Trying to navigate Google Merchant Center can feel like walking around a labyrinth without a map – overwhelming, confusing, and slightly terrifying. If you think you’re an idiot for feeling this way, don’t stress – you’re not alone.
Many ecommerce business owners trying to run Google shopping ads struggle to navigate this complex tool, which often leads to them just giving up. This is one of the worst things you can do since this tool can open up a whole new world for you and your Google Ads (cue the Aladdin song).
I run my own paid ads agency, which essentially means that we manage the ad accounts for other businesses. At this point, I think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to all things ad-related . . . including Google Merchant Center. That’s why I’ve decided to compile all my knowledge into this blog post, as well as a video, which you can access here. This shares everything I know about Google Ads, and, more specifically, Google Merchant Center.
Anyway, that’s enough blabbering from my end, so let’s dive right in.
What is Google Merchant Centre?
Before I teach you how to sprint, you first need to learn how to crawl. I can’t walk you through the intricacies of having a Google Merchant Center account if you don’t even know what it is. Hopefully, you already know how Google Ads work, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get the hand of Google Merchant Center. Basically, it’s a space where ecommerce brands can load their product data, allowing shoppers who view their ads to see various details about a product.
This product data includes things like prices, images, and other helpful details. If you regularly do Google shopping searches, you will know what a Google commerce search looks like.
Challenge #1: the settings
One thing that all ad platforms seem to have in common is that they tend to hide a lot of valuable data. I don’t know why they love to make our lives miserable, but it’s the way it is. Google Merchant Center is, unfortunately, no different. There are loads of often-overlooked settings, simply because they are obscure and not so easily accessed.
You might think that because these settings aren’t super obvious, they’re not important, but that would be incorrect. Neglecting these settings can have disastrous consequences for your paid ads campaigns. Instead, you need to work on mastering these settings so that you can harness the full potential that Google’s advertising ecosystem has to offer you.
Set your account up correctly
Picture this: you’re staring at your screen, confronted by the wide variety of options that Google presents. Where do you begin? Well, by setting up your account. And more than that, by doing this correctly.
You can set your account up manually or do it via Shopify, but you need to have a solid foundation with all the necessary information to make things a breeze for your future self. This might also be a good time to mention that the video I linked earlier has a live walk-through of all of this, so if you feel like you have no idea what’s happening in this blog post, seeing it in real time might help!
Start to explore
From there, it’s time to explore all the sections and features available to you. Something that many people overlook is the performance of free listings. This may seem like an insignificant step, but taking the time to optimise this can significantly impact your visibility in Google searches.
And let’s be honest: the Google shopping spot of search results is the most coveted, so you need to do everything you can to show up there.
Product management
Now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty details of project management. There’s a lot to unpack here. From diagnosing issues with individual products to optimising product feeds and a whole host of other things, I’m here to help by breaking it down.
Supplemental Google Merchant Center feeds: these are where the magic happens! You can provide extra product data and additional attributes to your primary feed, and thus fine-tune your product listings to increase your chances of appearing in relevant searches. Think of this as a bit of a boost to give you that extra performance you need to stand out from the crowd.
But wait, there's more!
Something that you may not be aware of is the fact that you can create multiple versions of your products within your Google Merchant Center account. With each version, you can highlight a different aspect of your product, and this way, reach a wider audience (and drive more sales, which is the goal!).
If you spend some time in your Google Ads account and you know your Google Analytics inside and out, you can essentially maximise your opportunities and really milk your best-sellers to get as much money from them as possible.
In conclusion
In conclusion, Google Merchant Center is a powerful tool that can propel your business to new heights, and if you’re an ecommerce store running Google Ads and you don’t have a Google Merchant Center account, you’re missing out!
This was a very quick, high-level crash course, so don’t worry if you still don’t completely have the hang of it! You can play around on the platform and familiarise yourself with all it has to offer, and there are tons of other resources that can help you gain more in-depth knowledge about any specific problem areas you’re struggling with.
And of course, if you still can’t get it right (or you’d simply rather spend your day on other things and have the pros do the heavy lifting), get in touch with my paid ads platform via the form below to learn how we can help you.