Picture this: a typical dorm room in a bustling public university. It’s a crisp October afternoon, around 4 o’clock, and outside the window, vibrant autumn leaves gracefully descend upon the damp grass, a sight beautiful enough to move anyone.

Suddenly, our protagonist bursts into the room. He was responsibly enjoying a few beers at the football pre-game when a pressing need struck him. He’s in dire need of a new shower curtain, and he needs it immediately.

Now, you are a shower curtain connoisseur, offering top-notch products that rival the best. But our hero, being the tech-savvy Gen Z’er he is, turns to Google and searches for “rad shower curtain.” Sadly, your brand is nowhere to be found among the Shopping ads. And why is that? Because you haven’t ventured into the realm of Shopping ads yet. You haven’t had the chance to learn their intricacies, relying solely on text ads. This lack of prominence at the top of the search results has cost you a potential sale. We don’t want that to happen, ever. That’s why we’ve crafted this comprehensive guide to ecommerce PPC—to empower you with the fundamentals of Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, and Amazon advertising. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll be well-versed in:

• The mechanics of Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, and Amazon advertising
• Setting up and structuring accounts on each platform
• Optimizing your bids effectively
• And much more! Let’s dive right in.

Exploring Google Shopping

When Google users embark on product searches, they’re greeted by Shopping ads. These ads are presented in a grid layout on the right side of the search results page when using a desktop computer.

On mobile devices, however, these ads take the form of a carousel, prominently displayed at the top of the search results.

According to Search Engine Land, Shopping ads command a significant portion of clicks - about 75% - originating from product searches that aren’t tied to specific brands. When considering both branded and non-branded searches, Shopping ads contribute to roughly 52% of clicks for ecommerce advertisers. Furthermore, Smart Insights reveals that a staggering 85% of paid clicks for American ecommerce businesses advertising on Google stem from Shopping ads. The message is crystal clear: Google Shopping is an indispensable tool in the ecommerce digital marketing arsenal. To delve deep into the intricacies of crafting a profitable Google Shopping campaign, grab our complimentary guide today!

Unraveling the Mechanics of Google Shopping

In a nutshell: Google Shopping operates quite differently from other Google Ads components. To join the ranks of Shopping advertisers, you need to connect your Google Ads account with Google Merchant Center. Fret not; it’s a straightforward process that can be completed here. Once that’s done, it’s time to build your product data feed—a comprehensive spreadsheet that meticulously describes and categorizes each product in your inventory. This structured format enables Google to effortlessly crawl and index the necessary information.

Advertisers with smaller inventories might find manual feed creation manageable. However, larger advertisers dealing with hundreds or thousands of products would be better served by employing automated feed solutions. When crafting your feed, ensure you provide the following details for each product:

• Unique identifier
• Title
• Description
• Product link
• Image link
• Availability status
• Price
• Category
• Brand
• Global Trade Item Number (GTIN)
• Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)
• Condition
• Item group identifier
• Shipping details Google’s comprehensive information requirement stems from a fundamental aspect of Shopping ads: advertisers don’t design their own ads. Instead, Google leverages your meticulously organized product data to construct a digital profile for your store, a practice consistent across all Shopping advertisers. This approach empowers Google to automatically generate and display the most pertinent Shopping ads when a user initiates a product search. In the realm of Shopping ads, bidding on keywords is also absent. Similar to SEO, you target keywords strategically within your product titles and descriptions. This, along with providing other essential details like product category and GTIN, equips Google with all the information it needs to optimally populate the search results.

Product search query: “women’s running shoes” Now, you might be pondering how Google determines the cost per click for your ads. We’ll get there soon.

Structuring Your Google Shopping Campaigns

With Google Merchant Center set up and your product data feed ready, it’s time to head back to the familiar Google Ads interface and start building those Shopping campaigns. Initially, Google groups all your products under a single product group aptly named “All Products.” You’re then free to divide this broad group into more specific product groups based on your preferences and strategy. Approach this segmentation thoughtfully. Product groups are the bedrock of your Shopping bids. Remember, different products in your catalog come with varying prices, profit margins, and conversion rates. Lumping products with vastly different metrics into a single product group results in a uniform maximum CPC bid across the board, which might not be ideal. Ideally, higher-priced, more profitable, or better-converting products deserve higher bids. Achieving absolute uniformity within a product group requires assigning each product its own group. While feasible for smaller catalogs, this approach becomes impractical for those managing hundreds or thousands of products.

