I frequently get asked about Google shopping Ads and how they work. Is it a cost effective method of selling? Does it cost much to set up? Does it Work? In that order, the answers are: Yes. No. Yes.

Cost effective – Yes, well I always found that it was. When I owned my eCommerce business I had 6500 products on what is now called “Google Shopping”. For me the return on my investment was very good and all information I’ve had from other people that use it is that they believe in its costs effectiveness also.

You can set it up for free if you do it yourself. Admittedly there are a few steps to go through and creating the data feed isn’t so straightforward unless your eCommerce site is on OpenCart or Magento or perhaps one of the other platforms that can easily create the feed from your online shop database.

Does it work – Yes it really does. The beauty of setting up a Google shopping campaign is that you don’t have to worry about keywords. Google takes the information from your shopping database. I think this is a major reason as to why it works very well. As long as you follow the set up procedure correctly, there’s not much that can go wrong. If other businesses are selling the same product, then you do need to be competitively priced. One big tip here though is to make your product titles a bit different from everyone else. Perhaps think of this when you are adding products to your store. Consider adding in an extra descriptive keyword to your product titles.

So the key benefits to Google shopping are: The Ads perform better than text Ads. Why? Because the Ad is for one product, it’s an image Ad so people can see immediately what they are clicking through to see. Your products are well and truly in the spotlight. Right at the top of the Google SERPS. Once set up, it’s really easy to manage a campaign. As I’ve said, set up can be a bit tricky but once done you can manage it yourself without any ongoing management fees.

By the way, you don’t need to have thousands of products. You could create a data feed with one product if you wanted. The set up is the same for however many products you have.

Just think. When you have got it all set up, you have the potential to sell your products to anyone, anywhere in the world. You don’t have to of course, you can target the Ads just like any other Google AdWords Campaign. If you are a small shop in Norwich, Norfolk where I’m from, you can target any surrounding area that you like. Norfolk, Suffolk or East Anglia or just England or the whole of the UK or the rest of the world. Imaging that!

If you are trying to set up Google shopping and you’re finding it a bit more difficult than you thought. Give me a call. I’d be quite happy to give you some advice without any obligation. A coffee and a chat can sometimes work wonders. You can contact me by phoning 01603 383477 or filling in my contact form. I’d really like to hear from you.