What Is Google Shopping? Everything Businesses Should Know

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping is a specialized Google service that allows users to research products from various online stores. With Google Shopping, users can easily find and compare prices and products from different online retailers to find the best option.

On the business side, Google Shopping is a service where business owners can promote their stores and display their products to appear for relevant searches.

For instance, if you sell graphic t-shirts on your online store and someone Google searches "Graphic tees," your products will pop up. Businesses promote their products with Google ads which directly point shoppers where to go to make a purchase.

Google marketplace shopping is a pay-per-click advertising platform, meaning you only get charged when someone clicks on your ad. Google Ads and Google Merchant Center are the two platforms that power Google Shopping.

Google Ads is where you can run paid ads, and Google Merchant Center is where your product feed lives. With the Google Merchant Center, you can optimize your product offerings to appeal to the right target audience and increase sales.

Is Google Shopping free or paid?

Google Shopping is free for consumers to use, and it's also free for businesses to join. However, if a company wants to invest in Google Shopping ads to promote its products and drive sales, it costs money.

Some features of Google Shopping are free for businesses, such as product ratings, which is software that can display ratings on your ads to encourage customers to click on them. Customer reviews are another free service that prompts customers to review their experience with your business.

So while it's free to use Google Shopping to list your products, advertising your products will cost you money. With Google Shopping ads, you can run targeted local inventory ads or promotions for your best-selling products. However, you will only pay when a user actually clicks on your ads.

Why should business owners use Google Shopping?

There are many benefits of Google Shopping for business owners. Google marketplace shopping can be highly lucrative for your business because you can reach new customers, drive sales, and increase conversions. If you feel like your business sales have plateaued, Google Shopping is a great way to reignite the spark and generate attention for your brand.

Some of the benefits of Google Shopping for business owners include:

Increase product visibility

One of the main issues many businesses face with online stores is needing more visibility, and Google Shopping is a great way to achieve that.

With Google Shopping, you can highlight your best-selling products for prospective customers who have shown interest in similar products based on their Google search. You can position your online store at the top of the search engine, encouraging users to click on your product link over competitors located further down on the page.

Google Shopping ads will appear above organic search results, which will help to expand your product visibility.

With Google ads, your product will be the first to appear on the page, so a shopper will naturally be more drawn to it over other products on the feed. So rather than having to scroll through tons of product links, users will immediately see your product link and be more inclined to click it.

Reach more people

You can never have too many customers. If you want to broaden your customer base and reach more people, Google Shopping ads are the way to go.

Google Shopping can help you get a broader reach because you're showing ads to people who would have never found your business otherwise. With Google Shopping, you can drive traffic to your company's website and encourage users to add your product to their shopping cart.

You can also create shopping campaigns that are based on specific target keywords that you choose and ensure that those campaigns will appear anytime a user does a relevant search.

Get quality leads

When you're trying to make a sale, quality always beats quantity. While it's great to have a large customer base, that customer base will mean nothing if they're not loyal customers who actually make purchases. This is why it's so important to have quality leads who are likely to turn into customers.

Google Shopping is a great way to get more quality leads because you're showing ads to prospective customers who are already interested in what you're selling. When customers see your product listing at the top of their search results, they will likely click on that link and research more about it.

Google ads can quickly turn prospective customers into high-quality leads who will likely make a purchase.

Reporting and metrics

Making an ad for your business is only half the battle. After you create a product ad, you then have to keep track of how it's performing. You can do this with Google Shopping.

A significant benefit of Google Shopping is how easily you can track the performance of a marketing ad campaign. Google Shopping provides excellent reporting and metrics tools that will give you insight into vital metrics like click-through rate, conversions, and cost per click.

All this information is necessary to know how well your product ads are doing and if they're reaching the right people. With Google Shopping, you can access this information directly from the platform and optimize based on performance.

Keeps customers in mind

It's crucial to keep your customers in mind when creating ads for your business. Your customers purchase from your brand, so your product ads should be relevant to them.

With Google Shopping, it's easy to design ads with your customers in mind. Since customers can compare products and prices with Google Shopping, it's essential to position your product as the best option.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes: What type of ads do they want to see? Where should these ads be shown?

Google Shopping allows you to create effective, beautifully designed advertisements that appeal to your target audience. You can include high-quality videos, images, reviews, or any other features in your ads that will get users to click on your link over competitors.

Mobile-friendly

A lot of people do their shopping from their phones, so your ads must be mobile-friendly. Users should be able to browse their product feeds the same way on their phones and laptops.

Fortunately, Google Shopping is simple to format to work on a phone. If your product listing isn't mobile-friendly, users will click off and choose a competitor instead. A majority of e-commerce business sales generate via phones, so it's crucial to optimize your ads for mobile.

