Google Ads is definitely a key platform from which to drive sales on your eCommerce website. Research shows that Google Ads accounts for as much as 18% of all eCommerce revenue.
Yes, the platform offers powerful advertising tools and with the right set-up, you can enjoy a very positive return on your investment after a period of time.
However, simply connecting your site to Google Ads and getting some ads out there won’t cut it in today’s hyper-competitive online marketplace. Remember, at this point, your bank account becomes involved and if you don’t get the foundations right, the consequences can be very uncomfortable.
Let’s look at what to focus on for maximum impact before you launch your Googe Ads campaigns:
- Get your site Google Ads ready
- Know your product
- Set a suitable budget
- Be ready for a 3-month trial period
Step 1. Get your site Google Ads ready
Simply getting your ads out there is not enough. You need to make sure your prospective customers’ journey is easy, simple, and logical.
1) Ensure your site is relatively fast with safe and easy check-out steps
Buyers won’t wait for 30 seconds for your page to load, believe us. Nowadays everything in eCommerce should happen fast and smoothly. Fast pages are an integral part of an uninterrupted customer journey, so it’s worth making sure your pages load quickly both on desktop and mobile devices.
Do make it hard for the shopper by adding unnecessarily complex check-out steps, make them as minimal as possible while keeping everything safe.
PS: don’t neglect the check-out process, it’s a perfect opportunity for cross-selling (or upselling), so get your pop-ups with a compelling offer ready just before customers hit the Buy Now button.
4) You have relevant landing pages for your major product categories
Your ads must take the people clicking on them directly to the most relevant landing pages.
Think about it this way: you are looking for a pair of running shoes, you find an ad promoting running shoes, you click on it and it takes you to a generic page offering trainers, walking boots and other footwear. Or the second scenario: you click on the ad promoting running shoes and land on the page that sells running shoes. Which of the two is more likely to end in a sale?
5) You’ve created a product feed for your shopping campaigns and integrated it with Google Merchant Centre
It’s true, shopping campaigns are not always a good fit for eCommerce sites. However, they can be a great revenue generator if:
You’re priced competitively. Google Shopping is very much a comparison service allowing prospective customers to compare your product with the products of your competitors. Your product price is one of the most important points of comparison. Luckily, Google – via Google Merchant Center – will tell you how competitively priced your ads are vs. competing products.
You have good margins and multiple SKUs. Good margins are important: they allow for competitive pricing, but also for your advertising campaigns to generate better overall profits. Multiple SKUs means more options for your customers: more colours, more sizes to choose from, so more chances they buy after clicking on your ad.
Your happy customers leave good reviews for your products. Reviews can make or break your business and it’s especially important in shopping campaigns where your competitors are displayed next to you. If they have a 5-star review and you don’t, you’re already at a disadvantage. The thing is 72% of potential customers won’t buy until they’ve read customer reviews. Good product reviews on Google Shopping act as a powerful persuasion tool.
When you have all of these prerequisites, your chances of success from your Google Shopping campaigns are much greater.
What you need to do now is to create a product feed – a list of what you sell with product titles, descriptions, GTIN codes, and prices, and feed it through to the Google Merchant Centre.
Most eCommerce platforms provide integration solutions for your shopping feed. Shopify, for example, does it through Shopify’s Google channel.
Now that your site is ready for Google Ads, let’s talk about what you are selling – your products.
Step 2. Know your product
As an agency that manages Google Ads campaigns for our clients, the first thing we ask our customers to do is to give us an in-depth overview of their product range.
We usually want to know which products sell best, what the margins are like, which products have the best up-sale opportunity, how seasonality impacts sales etc.
This helps us to focus on what’s working. It is as simple as that – find what’s working well and focus your main campaigns on those factors.
Where to obtain insightful ecommerce data?
The eCommerce system you use usually has some kind of reporting where you can see which products perform well.
