What are Google Smart Shopping campaigns?

Google Smart Shopping utilizes machine learning and your product feed to display ads across a variety of channels, like Google Shopping, YouTube and even Gmail. Google Smart Shopping auto-optimizes your campaign to drive the best results over time by testing different image and text assets, and displaying the ones that perform the best.

With Google Smart Shopping campaigns, you are going to be able to show the right ads on the right channels to the right audience at the right time. Best of all, it’s completely automated, which makes optimization effortless.

With these campaigns, the goal is to achieve the highest possible ROI. That means that it might stop showing certain products because they’re not that profitable, or certain people will stop seeing certain products because they’re not interested. Over time, it’s going to optimize your budget and help you see the best return on your investment.

If you have an e-commerce store and products to sell, it’s a no-brainer. Here are a few tips on how you can best take advantage of Google Smart Shopping campaigns.

3 tips to maximize your Google Smart Shopping Campaigns

#1. Optimize your product feed

Optimizing your product feed is critical. It involves optimizing your product title and description for the best keywords, and making sure that your product description tells a story about your product and includes the key details consumers are looking for.

When writing your product description, make sure to interweave keywords into it to ensure that Google knows what your product is all about and which shoppers it should ultimately get in front of. Also, make sure your images are professional and high quality.

Optimize every aspect of the Google shopping feed, from the product description to the specs. The more optimized your product feed is, the more information the Smart Shopping campaigns are going to have to optimize your campaign.

Google knows who the right people are, but it may not understand what types of products you’re offering if you don’t have an optimized product feed.

#2. Be patient and choose the right budget

These campaigns can drive results pretty quickly, but don’t expect it to happen overnight. Let the campaign run for longer than a month before you judge the results too harshly.

Google’s machine learning is constantly making changes and tweaks to continually improve your performance and maximize your investment. Over time, it should get better and better.

In addition to giving your campaign plenty of time to start working, make sure that you dedicate a reasonable daily budget to your Google Smart Shopping campaign — $50 is a good start for businesses that can afford it.

A $50 daily budget will give you enough data for the algorithm to start working, but the more you can afford to spend, the faster it will work.

#3. Build your product page to convert

These smart campaigns are going to get your products in front of the right people at the right time in the right place, but ultimately, people are going to click through to your product page before they decide whether or not to make a purchase.

Your product page needs to be strong so that they complete the purchase. Make sure that your product page looks good, and that it’s professional, mobile-friendly and builds trust.

To build trust, you’re going to want reviews on your product. If you don’t have reviews, give your product away to somebody for free in exchange for a review. Reviews are so critical. Make sure you have them.

Also, include trust badges on your site and make sure that shipping rates are clear. Simply put, just do everything you can to make sure that your product page is strong, and then compare it with your competitors’ product pages.

When comparing your product pages to the competition’s, try to look at the pages from a shopper’s point of view. Would you buy the same product from your website or your competitor’s?

It’s important to make sure that consumers want to pick you when comparing your product pages side by side. Make sure your product page wins that battle and has everything it needs to convert as much traffic as possible coming from these campaigns.

Taking advantage of Google Smart Shopping is a smart way to maximize your ROI and get your products in front of the right audience on the right channels at the right time. Learn how the ad specialists at Marketing 360® can help you maximize your success. See our plans and pricing.