In this article – I will show you how to create a google shopping merchant ads – for your online WordPress WooCommerce store. Google shopping ads are the most efficient way to advertise your eCommerce products online in my experience.

Google is a master of advertising and have fine-tuned their algorithm and engine to be the most efficient in the digital space.

These are typical google shopping merchant ads 👇🏻

When a potential client enters a search on google for a product like “ladies watches” – the top results on google will most likely be a Google Shopping Merchant Ad. The client will be able to see: (1) The Products name, (2) Product Image, (3) Merchant selling the product and (4) Description.

When you click on an image – you will be led directly to the product – page on the Merchant website – this could be a WooCommerce store for example. If the client likes what they see, they can add product to cart and immediately check-out.

In my experience working with eCommerce stores – I have found that Google merchant shopping ads are the most efficient – when it comes to driving traffic to an eCommerce store.

Google merchant shopping ads are the most efficient in driving traffic to an eCommerce store

Getting started

In order to 1 get started, you will need:

(1) a google account – of course.

(2) You will also need a Google Merchant Centre account – https://www.google.com/retail/solutions/merchant-center/

(3) A google Ads account – https://ads.google.com/intl/en_za/home/

(4) And an eCommerce store – we will be working with WordPress and WooCommerce

(5) Specifically for this Tutorial – you will need the WordPress Woo Feed plugin, to create a feed of all your products for google shopping – https://wordpress.org/plugins/webappick-product-feed-for-woocommerce/

Configure the Google Shopping Feed

Install and activate the Woo Feed plugin. Select a Google template for your feed, give it a filename and choose XML Feed – click create.

Note the URL of the feed you just created. We will use it later when we create the Google Merchant catalogue.

Set-up Google Merchant and Google Shopping

Create your google merchant account using this link: https://www.google.com/retail/solutions/merchant-center/

When your account is created – on the dashboard navigation – to the left you get: (1) Overview- default, selected, (2) products, (3) performance and (4) growth. To get started – click on products, and feeds.

Create a new feed – select XML type feed and link the url from the previous step. Then fetch and process the feed.

When you do that Google will crawl your website and upload the data in the XML feed to create your google shopping product list. Google also confirms the information on the xml file by actually crawling your website to: (1) Make sure the description, price and data is as reported and (2) your shop works – checkout etc.

If all is well, google will approve your product list and you will see this in the overview section. If there are any problems with your product feed – you will also see this here, and be able to correct it.

Set-up Google Ads

Create a google ads account using the link: https://ads.google.com/intl/en_za/home/ – or simply search for google ads from your browser. Create a new campaign – select a google shopping campaign. At this stage you have two options: Google shopping campaign or Google smart shopping campaign.

Difference between shopping campaign and smart shopping campaign

1. A google shopping campaign is the right option – if you are just getting started and google has not collected any data yet regarding your store. Google shopping campaign will simply display your products and bid with other merchants for the traffic based. Your ads will be displayed, according to your budget and bidding strategy.
2. Google smart chopping campaign does everything a shopping campaign does plus more. It utilises learning algorithms to better target your audience. It re-advertises to people who have already shown interest in your products and people who are more likely to shop from you. This type campaign also tends to be cheaper in the long run – with a lower cost per click, because i is better optimised.

Therefore the smart campaign is the better option – but you need to have some data to work with before you can utilise a smart campaign.

Video Tutorial – Google Merchant Shopping Ads

For a detailed video tutorial – check out our youtube channel: