Part of my job is setting up Google Shopping for my clients; all that time spent liaising with web developers from overseas creating manual Data Feeds when the web developers aren’t able to pull one from the site, setting up a Merchant Center (sic) and spending time on creating Shipping Rates tables, creating the campaign in the AdWords account, troubleshooting, and when you think you have entered everything correctly you find that one tiny detail that wasn’t required on other accounts is now suddenly is required on this particular account!
It’s enough to pull your hair out (lucky I don’t have much there)!
There is some real joy in setting up a Google Shopping campaign, but that comes right at the end when you begin to see actual results and conversions coming in. The build-up though can be exhausting and time consuming. Google has recently added extra requirements which allow us to provide customers with a better experience, which is of course great, but it does take a little more time.
The key to setting up a successful Google Shopping campaign in time for Christmas is all in the organisation and preparation. Much like an SEO campaign, which needs to be implemented many months before you begin to see results, a Google Shopping campaign needs to be given sufficient time to be set up so that once Christmas actually rolls around, it’s up and ready to serve. A Google Shopping campaign has many components that must be set up, reviewed and validated prior to the campaign even going live.
Depending on the efficiency of your web team, or the capabilities of your web platform, pulling a Data Feed can take time. Some platforms don’t even allow it, so a manual feed must be produced and depending on the extent of your product database, you could be sitting there inputting data for quite some time.
Updated shipping requirements are time consuming too. If you’re a ‘single rate’ business, then good for you, but if you’re not, get comfortable, and this is all before the ads are put under review by Google.
There is also the inevitable scenario that not every product on your website is going to give you an instant ROI, so optimising your Google Shopping campaign will require attention too. Hopefully your digital strategist has been on top of things and provided you with this same advice and your Google Shopping campaign for Christmas 2015 is well underway. If not, then perhaps it’s time to have a word!
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