How to start a Google Shopping campaign?

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Step 1: Create a Product Feed
A product feed is a file that you must provide to Google Merchant, containing all the information for each product you intend to sell. This is perhaps the most difficult part of setting up Google Shopping because the product feed must be accurate and meet all of Google's specifications. If any data is missing or their guidelines are not 100% followed, the products will not be approved and you will not be able to continue.

A good way to visualize a product feed is as a big spreadsheet where the rows are all your products and the columns are all those fields that Google requires.

Product Feed in Google Spreadsheet
Product Feed in Google Spreadsheet
Most of them are pretty straightforward: product title, price, description, sku, link, brand, image link, etc. However, there are also a couple of fields that you might not have by default, such as: Google product category, gtin, mpn, etc. If you want to know the full list of all the required and optional fields your product feed should have, you can check it out in this Google Merchant Center product data specification document .

The ease with which you can create this file will depend on the amount and quality of your product data and the e-commerce platform you use. For example, Shopify, Woocommerce, or Magento all have apps or plugins available for creating feeds.

Setting up Google Shopping on Shopify
There are many options to choose from in the Shopify app store when searching for “Google Shopping Feed” options in their search engine.

Google Shopping apps search result in Shopify app store
Of all the options, we recommend using the one that combines good ratings and popularity, which is Shopify's own app for Google Shopping .

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Shopify App for Google Shopping
Shopify App for Google Shopping
The best thing about this app is that right after installing it, it will take you to a wizard that will help you easily configure everything.

Shopify App Features for Product Feed
Shopify App Features for Product Feed
This wizard will help you identify errors and why some products are disapproved, as well as give you suggestions on how to fix them. If you use Shopify, we recommend using it because of how user-friendly it is, especially if you are new to Google Shopping and Google Merchant Center.

Setting up Google Shopping in Woocommerce
If you are using Woocommerce, there are some plugins that we recommend you use to create the product feed, such as:

Woocommerce Product Feed PRO
Woocommerce Google Feed Manager
These plugins , like others for WooCommerce, also offer the possibility of duplicating the product feed for other channels such as Facebook Dynamic Ads, which would still be useful if you plan to generate traffic through other means.

Screenshot of Woocommerce Google Feed Manager
Screenshot of Woocommerce Google Feed Manager
Google Shopping Setup in Magento
Just like the other platforms, if you are using Magento, there are many options to choose from to create your product feed, such as:

Google Shopping Feed – M1
Google Shopping – M2
Simple Google Shopping
There are also other tools for Magento from better-known startups, such as Channable or DataFeedWatch, which have developed plugins for Magento.

Setting up Google Shopping for other types of online stores
If for some reason you're using a platform other than the ones we've mentioned above, you'll probably have a bit more work to do, as you'll need an XML or CSV file with all your products to upload directly to Google Merchant Center. We always recommend using an XML file, as this way any changes to product data will be automatically updated.

We only suggest having CSV files or a Google Spreadsheet as a last resort in case you do not have the resources to generate an XML file, since any changes you make, such as the price, would require manually updating the file and then uploading it to Google Merchant Center.

However, if you want to avoid this work, you can use DataFeedWatch or Channable , which through their tutorials or customer service, can advise you in more detail on how to speed up this step.

Step 2: Create a Google Merchant Center account
After you've created your product feed , you'll need to create and set up your Google Merchant Center account. Setting up this account is usually pretty straightforward. First, you'll need to certify that you own or are authorized to own the online store you want to promote through your Google Analytics ID, Google Tag Manager, or by adding a tag to your website's HTML code.

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Shipping Settings
Since Google Shopping displays the shipping cost of each product in the search results, it is very important that you include this information correctly, since this data is a very influential factor in the purchase decision. You can find this information in the Google Merchant Center tools section under the name “shipping and returns”.

Shipping Settings in Google Merchant Center
Shipping Settings in Google Merchant Center
When you get to this section you will need to create a shipping service and the area it covers, and then define the rates.

Setting up shipping service in Merchant Center
Setting up shipping service in Merchant Center
Uploading Products to Google Merchant Center
Once you've uploaded your product feed , Google Merchant Center will journalist email databaseprocess all your data and let you know if there are any errors and how to fix them.