In Magento, for example, reporting is based on your product, order, and customer data. It’s quite easy to pull the sales report for the past year to find out which products are generating the most revenue/profit/sales.
You can also find similar information in your Google Analytics in the Ecommerce section – Product Performance.
You will have a clear understanding of which products are your best performers. Often it’s your best 20 % of the products that are generating 80% of your online revenue/sales/profit.
This is where you can focus the bulk of your budget on Search and Shopping campaigns pushing those products forward.
The rest of the products can be put through secondary catch-all campaigns. This is also a great way to discover hidden opportunities.
How good are your margins?
Do you have strong enough margins to allow your advertising campaigns to keep on the side of profitability?
It goes without saying that your advertising budget will eat into your profits. Can you afford this while maintaining a reasonable amount of clicks on your ads?
Let’s say you are in the clothing industry and you want to run a shopping campaign.
The average cost per click for shopping ads in this industry is approx £0.48. The average conversion rate (how many clicks result in sales) is 2.7%. You need just under 50 clicks on your ad to generate 1 sale and these 50 clicks will cost you around £24.
Do these figures work for you? Are your products priced high enough to be viable for a shopping campaign while remaining attractive when displayed next to your competitors?
Step 3. Set a decent budget – size matters!
When it comes to your Google Ads budget, size does matter!
When you advertise with Google Ads, you basically commission Google to research your customer behaviour and interaction with your ads, product pages and products.
The Google algorithm looks at what kind of audience interacts with your ads, how they interact, what works best with which kind of audience, etc, it then steadily modifies your campaigns to produce better results.
The more data Google has, the more accurate your campaigns will be and the more satisfying results you can expect.
To get to the point, you must allow a decent monthly ad spend to accumulate enough accurate data for testing and optimizing to run efficiently.
Collecting this core data costs money. Google will drive clicks to amass the necessary data and yes you will pay for them.
With that investment, Google will start to build an audience specifically for you that you can use to your advantage later. It’s important you stick with your campaigns long enough to generate a reliable amount of data about your audience and their behaviour.
This brings us to our next point: how long is long enough?
Step 4. Be prepared to wait for results
Sometimes new clients tell us that they tried Google ads for a couple of months, got a poor ROI and switched the ads off as it looked like they just didn’t work for them.
The amount of data the algorithm collects while you are running your campaigns is insanely complex. Your ads need to generate enough impressions, clicks and sales for Google just to begin to understand your audience.
In a nutshell, Google builds your audience understanding by looking at the following:
- How many times people see your ads
- How many times they click on your ads
- When users click on your ads
- How often users come back to your site after they clicked the ad
- How long on average it takes from the initial ad click to a completed purchase
Google needs multiple users to interact with your ads in order to collect enough data to understand your sales cycle and determine the patterns of behaviour for your audience.
Let’s say on average it takes a couple of weeks from the moment a customer clicks your ad to the actual purchase which means your sales cycle is 14 days. It means that for the first two weeks of advertising you can expect near-zero results.
In the next 2 weeks, you might get sporadic sales. This is where the first grains of useful data start to flow in your direction.
The second month is when Google start amassing data. Remember it needs multiple repetitions of the impressions-clicks-sales routine to build a valid understanding of your audience.
In reality, you need to wait for at least 3 months to accumulate enough data that can help Google and your account manager to start testing and optimising your campaigns.
Are you ready to advertise?
These 4 steps might seem slightly daunting, however, they are the foundation of any successful advertising campaign using Google Ads.
Got it all ready? You are good to go.
Finally: We’re here to help!
Creating an ongoing successful Google Ad strategy takes time and effort, it is worth it, the reward will often more than justify the effort, but remember, you don’t have to go it alone.
We’ve helped many businesses, large and small to get their eCommerce running efficiently and profitably, our experience across multiple market sectors means that we can get you to where you want to be a lot faster, saving you money, time and frustration. Why not get in touch today?