Instead, strive to create product groups with minimal internal variation. Naturally, this leads to significantly different campaign structures for different businesses. Let’s imagine you’re an athletic apparel reseller. You could start by splitting your “All Products” group based on gender: men’s and women’s. Then, categorize each gender group by product type: tops, bottoms, and sneakers. Further segmentation can involve dividing tops into short and long sleeves, bottoms into shorts and pants, and sneakers into low-cut and high-top. Finally, categorize each of these groups by brand: Nike, Under Armour, and Puma. This approach yields 36 distinct product groups, such as:

• Men’s Nike low-cut sneakers
• Women’s Under Armour long sleeve shirts
• Men’s Puma shorts
• Women’s Under Armour high-top sneakers These granular product groups become the targets of your maximum CPC bids. Although individual product bidding might be impractical with a large inventory, this structure ensures you’re not assigning the same bid to vastly different products. With product groups established and bids assigned, Google understands how much you’re willing to spend per click on each product advertisement. As with Google Search auctions, your Shopping ad’s position in sponsored results depends partly on your bid. Higher bids generally translate to better visibility. The other crucial factor is Quality Score, a metric assigned by Google to each generated ad. Improve your Quality Score by:
• Providing exhaustive product information: More information enables Google to match your ad to search queries with greater precision, enhancing its relevance.
• Crafting compelling titles and descriptions: Enticing copy leads to a higher click-through rate (CTR), positively impacting Quality Score.
• Using high-quality images: Visually appealing images contribute to a higher CTR.
• Ensuring a seamless landing page experience: Easily navigable landing pages make your ad more favorable in Google’s eyes.

Optimizing Your Google Shopping Bids

As mentioned before, price, profit margin, and conversion rate are crucial factors to consider when setting bids. “But, Conor, I’m just dipping my toes into Google Shopping. I don’t have enough data on my products’ conversion rates yet.” That, my friend, is the perfect segue to our first bid optimization tip.

Start Low and Go Slow

Starting with bids below your budget is a prudent strategy, especially when you’re just beginning. This approach allows you to gather valuable performance data over time and gain insights into your products’ selling potential. For instance, imagine you’ve assigned modest bids across your athletic apparel Shopping campaign. After two months, you’re confident that women’s Nike low-cut sneakers are your star performers, while men’s Puma long sleeve shirts are lagging behind. Based on this data, you can confidently increase bids for the former and decrease them for the latter.

Regularly analyzing your campaign performance and adjusting bids accordingly will keep your campaigns healthy and your budget optimized.

Leveraging Geographic Bid Modifiers

Your products likely perform differently in different regions. Once you have enough data to identify high-performing regions, use bid modifiers to increase your maximum CPCs when users from those areas search for your targeted keywords. This tactic increases your chances of securing those coveted top spots in sponsored results.

Keeping a Close Eye on Search Impression Share

Search Impression Share is a metric that deserves your attention. Simply put, it represents the ratio of impressions your Shopping ad has received compared to the total number of impressions it was eligible to receive. Search Impression Share = Impressions / Possible Impressions A low Search Impression Share for a product indicates poor ranking. If you’ve ruled out Quality Score issues—you’ve provided all necessary information, maintain a decent CTR, and have an optimized landing page—consider increasing your bid. However, what if the poorly performing product shares a group with products that have low conversion rates? You wouldn’t want to raise bids for the entire group in that case. This is where Custom Labels come in handy. These labels allow you to cherry-pick specific products from various product groups and group them together, enabling you to assign a unique bid to this new group.

Via PPC Professionals. For example, let’s say your top ten best-selling products are scattered across eight different product groups. With a Custom Label, you can consolidate them into a single group and assign a unique, potentially higher, bid to maximize their visibility.

Exploring Automated Bidding Strategies

We’ll conclude this Google Shopping exploration with a quick look at automated bidding strategies. Designed for those who lack the time or resources for manual bid management, these strategies leverage machine learning to monitor campaign performance and adjust bids based on your business objectives. If your goal is to increase site visits, Maximize Clicks is your go-to strategy, aiming to generate as many clicks as possible within your daily budget. For those who prefer manual bid control with a conversion boost, Enhanced CPC automatically modifies your set bids based on the likelihood of a click converting into a sale. Lastly, if maximizing conversion value while maintaining a specific ROAS is your priority, Target ROAS sets bids accordingly.

Entering the World of Bing Shopping

Get ready for a more concise section compared to the previous one. Bing Shopping operates on principles very similar to Google Shopping. Bing Shopping ads, triggered by user search queries, are displayed on the right side of the search results page on desktop computers and prominently at the top on mobile devices.

