Here’s How To Use Google Shopping To Make Your Fashion Brand More Visible To Potential Customers

Every fashion entrepreneur hopes to make more sales for their fashion business as time goes on. Achieving this can be done in so many ways. 

Jut like Google My Business can help you get more clients for your fashion business, Google Shopping can help you gain more visibility and, hence, more clients and sales for your business. But, what is Google Shopping and how does it work?

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping is a service that allows consumers to search for, compare, and shop a variety of products from different retailers and brands. The retailers and brands whose products are displayed are those who have paid to advertise their products with Google. 

Although similar to Google Ads, Google Shopping offers an advantage for your fashion website over ads. With Google Shopping, you can add images, customisations, reviews, and details of the products you are selling. This means customers can see what exactly it is you are selling. 

For fashion brands, a Google Shopping campaign is a great way to showcase your products and drive your target market to your e-commerce fashion shop.

Reports show that in the first quarter of 2018, Google Shopping ads accounted for 76% of retail search and spending. This means that with Google Shopping, brands have a higher chance of making sales.  

How Does Google Shopping Work?

When customers go to search for something on Google, say ‘Nike running shoes’, it pulls up different websites along with sponsored Google Shopping results. The Google Shopping results that are displayed then allows customers to see various types of Nike sneakers that a retailer has, the prices of the sneakers based on retailer, and the name of the seller of the sneakers.

Google Shopping results show up as thumbnail images that display each product’s retailer and price.

This means that based on the search queries a user enters into Google search, Google algorithms try to match the results brought out with the words typed as best as it can. 

So, as a fashion designer or retailer, it is whatever description you put into your Google Shopping Ad campaign and what people search for that determines who sees your products. 

Benefits of Google Shopping Ads

1. Wider Reach

Google is the number 1 platform people from all over the world use to search for things. It is also where a lot of people looking to buy goods online go to. This means that when you have a Google Shopping ad, the likelihood of being seen by a wide range of potential customers is wide. 

Unlike with many other platforms where your brand is exposed to only people that are connected to you in one way or the other, Google Shopping helps take your brand in the view of customers that might not even have heard of you before. 

2. Better Qualified Leads

When people go to Google to shop for items, most of them most likely want to buy something. They go there with intent. This means that the traffic generated on your site from Shopping ads consists primarily of shoppers who know what they want and are willing to buy it now. 

3. Increased Sales

Since your Shopping ad is likely to reach a wide range of potential customers and most people that click on it are willing to pay for whatever it is you are advertising, this results in an automatic increase in sales.

How To Create a Google Shopping As Campaign

Now that we have discovered how beneficial Google Shopping is as a marketing strategy and a way to make your brand more visible and increase sales, it is time to go through the process of setting up a Google Shopping campaign. The process involved is a bit tedious and extensive, but it is one you can definitely do. 

There are 2 key Google products you need to have to set up a Google Shopping ad campaign – Merchant Center and Google Ads. 

• The Merchant Center is where your product data will be sent to and stored. It is also where you will enable Shopping ads. 
• Google Ads is where you will create and manage your Shopping Ad Campaigns. It provides important performance reporting and tools to help optimize your advertising.

1. Set Up a Google Merchant Center Account

The first step to take is to set up a Google Merchant Center account. The account is easy to set up, easy to navigate and serves as a home base for your products information. Although there are a few steps in it, Google will prompt you through the setup. 

After you have set up the account, you need to claim and verify your website URL. After your website has been verified, you will get a prompt to accurately identify and label your products. 

Before you go far in this process, make sure to optimise the product images on your retail website because Google will pull feature images of your product from your site. If your images are of low quality, you will not be able to create a Google Shopping campaign. 

On setting up your product feed, that is identifying and labelling your products, make sure that you have all the information filled out for your products. This includes titles, descriptions, product category, product type, price, link, image link, brand, and so on. 

