-depth reporting to learn what visitors do after clicking your ads.
If your business uses Google Ads and Google Analytics together, you can learn about customers’ behaviors. This information will guide them to improve customers’ experiences on their website. And this information can also help them to increase conversions and return on ad spend (ROAS).
You can learn more about it here.
Smart Shopping Campaign
In the smart shopping campaign, you are upgrading the performance of your campaign to the maximum level. It brings additional inventory and formats to reach new customers. Advertisers upgrading their Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of 12% in conversion value at the same or better return-on-ad-spend (ROAS).
A smart shopping campaign automatically gets product data from the product data feed and uses it to create shopping ads specifically for target customers.
With Smart Campaigns, Google’s machine learning algorithm uses product feed to create and show different types of ads across different networks. Those networks are Google search Network, Google Display Network, Youtube, and Gmail. This system of Google tests different combinations of product images and descriptions, then selects and shows the most relevant ads automatically to potential customers.
While saying how product feed affects Google Ads it’s time to talk about optimizing your feed.
2. Optimize Product Feed
Product feeds are very useful when selling online. This is because customers are willing to get more information and look at different images of your products.
Optimizing your product feed will make your products more noticeable. It’s a great way to reach target customers!
By definition, a product feed is a file that contains information about product data like product titles, descriptions, images, prices, and other details. This data file tells Google what your product is. Then, Google decides how ads will be displayed.
Merchants can start by focusing on the important pieces of their product to attract ideal customers. This might be the product title, the ideal description, or powerful images. And it needs to be structured in the best way possible.
How to optimize your product feed?
Well, easy task. Let’s go over quick tips on how to do it.
Conduct Keyword Research
Using keywords is one of the most important things you can do. This is because keywords play a big role in the results that you get with Google Ads.
First, you need to know how keywords are working.
Keywords provide some kind of direction to the Google algorithm of what your product is and where it should go and what it should rank for in the first place.
When you have more keywords on a product page, a handful of keywords that are more relevant to products means that there are more chances for ranking one of the keywords that you have. When that happens you automatically gain authority in Google’s eyes. This can lead to ranking even more keywords and lower your cost.
Let’s explore them step by step on how to do it!
A) Main words for your product
Figure out the main word to describe the product. Keep this between 1-3 words maximum. You will use it as the title of your product.
B) Use a keyword planner tool or any other keyword research website
You can type the main keywords for your product by using a tool or website.
C) Set up certain filters on the keyword planner tool
These filters are mostly available on Google keyword planner. But if you are using any other tool, look at this manually.
While looking for keywords, remember to use the customer’s language. What would they ask Google when they search for your product? Looking for related Google searches is a good practice for this.
We know that customers are coming from Google searches. In Google Search, you don’t have much ability to bid on specific keywords. So, you lose a lot of the control you have with keywords listed in Google Search campaigns.
And while using keywords, you can use negative keywords as well. They are a great way to streamline the shopping campaign and also save you money.
Before using negative keywords you have to create a shopping campaign.
Use Negative Keyword List:
You can’t ignore negative keywords, they can be very powerful to get target customers. You can do it by blocking out unwanted search results and you can minimize garbage clicks. Using negative keywords will improve click-through rate, improve conversion rate, lower cost per click and improve return on ad spend.
Create keyword testing in the feed to hone in on what works for your store. Then product feed will be well optimized to get target customers into your store.
3. Use Retargeting
Did you know that your e-commerce website can track shopper behavior and respond with dynamic advertising? This can be used to bring visitors back to your shop, even after they have left to visit other sites. This is called product retargeting.
Statistics show that; Nearly 98% of your website visitors won’t purchase if it’s their first time visiting your website. Retargeting can be used to attract visitors.
Let’s explore what retargeting is, how it works and tips for successful retargeting campaigns.
The way a shopper behaves on an e-commerce site can tell that merchant a lot about which product they are interested in. This is useful information for businesses. Because it allows the creation of specific advertisements for customers who have shown an interest in certain products.
As with any advertising campaign, it’s important to measure and optimize the performance of your products’ retargeting campaigns over time. This means you can track conversion rates, test new types of ads, tweak your parameters and use analytics to manage these campaigns. Retargeting can be a great way to re-engage the visitors that might not have returned otherwise. Knowing how it works, and how to do it can make these campaigns a great addition to the marketing activities.
While retargeting you get a chance of turning visitors into paying customers. This strategy will put product ads in front of the target audience.
Focus on Best Selling Items
Most online retailers might treat all their products the same. But you probably have some items which sell better than others. Now, identify the most profitable products. Google Analytics can easily determine these products. You can find them by going to Google Analytics in the left-hand navigation, Conversions > Ecommerce > Product Performance and then changing the Primary Dimension to ‘Product SKU’. This allows you to track the sales activity of each SKU from your site.
After finding the most profitable products you can use product retargeting. In retargeting you can create more aggressive bids. And you will be able to use this strategy to retain existing customers.
4. Adopt Dynamic Repricing Strategy in Data Feed
Competitive pricing should play a big role in your e-commerce strategy. Since e-commerce is getting crowded every day, letting your prices be flexible and competitive means you are intelligently competing with other merchants to optimize Google channel.
There are dynamic pricing solutions for staying ahead with price fluctuations on e-commerce. By using dynamic pricing algorithms in Google shopping platform, merchants can see competitors’ prices and take actions accordingly. Having this flexibility in the e-commerce marketplace will be advantageous for businesses. This is because you will be making data-driven decisions. Then, you can see results immediately in a positive way.
5. Use Google Tag Manager on Shopify
Think about the most commonly used marketing and tracking tags for Shopify stores. They are Google Analytics, Hotjar, Google Ads Conversion Tags and others. And many businesses don’t own only one website, they usually have multiple websites selling different brands. That requires a lot of work. And Google was aware of how time-consuming and complex it is.
Google announced Google Tag Manager (GTM) as a solution for it. It allows marketers to track tags into online properties without having any knowledge of coding.
Let’s talk about the benefits of GTM.
Benefits of Google Tag Manager
Reliable and Accurate Data: GTM offers that data is being collected reliably and accurately.
Quick Deploy Google and Third Party Tags: GTM supports all tags and has easy-to-use templates for a wide range of Google and third-party tags for web and mobile.
Simple to set up: No programming knowledge is required. You can easily make updates, add new tags or test each change.
Collaborative work: GTM lets you collaborate and work independently. Like in Google Analytics you can add different users to GTM with certain permissions.
GTM provides integrations with;
- Google Analytics
- AdWords Conversion Tracking
- Google Optimize
- AdWords Re-marketing
- DoubleClick
- Google Surveys
- Hotjar
How to set up Shopify Google Tag Manager?
You can do it manually by adding the code to the Shopify store’s theme and checkout file. You need access to the GTM container and your Shopify store and have the rights in the Shopify store to go in and edit theme files. Or you can work with apps on Shopify that are optimized for this setup.
Key Takeaways
- Optimizing your product feed will lead Google to display your ads to the target audience.
- Using negative keywords can minimize cost per click and improve return on ad spend.
- Google Smart Shopping campaign offers you to upgrade the performance of product pages.
- Retargeting gives a chance to re-engage the visitors and turn them into paying customers.
- GTM is one easy way to track tags into online properties that offer reliable and accurate data.
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