The raised online engagement has paved the way to increased competition in the offline and online marketplace, as it has become one of the most favorable platforms for users. This surge in the internet market has opened the door to enormous business opportunities. One such opportunity is listing and storing products on the online space given by the Google Merchant Center. Online shopping has started to gain highly increased popularity as it has made it very easy and effective to perform most of the market activities while sitting in our comfort zones. The need to be physically present and incur additional hidden charges, i.e., transportation charges, loss of valuable time, etc., have been evidently eliminated by online storekeeping and marketing. Online shopping has increased the geographical boundaries of the stores and enhanced the possibilities of attracting more target audiences to achieve a high rate of conversions or their brand’s call-to-action.
What is a Google Merchant Center?
To run your business in the offline market, you are required to have a space to maintain a shop and manage your products to ensure that the buyers can look at the products and decide whether to buy them or not. In the same way, Google Merchant Center provides space for your business to maintain its products online, but it is not an online store. In simple words, the Google Merchant Center is your product data storage space.
To store your product information online, you need to create a Google Merchant Center account, which is easy. It is an online dashboard that lets you manage your business online, list your products, provide support to your online Google advertising, show your product in the relevant searches, and also provides the choice to select Google’s partner sites for the advertising of your products. To use an additional feature, you need to link your Google Merchant Center account with the Google Ads account for advertising on Google with the most suitable advertising campaigns.
Is Google Merchant Center free?
Creating an account and listing your products with detailed information is absolutely free on the Google Merchant Center. The cost which you have to pay is for your Google advertising campaigns that are only possible to run when you have a Google Merchant Center account. Running Google shopping ads for your product requires a destination for the users or the target audience to land, where they can gather or acquire extra information about the product that is related to their search query and that is why you need a website. If a user tries to find a product online, it displays that the users have an intent actually to buy the product, so using Google Merchant Center and Google Ads collectively are essential and effective for your business. Therefore, you only pay for the ad clicks and the engagement on the ad.
What do you actually pay for?
Whenever you enter into a market with your product or services, you want to make sure that the target audience has an awareness of your product and they perform the required step of the brand’s call-to-action, which may be to build brand image, increase traffic, generate leads or buy the product. To achieve your brand’s call-to-action, promoting and advertising the product is excessively necessary. This is where Google advertising is essential for your products, so linking the Google Merchant Center and Google Ads becomes significant and that is where paying money is required to advertise on Google.
• Paying for the clicks - The Google Ads are generated by assessing the information given in the product details; if clicked by the visitor when they searched for the product, then you have to pay a fixed amount to Google, which is called pay-per-click. Every time a user clicks on your ad, an amount is deducted from your account. Pay-per-click is one of the most prominent digital marketing methods; it is beneficial when its placement on the search engine is done right because it gives quick results to the businesses, unlike SEO marketing which takes time to show its effectiveness.
• Paying for the engagement - This type of pricing model is less risky as your company has only to pay a fixed amount when the user carries out any kind of engagement after clicking on your Google shopping ads. Engagement can be defined in several ways, which include a like or a comment on the company page, signing up, sharing the content, etc.
How to create a Google Merchant Center account?
Creating a Google Merchant Center account is as simple as creating a Gmail account. You just have to search for the Google Merchant Center in the search bar and click on the merchant page.
• Then click “get started” on the next page.
• On the next dashboard fill in your business name, business country, and the time zone.
• Then select between on my website or at my local store where you want your customers to check out.
• Now, at last, click on creating an account.
After the primary step, you have to provide additional information about your business, i.e., your ID verification, your payment account details, return & purchase policy, listing the product sheet, linking your website, etc.
When listing your product in the Google product sheet, Google will provide you with pre-set attributes containing sections that include - product ID, title, description, price, etc. You can also add extra attributes to the sheet, giving more relevant information to help the target audience better understand the products.
How does Google Merchant Center help?
There are several ways in which Google Merchant Center helps your online shopping business, and that is the reason it is in rising demand. Also, Google is one of the most trusted companies in the world, so it also assures the users that they will be provided with the most filtered and beneficial results for their queries and give them a satisfactory return on investment.
• Provides space for online listing of the products - One space for listing all your products and defining all the essential attributes of the products, which help in creating ads by deciphering the product information and also displaying the ads on the search engine related to relevant user search intent and terms.
• Wide reach - As the maximum number of customers switching to online shopping because of the greater convenience it provides, it also gives larger scope to the products to reach the most target audience if the product information is adequate and relevant and adheres to Google guidelines.
