Integrating your AdWords account with your Google Merchant account in order to create a Product Listing Ads campaign is becoming more and more commonplace as time goes on nowadays as the most awaited PLA's are Available Now for Indian Marketers.
I must admit however that I believe that for certain products and industries, Product Listing Ad campaigns are the best way to expose your products to your targeted audience.
This depends of course on the nature of the product you are promoting but especially applicable to ecommerce-based businesses, Product Listing Ads are becoming the clear path to take if you want to increase AdWords profits.
It has simply become impossible to ignore the benefits and results that can be achieved from Product Listing Ads at this point in time.
Increased Visibility with Product Listing Ads
A key factor to take into consideration is visibility; the image below serves as a great example:
If you were to click on one of the ads above because you are looking to buy some “cowboy boots” online, I’m pretty sure the ones getting most of your attention would be the image ads (which are the PLAs).
Something else worth mentioning is the fact that when a potential customer performs a search for a product, you can be eligible to show on both results: regular search ads as well as PLA ads. This of course will ensure you’d have more coverage.
Earn a Google-Trusted Store Badge and Gain Credibility
Earn this badge if you qualify, and meet the program performance standards required by Google. This will definitely help you gain confidence from your customers and allow your potential customers to feel more comfortable when doing business with you.
As it can be noticed in the image above, the regular search ads’ PLAs may come off as an annoying new roommate in college. Or worse even, it is also drawing more attention in the SERPs.
Good thing for us, we are not search ads and as marketing agencies, independent marketers, AdWords specialists and business owners, it can all truly represent a great deal of benefit for us all.
Maximize your Product Listing Campaign Exposure & Performance with Auto Targets
Something that is an imperative part of having an efficient and successful PLA campaign is having a well structured AdWords campaign. In order to have a great structure, you should divide your products up into Product Targets.
This is done with the help offered through the Auto Targets tab.
Product Targets Are Products you Group Together
In simple terms, product targets are a group of products that you decide to group together based on different attributes such as brand or product type, just to name a few. This gives you a lot of flexibility because you can group your products up at will.
As a best practice, you should separate your products, categorize and organize them with the help of Auto Targets.
If you don’t do this, it’s the same as having a regular search campaign in which all your keywords are meshed together into one single ad group. This, I think we can all agree, is not the best of ideas.
Auto Targets Help You Optimize Your PLA Campaign
Through Auto Targets, you can play around with your product’s exposure and it will also greatly simplify your work when the time to optimize the campaign arrives.
If you have your products well-organized and separated with Auto Targets, you’ll be able to easily identify the products that have the highest ROI, and which are the ones that are causing your funds to disappear without giving you an even return on investment.
When you identify your best ROI activity, you can adjust bids and budgets accordingly.
Another reason that makes Auto Targets so helpful, is the flexibility you acquire when grouping products together since you can do so based on certain attributes such as brand, condition, label, product type, ID (ID can only be used for the exposure of individual products).
Group Products Together Based on Promotions
Another way of grouping them together could be based on a promotion. If you have a group of products that all have a 15% discount, you can create an Auto Target for them and group them up.
It could also be done based on which are your best-selling products, or which are the products with the highest profit margin for you.
Those are some good core ideas I offer since I’m pretty sure you can think of several different ways of grouping up your products as well; which in the end as we know, those very groups of products that you put together are the Auto Targets.
When Should I Get Started with Auto Targets?
It depends, if you’re an ecommerce-based business and already have a PLA campaign, the right time might be exactly now. If you don’t have one yet, I strongly encourage you to create one and take advantage of the benefits you can obtain from Auto Targets right away.
Personally, I’ve experienced positive results through the use of PLA campaigns in combination with an adequate campaign structure and of course, with the use of Auto Targets. I’ve obtained higher amount of conversions as well as I’ve witnessed a drop in cost-per-conversion and have seen how PLA campaigns have taken away some protagonism from search ads.
How to Set Up Auto Targets
Setting up Auto Targets is quite a simple thing to do (even more of a reason to make sure you are using them). All you have to do is go to your PLA campaign and create a new ad group. Then after you’ve created it, click on the Auto Targets tab.
Afterward, select the ad group where you will be adding the Auto Target and define it based on which attributes you will be putting your products together for (i.e. product type, brand, condition, AdWords label, AdWords grouping or ID). Please remember that this can only be used to expose a single product. You can also combine up to three of these attributes in order to group your products together.
How to Track your PLA Marketing Efforts
The marketing efforts made on your PLA campaign can be tracked. The simplest way to generate a good idea, as stated before, is by efficiently grouping products together through the use of Auto Targets. However, if you want to get more granular, you can also do so as well.
In order to do so, you need to make proper use of the Google Analytics URL Builder:
The fields in red are the required fields. You need to add your website’s URL but it has to be the specific URL of the individual product, not just the URL of your homepage.
Next, fill the rest of the fields with information that will serve as referrals to help you identify and track back each product’s performance.
Once you’ve filled the required fields, click on “Generate URL”. This will automatically generate a URL for you. This URL then has to be included in the data feed in your Merchant account within the [Adwords Redirect] attribute column field (If one does not already exist, you’ll then have to add it to your data feed separately).
Once this has been done, you will be able to track information from the product’s performance in your Analytics account by going to Traffic Sources/Advertising/AdWords/Destination URLs.
You can look for important metrics such as conversions, bounce rates, average visit durations and all sorts of useful information.
A Big Task If You Have A Lot Of Products
If you have a wide list of products in your data feed tracking, then all of them could turn into something a bit tedious for you due to the fact that you would need to generate a URL for each and every single one of them manually.
However, if you are really interested in getting as much information as possible from them (which you should be doing since the data that you get is what will help make or break a campaign), then I suggest you take the time necessary to do it and just go for it!
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate and emphasize the above-mentioned suggestion. If you have an ecommerce-based business and have an AdWords account, don’t wait any longer and start taking advantage of PLA campaigns and all the benefits that can be obtained through such platform. In no time at all, you may notice a difference in your online marketing effort results and start experiencing more sales at a much lower expense.
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