6 Tips to Supercharge Your Holiday Google Shopping Campaigns

There’s no question that well-executed Google Shopping campaigns can deliver impressive returns. However as more and more advertisers adopt Google Shopping, combined with Google’s initiative to show more shopping ads over the festive season, it can be difficult to stand out from the competition.

 
Here are six tips to help supercharge your Google Shopping campaigns this holiday season that’ll help drive visibility and returns on your product advertising.

Optimize Poorer Performing Products

A well optimized product feed is the foundation of successful Google Shopping campaigns and for the festive season, it’s a good opportunity to drive more value out of poorer performing products to shift inventory.

Make sure product titles include as much information as possible within the 150-character limit. This includes the name of the product, brand, gender, size and color. This is good practice that will sit well with merchants serving a variety of industries, from clothing to DIY and furniture.

A similar principle applies to product descriptions. Make sure that they contain all the relevant keywords and specific information within the 500-character limit. If you’re selling branded products, there will be a lot of competition. So, write descriptions that highlight the key features of the product. For example, if you’re selling winter coat, is it waterproof? Lightweight? Can sustain up to certain temperatures? It’s all in the detail.

It’s very important that you invest the time into undertaking keyword research when optimizing product titles and descriptions. You’ll soon discover that your customers further into the sales funnel are conducting more granular searches that incorporate colors and sizes into queries. By using more descriptive and keyword focused titles and descriptions, you’re also increasing the chances of your ads showing to searchers at the top and further down the sales funnel.

For inspiration, look beyond AdWords Keyword Planner and use keyword research tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush and even search terms data in your Google Search Console account.

Keep on Top of Feed Errors & Disapprovals

While it’s clear that any disapproved items in your feed will have an impact on revenue, products with missing fields (flagged as blue and yellow flags in Google Merchant Center) will have not only have an impact on their visibility, but also their competitive edge.

Fortunately to help you identify and resolve feed issues, GMC will not only summarise what products are affected but will also give you the option to download them as an itemised CSV file.

A summary of all product errors and disapprovals can be found in GMC under Products and Diagnostics.

If there are many products with missing fields such as ‘brand’ or ‘google product category’, you can set up Feed Rules in GMC. This will allow you to automatically populate missing fields with either a fixed value, or with variable values based on rules. Perfect for a quick fix.

To set Feed Rules, navigate to Products in GMC, select Feed and then Feed Rules.

Blow the Competition Away with Epic Product Images

High-quality and relevant product images will not only help reduce the number of disapprovals in your feed, but will also have a positive impact on your products’ visibility and click-through rates.

For clothing items, be sure to use quality 250 x 250px images and 100 x 100px for non-clothing items. Also, remove any layered promotional text or marks that may be obscuring the view of products.

Finally, consider using alternatives to manufacturer stock images. For example, use contextual product imagery that shows the item in situ, or show the product from different angles. This helps your product stand out in competitive branded item results.

Leverage Custom Labels for Efficient Spending & Reporting

I’ve come across many AdWords shopping campaigns structured as a single campaign with a single ad group containing a crazy number of product groups. This campaign structure puts a huge limitation on your bidding strategy and reporting.

View Source to Continue Reading: 6 Tips to Supercharge Your Holiday Google Shopping Campaigns