If you want to be found by people searching for your products, you need to be advertising on Google. Unlike other platforms, Google allows you to show your products to people in the market for what you sell. If you’ve already tried Facebook marketing you’ll know that you don’t always generate sales when targeting a broad audience. So let’s look at how to advertise on Google.
Different Ways to Advertise on Google
There are many ways in which you can advertise on Google. Where you start really depends on your digital advertising goals.
Google Shopping Ads
What are Google Shopping ads?
A Google Shopping Ad consists of your product title, an image and your product’s price. Shopping Ads allow you to show your products at the top of Google search results for relevant search terms.
Google Shopping Ads direct users to your product specific landing pages. There they can find more information about the product and purchase directly from your site.
There’s no better way of getting your products in front of people looking to buy than with Google Shopping. That is why we recommend all e-commerce retailers start with Google Shopping.
What and who are they for?
Google Shopping Ads are best suited to online retailers looking to drive website sales. They are used to target the highest revenue return for your ad spend. Shopping Ads can also use Google’s Machine Learning, through Google Smart Shopping, to target consumers most likely to purchase.
If your goal is to sell products online, you need to be on Google Shopping.
How to advertise on Google Shopping
Setting Google Shopping Ads up has the potential to be a complicated process. Shopping Ads require you to set up a Google Merchant Center account, Google Shopping feeds, shipping details, GTINs and meet strict image guidelines to name just a few. Read more about Google Shopping feed attributes and requirements.
After you have those things in place and you’ve checked you comply with Google’s requirements, there are still a few more steps to follow.
- You need conversion and remarketing tags so you can measure the effectiveness of your advertising and capitalise on those visiting your website
- You’ll then need to build out campaigns that are suitable for Machine Learning; it’s important to know the best way to take advantage of Google’s AI through Google Smart Shopping
- You’ll need to set your advertising goal (that aligns with your budget) so that you’re maximising the revenue at your target return on ad spend
- Finally you’ll need to manage your campaigns and carry out ongoing optimisations to your Google Shopping feed
Read more information on how to set up Google Shopping ads
Google Search Ads
What are Google Search ads?
A standard Google Search Ad, or text ad, consists of up to three headlines and two descriptions.
Google Search Ads match your products or services with customers who are actively in the market looking for what your business offers. Search Ads rely on particular search terms, that you want to show for, to reach your target audience.
Search Ads can communicate your brand’s unique selling points and other messaging that Shopping ads can’t.
What and who are they for?
Google Search Ads can be used to increase the total number of online sales, drive website traffic or calls. Search Ads can even be used to drive in-store traffic; consumers who click on a Search Ad before visiting a store are 27% more likely to buy something in-store.
49% of online shoppers click on text ads as opposed to just 31% on shopping and 16% on display. Through Search Ads, you can deliver an ad to those looking for specific products as well as maintaining a brand presence among those researching a product category at a broader level. Read more about the importance of advertising on your brand.
How to advertise on Google Search
Setting up effective and efficient Google Search Ads can seem simple but it does offer its own challenges.
Creating a Google Search Ad for each product, with specific landing pages, is a difficult and time consuming process. This is particularly true for e-commerce businesses with large inventories.
Ensuring your ads are as relevant as possible is another challenge in creating effective and efficient Google Search Ads. Understanding what consumers are searching for, and matching your appropriate product and advertisement to those searches, is also time consuming and difficult to achieve manually.
There are many more things you’ll need to consider in setting up your Google Search Ads.
- For the best results, you’ll need to spend time crafting appropriate call out extensions and site link extensions
- You’ll need to know what the best Google Ads keywords for your products or services may be as well as knowing when to use longtail keywords and single keywords ad groups
- You’ll need to make sure that your keywords’ Quality Scores are optimised by improving your Ad Relevance, Landing Page Experience and Expected Click Through Rate %.
- Like Google Shopping, you’ll need to set your advertising goal (that aligns with your budget) so that you’re not wasting money on an advertising target that doesn’t suit your business needs
- You need to choose the right bidding strategy so that your advertising aligns with your goals
- You’ll need to manage your campaigns and carry out ongoing optimisations to your ad copy and and target keywords. This helps make sure you’re advertising as efficiently as possible.
Read more information on how to set up Google Search campaigns
Google Display Ads
What are they?
Google Display Ads allow you to put image and video based advertisements across many Google and partner sites in many different formats, including Google display banner ads, videos, GIFs, HTML5 ads or even responsive display ads, that use machine learning to choose your headlines and descriptions.
Google Display Ads work across the millions of websites on the Google Display Network as well as Gmail and YouTube to reach over 90% of the people on the internet. With Google Display Ads, you can put across the images, videos and messaging you want, to the people you want, in the places you want.
What and who are they for?
Google Display Ads can be used in many ways but are particularly effective when targeting consumers who haven’t heard of your brand, haven’t necessarily started their purchase journey but may be interested in what you sell.
The beauty of display is that you can advertise to people even when they aren’t searching for your products or brands. This is why Google Display Advertising is the best approach for brand awareness or even new customer acquisition. Read more on how to get more customers with Google Ads.
Display Ads can also be used to target people aware of your brand and products through Dynamic Remarketing Ads, which show tailored display ads to your website visitors. Dynamic Remarketing on the Google Display Network is a feature of Google’s Smart Shopping.
How to advertise on Google Display
In order to set up an effective and efficient Google Display Ad campaign you need to ensure you are targeting the correct audience, showing on a range of performing placements with relevant and effective content.
Dynamic Remarketing on the Google Display Network can be set up through Google Smart Shopping, or if you’re ineligible for Smart Shopping, by adding remarketing tags to product pages on your website. Unfortunately this can be a lengthy and difficult process that may require additional assistance.
Creating and maintaining relevant Google Ads audiences is a potentially time consuming and costly exercise if you don’t know who to target. Through Google, you can create relevant prospecting audiences based on a consumer’s interests, their searching habits or how they’ve interacted with your business. You can even create audiences similar to your converters through Google’s Machine Learning if your conversion tags are correctly installed. However the sheer amount of data available to you can be a blessing or a curse; refining your audiences to the most relevant users is essential to ensure you’re not wasting money.
How to Advertise on Google; Final Word
There are different places to start but knowing your business goal is the first thing you need. Each Google product can help you in different ways. Are you looking to sell to those already in the market or are you ready to expand to those who are interested in the product category as a whole?
If you’re starting out in e-commerce advertising you should begin with Google Shopping. Find out how we can help you get started with our Google Shopping ads management.
