How to create a Google Shopping campaign for your business.

by Marta Ventura October 13, 2021

Google Shopping ads are a great tool for both buyers and sellers.

Shoppers love it because with one search, they can compare prices for the same product from different suppliers, and sellers love it too because these types of ads are among the most clicked-on ads on Google.

The Network, www.thenetwork.es, shopify, shopufy partner, shopify expert

📈 The data speaks:

For retailers, Shopping ads account for more than 60% of their paid promotion clicks.

For entrepreneurs with Shopify stores, Shopping ads offer one of the highest returns on ad spend of all paid channels.

Additionally, Shopping ads on Google have been constantly evolving and improving. They're now smarter , easier to set up, and offer greater reach. In this guide, we'll explain in detail how to set up your products in Shopping ads.

What are Shopping ads and where do they appear?

The ads of Google Shopping are the product advertising formats that appear in Google search results.

Shopping ads appear not only in standard Google search results, but also on the Shopping tab, on search network websites, in the Shopping comparison shopping service and in apps (iOS and Android), as well as on YouTube and the Google Display Network.

Because Shopping ads are so useful for shoppers and so popular with advertisers, Google continues to expand the reach of Shopping , which means there are more and more opportunities to reach shoppers.

Google Shopping ad campaigns come from two platforms: Google Ads and Google Merchant Center.

Google Ads is where your Shopping campaigns live, where you set your budgets, manage your bids, get insights, and make optimizations.
Google Merchant Center This is where the product feed is stored along with shipping and sales tax details.

How to create smart campaigns in Google Shopping?

Google Smart Shopping campaigns give you a hands-off approach.

If you're looking for the easiest setup and the least amount of effort, Smart Shopping campaigns are your best bet.

These types of campaigns require a few pieces of data to get started. They require an approved feed, a daily budget, some geographic targeting, and target ROAS.

You can also skip the specific target ROAS and choose to maximize conversion value directly.

Once this is done, the Smart Campaigns tool does its thing. This system takes care of capturing impressions and clicks from potential buyers, respecting your daily budget and seeking your target ROAS.

➡️ Advantages

If you have an optimized feed, as we discussed above, Smart Shopping campaigns usually work quite well. Sometimes they work as well as or even better than standard Shopping campaigns.

The real benefits are that setup is very simple and requires almost no ongoing management. Plus, Smart Shopping campaigns include dynamic remarketing ads.

This way, there's no need to set up a separate dynamic remarketing campaign. Smart Shopping campaigns take care of it for you.

You'll need to check back from time to time to make sure you don't have any issues with your feed, and you may want to adjust your ROAS targets from time to time if performance isn't up to par.

Except for feed updates, issues, or changes to ROAS goals, Google takes care of everything else.

➡️ Disadvantages

If you're a control freak, Smart Shopping campaigns are sure to disappoint you.

Data visibility is lower and there are fewer opportunities to optimize performance. For example, you can't add negative keywords or run a search term report, and you can't have more than one ad group.

➡️ Important tips

Target ROAS can be set per campaign or per ad group. Since you can only have one ad group per campaign, essentially every product in a Smart Shopping campaign will have the same Target ROAS.

If your profit margin is consistent across all products, you may want to have all products in the same campaign. While you can't have more than one ad group per campaign, you can have multiple Smart Shopping campaigns running at the same time.

It's usually best to create a separate campaign for each product group that has a similar target ROAS. Let's say, for example, that you sell sneakers and socks.

It would be best to create one campaign for sneakers and another for socks. This way, you can define a unique ROAS for each category.

Setting up separate campaigns for different categories or product groups also allows you to control budgets for each category and gain better visibility into which categories are selling.

If you need help preparing your Google Shopping campaigns:

Posted by Marta Ventura, CEO of The Network, Publicist and Shopify Partner Expert Spain.