• Helps in understanding the target audience - In the Google Merchant Center, you are provided with insight into which ads are getting the maximum clicks; this helps you understand the needs and wants of the target audience. When you recognize the audience’s intent, then improve the demanded product and make it suitable for the users in the best possible way. This helps your business as well as the consumers to grow, maintain a healthy relationship with your brand, and strengthen trust.
Google Merchant Center helps in effective Google advertising, but your business also needs to exert several efforts to carry out this process in a highly optimized manner. Taking necessary measures is very crucial for the best performance of your advertising campaign.
• Provide accurate product information and assure availability - The product information in the Google product feed should be accurate. The details in the attributes must provide a relevant description of the product that matches the product landing page and secure the product's availability if it is available in the product list.
• Give offers and also highlight them - Promoting the products through special offers makes them more appealing to the audience as one of the main purposes of online shopping is to get the best deals; that is why it has become more popular than traditional shopping because the users get a number of options scrolling through their laptop or mobile screens instead of going outside and finding the best deals. Therefore, highlighting offers in the product attributes details is essential to generate Google Ads that mention it. Google acknowledges 3 types of offers, i.e., discounts on the product, free shipping, and free gifts.
• Analyzing the advertising campaign to focus on the most preferred products - Availability of campaign data and knowledge about which product ads get the most clicks gives an idea about what is the most preferred choice of target audience amongst the overall Google product feed so committing time to focus on these products becomes justified.
• Quality visuals in the product attribute - When you provide a product description in the Google product feed, try to insert optimized images as per the product Google guideline. Using light colors that are easily visible, making sure the lighting is enough enabling a clear view, and not using pixelated images.
• Safely handle user data - The data collected in your Google advertising campaign should be handled with care. The customers are showing faith in you by providing their data, so it is the company's duty to only collect necessary relevant, and required data and limit the data's access to a few hands.
There are certain guidelines of Google Merchant Center that are also essential to understand and follow to achieve good results from advertising on Google. Proper implementation of Google advertising is only possible when these Google guidelines are taken into consideration.
• The Google guideline on products - The most essential feature of a company is the products that they are trying to sell through advertising on Google; therefore, it needs more emphasis to be in sync with the Google guideline. There are certain requirements that the products should be in accordance with.
The product's price should be consistent in the whole country selected by the seller, shouldn't be a dangerous product or a product that leads to wrong deeds, and the price should be adjusted, including the taxes. It should also provide appropriate content with optimized visuals. This is done to ensure that the customer derives maximum satisfaction and their trust in Google grows.
• Should not exercise prohibited practices - Mishandling of customer data is one of the major prohibited practices as per the Google guideline. Companies need to avoid any kind of wrong use of customer data.
• Not generating restricted content - Certain content is not permissible - adult content should only be displayed to a qualified audience, promotion of alcoholic beverages should comply with the rules and regulations of that geographical area, and it should not be portrayed positively. There should not be any promotion of unapproved healthcare products or political and gambling content.
• Guidelines on editorial and professional requirements - Using optimized images, not throwing pop-ups on users' faces which can hide important data on the page, slow website speed, not blocking the back button to extract more website time from the target audience, and you can also not list products that Google has banned. Complying with the professional requirements is entirely following all the guidelines mentioned by Google.
Conclusion
Using Google Merchant Center to sell your products is totally worth it. Your Google product feed provides all the attributes that well define your products. Adding extra attributes to give more details to your product, like product specialty benefits of your product, etc., helps in making optimized Google shopping ads. This optimization is essential in serving satisfaction to the target audience and increasing conversions in online shopping of your products. Understanding of Google Merchant Center is a necessary skill to have if you want to flourish your e-commerce business, and the main benefits of the merchant center are obtained through linking it with Google Ads. When you have given all the required information about your products in the product sheet, it becomes simple for Google to generate ads by decoding the product data and showing it to the most relevant searches, boosting your presence on the search engine and expanding your business boundaries. This is why your business should use the merchant center account collectively with the Google Ads account to get maximum advantage. Google Ads is a platform where you can advertise your e-commerce business by running e-commerce PPC ads to promote your products and services to the audience. Since PPC ads are highly targeted, you can target the audience based on location, age, income, preferences, etc. If you are looking forward to running PPC ads but don’t know where to start, you can hire a digital marketing agency. They will conduct market research, create ads, analyze PPC campaign performance, and provide you with detailed PPC reports. They provide other services such as lead generation, remarketing ads services, PPC audit, online reputation management, and competition analysis services.
References:
• PPC for beginners: A complete guide to Google shopping ads
• Analytics for beginners: Why you should link Google Merchant Center to Google Analytics 4