February 2, 2022
Shopping ads now drive 76% of retail search ad spend, and generate 85% of all clicks on Google Ads, posing an opportunity we’re sure you’d agree shouldn't be ignored. You might have already set your shopping campaigns away and think that’s it, job done! But if you’re not optimising your ads, how can you expect them to perform?
A new year brings bucket loads of ‘will’ to do better than the last, so now’s the perfect time to whip your ads into shape. Our shopping specialists have listed their top 6 tips to optimise your shopping ads below…
- Get your product titles on point
We think it goes without saying that your product title needs be bang on and is actually one of the biggest levers you can pull to improve your shopping campaign performance. At the very least you’ve got to use your 70 characters (out of the 150 only 70 are visible on your ad!) wisely and clearly show exactly what product you’re selling to both Google and the prospective customer. Your titles have a direct impact on how Google matches your products to relevant search queries - the more optimised your title the higher chance you’ve got of Google showing your ad to a user that’s more likely to convert.
P.s, make sure you’re getting seasonal keywords into your titles where appropriate! - Focus on top performing products
Utilise the data in your account to pinpoint the products that prove to give you the best ROI and focus the majority of your campaign budget on them. In doing so, you’ll eliminate wasted budget being pumped into your less popular products and get the most value out of your ads.
On the flipside, you’ll also benefit from entirely excluding products that are out of season or have few sizes left (i.e only having one size left in a top will not convert as well as if there were 6 options available). Spend your budget where it matters. If you’re keen to see where your products stack up against your competitors we happen to have a pretty epic tool for you 👀 >> https://weareortus.com/services/price-intelligence-tool/ - Optimise the sh*t out of your landing pages
So you’ve got the click we’ve been aiming for but where does your customer land? If your ad leads the customer to a clear, relevant page, they’re more likely to convert to a sale. Land them in a labyrinth of mixed messaging and unclear CTAs and the likelihood of them ditching your site and giving that sale to a competitor is pretty high.
Make that path to purchase super simple - the fewer steps the better, but most importantly make sure the page they’re landing on is exactly what they’re expecting to see after clicking on your ad. Page speed is also an important factor here which is helped by streamlining your content and avoiding those huge file/slow loading images! - Think about including custom labels
With Shopping campaigns, you can apply custom labels when you’re looking to organise the products within your campaigns by attributes that are important to you as a retailer. For example, you can use custom labels to indicate that products are seasonal, on clearance, best sellers, etc. These values can then be selected to use for monitoring, reporting, and bidding in your Shopping campaign.
They’re only visible internally but they’re a great tool to use to optimise your campaigns - if used correctly they can really boost your ROI so definitely one worth implementing! - Supply Google with as much information about your products as you can
Whilst there are a whole host of 'must have' attributes (titles, price, link URL etc), Google also have some attributes that are "we wish we had them, but we'll still show your ads if you don't supply them" - but without this, you may be limited in how often you show and who you show to.
Adding information like colour, gender, material etc is a must have to make sure you're showing your products to the right queries. - Provide both the original and reduced price if your item is in sale
With products that you’ve marked down or moved into sale, make sure you’re providing Google with both the original price and the sale price. This enables them to clearly highlight that your items are in sale and add the promotional overlay to make your ads pop to those all important customers! Supplying only the "price" feature makes it harder for Google to distinguish the price drop so this is often missed off.
If you’re a little bit lost with where to start, our shopping specialists will be happy to help. Kick things off with a free audit here to uncover exactly where your ads are falling short!