Google shopping was launched on 31st May, 2012. It was known as Product Listing Ads (PLAs) back then, now better known as Shopping ads. Google Shopping results in visual SERP, where Google shows the photo of your product and some brief description.
Google is powered by keywords. And we simply increase the success rate for the products we sell on Google Shopping by leveraging on the free keyword tool offered by Google – Keyword Planner. We reverse engineer the process, identifying keywords with high search volume and source for products to match those keywords. Because with Google Shopping, we are going after the Quality Customers – customers with credit cards in their hands, ready to make a purchase.
We have been utilizing Google Shopping to promote the products we sell under our ecommerce division for several months now. And our finding is that, it’s a wonderful sales channel NOT to be missed by all ecommerce business owners to increase their products sales.
This process results in stable growth for our ecommerce division. It opens up a whole new world of possibility with almost unlimited products to sell! In case you’re wondering, the products we sell range from home and garden to beauty products.
So, why “Inverted Marketing Funnel”?
When it comes to ecommerce, it’s all about data. Whether on Google or Facebook ads, the more data you have, the higher your success rate. By ‘data’, we’re referring to the information that can help you make better decisions. For example, let’s say you are interested in selling hats. Just by performing a simple keyword research on Keyword Planner, Google shows you a variety of results and the volume they recorded for those different products.
From the search result in the screenshot, you can see clearly what are the most popular hats people are interested in, and the potential monthly volume. Google also shows you the range for the cost per click you are expected to pay.
Here’s how we make the best of Google Shopping. We would first promote our products there, and continue to grow our campaign data. Once the data is strong, and we have identified good selling products, we would proceed to launch Search or Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign for even wider exposure. Our objective is to ultimately leverage on all the advertising placements Google offers – Search PPC, Google Display Network, Google Shopping, and also YouTube ads.
Take a look at the screenshot for one of our Google Shopping campaign below:
This screenshot is directly taken from our Google ads dashboard, showing one of the products we’re promoting on Google Shopping. This product was launched in March 2019, and is growing strong with very healthy ROI. At an ad spend of USD$293.35, it brings in sales value of USD$3,325.60.
As soon as we are confident with the keyword data we have, we went ahead and launch this product on Search PPC campaign. After some optimization, it continues to grow into yet another profitable campaign on another Google ad placement! Here’s a screenshot of the PPC campaign for the same product.
At this moment, the PPC campaign for this product spends USD$460.23 on advertisement, and brings in sales of USD$2,693.83. Not too bad, eh? Next, we’re looking to grow this into Google Display Network, and ultimately running it on YouTube ad as well. As previously mentioned, our ultimate goal is to profitably maximize the exposure for the products we sell on all the advertisement placements Google offers.
So, if you are currently running an ecommerce business, have you utilized Google Shopping to promote your products? If you have, do share with us how it works out for you. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?
Or, if this is your first time hearing about Google Shopping, and you want to learn more about it, feel free to download the PDF book we published, ONLINE STORE GROWTH HACKS (OSGH).
Hurry up and click on the button below to download your copy:
