Do not give up on your Standard Shopping campaign.
I know what you are thinking. There is Performance Max. Yes, true, but you want to retain as much control as possible over your ads while collecting as much data as possible. And Shopping Standard is still a way to achieve this.
Performance max will take the control away while hiding most of the data to make your account profitable in the long term.
Shopping Standard Ads have become an indispensable part of the business world and have had significant effects on e-commerce advertising. They offer a convenient way for businesses to showcase their products and drive sales.
In the competitive business market, it is now more challenging than ever to distinguish your business from other companies offering the same services. That means your ads need a lot of effort, money, and creativity to produce the expected results.
Performance max takes away that effort. However, that is not the way to go. Putting in a bit more extra time and effort will have a substantial impact on your sales.
Thankfully, I tested and trusted strategies that have produced decent Returns on Investment (ROI) from shopping ads for all my clients.
Each of the strategies we discuss here can help drive more traffic to your business, convert prospects to customers, and increase your revenue from shopping ads.
Target The Right Keywords
All the accounts I’ve seen target everything that makes sense for the business. But this is not the correct approach.
The more the generic keyword, the more likely you’ll have to pay a premium.
Selecting the right keywords when planning your ads ensures that your ads are shown to the right people with the highest possibility of conversion. This is marketing 101. Consider choosing keywords that are relevant to your product and target audience and make sure to run a cost analysis to forecast possible costs.
Remember to think like a customer, be specific and targeted, use different variations of the same keyword, and use long tail keywords.
Google Keyword Planner, Answerthepublic.com, Ahrefs, Wordstrem, Semrush, and others are good tools to make the most out of your keyword research.
Use High-Quality Photos
First impressions sell. Trust me.
When selecting images, apply creativity and use a range of styles. For both, your shopping and website images.
If you are selling shoes, do not show a simple shoe, show a new look, a new style through the image.
Users need to start understanding their possible gain if they buy your shoe, and a tedious white background shoe image will not achieve this.
You can use models to display your products, play around with different angles in product images, and vary the background. Depending on your target audience and products, stock images, graphics, or 2D/3D images can also be effective.
Besides clear images, you can also use other sales visuals to explicitly display what customers are getting from your products. Clear visuals and images leave less room for exaggerated expectations or doubt. You can get clear photos from Pexels, Unsplash, Pixabay, Canva, etc.
Add Reviews Extension
All my clients have a goal of 10-15 monthly. This is an achievable figure and this should be part of your strategy moving forward.
I saw an average 160% increase in sales across all my client accounts thanks to adding more reviews.
Reviews make a huge difference. You’re missing big if this is not part of your weekly strategy.
Studies show that 98% of customers view reviews as a valuable resource when shopping online.
New prospects are more likely to be converted when they know that other people have had good experiences with your brand.
Adding reviews to your ads not only builds trust with your audience but also increases your clickthrough rate.
When setting up your ads, you can add reviews from the Merchant Center, a Third-party reviews aggregator, or Google Customer Reviews.
Use Value Adds
Value adds are particular features or improvements you add to your products or ad copies to make them more desirable to your customers. Your audience is more likely to interact with your ad when they are something for them to gain from it.
Google ad allows you to include these value adds as a list of extensions to be displayed in your ads. These offers differentiate your products from competitors and entice your audience. Examples of the value add for your ads are free delivery, free shipping, free returns, free trials, demos, and so on.
Optimize Titles and Descriptions
When writing your ad copies, remember to make the most of your title and description by using smart keywords that resonate with your audience.
Do the same for your website text.
Focus on your product’s unique selling point (USP) and use creative keywords and phrases that clearly state the benefits and value of your products.
Focus on how your product will solve someone’s problem.
Monitor Search Terms
It is important to monitor the search terms that your customers use to find your products. This gives you a clearer understanding of keywords and allows you to separate useful and negative ones.
Again, look at the Cost Per Click. Are those expensive keywords bringing engaging users?
A good tip is to set up tracking for your website signup form. If customers that generate the highest CPC are not purchasing but keep signing up, those keywords could have a good potential.
Ensure that you regularly document or report the changes in keywords and search phrases so that you can only move ahead with the relevant ones.
Pause Poor Performing Ads
To progressively make the most Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), you must constantly review and analyze the performance of your ads. This way, you can know where to put in more effort, increase the ad bid, and pause the budget on poor-performing product ads.
Reviewing your ads, adjusting bids, and pausing/replacing poor-performing ads, will help optimize your ad budget. If you are using manual bids, you can lower the bid, and with an automated bid, you can pause the campaign altogether.
Adjust bids on your devices
Knowing the devices that customers use to search for your product or view your website is significant to the success of your ad campaign.
You can adjust bids based on location, ad schedule, placement, and devices. Look at what’s performing better and tweak those binds accordingly.
Stop any location that is not performing, and isolate those that are performing significantly better than the competition.
The goal is to understand your customer’s search behaviors and adjust your ads to meet them in their comfort. Adjusting bids should be made after reviewing the data from previous ads. You can also use Google Analytics to monitor how your customers convert on each device.
Final thoughts – Scaling your shopping Ads
Turning your shopping ads into money requires careful planning and execution. Using any or all the strategies above, you can increase the visibility and appeal of your products to potential buyers.
Remember, the key to success in shopping ads is to focus on the customer’s needs and to provide a seamless shopping experience. Doing so can drive more sales and achieve a higher return on ad spend (ROAS) for your advertising efforts.
