Google Shopping Optimization – How to Scale While Maintaining ROAS
Google shopping campaigns offer a cost-effective way to advertise your products or services. And with the demand for digital marketing Columbus Ohio and a Columbus digital marketing agency, many businesses are turning to Google shopping to generate leads and increasing ROAS (return on ad spend).
However, optimizing your campaign correctly is essential if you want to scale without compromising ROA.
This blog post will discuss how to optimize your Google shopping campaign and why it’s so beneficial.
What is Google shopping optimization?
Google shopping optimization is used to ensure your ads are shown for the most relevant search terms, so you only pay when someone clicks on them. Unlike traditional display campaigns, where Google will automatically target searches related to your product or service, this type of digital marketing requires more attention and optimization.
Why is Google shopping optimization essential?
Google shopping optimization is vital for these reasons:
It allows you to target the most relevant keywords and ensure it displayed your ads for them. This way, you only pay when someone clicks on an ad.
Your ads will also show up above or below other shopping ads. This is known as “Sponsored Products” and helps increase overall impressions and visibility.
How to optimize your Google shopping campaign
There are several ways to improve performance, such as
Limit networks
Networks are essentially sub-campaigns within your digital marketing campaign.
When you create a new product group, Google automatically creates the default network for that group and will disperse products across it. You can also manually select which networks to use by selecting them from the Network drop-down list at the top of their screen. Always limit distribution, so all campaigns are running on maximum bids.
Bid adjustment allows you to manage they optimize how much each one towards achieving goals like impression share or conversions, but can be managed separately per ad group in AdWords. Automated rules allow you to set bid adjustments based on specific criteria such as device performance or location targeting without having an expert do it during regular business hours.
Adding negative keywords
Negative keywords are a great way to reduce wasted spending and save money. They can also be used as part of your strategy to prevent competitors from outranking you for specific searches, or even intentionally bidding on terms that may not fetch any click volume but help them stay in the top spots.
Irrelevant search queries
These are search queries that match your products but don’t have any commercial intent. They are the easiest to find and the most valuable because competitors do not heavily bid on them.
Competitor search queries
These are the keywords being used by competitors to bid on and potentially outrank you for relevant searches. You can see a list of suggested competitors’ negative keywords in their campaign reports section under “Keywords.”
If you find this task challenging, consider hiring a digital marketing agency, Columbus, to help.
Very generic search queries
Generic or very general words will not typically convert into sales because they show no specific product interest, which means there is less chance of getting a sale from these types of clicks when compared with more targeted phrases.
This is especially true if it isn’t apparent what category your product falls into since people usually add at least one modifier when making purchasing decisions online (e.g., digital cameras vs. digital cameras for kids).
Google Shopping campaign structure
The Google shopping campaign structure is like the structure of a regular AdWords campaign. The major difference is that you can set bids and budgets for product groups rather than just keywords or ad texts.
Structure 1–One undivided campaign
This option is suitable if your business sells only one type of product. For example, digital cameras only (no lenses, no cases, etc.) You will have all your digital camera ads in one shopping campaign with different digital cameras targeted by separate product groups within this single Google Shopping account.
If you plan to sell multiple kinds of goods, later on, it’s better not to use this method because the overall performance may suffer as it added more products after the first launch because of less focused targeting options.
Structure 2–One campaign with multiple products groups
This option allows you to create various Google Shopping campaigns with separate product groups for different products. For example, digital cameras only (no lenses, no cases, etc.) and laptops only (no monitors or keyboards).
Suppose your business sells over one type of product. In that case, this is the best way to go about optimizing your shopping campaign because it will allow you to target each group by its own set of keywords while maintaining consistent ROAS across all products in that product group.
But make sure it tightly themed these ad groups so they don’t get too granular. The major advantage here is better control over ad targeting, which means less wasted spend on irrelevant search queries like “digital camera bag” when you’re in the business of selling only cameras
Structure 3 – Multiple campaigns with different products
The third structure is a little different because it involves multiple campaigns with their products.
This is best when you have very similar or the same products but sold under separate brands. It might confusing to manage all these campaigns from one Google shopping manager interface. So, having separate ones will make your life easier and prevent you from wasting spend on irrelevant search queries like “digital camera bag” when you’re in the business of selling only cameras.
This structure may require more effort since there are more ad groups involved. However, if done right, this can boost ROAS by narrowing down targeting, again less wasted spend on irrelevant search queries.
Structure 4 – Multiple campaigns with the same products
If you are selling multiple products but under the same brand, this is another structure that may benefit your business. For example, if you run an online store with e-books for kids and adults, it makes sense to have one campaign focusing on all children’s books while having a separate campaign focused on adult books.
Also, note that if your business has multiple brands, it may be beneficial to have separate campaigns for each of them.
This way, you can tailor bids and budgets per brand, ensuring that they are not competing. You can adjust targeting accordingly by adding negative keywords for irrelevant search queries across all the different brands under which you sell products.
Conclusion
The key to scaling while maintaining ROAS is testing. Your goal should be to test as many things as possible in order to find the best-performing solution for your business.
Keep an eye out for new features and changes that Google makes, because these can also affect how you optimize your products on their search engine results page (SERP). If you’re not already using conversion tracking, it may just be one of those tests worth running.
If you feel like all, this is too much and you need professional help, you can look for experts online by searching for ”digital marketing agency near me”. You’ll surely get recommendations.