Google Ads for E-commerce: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started

Now, let’s get into how you can optimize the three main e-commerce campaign types (Search, Shopping, and PMax) differently for lead generation goals.

• Use ad extensions: Ad extensions can provide additional information about your business and make your ads more appealing to potential customers. Some useful ad extensions for lead generation include call extensions, site link extensions, and lead form extensions.

• Use landing pages optimized for lead generation: Your landing pages should be designed to capture leads. This means that they should have a clear call to action and a form that people can fill out to submit their contact information. You should also ensure that your landing pages are relevant to your target keywords.

• Use lead qualification: Lead qualification is the process of identifying and prioritizing leads that are most likely to convert into customers. You can use lead qualification to identify leads that are a good fit for your business and are more likely to be interested in your products or services.

• Use lead nurturing campaigns: Nurture campaigns are a great way to stay in touch with potential customers and move them closer to purchasing. You can use nurture campaigns to send potential customers educational content, special offers, and event invitations.

Now that we understand what options you have in terms of Google Ads campaigns for e-commerce, let’s look at how to create the three types of Google Ads e-commerce campaigns - Search, Standard Shopping, and Performance Max.

How to Create Search Campaigns

Here is a step-by-step process of creating search campaigns in Google Ads:

• In your Google Ads account, click the plus button (+) and select New Campaign.
• Select your advertising objective. This is the goal you want to achieve with your campaign. For example, you can increase website traffic, generate leads, or drive sales.

• Select the campaign type. For a search campaign, select Search.

• Set your budget and bidding strategy. Your budget is the maximum amount of money you will spend on your campaign daily. Your bidding strategy determines how much you will pay for each click on your ad.

• Create your ad groups. Ad groups are groups of related keywords and ads. For example, you might have one ad group for your product or service name and another for related keywords.

• Add keywords to your ad groups. Keywords are the words and phrases people are likely to search for when looking for what you have to offer. 
• Write your ads. Your ads should be relevant to your keywords and encourage people to click on them.

• Review your campaign, click Save, and continue.

Once you've created your search campaign, it will go through a review process. Once your campaign is approved, it will start running, and your ads will appear in search results.

How to create Standard Shopping Campaigns

The steps to create a campaign remain the same until choosing the type of campaign. In this case, you select "Shopping" as your campaign type.

From there on, the steps are as follows:

• Select your product feed. Your product feed is a file that contains information about your products, such as their titles, descriptions, prices, and images.

• Set your budget and bidding strategy.

• Review your campaign, click Save, and continue.

After completing these steps, your Google Ads Shopping campaign will be set up and ready to go live. Review and monitor the campaign's performance regularly for any necessary adjustments.

How to create a Performance Max campaign

• Select the Performance Max campaign type.

• Set your budget and bidding strategy. 

• Select your conversion goals. Conversion goals are the actions you want people to take on your website after clicking on your ad, such as purchasing or signing up for your email list.

• Add your ad assets. Ad assets are the different elements of your ad, such as your headlines, descriptions, images, and videos.

• Review your campaign, click Save, and continue.

Once you've created your Performance Max campaign, it will first go through a review process. After your campaign is approved, it will start running, and your ads will appear in search results and other Google channels, such as Display, YouTube, and Maps.

Remember, creating a campaign is just the beginning. Running successful e-commerce campaigns is all about testing, monitoring, and making optimizations based on your results. Once you have a good understanding of what's working and what's not, you can start to implement more advanced strategies like remarketing.

Remarketing for Google Ads E-Commerce Campaigns

Remarketing is a powerful way to reach people who have visited your website or interacted with your brand. It allows you to show targeted ads on other websites they visit, reminding them about your products and encouraging them to return and buy.

You can also use remarketing to optimize your campaigns in a number of ways. For example, you can target people who have visited your website but didn't make a purchase, helping you to retarget those people with more relevant ads or offers.

You can also target people who have abandoned their shopping carts. This is a great way to try to win them back with a special offer or discount.

Here are some tips for using remarketing effectively in your Google Ads e-commerce campaigns:

• Use multiple remarketing lists: This will allow you to target people with different ads based on their specific behavior.

• Segment your remarketing lists: For example, you could create separate lists for people who have visited your website but haven't purchased in a while and those who have abandoned their shopping cart in the past few days. This will allow you to create more targeted and effective ad campaigns.

• Use negative keywords: This will prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches and saving your precious budget.

• Monitor your results and make adjustments: It's essential to track your remarketing campaigns and ensure they perform well. If you're not seeing the desired results, you can try adjusting your targeting, bids, or creative assets.

By using remarketing to target people who have already shown an interest in your products, you can increase your chances of converting them into customers. 

