Google Shopping for Shopify: How Small Retailers Can Boost Online Reach and Drive Sales

There’s a reason so many retailers are choosing to allocate big portions of their marketing budgets to Google Shopping campaigns. With broad reach and impressive ROIs, Google Shopping campaigns can help small retailers secure a competitive edge in even the most saturated industries. 

And small businesses using Shopify for their online stores can easily integrate their product lists into Google Shopping campaigns. You don’t need to spend hours researching keywords or split testing ad copy. Shopify Google Shopping campaigns run themselves, leaving you more time to run your business. 

Benefits of Google Shopping for Small Business and e-Commerce 

1. High Conversion Rates

Google Shopping ads boast among the highest conversion rates of any digital marketing platform. Compared to text-only pay per click ads, shopping ads have a 30% higher conversion rate.  

Because Google Shopping Ads are being matched with users who have a high commercial intent, meaning Google is only showing your ads to people who are already specifically looking for your product, you’ll see far higher conversions at much lower costs. 

And Google’s algorithm is getting impressively good at understanding user intent and matching people and products correctly. If you do the work of optimizing your Google Shopping feed, Google can get your products in front of customers when they’re actively searching for them. 

Another contributing factor to the high rate of conversion on shopping ads is the information-rich snippet. Users get product images, price and sizing information, and even ratings right from the ad, so they’re less likely to click on the ad and bounce back to the SERP. All the information they need is right there on the Google.  

2. Increased Exposure

Google Shopping Ads provide retailers with a much broader reach than text-only ads. Not only do your ads appear at the top of the Google SERPs above all other organic and paid results, they also appear across the Google networks, which Includes YouTube. Google uses your product data to decide when and where to show your ads to best match them with a user’s search and intent. 

3. Easier to Manage  

Google Shopping ads are not only more effective than text PPC ads for retailers selling online, but they’re also less work intensive. 

Unlike traditional text-only search ads, shopping ads do not use a keyword bidding strategy. Instead, Google uses the product information you provide to match your ads with people searching for them. 

Pro tip: Keyword research can still be instrumental to success. By learning what your audience is searching for, you can incorporate those keywords into your product titles and descriptions to optimize conversion. 

Automate your Strategy with Shopify Google Smart Shopping Campaigns 

With nearly a million online retailers using Shopify for their website, it’s become the go-to eCommerce platform. And with Shopify’s ability to easily integrate your product data with Google Shopping, it’s not hard to see why.  

For starters, keeping your product feed updated and accurate is critical to a successful Google Shopping campaign. Shopify will automatically sync your inventory with your Google Merchant Center, so you don’t have to worry about how to get your Shopify products on Google Shopping. Shopify can also sync your inventory with other shopping channels, like Amazon and Facebook.

The Smart Shopping Campaign is where smaller retailers can really make the platform work for them. This feature allows you to get the most out of your budget, no matter how small, and save time manually optimizing your campaign. 

With Google Smart Shopping, you set a daily budget and let Google do the rest. Using machine learning, Google will optimize your campaign for you, pairing different combinations of text and images for each product to serve the most relevant ad to prospects searching for your products. 

Google Smart Shopping can be very successful for small retailers who don’t have the time to strategically manage their campaigns. But there are best practices that can ensure that Smart Shopping is used effectively, like optimizing your ad creative components, and choosing the right bidding strategy for your goals.