In general, Bing Ads offers some compelling advantages over Google Ads, both for Search and Shopping campaigns. Some of these benefits include:

• Reduced competition in ad auctions
• Lower average CPCs
• Greater control over campaigns and ad groups
• Demographic-based targeting options for Search campaigns
• More refined device-based targeting These advantages make Bing Ads a strong contender for those already leveraging Google Ads, and ecommerce vendors are no exception.

How Does Bing Shopping Work?

As we mentioned earlier: it closely resembles Google Shopping. Naturally, you’ll be setting up shop in Bing Merchant Center. To do so, log into your Bing Ads account and navigate to Tools > Bing Merchant Center > Create a Store. This section is your hub for creating and optimizing your product data feed.

Here’s the good news: Bing Merchant Center allows direct product data feed imports from Google Merchant Center. Within Bing Ads, go to Tools > Bing Merchant Center > Import > Sign in to Google. After logging in, you can schedule recurring imports from Google Merchant Center to Bing Merchant Center, ensuring any updates to your Google product catalog are automatically reflected in Bing.

Similar to Google, Bing crawls and indexes your product data, enabling it to generate ads automatically in response to user searches. Feed optimization best practices from Google largely apply here as well. An important distinction: Bing Shopping offers a unique feature called priority levels. You assign a priority level to each campaign, signaling to Bing which campaigns are most crucial to your success. Bing considers these priority levels when ranking ads for a specific user search query. High-priority campaigns are ideal for best-selling or seasonally relevant products, while medium priority suits consistent year-round sellers. Low priority is reserved for everything else.

Structuring Your Bing Shopping Campaigns

Once your product data feed is ready, you can either import your existing Shopping campaigns from Google or create entirely new Bing-specific campaigns. For the latter, navigate to Create Campaign > Sell Products. Mirroring Google’s approach, Bing initially places your entire inventory into a single general product group. To further refine this grouping (which, hopefully, by now you’re convinced is a good idea!), you can segment your catalog based on condition, brand, product ID, category, or product type. Again, the principles of campaign structure optimization from Google Shopping largely apply here as well. Structure your product groups to facilitate logical bidding, ensuring significant product differences don’t result in identical bids. If time is of the essence, importing your Google Shopping campaigns is a viable option. In Bing Ads, select Import Campaigns > Import from Google Ads.

Next, log into your Google Ads account and select the campaigns you wish to import. Although not mandatory, setting up scheduled imports is recommended. Go to Schedule Imports > When and instruct Bing to import your Google Shopping campaigns daily, weekly, or monthly. The final step, arguably the most crucial, is verifying a smooth import process. Double-check:

• Your bids and budgets: Bing Ads and Google Ads have different minimum requirements for these. Bing automatically adjusts imported campaigns to meet its criteria, which you can disable, but non-compliant campaigns won’t be imported.
• Your targeting settings: Bing Ads and Google Ads have distinct targeting options that necessitate platform-specific configurations.
• Your negative keywords: Unlike Google’s broad match negatives, Bing only supports phrase match and exact match. Imported broad match negatives are automatically converted to phrase match. Now for some good news: bid optimization tactics and automated solutions discussed in the Google Shopping section are applicable to Bing Shopping as well. With that, let’s shift our focus to the Amazon advertising landscape.

Navigating Amazon Advertising

While often overlooked as such, Amazon, like Google and Bing, is a powerful search engine in its own right. Its advertising platform follows a familiar logic: users input search queries, and Amazon presents relevant product ads. These ads appear prominently at the top of search results and on relevant product listing pages.

For ecommerce merchants, advertising on Amazon is practically a no-brainer. True, it adds to your expenses, but given Amazon’s expansive customer base (over 300 million) and vast consumer behavior data, it’s an incredibly effective way to drive sales. Moreover, Amazon has become the go-to product search destination for many consumers in recent years (go-to product search engine). While Google Shopping still holds a significant market share, it plays second fiddle to Amazon, a trend unlikely to reverse anytime soon.

Decoding Amazon Advertising

In a nutshell: it bears a striking resemblance to Google and Bing Search advertising. Amazon sellers looking to amplify their presence on the platform bid on specific keywords that indicate user interest in or need for their products. Each click on your ad incurs a small fee, aligning with the core principles of PPC advertising. Amazon offers two primary ad types:

• Self-serve ads, commonly found on search result and product listing pages, follow a familiar ecommerce ad format, showcasing the product image, title, price, and more.
• Premium ads, akin to banners, grace the Amazon sidebar and other websites, resembling Google Display Network (GDN) ads. These focus more on brand awareness than direct product promotion. This guide primarily concerns itself with self-serve ads, further categorized into three formats.