In addition to remarketing, there are several other best practices that you can follow to improve your Google Ads e-commerce campaigns. We have curated five tips from expert PPCers in the industry, and some valuable articles and user guides by Optmyzr.

5 Best Practices For Successful E-Commerce Google Ads Campaigns

Showcase Your Best Products

Put the spotlight on your top-selling products. They're the winners for a reason. Give them catchy titles, descriptions, and eye-catching images or videos to attract more buyers. Allocate a good chunk of your budget to these rock stars.

Know more on it here.

Set Smart Bids and Budgets

Figure out your bidding strategy based on your profit margins and conversion rates. Smart bidding can be a game-changer, but keep an eye on it to ensure it works for your specific goals.

Check out Freya Laskowski’s advice on our recent blog here.

Keep Out the Irrelevant Clicks

Use negative keywords to filter out searches that don't match what you're selling. Regularly review search terms to keep your ads from showing up where they shouldn't.

Read Nicholas Woodward’s article on 5 effective strategies for negative keywords and how to use them in e-commerce PPC campaigns.

Create an Optimization Schedule

Optimization is the key to any campaign success, but it can be difficult to keep track of your campaigns and ensure they perform optimally, especially if you’re operating on a larger scale. That’s where a Google Ads optimization schedule can help. It helps you track your progress and make data-driven decisions.

Here’s a great article by Andrew Lolk on Google Ads optimization schedule.

Track your performance to optimize for success

Tracking your e-commerce website’s performance is essential for optimizing your Google Ads campaigns. And setting up conversion code is the key to unlocking valuable insights into your website’s behavior.

Check out Hukum Negi’s tip on using Google Ads conversion code.

We have another great resource for you to help you through this year’s e-commerce campaign management. Check out this PPC Town Hall episode on how to stand out in eCommerce advertising featuring Duane Brown and Andrew Goodman, who have been running top-quality eCommerce campaigns for years and helped brands exponentially grow revenue and smash prior financial records.

Streamline Your E-commerce Google Ads with Optmyzr

Running e-commerce Google Ads can be a handful. It demands constant fine-tuning and attention to ensure your campaigns are at their prime. But there's no need to stress. With Optmyzr, managing your e-commerce campaigns is a lot easier and more efficient.

Here are some of Optmyzr’s top tools and features to support you at every stage of your e-commerce campaign management journey.

Tools for creation

Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0

Structure your active shopping campaigns by creating multiple levels of product partitions through a single click. You can create hundreds of ad groups with thousands of product groups in a matter of minutes. 

Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0 makes building Shopping or PMax campaigns easy based on performance. For example, you can group products with similar ROAS performance and set more targeted bids and budgets, leading to improved performance overall. And it helps you manage your campaigns more effectively by making it easy and quick to identify and address any low-performing campaigns.

Know more here.  

Restructure Shopping Campaigns Tool

With this tool, you can restructure your shopping campaign groups created through Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0. You can also restructure campaigns not part of a campaign group created through Optmyzr.

Know more here.

Tools for performance analysis and optimization

Shopping Analysis

The Shopping Campaign Analysis tool from Google Ads is a powerful tool for getting insights into your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. It allows you to aggregate data from your shopping feed by performance metrics and attributes, regardless of your campaign structure. 

Know more here.

Shopping Feed Audits

These audits help you identify opportunities for enhancing your shopping and PMax Retail campaign structure and organization. For example, you can:

• Identify product groups or listing groups that contain too many products. You can split them further for better management and targeting.
• Identify shopping campaigns without any negative keywords.

Know more here.

Alerts for Monitoring

• Set up Feed alerts to stay informed about any feed issues causing product disapprovals.
• Employ the Alert Management System or Rule Engine for performance and budget alerts.

Know all about alerts here.

Tools for Managing Bids

Shopping Bidder Tool

The Shopping Bidder lets you make bulk bid changes for product groups based on performance with a single click. The tool enables you to set bids for thousands of product groups in a matter of minutes. New bids can be uploaded to AdWords with a single click.

Know more here.

Shopping Attribute Bidder

Manage your shopping bids in a more flexible way by aggregating and reviewing data from the attributes in your product feed. For example, you could change bids for product groups advertising the same product but with different attributes like size and color.

Know more here.

Stay on top of your Google Ads e-commerce campaigns with Optmyzr

Managing successful e-commerce Google Ad campaigns is an ongoing process that requires constant experimentation, testing, data analysis, and strategic thinking. It's also important to be adaptable and willing to refine your campaigns based on changing market conditions and business goals.

And Optmyzr, with its array of solutions, helpful resources, and support team, is always there to assist you.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.