In recent times, we’re seeing more and more Pronto clients tapping into the power of shopping campaigns. Well planned and strategy driven shopping campaigns can be used for multiple promotion purposes. A good promotion has the ability to showcase your online and local inventory, while boosting traffic to both your website and physical store. The higher the quality of leads that are heading in-store or browsing through your site, the better! Shopping campaigns help customers to determine if your product or service is ideal for them.

You may have heard about Google Shopping campaigns - even if you’re unsure about what they are, no doubt you would have been exposed to them when searching via Google. Explained simply, they are product listing advertisements (PLAs) that allow companies to advertise their products, while people are searching via Google. The products appear via either the “All” or “Shopping” tabs within the Google search engine results.

The results we’re seeing from retailers speak for themselves. Consider this feedback and statistics from this Search Engine Land article:

“The median retailer taking advantage of Google Shopping saw the highest share of all site orders attributed to Product Listing Ads ever in June 2017, at just over 14 per cent.

Compare that to just a 5 per cent share at the beginning of 2015, and it’s clear Google Shopping is more important now than ever before.”

If you’re using Avenue, getting started with Google Shopping couldn’t be easier. It starts with you sending us your product data within the Merchant Centre and then creating a campaign in AdWords. We’ll then use your campaign to create ads on both Google and right around the web so that potential customers can easily see what you’re selling. These placements are called shopping ads because they’re more than just a text ad - people will be able to see a photo of your product, as well as a title, price, the store name and more. The ads give users a strong sense of the product that you’re selling before they even go to click the ad. As a result, you gain more qualified leads.

How you benefit from Google Shopping

You generate more traffic to your site: it’s common to see businesses reporting significantly higher (in some cases double or even triple the standard number) click-through rates (CTR) with these ads, in comparison to text ads showing in the same location for shopping related search.

The leads coming through are better qualified: the quality of leads you’re obtaining is incredibly important to your business. By featuring product information directly in your ads to help shoppers make informed purchasing decisions, you’re sifting out those who aren’t really interested in your product or service. Pictures are incredibly important with these ads because shoppers are instantly able to see which products suit what they’re looking for in an instant.

Easier campaign management: shopping ads don’t use keywords. Instead, they work with product attributes defined by the retailer in the Merchant Centre data feed so that your ads appear in relevant searches.

Increased reach and presence online: when someone engages in a search, more than one of your shopping ads may appear. If the ad is relevant to the search, a shopping and text ad can appear at the same time, achieving higher reach levels with shoppers.

Powerful reporting tools and rich data: any online marketer will tell you they want as much data as possible. Google Shopping allows you to really drill down to how your ads are performing. By filtering your products view, you can hone in on really specific search results. You’re also able to use benchmarking data to gain insights into your competitor landscape, while impressions share data and the Bid Simulator tool, allows you to easily identify growth opportunities.

Our team at Woven can assist you in setting up and integrating Google Shopping into your website. Additionally, we can provide ongoing management of Google Shopping campaigns. Contact us today to discuss your needs.