6 Simple Ways To Make Your Shopping Ads Stand Out From The Competition

It’s not easy to stand out on Google Shopping. If you’re reading this you probably already know that Google Shopping ads are an effective and affordable way to generate interest in your products. Thanks to Shopping ads, your e-shop can attract the attention of customers and enhance traffic, leading to more conversions. However, you also probably know the competition is high! That’s why you should be using every trick available up your sleeve to optimise your listings to make them stand out. 

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Google ads provide a network for eCommerce businesses to showcase their products. In a shopping ad, you can see a product’s photo, title, price, seller's name and sometimes more. Shopping ads provide a user with better information about a product so, in turn, it provides a higher conversion rate. There’s a few additional factors that can contribute to the success of your Google shopping ad and as a business owner you should be leveraging them fully.

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In this article we’re not going to go over the basics - we’re going to show you how you can get “more” from your ads so you stand out from your competitors and in turn - higher conversions!

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Maximising Google Merchant Centre To Get “More” Out Of Your Shopping Ads

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You might already be aware of the programs provided by Google Merchant Centre (GMC). But do you know how to utilize them all? Taking advantage of all the components available will help you to get an edge over your competitors.

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You can find GMC programs here:

Let’s start by applying some of the FREE programs available.

1. Promotions

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Why Use Promotions?

• Boost clickthrough rate: Use promotions to highlight the products you show on Google. 
• Increase conversions: Give shoppers a reason to buy now. 
• Capture multi-screen traffic: Google shows “special offer” links on the desktop and mobile devices.

Types Of Promotions:

• Discounts: Amount Off, percent off, cash back, buy one get one free, or buy one get 2nd percent off. 
• Free gifts: Free item or free gift card for a specified value.
• Shipping: Free or discounted shipping.
  
  

Note: Promotions do not affect rankings on Google.

Conditions & best practices to get your promotions approved fast

• Your landing page price should never be the same as the checkout price
• The sale offer/price must be valid. Such as the base price must be charged for 30 days (can be continuous or not) before providing the sale price.

For example:
The price at (product landing page) should be the base price i.e $54.95 and the discount must be applied at the checkout i.e $34.95. The offer can be automatically applied or through a coupon/code.

If your landing page price is the same as the checkout price then your promotion will get rejected.

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In case, your promotion includes a “free gift” then you might need to specify the product id which will be given as a free gift. Or if you do not have a specific gift to provide then your promotion may appear as a special offer.

Example: In the case of a special offer.

Example: Free shipping or discounted shipping - You will have multiple options for shippings & can add a minimum purchase value too. Simplest promotion to create however, needs attention to the conditions required for creating this promotion.

Bonus Tips:  

-What’s the most common reason for promotion rejection? 

A: Promotion Title. It should be specific and to the point.

Example: For percentage off: “27% Off”, For free gift: “Buy one get one free”

- Can we show promotions for offers such as up to 50% off?
A: No, the offer must be exactly 50% off. With offers like up to 50, 20 etc percent off will not work.

- Can we run promotions for specific product categories or a single brand?
A: Yes.

Example: When creating your promotion, you’ll be asked to provide a promotion id, this can be anything, just don’t include any spaces between it. Example: BFCM

You have to enter this id in your products in promotion id attribute, refer to screenshot for easiest way to do it, or you can just add it through your feed app & for bulk changes use a supplemental feed.

Steps:

Go to the products in the left section of GMC -> click on the product you want to add your promo id in it -> click on the edit icon at top -> scroll down and add your promo id in the “promotion id” column.

Tip:

How long does it take for your promotion to go live?
24-48 hrs, providing it meets all conditions by Google.

2. Google Ads Tags, Badges & Annotations 

One of the most useful and important badges provided by Google merchant center is “Sales” badge & “Price Drop badge”.

Conditions & Requirements::

Google automatically picks these changes and shows them itself too. However, there are certain conditions that need to be fulfilled for these annotations.

