Use Google Product Listing Ads to Boost Your Sales

It’s time to leverage Google Shopping Ads to drive additional sales to your business. Google Product Listing Ads, or PLAs, are both efficient and affordable. They’re also a terrific way to drive clicks to your website. While marketers talk about PLAs alongside traditional paid search campaigns, they’re in an entirely different category. While both are based on a CPC (cost-per-click) model and can be managed from AdWords, that’s where the similarities end.

We’ll provide you with some tips for the best practices for Google Product Listing Ads so that you can succeed. With the right strategy and tactics that complement your other ecommerce marketing efforts, you can use Google PLAs to increase your sales and visibility.

What Are Google Product Listing Ads?

Google’s Product Listing Ads are unique in that they don’t use keywords but instead target by product and product category. While management for Google Product Listing Ads is taken care of through AdWords and Google’s Merchant Center, the process is slightly different than regular paid search campaigns. You’ll set a bid for your ads, but Google will determine the relevance based on information you set, including:

Google Product Category
Product Type
Image
Price
Color
Size
Availability
Brand

It’s important to be accurate and as descriptive as possible in these categories, as these and your bid are what Google will use to list your ads.

Google PLAs are shown in two places: at the top and upper right of search results pages. They’re the only ads in these spaces. When someone searches for something like your product, Google uses its algorithm to determine if your product fits into their search and shows a variety of ads. Make sure your product sticks out by using high-quality images and backgrounds that pop. With 35% of online product searches starting on Google, PLAs are an effective way to reach out to customers.

The Basics of a Google Shopping Campaign

Why should you start a Google Shopping campaign? You’ve already got a paid search campaign going to promote your website, so why spend additional money on specific Google Product Listing Ads? For one thing, you’ll be able to promote items from your local or online inventory specifically—and you can even target your best-selling items.

Google will only charge you when a user clicks an ad that leads to a landing page on your website. This system means you’re paying to boost traffic to your website at a low CPC and only forfeiting the minimum amount necessary to rank higher than the advertiser immediately below you. Google will rank your item and then correlate a bid that will show your item at the lowest cost to you (up to your max bid). You get to choose how much you want to pay so that you won’t overspend.

How Do I Succeed with PLAs?

Now that you know the basic best practices of Google Product Listing Ads, you want to know how to succeed on the platform. The first important tip is organization. Keeping your feed organized will help you flourish, so make sure to take advantage of drilling your products down by each subcategory. The better your categorization, the higher ranked your items will be in Google’s algorithm. Remember the same PLA can look different across different platforms, so test across mobile, desktop, laptop, and tablet to ensure ads look good in each.

Larger feeds with more than 1000 products tend to do better on Google Shopping, while smaller feeds won’t have the same impact. Choose relevant, targeted product images that stand out among comparable ads. Research your competition and take high-quality photographs of your items. Focus only on your bestselling items, especially if you have thousands of products, and utilize promotions and sales to help your ads stand out from the crowd.

Using Google Product Listing Ads as part of your paid marketing campaign is an innovative way to drive additional traffic to your site. Understanding how to build your product feed and optimize product listings will enable you to use PLAs to boost your sales effectively.

At Leverage Marketing, our PPC experts have the know-how to manage Google Shopping Campaigns and optimize Product Listing Ads like nobody’s business. Contact us today so we can make your PPC dreams come true.