How To Develop A Profitable Google Shopping Campaign
First, you will need to connect your Google AdWords and Merchant Center accounts so that your product data can pass through to your AdWords Shopping campaign. The benefits of using Google Shopping ads include:
- More traffic
- Better qualified leads
- Easy retail-centric campaign management
- Broader presence
- Powerful reporting and competitive data
Although Google Shopping ads can appear simultaneously with text ads, they’re much different. Instead of using keywords to decide how and where to show your ads, they use your merchant center product data. Your Google Shopping ads will most likely show up on:
- Google Shopping (in select countries)
- Google Search, next to search results and separate from text ads
- Google Search Partner websites, including YouTube and Image Search in some countries (if your campaign is set to include search partners)
According to PracticalEcommerce, more than 1/3 of all online product searches begin on Google. By showcasing product images, prices, discounts (if any), reviews and locality, Google Shopping optimizes for conversions and serves your site more qualified leads.
Looking to increase your return on ad spend (ROAS)? Try one of these 11 Google Shopping tips:

1. Start low on the totem poll
In terms of bidding, you should start off with lower bid amounts. When you compare it to search ads, increasing or decreasing your bids can have a drastic, immediate impact on performance. We suggest starting your bids at $0.50–$1.00 per product group.
2. Optimize your data feeds
Data feeds are the foundation of your Google Shopping campaigns. Without a strong feed that pulling in keyword rich (not stuffed) titles, optimized descriptions, product types and other required data, your Google Shopping ads will suffer.
3. Provide fresh, high quality data
It’s also important that a user sees the same information for products in Google Shoppingthat they’ll see on your website. Google regularly checks your site to ensure your products match the data feed. For example, if you have a product that shows on Google as “in stock” and in fact is actually “out of stock,” it not only disappoints the shopper but may cause your item to be suspended from Google Shopping results.
4. Organize your product groups
As we mentioned earlier, Google Shopping campaign bidding works different from search campaigns. Instead of bidding on keywords, you’re bidding on product groups. You’ll start off with the “All Products” product group, and from there, you’ll want to organize your products into logical groups. Using your online store’s navigational structure may help you through this process. When you have smaller data feed, it’s best to segment down to the specific item ID so you can bid on a product by product level.
5. Identify your top selling products
By identifying your most popular products that drive the most revenue, you can pinpoint which products you need to optimize for and get them to the top of the rankings.
6. Take advantage of geographic bid modifiers
By analyzing the geographic data, you can determine what your high-traffic/high-value regions are and what may be your low-traffic-low-value regions. With the bid modifier, you can use that data to bid up or down where needed.
7. Remarketing through Customer Match Audiences
Google recently released their Customer Match feature for its Shopping Campaigns, which allows retailers to upload their customer lists to Adwords and target those customers when they’ve signed into their Google accounts. According to Larry Kim of Wordstream, “If you’re limited by budget (which is generally the case), this really is your lowest hanging fruit by an order of magnitude.”
8. Offer your shoppers more options
According to the Search Engine Journal, only 34% of consumers buy the product they clicked on. Instead of pointing your ad to a specific product landing page, consider sending customers to a category landing page instead. This way, you’re showing them the original product they searched for as well as other related products they may be interested in.
9. Make improvements to your ads based on the data
The Dimensions Tab in AdWords provides useful data for discovering which product ads are receiving little impressions (which means your bid is too low, you’re being outbid, or there may be issues with your data), and which product ads are being seen but not clicked (which could mean your product is either overpriced compared to competitors, or is showing up in irrelevant search queries.
10. Use quality images that stand out
Images play a key role in your product listings ads (PLAs), and should clearly depict the product, and could be a deciding factor in whether you stand out from your competitors or not.
11. Improve the product landing page experience
Getting people to click on your ad is just the first step. To ensure your shoppers are getting a good user experience once they land on your site, optimize your product landing pages with the following:
- Easy add-to-cart functionality
- Accurate product titles and descriptions
- Clear and accurate shipping information
- Visible product reviews or proof of social sharing
Post-launch considerations

A/B testing
When you make any changes to your website or product feed, you should always perform A/B tests to compare the changes to ensure your conversion rates are improving.
Set negative keywords
Setting negative keywords for your Google Shopping feed will keep your ads accurate and relevant. Even though you’re not using keywords for bidding purposes, setting negative keywords is an important in order to avoid paying for clicks from searches unrelated to the products you sell. Take the time to go through your search terms report and remove any keywords your ads show for that aren’t leading to conversions.
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