Overview
The holiday season is the most important time of the year for many retailers around the world. Simply put it is a time when consumers are more willing to pull out their credit cards and buy products and services online.
That is why it is important to keep up to date with the best ways to promote your business online during the holidays.
One helpful method many retail outlets use are the Google shopping ads displayed on the search engine giant. These ads help consumers purchase products they are interested in buying directly from businesses advertising on the Google shop.
Like many ad formats, the technology changes from time to time. Here are the biggest changes for Google Shopping since last holiday season.
What are the new Google Shopping Updates?
Promotional Text is gone– Over the past year, Google removed the promotional line of text under the product listing ads. The lines allowed marketers to put in a brief description of the product or promote any specials like sales or free shipping on their offers.
Now, the Google Shop wants to pull the information in from the Merchant Center feed. By doing this, they can make all of their ads look uniform. Since promotional messages vary in length, doing this helps to increase click through rates for shoppers.
For Google shopping Australia merchants who want to share other information besides for sales or free shipping consider using the feed to include other shopping extensions like Merchant Promotions, Product Ratings, or Trusted Google Store Certificates.
In essence, while the promotional text is gone, the shorter versions from the feed can help you drive more traffic to your website.
Source: Google Blogspot
Local Inventory Checks – Do you ever hate going to a store only to find out that they ran out of the product you needed? Nothing like wasting a half hour or more running back and forth to your local store.
That is the reason Google Shopping decided to create local inventory ads for brick and mortar stores. For businesses who are found locally this is a very good way of not only increasing store sales, but also keeping your customers happy.
If a customer can simply search on Google to see what goods you have in stock, they will not be angry if they cannot purchase from your store. However, if they went to the store then they will probably be annoyed that you do not keep your store well-stocked. Not a good way to build a long-term relationship with clients.
One more thing to add. This works even better on a desktop device. That is because on desktops, users have the ability to search for store-only products. This is not available at the moment on mobile devices.
However, it is good news for the vast majority of people who shop online this holiday season.
Mobile expanded product detail- Another new item is that mobile ads now have expanded product details when you swipe over the product on a touchscreen.
Since the screens are smaller this ensures that you maximise the smaller space with the information you need about the products you want.
Shopping Assortment Report- One of the biggest challenges for larger merchants is placing all the ads for each product. Since it may not always be feasible to advertise every good you offer on the product listing ads, it only makes sense that Google can help you determine the best products to advertise.
The Shopping Assortment Report reviews all of the products you have in your Merchant Center product feed. The report then lets you know the top 100 products you offer that are not already being advertised.
Furthermore, the report helps you identify the best pricing to sell these products. In essence, it helps you itemise the best products to sell to customers at the best price to get the most traffic and conversions.
This is perfect as we enter the holiday season, because it provides added traffic generation during some of the biggest shopping months of the year. PLA ads are perfectly positioned to help merchants cash in on this shopping trend.
Buy Now Button– The final item on the list is that Google Shopping Australia added a Buy on Google button. This button allows consumers to purchase items directly from the search engine.
For anyone who ever had to deal with shopping cart abandonment, you can appreciate the ability to purchase items directly through the search engine. It reduces the number of pages a customer’s clicks through, and ensures more sales go through.
Final Thoughts
The holidays are often touted as the busiest buying season of the year, because everyone is interested in getting presents for their loved ones during this time.
That is why it is so important you have the right marketing strategy to help generate revenue for your business.
Understanding how product listing ads change over time can be a tremendous benefit to ensure you get the highest click through rate from Google Shopping. If you need help identifying the best product listing ads for your next campaign, feel free to give us a Shout!
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