3 Effective Google Shopping Tools to Boost Your Campaigns

Unlike text ad campaigns, which rely on linguistic virtuosity and extensive A/B testing to optimise, a successful Google Shopping campaign requires analyzing quantitative data for all eCommerce retailer’s items. However, even a modest retail catalogue of a few thousand items yields a laundry list of Shopping KPIs to analyse—no simple task for time-pressed eCommerce professionals like you. Fortunately, Ads has several handy tools to help you cut through the clutter and take data-informed steps to optimise your Shopping campaign. Here are three such tools approved by a reputable Google Shopping agency:

Dimensions Tab

When it comes to optimising Shopping campaigns, the dimensions tab should be your jumping-off point. Easily accessible at the top right of the Ads console, it provides multiple Shopping-focused views of your campaign performance. Here are two examples of how you can use the dimensions tab information to improve your paid search campaigns:

• Make adjustments to your day-parting: View your Shopping campaigns by Hour of Day or Day of the Week to see when your campaign’s conversion rates are at their peak and lowest. With this information, you can apply bid modifiers to your campaigns to bid higher on traffic during days/times when conversions are at their peak—or lower bids during low-converting days/times.
• Add geo-targeting filters: Choose the Geographic view to discover how your campaign performs by geographical areas. Once you have found the best places for your campaigns, you can use geo-targeting bid modifiers to increase your bids for clicks from those areas.

Item ID Report

You will find the Item ID option under the Shopping drop-down menu in the Dimensions tab. This goes beyond aggregate campaign performance and displays performance KPIs for individual items sold. If your catalogue features hundreds or thousands of items, you can quickly make sense of the overwhelming date with the following tips:

• Sort by clicks: Sort your items by clicks to highlight the most important ones. These may differ from your best-selling items in-store or on other digital channels.
• Consider product breakouts: Notice a few items that are doing exceptionally well? Consider splitting each one into its individual product group with a slightly higher bid and generate even more money from items that are already hot.

Search Terms Report

Unlike text ad campaigns, which allow you to choose the exact keywords for which your ads appear, Google’s algorithms determine which queries trigger your Shopping ads. What’s more? Ads provides a detailed breakdown of the search terms that are driving your ads. You can find this Search terms report under the Dimensions tab. You will discover tens of thousands of unique search queries in the report, but how do you decide which queries are best for your campaign?

• Sort by impressions: Look for the queries that generate the most impressions for your Shopping ads. This will provide you with a more in-depth understanding of the terms your buyers use to find your products. You can use this information to influence your marketing vocabulary.
• Sort by cost: Sort your report by cost to find the terms pushing up your costs—i.e., terms that are receiving a lot of clicks but not converting. This could indicate that the results Google returns for that word are not precisely what users are looking for. If a term is not converting well, consider adding it as a negative keyword to your campaign. This ensures that your ads do not appear for a weak search query.

Conclusion

So there you have it: three Shopify PPC management tools that provide a solid starting point for being proactive—rather than reactive—in the new Google Shopping-centric search landscape.