Google #102: The merchant centre is the base
You need to set up the merchant centre to sell products via the Google ecosystem. It stores product information, displays it on relevant search results and drives the google ads. Let's learn more.
👋 Namaste! Welcome to Out of Singapore. I am Shan and I share my learnings from DTC marketing every week. The online marketing ecosystem is controlled by a few big players - Facebook, Google, TikTok, and regional marketplaces. To succeed, one has to leverage the tools provided by them.
This is the 3rd part of the Google marketing ecosystem series. Before we get started, I noticed that words get missed in my sentences. It is quite frequent. Notice this example below -
The last sentence should be - “I have BEEN writing…”. I will aim to fix up these writing mistakes before sending blogs out. If I continue committing these mistake then shame on me.
Today we will talk about these topics.
Setting up the Google product feed
Setting up shipping and returns
Marketing on Google
Analysing performance dashboards
Know about the growth Programs
Point 1 and 2 are fundamental before anything else can happen.
If you are starting a new online business, the first step is to create a Google account and then go to merchant centre to start the setup. Here is a help article for reference.
Also, have a look at this onboarding snapshot from Google. The guide can be found here. After this, you will need to do everything shown below.
#1 Get the product feed approved
You can set up product feed by one of these methods -
Google sheets - Fill a defined Google sheets template. Google will fetch information from this every day. I have used this. It is intuitive and simple to use. Good for small number of SKUs.
Fetch a file on website - Did not use. Possibly good for someone hosting their website on their own servers. Great for businesses with large number of SKUs.
Upload a file to Google - One time upload of a template provided by google. Good if your product information does not change often.
Content API - Primary method if your webstore is hosted on Shopify, BigCommerce or other major ecommerce platforms. Simplest option. Updates flow to Google automatically.
Destinations - Added products are eligible for these “destinations” (where they will be shown to consumers")
Free listings - Shown on shopping tab of Google. Do not expect high ranking with this.
Dynamic remarketing - Target customers who have interacted with your website and products.
Shopping ads - Performance max and other shopping campaigns via Google Ads.
The aim should be get the products approved for all destinations. It will allow the product to rank higher and give you scope to improve performance via specific levers.
Google follows a strict set of guidelines for product approval to specific destinations. We struggled for 3 months before we got it 80% right.
Most important guidelines can be found here. Before you get started on selling on Google, spend a few days reading and re-reading these guidelines.
The guidelines are about
Prohibited content - Counterfeit products, recreational drugs, weapons, explosives, tobacco, any racial prejudice content, self harm and extortion and sale of endangered animals. These content are banned from showing or advertising on Google.
Prohibited practices - This is vague and about malicious content aimed to cheat a consumer.
Restricted content - You may advertise them with limitations. Adult sexual oriented content, alcoholic beverages, gambling content, Healthcare related content (read supplements and regulated ingredients).
Site requirements - Website URL should be right, gimmicks like “free” not allowed, back button should not be disabled, and other scam practices.
Here is demonstration of Google not showing sex toys and drugs as online products.
Note there are product categories they do not specifically say prohibited but can be. Email them consistently to get an answer if your products are not approved.
Next subtopics will be shorter, I promise!
#2 Setting up shipping and returns
This is available under Tools > Shipping and Returns. This consists of
Service coverage - Country, currency and delivery location.
Delivery times - Order handling time (pick, pack and dispatch) and shipping time
Shipping cost - Free shipping criteria or a flat fee. Keep this simple.
This needs to be defined for each country individually since the checkout currency is different. You can keep the checkout currency same (we did for first 4 months), however, that would create friction and trust loss leading to low conversions.
Shipping options for US are more detailed. You can add tracking or connect to various shipping services to track delivery.
That’s it. Now we get into the really selling the products.
#3 Start your marketing ads
If you are novice, or wish to keep things simple, you can start running ads from merchant centre directly. This will be a performance max campaign.
What is a performance max campaign (PMAX)?
As per Google, “PMAX is a campaign type that allows advertisers to access all of their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign”. Once you set up, the products will be visible across shopping ads, YouTube ads, search network and other real estate that Google has.
To create your first ad, you just need to
Select the products
Define the daily spend budget
Google will create a ad campaign in a few seconds and you are good to go.
Next steps will be to monitor the performance. Post which you will need optimise the campaign by defining audience, increasing or decreasing the budgets and defining targets. Here is a quick google search on PMAX campaign optimization. I will talk about this in another post.
#4 Read the performance dashboards on GMC
Here is a quick snapshot of how it looks for us.
You see that sudden dip in the green line. That helped me identify an issue with our website. Here are the things you get to know from the performance dashboard
Traffic - Clicks on your product listings
Funnel for your products - Clicks, impressions, CTR
Competitive visibility - Easiest way to find out how you are doing against your competition. Look at this chart below - gives us relative position against our direct competition.
Finally, you can create your own custom report by going into “your reports” section.
You need to look at performance for
Overall product performance - available under “performance” tab
Marketing performance - available under “marketing” tab.
These 4 are the most crucial aspects of building a successful Google merchant centre. To build a successful Google business, the remaining levers of Google have to be tapped into.
#5 Grow with merchant centre programs
The last tab is the “Growth” tab. The most important is the “manage programs” section. This tells you everything you can do to grow your business. These are
Free product listings
Shopping ads
Dynamic remarketing
Customer reviews
Free local product listings (for physical stores)
Local inventory ads (for physical stores)
Promotions
Product ratings
We have talked about points 1 to 3. Point 4 and 8, I will talk in separate post. Point 5 and 6 are not relevant for an online business.
Regarding promotions on google, we have not tried it yet. It could be sales boost. Will update after trying this out. The point is that you should be part of these growth programs or interventions.
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That’s it for the third post in the Google marketing ecosystem series. Thank you so much reading this. Please like and share 😍
I almost killed myself in a CrossFit class this Friday. But thankfully my body survived and I crawled back home. For my runs, I need to train at lower heart beat. Right now, I kill my heart running at 170-180 beats per min. The right bpm would be 130-150. That’s when I can run half marathon. Yay!
Jisoo News
It’s the anniversary of Jisoo’s solo debut with Flower. Remember the song that got me dancing crazy everywhere. Haha, I wanted to become a influencer dancing to those hand movements (and hips).
Also, Lisa turned 27. Why are they so young? 🥹
Have you seen this Yoga brand that Jisoo endorses? Will it give Lululemon a run for its money?
Jisoo GIFs
Since this is the anniversary, flower GIF deserves to here today. 😆
Thanks again, have a great week ahead! Cheers 🍻