Earlier this year, Google announced the launch of the Merchant Center and Google Shopping in Ukraine.
Progress:
Our Client became one of the first online store owners in Ukraine who agreed to try this type of advertising, as well as to feel all its advantages, such as:
- Increased traffic. According to some sources, the CTR of shopping ads could be 2-3 times higher than the CTR of text ads on the search network.
- Ads attract more attention and provide more information to the user about a particular product compared to a usual search ad.
- Wider outreach. In the search results, the user can see several shopping ads, as well as text ads, if it matches the query. This doubles the outreach of potential buyers.
Key milestones for a shopping campaign setting up:
- Creating an account in the Merchant Center - a service where we upload data about products with a view to its subsequent use in a shopping campaign.
- Data feed preparing is a product details file that meets specific Google requirements.
- Create a Shopping Campaign in a Google Ads account.
Now in more detail about each milestone.
1. Create a Merchant Center Account
Everything is simple. Follow the link https://www.google.com/retail/solutions/merchant-center/#?modal_active=none and click Register (Sing Up). Choose a country, enter company information and website address.
At this point, it's important: if you already have a registered Google Analytics account and the analytics code is already installed on the website, it’s better to register a Merchant Center account with the same mail on which the analytics is registered. In this case, you won't need to perform any additional actions to confirm the rights to the website.
If you register using another mail or create an account for the client in the shared Merchant Center account of the agency, and after allowing the client to access, you will need to confirm the rights to the website using any of the 4th proposed methods.
After that, you need to link your Merchant Center account to your Google Ads account.
Before registering an account, I advise you to take a look at the rules/requirements of the Merchant Center: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6363310?hl=en&ref_topic=7286989. Attention should also be paid to the section Requirements for websites. Any discrepancies may lead to the account block.
More information detailed could be found in the Article "3 unobvious reasons that could lead to your Merchant Center blocking".
2. Data feed preparing
Product data specification: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112?visit_id=636721870100693933-793183307&rd=1 - how to fill out product data in ads. The ads will not be displayed if the data is in the wrong format.
Google currently supports 2 data feed formats:
1. Text format. Text data feeds can be created in the spreadsheet editor or in Google Sheets.
A template, an example of a data feed in Google Sheets, as well as instructions can be found straight into the Merchant Center account: in the menu Products - Feeds - Create Feed. You’ll need to select your country, language, set the feed name and choose how to download Google Sheets. Next select “Create a Google spreadsheet” using the template:
Now, upon returning to the Feeds tab, there will already be a feed created by us. Opening it we get a template for entering data. That's convenient because the data can be entered directly into this table and there is no need to reload it. It would just enough go to the feed settings and set the schedule for uploading it to the system after filling in.
Template see here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TrQMUFnrAZlhP6-7kIv8FfR1SOajwsrUP24FvIT72E4/edit?usp=sharing
This type is suitable for companies with a small number of products and does not require special knowledge.
2. XML-format. Here it is necessary to involve a developer because it requires deeper technical knowledge.
It will be checked for compliance once the feed is ready and uploaded. Feed verification may take several days.
On the Diagnostics tab, you can view the result of the scan, as well as recommendations for resolving errors, if any:
Next, you’ll need to set up a shopping campaign in your Google AdWords account, set basic settings and establish your budget.
In our case, we set up impressions throughout Ukraine, set a budget of 50 UAH/day and selected manual bid management, advertising all products from the data feed.
All the work on preparing and setting up Google Shopping took a total of 2 days. A mostly great deal of time is spent preparing a data feed.
Deliverables
The shopping campaign runs for 4 months. 16% of the total transactions are received from the shopping campaign:
Также стоит отметить, что средняя цена за клик и стоимость конверсии в торговой кампании существенно ниже, чем в общем по аккаунту:
This is what Shopping Ads look like in Google Search results:
As you can see, properly configured Google Shopping brings a great effect. The main thing is to set up an actual feed with products.
Contact our specialists for assistance in setting up campaigns!
