Google Shopping: How to Optimize Your Campaigns This Holiday Season

The holiday season is the time for surges in sales.  However, as more online retailers are taking advantage of all that Google Shopping has to offer, it is becoming harder to truly stand out from all the competition in the online marketplace.

If you’re looking to drive visibility on your Google Shopping campaigns and see greater returns on your online marketing investment this holiday season, here are five tips to help you optimize your advertising:

1 – Optimize Your Product images

In order to ensure that your product offerings are competitive, you need to be using high-quality images that are relevant to your products.

More and more shoppers are searching using Google Images from their mobile devices.  In fact, Google has reported that “the top questions Google Images users ask us are ‘What’s the price of this?’ and ‘Where can I buy it?’”[1]

If you sell clothing items, you want to use high-quality 250 X 250px images.  Other products should be at least 100 X 100px.

Bonus tip: make sure no promotional markings are blocking a clear view of your product.

2 – Utilize Custom Labels

Custom Labels in Google Ads allow you to subdivide the products in your Google Shopping campaigns based on values that you choose. This helps give you more control over your advertising spend.

Popular custom labels are used for products that are on clearance, seasonal, or best-sellers.

For example, if you create a separate campaign for just your holiday season products, you will be able to set-up a designated budget with its own bidding strategy to help promote maximum visibility for those products.

What’s more, if you have the same product in multiple campaigns you will be able to use Google shopping’s campaign priority strategy to determine what will bid.

3 – Take Advantage of Remarketing Lists

Just like Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), it’s possible to use remarketing lists for Google shopping too. Using remarketing lists allows you to categorize and segment your site visitors based on their previous activity.

Common lists are for visitors who have abandoned shopping carts, returning visitors, and loyal customers.

Remarketing allows you to reach visitors and customers across all their devices as they browse other websites and mobile apps. With automated bidding, you can even leverage the power of advanced machine learning to ensure optimal real-time bidding for the individual viewing your ad.

By bidding more aggressively on audiences that are more likely to buy, you’re likely to raise your click-through and conversion rates while also lowering your cost-per-action (CPA). Certain studies show audiences converting at CPAs almost one quarter that of their other shopping.

4 – Edit the Listings for Any Underperforming Products

If any of your products seem to have been underperforming, make sure to check their listings and edit for optimization.

First, check the product titles and try to include as much information as possible within the character limit. This is not only your brand and the name of the product, but information like color, gender, size or any other significant distinguishers of that particular product.

Next, check your product descriptions. You want to make sure they are keyword rich, detailed, highly specific, and lengthy while remaining within the character limit.  Ideally, you want to highlight any of the key features of your products that will provide the benefits your customers seek.  Hone in on what is useful, unique, and/or unusual about each product.  Don’t’ forget – excellence is in the details.

5 – Check on Any Disapprovals or Feed Errors

Google Merchant Center provides a summary of any product errors and/or disapprovals under Products and Diagnostics. Make sure your products have no missing fields, as this will impact both their visibility and competitive edge on Google Shopping.

Bonus tip: if you have a lot of products with missing fields and you need a quick fix, go set up Feed Rules in Google Merchant Center.

By optimizing your Google Shopping campaigns for the holidays, you can take full advantage of everything this festive season has to give – and hopefully, get started off to a Happy New Year!

[1] http://www.googblogs.com/new-ways-to-be-there-and-be-useful-for-mobile-shoppers/

JXT Group

Menachem Ani ()

Online Advertising and eCommerce Expert with over a decade of success developing high-impact marketing strategies for online retailers and lead-generation clients.