It’s Time to Learn Google Shopping. So here’s a big post.

Shopping Ads are my favorite part of Paid Search.

For anyone who works in Ecommerce paid search, having a working knowledge of Shopping Ads is essential to keeping up with the competition.

This article is for the purpose of giving you that working knowledge, and we’re going to do that by focusing on these 3 components to Shopping Ads:

• Feed Setup & Management
• Campaign Setup
• Ongoing Optimizations

As I wrote this, I debated whether to gate the content by requiring some sort of email address or information exchange. I think this is immensely valuable (almost 5,000 words!!), as it is much of what I’ve learned in years of managing Shopping Ads. However, I decided to go ahead and let the content stand on its own.

I would ask you one favor, if you find value in this would you be so kind as to share it with others? Email it, tweet it, however you want to! Thank you, and enjoy the show…

Feed Setup & Management

In order for you to manage Shopping Ads well, you need to be aware of how they work. Shopping Ads are automated, in the sense that Google or Bing are not directly matching a search query to keywords. They are taking the data you have submitted in your merchant feed, and they are matching that to search queries.

Because of this, understanding shopping feeds is crucial to success in Shopping Ads. If you struggle to understand the concept of the feed, think of it in terms of a restaurant.

Your (1) server (the data feed solution) submits your order to the (2) chef (the Merchant Center for Google or Bing), who then finalizes it and sends it to the (3) runner (AdWords) who makes sure it gets presented

to the (4) proper table (SERP).

For feeds, you need to have all aspects of the process working correctly in order for your feed to be sent.

Data Feed Solution

The Data Feed Solution is how you take your product data and submit it to Google Merchant Center. There are options here, so be aware of the best fit for your particular need.

Small Company / Low Number of SKUs — if you fall into the category of having a handful of SKUs, you can actually just use Google Sheets to integrate directly with Google Merchant Center. This has the benefit of being simple to start and keep track of, however it’s probably not a great option if you have a lot of products (there are size limitations to this method), or if you have constant feed changes.

Large Company — if you are a good-sized company with developers to spare, then you may want to consider creating and sending your own XML file directly into Google Merchant Center. If you do go down this route, make sure you are aware of all the complexities of requirements to get your products approved, as well as ongoing changes approved.

Anyone — thankfully if you don’t fall into either of those camps, there are options out there. 3rd Party Feed Providers range in size and pricing and it all depends on what you need to be done. Companies like Feedonomics are a full-service solution that can be a big benefit if you want their assistance in helping optimize, as well as send your feed. Companies like GoDataFeed tend to be a little more affordable, but also tend to have less versatility and customer assistance based on that pricing. Companies like ChannelAdvisor or CommerceHub tend to have the benefit of offering other services as well (marketplaces, for instance).

Whatever you choose, be aware that you will still need to work with the feed provider to get your data to them in some format.

The Data Feed Itself

Now that you know how to get the Data Feed up, what are you actually sending to Google Merchant Center? The important thing to note about the Data Feed is that it’s important to get your product information accurate, but get as much as possible into the feed. There are required and recommended fields, and it’s tempting to only add in the required fields…

Want to keep reading? Follow the link below to finish the article on the ZATO Blog.

>> https://zatomarketing.com/blog/the-ginormous-google-shopping-guide-for-the-beginner-or-anyone/

Originally published at zatomarketing.com on June 8, 2018.