This information is what Google uses to show your products to people making searches. If you have an optimised campaign, you should not have any issues with visibility. 

2. Link Your Google AdWords Account

Once your Merchant Center feed is created, you can link it to your Google Ads account. This is because when a product search is conducted on Google, the Google Shopping results that are displayed are actually advertisements. 

Create Ad groups with similar products in them, for example, ‘women’s shoes, ankara dresses, men’s shirts’.

To get your products in front of potential customers using Google Shopping, you have to link your Google AdWords account. If you did not have a Google AdWords account previously, you are going to have to open one. The process is one that Google will walk you through. 

To link your AdWords account to your Merchant Center account, log into your Google Merchant Center account. At the top right-hand corner, you’ll find three vertical dots. Click those to expand the menu, and then click ‘Account linking’.

3. Create a Shopping Campaign

Once you have linked your Google AdWords account, you will be able to create a Google Shopping campaign to advertise your fashion products. There are 2 ways to get started. 

You can choose to either create it through your Google Merchant Center account or  Google AdWords.

• Through Merchant Center: After linking your Google AdWords account to it, you can simply click, ‘Create Shopping Campaign’. Next, insert the campaign name, country of sale, and daily budget. Once you click Create, you’ll be prompted to continue managing your campaign through Google AdWords.
• Through Google AdWords: Log into your Google AdWords account. Open the ‘Campaigns’ tab on the left-hand side menu, click the blue “+” icon, and choose ‘New campaign’. For starters, it might be better to create a campaign without a goal and then select ‘Shopping’. Lastly, choose a campaign subtype, there is the ‘Smart Shopping campaign’ and the ‘Standard Shopping campaign’. For now, you can choose the Standard. The next screen contains all your Google Shopping campaign settings. First, enter a campaign name, and click ‘Additional settings’ if you want to set an inventory filter, enable local inventory ads, or change your campaign URL options.

4. Place Bids on Your Shopping Campaign

Next, under your Google Shopping settings, you will be asked to select your bidding strategy and set your campaign budget. Bidding is simply how you pay for people to see, click on, and interact with your ads. 

A sufficient bid and high-quality product data will earn your ad a higher rank.

Your bid strategy can be;

• Manual CPC (cost-per-click) where you set your own maximum CPC for your ads,
• Target ROAS (return on ad spend), or  
• Enhanced CPC.

With ‘Maximize clicks’, Google Ads automatically sets your bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget. You can set a maximum CPC bid limit to cap your spend on each ad.

Next, choose your campaign budget. This is the amount of money you want to spend on average each day, the amount is not capped daily. Instead, Google manages your budget monthly; in a month, you will not spend more than your daily budget times the number of days in each month.

Once your bid is set, target and schedule your campaign. This part is important because it dictates who will see your product ads and when.

5. Build Ad Groups

The last thing you will be prompted to do after you complete your Google Shopping campaign settings is to build ad groups for your campaign. Ad groups determine what type of ads you will run and how you will organise bidding for those ads.

Ads groups allow you to separate specific sets of different products together. For example, shoes, bags, dresses, etc. It allows you to manage and optimise these groups differently based on your desired goals or characteristics of those products.

There are 2 types of ads groups you can run – Product Shopping ads and Showcase Shopping ads. 

• Product Shopping ads promote a single product.
• Showcase Shopping Ads allow you to advertise multiple products as part of a product or lifestyle ad that represents your brand or business.

If you choose a Product Shopping ad group, enter your ad group name and set a maximum CPC bid. This creates one big ad group for all your products. If you wish to filter your products further, you can create separate ad groups for different categories.

If you choose a Showcase Shopping ad group, enter your ad group name and set a maximum CPE (cost per engagement) bid. Engagements occur when someone expands your Showcase Shopping ad and spends at least 10 seconds within the ad. Lastly, choose what products to advertise as part of the Showcase Shopping ad.

Once you hit the ‘save’ button, your campaign is submitted.