This is a guest post by Vijay Chelakkat. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, feel free to get in touch with us.
Ever seen Google Shopping ads on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs)?
These sponsored ads help users find the products they are looking for easily. They have images and updated information on price, reviews, etc, for quick browsing.
As a store owner, you need to submit a feed of your products to Google Merchant Center and then link it with your Google Ads account for Google to consider your products for Google Shopping ads. Unlike text ads that use keywords to match results, Google shopping ads use the product feed that you upload to randomly select and display products.
That is why creating a Google product feed is especially important for your products to be featured in Google Shopping ads. In this article, we will give an overview of Google shopping ads and share with you a few free WooCommerce Google Product Feed plugins for the same.
Let’s begin.
What are the Benefits of Google Shopping Ads?
There are certain obvious advantages in displaying your products through Google Shopping ads. We will discuss some of them before getting into the list of plugins.
#1 Better visibility for your products
Irrespective of the size of your business, you will find better visibility for your products when featured on Google Shopping ads. Generally, acquiring new customers is a long and challenging process that involves several different marketing campaigns. Often you need to familiarize yourself with your customer base for them to purchase from you.
However, when Google displays your products through shopping ads, you are actually bypassing this arduous process. When products appear in the search engine results pages, customers will be naturally more open to going ahead with a purchase even when they are not familiar with your brand.
#2 Reach a bigger consumer base
Most of your marketing campaigns will be highly targeted and hence you need to work on different campaigns to get a significant consumer base. Google Shopping ads will in fact help you get to a wider audience who can be anyone using the search engine to find information related to your products. Compared to text ads, you will not have to worry about choosing the right keywords. For Google shopping ads, the relevance of a display ad is determined by Google’s algorithm rather than your intelligent guess with a set of keywords.
This will ensure that your products are reaching a broader section of the audience than you targeting specific groups.
#3 Get qualified leads
As you can see, Google Shopping ads are much more informative than text ads. This is because they contain product meta like images, product price, rating trends, etc., which are crucial for most customers. With just a glance at the ad, a prospective customer can gather quite a lot of information about products as well as the alternatives. So when the customer decides to click an ad, they are already well informed about the product and available options. That makes the lead more qualified and relevant.
#4 Better conversions
More qualified leads will also mean better conversions for your store. This has been a consistent observation when Google Shopping ads are compared with traditional text ads. According to studies, the conversion rate of Google Shopping ads is over 25% higher than text-based ads. This means that your return on investment will be significantly greater when your products are displayed on Google Shopping ads.
#5 Easier to manage
To be featured on Google Shopping, you need to generate a product feed from your online store. The steps you should take as a store owner are relatively simple compared to other marketing campaigns. To get your products featured on Google Shopping ads, you need to:
- Create an account with Google Merchant Center.
- Generate a compatible product feed file based on the specifications.
- Upload the feed to Google Merchant Center.
- Link your Google Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts.
- Create ad campaigns and schedule them in a targeted manner.
With most popular eCommerce platforms, you will be able to find specialized tools to help you generate a product feed. We will discuss some of the free tools that you can use to generate a product feed from your store if you are using the WooCommerce platform.
How to Generate Product Feed on a WooCommerce Store?
ELEX WooCommerce Google Product Feed
This plugin will help you immensely in getting your products listed in Google Shopping ads. Basically, it helps you generate a product feed of your WooCommerce store, which you can upload to Google Merchant Center. It supports three file formats – XML, TSV and CSV. The plugin helps you generate a Google product feed by mapping your product categories with Google categories. You can use conditions and rules for attribute mapping, which will be helpful in creating more accurate feeds. Moreover, you will be able to exclude products of specific categories from being part of the product feed. Also, the plugin offers a great interface to help you manage multiple feeds.
Furthermore, you will be able to schedule cron jobs for periodic updates of your product feed. This is important as Google mandates regular updates of the product feed to ensure that the displayed shopping ads are not outdated.
There is also a premium version of ELEX Google Product feed plugin that comes with advanced features including support for variable products. You will also find reliable support and frequent updates with the premium version of this plugin.
Product Feed PRO for WooCommerce
This plugin helps you create Google product feed along with several other feeds such as those for Facebook remarketing, Bing Ads, etc. It supports WooCommerce variable products along with advanced mapping and filtering options. The plugin will be a great asset for your marketing campaigns as you will be able to manage multiple products feeds effectively. There is an Elite version of this plugin with more advanced features.
Features
- Helps you create unlimited product feeds with no limits in the number of products.
- Great filtering options so that you will be able to include products that are most profitable and relevant.
- Easily map your product fields and attributes according to the channel you are creating the feed for.
- Properly include structured data in your product feed to help users make an informed choice.
- Helps you add additional data fields as per Google’s requirement.
- Helps you create an optimized Google product feed that will have better chances to be featured on Google Shopping ads.
- Support for shipping classes, table rates, Google Analytics and WPML.
WooCommerce Google Feed Manager
This free plugin in the WordPress repository will help you create a product feed with up to 100 products on your WooCommerce store. It will automatically create a product feed in compliance with all the requirements specified by Google Merchant Center. In addition, you can make customization, to ensure that your product feed does not miss any additional information. The plugin offers an intuitive interface and will be a great option for WordPress users who are not experts in coding.
Moreover, the plugin helps you ensure that the feed is optimized and your products get maximum visibility through shopping ads in search engine results pages. And, another standout feature of this plugin is that it ensures regular updates of your product feed based on the changes that you make in your WooCommerce store. With the help of this plugin, you will be able to have full control over your product feed and can ensure better visibility for your products through Google Shopping ads. If you want to avoid restrictions in terms of the number of products, you can check out the premium version as well.
WooCommerce Product Feed Manager
If you are looking to integrate multiple retail channels and marketing avenues to your WooCommerce retail strategy, this plugin could be of real help. It will help you generate product feeds for different marketplaces and comparison engines including eBay, Amazon and Google Merchant Center. Please note the free version of the product supports up to 50 products from your WooCommerce store. With the help of the premium version of the plugin, you can create feeds with unlimited products and offer detailed product attributes custom fields.
Features
- Generate product feed for Google Merchant Feed and set a regular schedule for automatic updates.
- Category mapping to match your store’s categories to the ones specified by Google.
- Filter products by categories, tags or custom attribute to be included or excluded from the feed.
- Option to create custom fields for Brand, GTIN, Gender, etc.
- Supports multiple file-formats including CSV, XML, and TXT.
- Compatible with the most popular WordPress themes.
WooCommerce Product Feed for Marketing Channels
This is another popular option in the WordPress repository that allows easy generation of product feed for Google Merchant Center. The free version allows you to create a product feed with up to 40 products from your WooCommerce store. However, with the premium version of the plugin, you will find advanced features like no product limits and support for variable products.
Features
- Upload WooCommerce store products one by one to Google Merchant Center through an XML feed generated by the plugin.
- Automatically generates merchant product forms.
- Compatible only with the latest versions of WooCommerce.
- Generate category-wise product feed with the premium version.
We hope you got an overview of Google shopping ads and how the above mentioned WooCommerce plugins can help you feature your products there. Leave a comment if you have a query.
Author Bio
Vijay is the founder of ELEXtensions.com & LearnWoo.com, in charge of Business Development & Marketing. He is passionate about product development and solving various problems that e-commerce customers face. He is a connoisseur of food and likes to travel, go for long drives, and spend time with his family & friends. Follow on Twitter.