Product Diagnostics in Google Merchant Center
Product Diagnostics in Google Merchant Center
This is where the problems start, as sometimes not 100% of the products are approved. These problems occur because some products do not have the complete information that Google requires to accept them. However, these types of errors due to lack of information are easy to correct, so it is advisable to correct them as soon as possible, otherwise the account may be suspended.

There are other errors that are more complicated by Google's marketing policies, such as those related to healthcare or political issues. The complete list can be found in the shopping ads policies .

Finally, if you want to get more out of your Google Merchant Center account, I recommend following this post where I talk in more detail about how to use Google Merchant Center .

Step 3: Create a Google Shopping account
As soon as you have your Google Merchant Center account approved, you can create your campaigns on Google Shopping. If you don't have a Google Ads account , it's time to sign up and create one. All you need is a Gmail account.

Once you've created your account, fill out your business details and payment details. To get to this step, you may be asked to set up a campaign beforehand, so we recommend filling out all the fields that are requested randomly, since after activating your payment details, you can go back and pause or remove the fictitious campaign you created. Just don't forget to pause or remove these campaigns, otherwise some meaningless ad could be printed and generate some cost if a user manages to click on it.

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Now comes the time to link Google Merchant Center with Google Ads, to do this you will have to enter Merchant Center and go to the tools section and select “ linked accounts ”

Linking accounts between Google Ads and Merchant Center
Linking accounts between Google Ads and Merchant Center
All you'll need is your 10-digit account number, which can be found at the top of your Google Ads platform.

How to identify the 10-digit ID
How to identify the 10-digit ID
Finally, you are ready to create your first campaign in Google Ads. Simply click on “Create New Campaign”

Button to create a new campaign
Button to create a new campaign
Select the sales objective, since that is the purpose of Google Shopping.


Campaign objectives in Google Ads
And finally, you will need to select the Google Shopping option to generate traffic to your product feed.

Type of campaign in Google Ads
Type of campaign in Google Ads
Once you've filled out your Merchant Center account details and the country where you're going to promote your products, the platform will take you through a series of steps to set up your first campaign. If you're new, such as an SME or an entrepreneur just starting out with digital advertising, I suggest starting with a low manual CPC of €0.5 and a budget of €10-€15 per day for a period of no more than 3 days, and then gradually adjusting the CPC bid and budget according to your business plan and the results you get over that number of days.


Step 4: Optimizing Google Shopping Management
Now, all the products in your feed have the same CPC, so this is not the most advisable option, since there will be products that may be more profitable or in demand and some that are the opposite. For this reason, Google gives you the option to segment your products by one of the labels you have in your feed, for which we recommend dividing it either by brand or category. As you can see in this example,

Product splitting in Google Shopping
Product splitting in Google Shopping
This is the easiest way to start segmenting your product feed, however, if you want to optimize through your most profitable products, I invite you to read the following post where you will find a guide on how to maximize ROAS in Google Shopping.

If you are just starting out with Google Shopping, I suggest you keep your products divided by brand or category with a manual CPC bidding strategy for now and check how your traffic and conversions are performing for a period of approximately five days. This way, you can get insights such as which product is spending the most money or if there is a group of products that is generating more sales than expected, etc. This way, you can evaluate whether it is a good idea to increase or decrease your CPC bid or even decide whether or not it is a good idea to promote a type of product for the time being.

This type of information, understanding how your products or product groups work, will help you to later make more precise segmentations with custom labels. For this step, I suggest you visit this post where we explain how to increase ROAS in your Google Shopping campaigns . Remember that there is usually no perfect formula for segmenting a campaign, but if you manage to understand how the user reacts to your ads and products, then you will be able to segment your campaigns much better and make them more profitable.

Tips
The most complicated part will be creating your product feed and uploading it to Google Merchant Center, so we suggest you be patient if you encounter errors along the way that prevent you from moving forward. The good thing is that both Google and the applications that help you create product feeds are usually very informative when it comes to explaining how to solve the errors or difficulties you encounter along the way.

Finally, once you have created your Shopping campaign in Google Ads, if you do not have experience in this type of campaign or do not have a history of previous data, we suggest you go little by little with the investment and analyze the traffic and sales data you obtain to then decide how to further segment your products to obtain greater profitability.

In addition, at SEOCOM we are experts in both the creation and optimization of Shopping campaigns, and all the processes we have described in this post, so if you need help in any of the steps, do not hesitate to contact us.