Blog: A Brief Guide To Using Google Ads for Shopify - OrbitWeb

Selling products from a Shopify store requires getting noticed by as many people as possible.

This means you have to make sure your ads are in front of many potential consumers.

Google Ads is one of the most powerful tools, providing access to billions of eyeballs every day. Forty-nine percent of shoppers surveyed said they use Google to find new items or products.

This brief guide shows you how to use Google Ads for Shopify and how you can increase those sales!

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads is an online advertising program. With Google ads, you can create online ads to reach people exactly when they’re interested in the products and services that you offer.

You choose where your ad appears, set a budget, and measure the impact of your advertisement campaign.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a commerce platform that offers a way to quickly launch your dream business and start selling to your customers, wherever they are.

Google Partners helping Shopify Merchants

Many merchants depend on Partners like OrbitWeb to help them build a reliable acquisition strategy.

This guide will show you how Google Ads can help generate not just clicks to your website but also paying customers, using three of Google’s most profitable advertising products.

Step 1 – Boost Search Visibility with Ads

Where do you go first when you need to find information or a product?

Google.

A search campaign puts your ads alongside search results when people are looking for the products or services that they offer. These Ads are very complementary to your client’s SEO initiatives.

Search campaigns are easy to create. With search campaigns, you can always target a particular marketing goal related to the action you’d like customers to take: click, sales, sign up, or any other metric. The goal should mirror the main result you want to achieve for your Shopify store. For example, website traffic, revenue, new customers, etc. What is really great about search campaigns is that you can change them anytime.

What’s more, each campaign has settings like location, devices, and language; this allows you to refine the targets of the ads for your Shopify store.

Once you have chosen the campaign settings, it’s time to populate the campaign with the details of their products and what you want to advertise.

Dynamic Search Ads can automate the population process if you already have a large inventory or website.

Dynamic search ads are search ads that show based on your site’s content. Google essentially crawls your site and then matches to search terms closely related to your site’s content. From that point, the headline and landing page are dynamically generated to match the search term.

Using ad groups

If you’d like to manage your ads manually, you can create ad groups: batches of similar keywords that you want to trigger a particular ad. For example, if you sell desserts, then your keywords can be “pie, cake, and cookie.” Another ad group could target beverages: coffee, juice, and soda, allowing you to have a different ad for each ad group.

How Ad Auctions Work

This section will reveal how Google selects which ads appear at the top of Google Search.

The short answer: Auctions

That’s right! Google Ads determines which ads to show with a fast ad auction, which takes place every time someone searches on Google or visits a site that shows ads.

Three main factors in the ad auction determine which ads appear and in what order:

• Your bid: When you set your bid, you’re telling Google Ads the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. How much you end up paying is often less, and you can change your bid at any time. If you are new to this, an automated bidding solution, like target CPA bidding, where Google bids strategically on your behalf to get as many conversions as possible at or below a certain cost-per-action (CPA), which you set.
• Ad Quality: Google Ads also looks at how relevant and useful your ad is to the person who’ll see it. Its assessment of the quality of your ad is summarized in your Quality Score, which you can monitor and improve in your Google Ads account.
• The expected impact from your ad extensions and other ad formats: When you create your ad, you have the option to add additional information to your ads, such as a phone number or more links to specific pages on your site. These are called ad extensions. These add-ons boost your ad visibility and prominence on the search results page and give people additional, interactive ways of reaching you. Google Ads estimates how extensions and other ad formats you use will impact your ad’s performance.

Don’t fret. Even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords, ads, and extensions.

Step 2 – Connect with high intent customers with Shopping Ads

Google isn’t just a search engine- the company has eight properties, each with over a billion users. Google Shopping ads have an extended reach beyond pure search to customers across YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and the Google Display Network.

Did you know 75 percent of shoppers say they have used a Google product in the past week to help them with their shopping?

Shopping ads are more than just a link to your client’s website. They show users a photo of your client’s product and include information like title, price, store name, and more. More descriptive ads give buyers a strong sense that the product is better at producing higher-quality leads.

Smart Shopping campaigns use real-time signals to automatically show your client’s products across Google platforms, prioritizing the kinds of customers who are most likely to be interested.

You can create Smart Shopping campaigns directly within Shopify using the Google channel app. The app will automatically use your Shopify store data to build a product feed in the Google Merchant Center. The data used is a list of products that you want to advertise, complete with information and images. Once the feed is approved, free listings will be enabled for eligible users, and you can begin to run a paid Smart Shopping campaign to advertise your products in more prominent places across Google.

Google will pull from your product feed and test different combinations of the image and text provided, then show the most relevant ads across its network. Even better, Google automates ad placement and bidding for maximum conversion value at your given budget, ensuring that your budget is spent as efficiently as possible.

The Google Channel App streamlines the Smart Shopping campaign setup. It allows you to manage Shopping Ads through a single campaign with a set daily budget. Suppose you prefer to manage ad targeting, optimizations, and bids manually. In that case, we recommend building a standard Shopping campaign through Google Ads, which works the same as Search campaigns, but they use your client’s product data rather than keywords to determine where to show ads.

Step 3 – Use Discovery Ads

People use Google for more than just shopping and searching. If you want to connect beyond intentional searches but also with people going about their daily activities, try Discovery ads. These are ads that appear on scrolling feeds. This is very similar to social media but for settings like YouTube watch lists, Gmail promotions tab, and Google Discover.

Discovery ads let you present your brand and products to people while they’re scrolling, when they’re open to trying something new. What an excellent way to find new customers!

Step 4 – Share your stories through video.

Did you know that YouTube has over two billion monthly visitors? You can engage potential customers while they’re in their “personal primetime:” highly engaged moments, watching content they’re passionate about.

You can choose from various video ad formats, depending on your goals.

Finally Thoughts.

Understanding how Google ads work will equip you to build better campaigns for your products. This is a great way to separate yourself from your competitors.

Not sure where to start?

As a Shopify Partner, our team at OrbitWeb will boost your sales and grow your brand through expert SEO and Google Ads. Not only this, we will create a digital strategy for you. We bring clarity and create a clear plan for the growth of your Shopify store.

Contact us today!