How to Improve AdWords Campaigns for eCommerce

Are you concerned there’s a glass ceiling for Google Ads campaigns? If you think your eCommerce business ads have hit it, rest assured, you can breakthrough. When conversion rates have seemed to stall, reviewing your Google ads account is critical. For eCommerce marketing, we’ve put together a list of the most effective strategies for improving your Google shopping ads and AdWords campaigns.

When to Use Google Shopping Ads or Search Ads

Google search ads are one of the most popular and well-known Google ad types. These types of search campaign ads will display on the search results pages when someone enters search terms for keywords or phrases that you specify for the ads. Specifically, these are text ads.

Search ads differ from Google shopping ads, mainly in how they operate. A search ad will give you control of keywords and phrases and show text ads on the search results page. But for eCommerce marketing, Google shopping ads, also known as product listing ads (PLAs), are probably the best fit, although eCommerce brands can benefit from running a mixture of both campaign types. Choosing which strategy to deploy will heavily depend on data found in Google Analytics and what you know about the customer journey.

Google shopping ads require marketers to have an eCommerce website and a product listing feed. A Google shopping ad will be based on your company’s product feed. So Google shopping ads require marketers to target their ads campaigns with the ideal, targeted search terms. When someone creates a Google shopping ad based on the brand’s product feed, Google will display a shopping product ad on the search results page that lists the product’s reviews, costs, and other relevant information.

Create and Launch Single Keyword Ad Groups

If you’re looking to breathe new life into your Google Ads, implementing single keyword ad groups is one of the quickest and easiest ways to break through stale conversion rates. Single keyword ad groups can not only improve your conversion rates, but they can also reduce costs per click too.

So, why exactly is this strategy so effective? Most marketers will use up to twenty keywords in a single ad group. However, this practice makes it harder to write relevant ad copy that accurately reflects the keywords for a particular ad group. A simple fix? Just use one keyword per ad group instead of several keywords. It’s much easier to write compelling ad copy when the ad group centers around a specific, relevant keyword. Single keyword ad groups are easier to trigger on the display network with precise and consistent text.

Single ad groups that are keyword-relevant will give you a greater click-through-rate. Also, you’ll see a higher quality score and, therefore, more conversions and lower costs per conversion when you implement this easy trick. Put each keyword you want to use in its own ad group for every different keyword match type to get started. If you’re unsure of how this would look in practice, use this simple template for the ad:

• First Headline: The keyword you’re targeting
• Second Headline: The benefits and features of the product
• Ad Description: Benefits, features, and compelling call-to-action
• Display URL: The targeted keyword

Use Product IDs to Segment Google Shopping Campaigns

Google AdWords gives marketers a few different options when it comes to segmenting the product feed. Do you have an inventory of thousands of products? Most advertisers who use Google shopping campaigns don’t. If you don’t, then you’ll want to segment the product feed by product ID. When you segment the product feed into small groups, you can avoid bidding against yourself. If you don’t segment, you also run the risk of sharing the same negative keywords.

Improve the ROI of your Google shopping campaigns by setting bids that are similar to the price of the product you’re advertising. For example, it might be okay to place a bid of $1 for a product that gives you a profit margin of $100, but not for a product that has a profit margin of only $3. But with segmentation via product ID, you’ll put each product in its ad group and protect your profit margins with a CPC strategy that makes sense for your eCommerce business.

Focus Your Daily Budget Based on Best Sellers

First, perform an audit of your Google ads campaign to find out who your bestsellers are based on historical data. Bid those bestsellers higher. Google Analytics can also help you uncover your best sells and the conversion rates for your eCommerce store. Any relevant ROI and conversion metrics can also be found in Google Analytics. When it comes to increasing your Google ads performance, having access to the right kind of data is everything.

Audit and Optimise Your eCommerce Product Feed Regularly

Google ads campaigns are dynamic and continuously changing. Even the best performing ads can go stale. For an eCommerce business, especially, the product feed is critical to the success of a Google shopping ads campaign. Regularly auditing and optimising your product feed will improve the performance of your shopping ads. In essence, eCommerce businesses need to ensure that the product feed landing pages have all of the relevant and required information that your shopping ads will need to perform well and generate a good ROI. If the product feed isn’t optimised, then you can run into two major problems:

• Your products won’t display when people search for them
• Each time your products do display, you’ll end up paying a higher cost-per-click

Auditing and optimising your product feed ensures you’ll pay a CPC rate that is aligned with your daily budget and marketing goals.

Over To You

Are you concerned that your Google ads for eCommerce marketing have hit the end of the road? Reach out to us today at Australian Internet Advertising. We’ll run a thorough and complete audit of your product feed and optimise your Google Ads account for increased sales, conversions, and lower costs-per-click.