Google Shopping and targeting

[odih]

I have been using Google Shopping for my ads. While I get a lot of clicks I have almost zero sales. My website was upgraded but I still did not get what I wanted. It appeared that I have not been targeting my audience. I have spoken with specialists who showed me ways I can target my specific audiences only to note yesterday that with Google Shopping the targeting has to be done through the Google Merchant Center because this controls the feeds of the content. And now I am being told again I have to do the targeting through a third-party app to the Center.

Has anyone gone through this problem and how to do targeting through Google Shopping or is it simply better to do my campaigns through Facebook?

[DuaneBrown]

Here is a basic walkthrough on getting setup on Google Shopping. You do need a Merchant Center and you do need to connect your Shopify store to Merchant Center to run Google Shoppng ads. Then you need to connect your Merchant Center to your Google Ads Account. Also added a note about Facebook and getting that setup.

Google Merchant Center
This is where you host and manage your products (SKUs), so you can use Google Shopping campaigns in your Google Ads (AdWords) account. You can add the Google Shopping app to your store and connect it to your Google Merchant Center... once you do this, you are almost set to run Google Shopping campaigns.

Google Ads (AdWords) Account
This is where you run and manage your Google Shopping campaigns from. You will need to connect your Google Ads account to your Google Merchant Center account above. Once you do that, you can run Google Shopping campaigns. Make sure you turn on Auto-Tagging in your account. Also, you can link your Google Ads account with your Google Analytics account... this helps make sure data is shared between them. Hopefully you have setup your Google Analytics account already. Make sure your bids are not to high and you have a good account structure.

Facebook Ad Account
If you have not, you should Setup your Facebook Catalog. That way you can run Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), which is remarketing/retargeting on Facebook and Instagram. When someone comes to your site and does not buy... you can show them an ad later on Facebook and Instagram. The DPA campaigns are always the best return on ad spend for our clients. It's good to start with site visitors or people who have added something to their cart/started checkout but have not bought anything.

Once you have that setup. You can see what is working and what is not working and grow the business. The above assumes you have setup your Facebook pixel and your have a Google Ads Conversion tag setup for your site too. That way you can track your sales. Hope you found this helpful, if so please click "like" below to let me know

[odih]

Thank you so much for your contribution. I have completed all steps in Google Shopping including the Merchant Center, Google Analytics, Conversion Auto-tagging, and Google Ads. What I am particularly concerned with is how I can do targeting when I set up my Google Shopping Ads so that my ads are shown to those who are more likely to buy rather than the general public.  On Facebook, you can do these without any complications but I seem to have chosen Google Shopping as an alternative platform for my ads. Do you know how I can target a demographic, interests, affinity and in-market in Google Shopping?

[DuaneBrown]

With little sales data, you can easily target the wrong demographic, interests, affinity and in-market audiences. You need to run a standard shopping campaign and add negative keywords to make sure you don't show for keywords that don't make sense for your business. When you do add audiences lists to shopping campaigns, you usually do it in "Observation" setting to help understand which of those audiences is converting at a CPA you can build a business on. 

[Sara32]

Hi @odih 

You can't target specific audiences with Google Shopping like you do with Facebook.  As @DuaneBrown says you can lay audiences over the campaign and then adjust bids for that audience in order to pay less or more depending on how well that audience performs but the campaign will still show to anyone who makes an eligible search.  At the moment you can't add affinity, custom intent or demographic audiences to shopping campaigns, only remarketing lists and similar audiences. 

Does that make sense??

Sara

[odih]

Thanks for your comments. For someone just making a new campaign, there is no audience to retarget and that is why targeting in Google Shopping is difficult, unlike Facebook. I guess I would have to make the best use of the situation.

[Josh_Uebergang]

You can target specific audiences with Google Shopping with Shopping remarketing lists. If you only want to re-target, then you set your audience settings for that campaign to Targeting, not Observation. This style of campaign is referred to as an RLSA.

Google Ads will provide a couple of pre-built audiences that you can use, but you're far better off creating a bunch of your own audiences. For an example of setting up an audience that is highly qualified and most often then not leads to profit for accounts we manage, see the bottom of chapter 4 of my Google Shopping book.

[EmmanuelFlossie]

Targeting specific search terms is done in Google Ads, not in Google Merchant Center. Google Merchant Center is the data processing area, this area is only used to submit product information, shipping, reviews, promotions etc...

The control of bidding, who to target, etc.. Is all done in Google Ads.

Targeting specific audiences is not possible in Google Shopping, You can however target specific search terms by utilizing an advanced priority campaign and you can retarget existing users via the Audience tab.

Yes you can use 3rd party tools ie: data feed tools to create more advanced and high quality data feeds. For example improve the title add more attributes etc... Each data feed tools has different features. Some simple and basic, some with more advanced features.

You can also use supplement feeds and import rules in Google Merchant Center to improve the data feed. While a bit more complicated, it is possible.

There are 3 fundamentals, the data feed, the google ads setup and the website.

Each require constant improvements to increase your ultimate goal, which is selling.

Start with your data feed, as this is the core of your ranking.

[jasonavada]

Hi there,

Some interesting facts here: Statistics show that up to 70% of users often search Google for information, price, sale location about the product before deciding to buy it. Many businesses have applied Google shopping and see a higher CTR click rate than regular Adwords ads, sometimes increasing by 2 or 3 times. So we all know the importance of Google Shopping, and this article explains how to install it to your Shopify store. Really hope it'll help!

[sampymishra]

Hi @odih 

For Google Shopping to perform, you will need to have a merchant center to add your products. You can also add keywords optimized titles and descriptions that will give your products better impressions. 

You can look at the app we have developed an app, Easy Google Shopping Feed app by AdNabu for Shopify. Some of the features of our app include: 

• The product-specific score for every product & recommendations to increase the score &, most likely, your performance in Google Shopping
• Metafield mapping to customize every single attribute of Google Shopping Feed
• Faster update of Google Shopping Feed with unlimited manual syncing
• Supports Multi-language and Multi-currency feed
• Many more features which can save your time and effort.

You can also get in touch with our experts and request a demo. 

Hope this helps.