Sponsored Product Ads

These ads, appearing on both search results and product details pages, directly lead users to the product’s dedicated page upon clicking.

Sponsored product ads rely on targeted keywords, offering exact, phrase, and broad match types. You can also define daily budgets and campaign durations for greater control.

Headline Search Ads

Unlike sponsored product ads, these appear as headline banners above sponsored and organic product listings on search result pages. Clicking them takes users to customized brand landing pages instead of individual product pages.

While also keyword-targeted, headline search ads only offer exact and phrase match types. They are best suited for promoting groups of three or more products rather than individual items.

Product Display Ads

Unlike the keyword-driven approach of sponsored product and headline search ads, product display ads target users based on their searches for related products or demonstrated interest in a specific product. These ads populate search result pages, product details pages, and even customer review pages.

Building Effective Amazon Advertising Campaigns

If you’re familiar with Google or Bing Search campaigns, you’re in familiar territory. Start with campaigns, segmenting them by product category. For instance, if you sell men’s apparel, you could have separate campaigns for men’s sweaters, men’s shirts, and men’s pants. Next, divide each campaign into ad groups. Within the men’s sweaters campaign, you could have ad groups for cardigans, crew neck sweaters, quarter-zip sweaters, etc. The men’s shirts campaign could have ad groups for t-shirts, dress shirts, undershirts, v-necks, etc. Similarly, the men’s pants campaign could be divided into ad groups for corduroy pants, khaki pants, jeans, sweatpants, etc.

Once your ad groups are in place, brainstorm and select around 20 relevant keywords for each. Then, start crafting compelling ad copy and eye-catching creative assets! As seasoned Search advertisers know, account and campaign structure heavily influence ad relevance. Precise campaign structures facilitate precise keyword and ad grouping, which, in turn, enhances the relevance of your ads when displayed to Amazon shoppers. More relevant ads naturally lead to more qualified clicks, which are more likely to convert into paying customers. So, yes, carefully consider your campaign structure, as it significantly impacts your success.

Mastering Amazon Advertising Bid Optimization

The answer to effective bid optimization, in its simplest form, boils down to a word many dread: math. Cost per action (CPA) reveals how much you spend to acquire a single conversion. It’s crucial to have a well-defined CPA goal for your campaigns. Calculating your CPA is straightforward: divide your total ad costs by the total number of conversions: CPA = Costs / Conversions Let’s break down this formula into two parts: Costs = Clicks x CPC Conversions = Clicks x Conversion Rate Substituting these into the CPA formula gives us: CPA = Costs / Conversions = (Clicks x CPC) / (Clicks x Conversion Rate) Since “Clicks” is present in both the numerator and denominator, we can simplify the equation to: CPA = CPC / Conversion Rate Rearranging this formula gives us: CPC = CPA x Conversion Rate Therefore, when starting with Amazon advertising, you can determine your initial CPC bids for keywords in an ad group by defining your target CPA for that group and estimating its conversion rate. But how do you estimate the conversion rate? Research average conversion rates for your industry on Amazon. Alternatively, if your Amazon ad groups closely resemble your Google Shopping product groups, use your Shopping conversion rates as a starting point. Remember, this method is merely for setting initial bids. As recommended for Google Shopping, closely monitor your ads’ performance during the initial weeks. This data will guide your future bid adjustments based on product performance. Consider bidding on brand names of popular competitors in your industry.

Search query: “nalgene water bottle.” However, be realistic: competing with established brands on their own turf requires a hefty budget. Therefore, optimize your ads to stand out. A/B test different ad copies to identify the top performer and replicate those elements across other ads. Exercise caution with broad match keywords. If you sell bikes and bid on the broad match keyword bike, your ad might appear for irrelevant searches like “kids bike helmet,” negatively impacting your CTR over time. This is where negative keywords play a crucial role. Adding terms like helmet, bell, and tire pump as negatives ensures your ads for broad match keywords like bike remain relevant and target the right audience.

Ecommerce PPC: Your Path to Selling Success

As the global ecommerce market continues its rapid expansion, the potential for online sales success only grows stronger. Consumers increasingly turn to platforms like Google, Bing, and Amazon for product research and purchases. (And for those concerned about the future of brick-and-mortar stores, rest assured, they’re here to stay. Don’t believe the doomsday predictions.) However, navigating the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape and establishing a robust multi-channel PPC presence for your business is no walk in the park. Be prepared to dedicate significant time and effort. But remember, the rewards are well worth the effort. A well-executed PPC strategy translates to increased revenue and sustainable growth for your ecommerce business.