The base price, or the higher price, must have been charged for a period of 30 days (do not need to be consecutive) in the past 200 days.

• A sale price should not be charged for more than 30 days. (this may be causing the problem as we have been displaying the same price for a longer time)
• The base price must be valid.
• The sale price must be lower than the base price.
• The discount on the sale must be greater than 5% and less than 90%.

How sales & price drop badges appear:

3. Shipping labels:

Free and fast shipping, Free returns annotations allow you to showcase products that you can ship quickly and with reliable fulfilment experiences for customers. To participate, you'll need to provide shipping that is:

• Free: A product can be shipped free of charge to the customer (or free if the product price meets the minimum basket).
• Fast: A product can be delivered to a customer in 3 business days or sooner, including both transit time and handling time.

The only requirement needed is if you provide free shipping. Note: it can be done for a single product from your inventory.

4. Other labels 

• Material

Use the material [material] attribute to describe the main fabric or material that your product is made of. For example, a high-heeled pump might be made out of leather, denim, steel, polyester, or suede. etc

• Size

Use the size [size] attribute to describe the standardised size of your product. When you use this attribute, your product can appear in results that are filtered by size. The size you submit will also affect how your product variants are shown.

• Style/Type

Use the size type [size_type] attribute to describe the cut of your product. This information helps create accurate filters, which customers can use to narrow search results.

• There are many others specific for different product types see full information here

How to add shipping labels:

- Can be added to your feed app.
- Directly in the product details.
- Supplementary feed with “shipping_label” attribute.

Other shipping labels which can be utilized are “perishable”, and “oversized”. Generally used for product categories like “furniture”, “machines/equipment” etc.

How long does it take for your promotion to go live?
24-48 hrs, providing it meets all conditions by Google.

5. Products Ratings: Free, may cost when using third-party apps

These ratings and reviews help with product research and purchase decisions, driving more qualified customers to your product pages.

Minimum Requirements:

• Product Ratings requires that you have a minimum of 50 reviews across all of your products.
• Products rating program must be enabled on GMC
• GTINs (Global trade item number) Without GTINs Google may not be able to match all of your reviews to products.

Methods to add Product rating in your shopping ads

• Through third-party review aggregators (can be paid) as there are many apps that provide automatic integration of your products directly to Google merchant center.
  
  List of aggregator ratings-reviews apps approved by Google.
  
  https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7045996#list_of_aggregators
  
  
• Through XML feed, some apps provide this option for free. But sometimes a developer’s help is needed for creating product reviews rating XML feed.

How long does it take for your promotion to go live?
2-3 days to get your feed to ingest in the GMC, 3-4 weeks to get approved by google.

Recommended Apps & Why?

• Judge.me - Cheap and most easy to use.
  Here is the full process using the judgeme app
• Stamped.io - Easy to use and Google-approved aggregator app
  Here is the full process using the stampedio app

6. Titles Optimisation.
Titles optimisations can be done to show your shopping ads for specific keywords or in case your competitors’ ads are appearing for the same searches. Tweaking your product titles based on specific keywords could improve the engagement for your ads.

Minimum Requirements:

• Should be less than 70 characters long.
• No excessive capitalization or special characters.
• Can you display offers in titles when there is no other option? YES.
• By doing the same you can segregate your traffic from shopping ads by including brand terms in the titles.

Methods to update product titles

• Can be updated in content API or product feed.
• Does not need to update titles on websites can be done in GMC also. This can be opted for when you don’t want to change product titles on websites but for ads only.

How long does it take for your promotion to go live?
30 mins.

Conclusion

Before getting started, first decide what components will work for you and you will utilise them. 

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Creating a plan before executing will ensure you systematically check all of the boxes to supercharge your shopping ads. 

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These practices are tried and tested and in most cases have helped advertisers improve the performance of their shopping ads! 

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Did you know about all of these free tools available to you? Let us know in the comments if this article was helpful, we’d love to hear from you.