We put together a detailed guide on how to sell on Google shopping to help you bring in new business.
A big attraction to selling on the internet is reasonable to low marketing costs.
Enter Google Shopping. This small but mighty tab on the Google Search Result Page showcases sellers’ products from around the globe, specifically ones related to your searches.
Google Shopping is a dedicated shopping search engine powered by Google. Shoppers can use it to search for products from online merchants, compare prices, and purchase them safely.
Retailers list their products on Google Shopping so they show up in their search results.
How to Sell on Google Shopping
Setting up Google Shopping involves a lot of steps: setting up an account, waiting for approval, structuring campaigns, adding negative keywords, optimizing titles, images, and prices, troubleshooting if something goes wrong.
Sell on Google Shopping for Free
Google Shopping is free. You need to start by signing up to Google’s Merchant Center. This is where you will be able to manage your listings and upload products.
They will ask you for your website, business name, and country. You will also need to verify your site ownership.
You shouldn’t expect to see a rise in sales from this first step, but it will help you monitor which products are most popular, and where to focus on paid campaigns.
Paid Advertising
The next step is to invest in paid advertising. This will get your products noticed by potential customers.
Paid adverts appear in:
- Google Search Network
- YouTube
- Gmail
- Display Network
Google Smart Shopping will determine the best time to promote your products to potential customers and the best places to advertise your products.
Upload Your Products to the Merchant Center
Typically, eCommerce platforms can integrate with the Google Merchant Center so that you can upload your products and synchronize your inventory.
To upload your products, you will need a product feed. This is a file with all the information about your products, their categories, and image locations.
Here are a few ways that you can maintain your inventory using a product feed.
- The Google Merchant Center can sync with Google Sheets. Changes made to your Google Sheet will reflect in the Merchant Center.
- You can go old school and manually upload an Excel spreadsheet regularly.
- Schedule fetch allows you to store your product feed on the server, and Merchant Center will read this to update your product inventory. This is the more technical route but cuts out a lot of manual tasks.
- Connect to an API for full automation.
Promote Locally With Surfaces Across Google
Physical store owners can sell products to local consumers using the Google Merchant Center. This is called ‘Surfaces across Google’.
You will need to opt-in to this program in the Merchant Center. To do this you will need to go to ‘Growth’, ‘Manage Programs’ and then click on ‘Surfaces across Google’, then follow the instructions.
Top Tip: According to Google, you should create a separate feed to your local listing and upload it daily.
Use “Shopping Actions” in Google Merchant Center
Google Shopping Actions allows Google to accept direct payments. This means that buyers can purchase directly from the Google Shopping tab without having to navigate to your store.
The shopping cart icon on listings from retailers that participate in the Google Shopping Actions program is used to indicate the products that are available to purchase from the shopping tab.
On mobiles and desktops, there are separate filters for buy on and buy on the internet.
Here’s how “Shopping Actions” actually works:
- A person finds your Shopping Actions listing on the internet;
- The shopper completes the purchase with the help of a search on the internet;
- The full price is collected by the company and it adds taxes and shipping charges;
- You receive an order from the Merchant Center of the internet giant;
- You receive the money from the search engine;
- You package the product and then ship it to the customer.
Track Efficiency in Google Merchant Center
A reporting system at the Merchant Center displays both paid and unpaid campaigns.
If you want to sync the Merchant Center to your website sessions and find out whether that click leads to a purchase or not, you will need to use Google Analytics.
You will need to use a third party if you want to find out if a click leads to a purchase.
Meet Google Merchant Center Requirements
You need to make sure your store is in line with the requirements of the Merchant Center before uploading your product feed.
Check that you have the items that you need for your store to be ready.
- Accurate contact information.
- Refund Policies and Terms of Service.
- A secure checkout process.
- Correct language and currencies.
- Legal shipping and tax settings.
Verify Ownership Of Your Website
You must prove you are the owner of your website before uploading your product data to the merchant center.
Set-up a Product Feed in Google Merchant Center
There are several ways to add your items to a shopping cart.
- You must manually create a feed.
- Use your eCommerce platform to make one.
- The heavy lifting can be done by a 3rd-party.
How to Create a Feed Manually
- Business settings. Your account needs to be linked to your website platform, you need to provide your business information, and you need to choose email preferences.
- Inventory panel. To see the look of your products in the web store, you need to upload the feed.
- Finalize the setup. Add your tax information, verify your website, and sign up for shopping actions if you do not already.
- Start promoting. Run sales, trace conversion, and create paid ads.
How to upload the feed to Google Merchant Center:
- Go to Merchant Center and sign in.
- Navigate to Products → Feeds.
- Click the New feed (Plus) icon.
- Go to the Target CountryMaximizeguage section and click Continue.
- You can assign the Feed name and select the Scheduled fetch upload. Click Continue.
- Provide the Feed file name. Do not use the Feed URL for this field.
- The Fetch time and Frequency should be set.
- Select your Timezone.
- Provide the Feed URL. Click Continue.
Run Google Shopping Paid Campaigns
You need to connect your existing Merchant Center account to your Ads account to begin advertising on Google Shopping.
Once that is done, go to the Merchant Center.
- You can set up shopping ads on the dashboard.
- Go to the bottom of the page and click on the account you want to link.
- Click on the link in the list of available accounts.
- Go back to the Ads account and refresh the page.
- Click the Bell icon on your top right to find the Merchant Center’s notification.
- You will see a message about Merchant Center trying to get into an account with the Ads account. Click View Details.
- You can choose the option APPROVE in the open request details.
- Go back to the Merchant Center and refresh the page.
Create your first Google Shopping Campaign
You are ready to begin your first promotion campaign with the Merchant Center and Ads accounts set up.
What is a Smart Campaign in Google Shopping?
The machine learning that is used in the Smart Shopping service helps you maximize your advertising investment. It uses your product feed and other advertisers’ experience to display your ads at the best time and place to potential customers.
How to Create Your First Smart Shopping campaign
- Sign in to Google Ads.
- In the page menu on the left, click Campaigns.
- Click the Plus button, then select New Campaign.
- Select Sales as the goal for your campaign, or choose to create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.
- For “Campaign type,” select Shopping.
- Select the Merchant Center account that includes the products you’d like to advertise.
- For “Campaign subtype”, select Smart Shopping campaign, then click Continue.
- Create a name for your campaign.
- Set an average daily budget.
- Bidding. By default, the Smart Shopping campaigns set bids that maximize the value of conversions within the average daily budget.
- If you have a specific performance goal, add a target return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Choose specific products or groups of products that you’d like to advertise in your campaign.
- Assets can be uploaded to create responsive ads for the Display Network and YouTube. Your assets will be combined in various ways to create ads, and those with the highest performance will show more often.
- Preview some of your potential ads.
- Click Save.
Give it some time to learn and optimize your budget, products, and goals.
Maximize Your Smart Shopping Campaign
Focus on revenue
If you want to maximize conversion or revenue, you can create Smart Shopping campaigns for each product type.
Prioritize inventory
The budget shares for each of the campaigns are easily defined by having individual Smart Shopping campaigns for different product types. Giving the most profitable campaigns the largest part of your budget will increase their profitability.
You can make a campaign for a limited period like the Holiday season. The campaign will be prioritized during the peak period.
Increase profitability
You can make a separate campaign for products that are more profitable than others. It is a simple way to make a Smart Shopping campaign more profitable. To make it easier to unify profitable products into a separate campaign, it is advised to use custom labels.
To increase profitability, decrease the target ROAS because it will generate more demand for your product.
Maximize reach with releases
IYou want to get the word out as fast as possible when you are launching a new product or brand. If you have a new product that has low ROAS, you should launch a campaign for it. The more shoppers see the product, the more they will see the ad.
How to Optimize Your Google Shopping Listing
Create an informative listing title
Creating titles that inform shoppers is the way to go.
Follow good SEO practices. The rule of thumb is to place the most important words at the beginning and the less important terms at the end of the title. The initial Keywords are weighted far more heavily by Google.
Add special offers
Special offers will help you stand out from the crowd. Adding text at the bottom of your listing is all it takes to display them. Users are encouraged to click on the offers to learn more.
Add reviews
Shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. Reviews can help you communicate that your product and service are of the highest quality.
Add better pictures
- Use white backgrounds only.
- Place your products diagonally.
- Use your own images.
Conclusion
Being the largest search engine on the internet, Google is the ideal platform to show off your products to buyers, especially when their interest is already piqued.
By learning how to sell on Google Shopping, you increase your sales and professional eCommerce profile.
Results won’t come easy, but it’s worth spending time on uploading your products properly, and managing your Merchant Center efficiently. Be consistent and have patience.