Easy to manage

Compared to other ad platforms, Google Shopping ads are much easier to manage.

With Google Shopping, you can easily set up your product feed in the Google Merchant Center and customize your product listings to better appeal to prospective customers.

Rather than finding target keywords yourself, Google will do the research and figure out which keywords are relevant to your products. This automatic research will save you significant time that you can put towards other tasks.

It's also easy to manage your ads directly with Google Shopping. You can choose which types of ads you want to show and what your bidding strategies will be, but Google will automatically update your product feed to ensure that all your ads are accurate.

How to set up Google Shopping in 8 steps

Now that you know the benefits of Google Shopping for business owners, let's go over how to set up Google Shopping. Setting up Google Shopping for your business isn't nearly as difficult as you may think and only requires a few simple steps:

Create a merchant center account

To set up Google Shopping for your business, you must first create a merchant center account. Your merchant center account is where your product feed lives, and it's also where you will manage your product inventory, customize your product listings, and track product performance. So, you need to create a Google Merchant Center account before you can create ads and list your products on Google Shopping.

To create a Google Merchant Center account, you first have to enter basic information about your business. After you've successfully created the account, you'll then have to verify your company's website. Once you've completed both of those tasks, you will have access to all the tools in the merchant center, and you can start creating product ads.

Choose high-quality product images

Your thumbnail images are the first thing prospective customers will see, so you need them to be good. It's crucial that you choose high-quality product images that accurately reflect your brand.

Product images are one of the most critical aspects of an advertisement, as they can significantly influence a customer's purchasing decision. There are specific Google guidelines regarding the images you can use in ads, so make sure you read those before selecting your product images.

Create a product data feed

Once you've chosen excellent photos to include in your product listing, you need to create a product data feed. This data is how Google will find your products and display them when users search on Google. You can set up your product data feed directly from your Google Merchant Center account.

Some of the product data you'll need to include so that Google can create your ads are your product's ID number, the title of your product, an accurate product description, an image link, and the product price. These product details are necessary so that Google can accurately display your product on the product feed.

Link your Google Adwords account

The next step is to link your Google Adwords account to your merchant center. You have to pay to advertise your products on a Google search page.

But to do so, you need to have a Google Adwords account. Linking your Google Adwords account is necessary because it's how you're going to actually get your ads on the product feed and seen by shoppers.

Build a Google Shopping campaign

Google Shopping campaigns are necessary because they are how you will promote your store to shoppers. You can choose your campaign name, country of sale, budget, and goals. You can also design and manage your campaign with your Google Adwords account.

Put bids in your campaign

The next step is to choose a bidding strategy and a campaign budget. Your bidding strategy will establish how you will pay for your ads so that users can see and click on the product link.

The higher your bid and campaign budget, the higher your ad will rank on the search engine. Your campaign budget is the amount you want to spend each day on your ads, so make sure you choose a number you can realistically afford.

Schedule your campaigns

After you've chosen a bidding strategy and a campaign budget, you then have to schedule your campaigns. Promoting your campaigns at the right time to the right group of people is crucial to ensure they're effective and read your target audience. You can select the location of your ads and the start and end dates of your campaign. Make sure you set an end date for an ad, or else it will continue to run, which can end up costing you a lot of unnecessary money.

Create product groups

The last step in this process is to create product groups for your campaign. Your product groups will determine the type of ads you'll run and how you will pay for them.

There are two types of product groups that you can run: product shopping ads and showcase shopping ads. With a product shopping ad, you can promote a single product, but with a showcase-stopping ad, you can promote several products.

Should you invest in Google Shopping ads?

Absolutely. Google Shopping ads are beneficial to businesses of all sizes. Whether you own a small or large business, every company can benefit from Google Shopping.

Google Shopping is a great way to reach new customers and get high-quality leads. It's easy to create compelling product ads explicitly designed for your customers and encourage them to choose your products over competitors. With Google Shopping, you can generate attention, drive traffic to your site, and ultimately increase sales for your business.

If you want to invest in Google Shopping ads but still need an online store, Mailchimp can help you get started. With Mailchimp, you can quickly set up and launch your online store with our intuitive and simple website builder. Mailchimp's website builder is an excellent resource for business owners who want to grow their customer base and increase sales.

Mailchimp offers many valuable resources for business owners, from Google remarketing ad campaigns to Google Analytics. Mailchimp has built-in marketing tools to help businesses get off the ground.

With Mailchimp, you can create a seamless brand experience and connect with your customers in a whole new way. We'll help you launch a successful and beautifully designed website that takes your business to new heights.