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What is Google Merchant Center

Google Shopping Merchant Center

Google Shopping Merchant Center is a free platform by Google which allows user to upload their product catalog or listings to Google. These uploaded product listings can then be used in Google Shopping Ads to improve sales. Let us get started with setting up of Merchant Center.

How to set up Google Shopping Merchant Center?

Since Google Merchant Center is a platform of Google so one needs to have a Google id to log into it. Type in “Google Merchant Center” in your explorer address bar and reach at the login screen.

Sign in to Merchant Center and enter the following information:

    1. Business Information:

      1. Enter the country of your business operations.
      2. Type in the Business name.
      3. Mention your country’s Time Zone.
    2. Accept the terms of use and click on Continue. 
    3. Choose the purpose of your adding products to the Merchant Center and click on continue.
    4. Click on Create your account to get started.

You will taken to the Merchant Center Overview screen.

    1. Click on Tools and then Business information.
    2. Update your business information in detail in “About your business” section
    3. Enter the Website URL for your online store. Make sure you own the URL as you need to verify and claim it for product additions.
    4. Proceed further to claim your URL which can be done in multiple ways.
    5. Once done, click Verify URL to submit your URL to Google Search Console for verification and claim it.

Once website URL is verified and claimed, it can be used as the landing page for your Google Shopping ads. 

Go to Tools and then “linked accounts” to connect Google Ads account with the Merchant Center. It will enable pulling products in Google shopping type ads.

Move to your Google ads account to approve for connecting the Merchant Center to it.

How to add products in Google Merchant Center?

Go to Products option displaying on left side of the Merchant Center overview screen.

Products can be added manually on one-on-one basis or through product feed file / Google Shopping feed / Merchant Center feed. Adding products manually can be quite tiresome and there are multiple ways to get the products added quickly –

    1. Using product feed file which can be submitted using Google sheets or XML files.
    2. If product details are easily available in some tabular form, requisite details can be uploaded in a Google sheet. These details are then fetched in by the Merchant Center and thus products become available.
    3. There are multiple plug-ins available which helps exporting product details from the website or Woo-commerce in XML form. This XML file can then be used to upload products in the Merchant Center. “Product Feed Pro” is a popular plug-in available for WordPress sites which facilitates export of product details.

Thus we can run Google shopping ads for our products listed in Google Merchant account. It is a very useful tool for the businesses which have e-commerce stores and want to take advantage of Google Shopping ads to promote their products.

Tune in to my facebook, twitter and instagram account to know more about the digital marketing and how it can help scale your business to new heights.

You can read more about setting up of Google Shopping Merchant Center here or can reach out to me for any help. Best of luck and happy selling

Retargeting remarketing by ads

Retargeting by Ads

Do you wonder what caused similar products or services to show time and again even when you had just once visited the page? Yes, you guessed it right. This is retargeting by ads where a tag or pixel gets attached to your browser cookies. It causes similar product show again to the same visitors. 

The result is a sequence of online ads diligently following the potential customer, reminding them of the product or service and telling them to close the deal. Visitors can either be targeted by the Google ads or any of the social media ads like Facebook ads. 

What actually remarketing or retargeting means?

Marketing is the process of creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging your products or service offerings that has value for your customers and users. Similarly, retargeting by ads is the process of remarketing of your product or service to the target audience which has shown some intent in your offering. Customer intent may or may not have resulted in  sales or conversion.

Thus retargeting by ads would serve as a reminding process for –

  • A Customer who has not taken the desired action or converted as yet.
  • A Customer who had once got converted and more likely to visit and remain loyal to the seller / service provider.

Technicality behind Retargeting or Remarketing

Do you remember everytime you visit a new site, a prompt comes up saying the site uses cookies and you allow it to get to the site quickly. In fact, your intent or interest gets captured by the site. Basically, a tag or pixel is attached to the owner site so that whenever a visitor accepts the terms, his/her details are  captured and used for the remarketing purposes. Once a site has the details of the users / visitors to the site, this same audience details is used to retarget the audience through an ad. Its all about showing the products/ services to the same users who had once visited your site. 

Pros & Cons of retargeting by ads

Pros:
  • Greatly improves brand recognition as target audience is the one which is already aware about your brand and service. They have already visited your page in search of their demands and often also termed as interested audience.
  • Conversion gets better as target audience already knows you better than the first time  visitor to your site.
  • Better ROI as the number of quality clicks increase resulting in lower spend to sales ratio (ACoS) or higher ROAS.
  • Gaining loyal customers of your brand. It causes repeat customers availing your service time and again. It immensely improves organic traffic in a longer run.
Cons:
  • It may cause frustration to the audience as time and again same product is shown which sometimes get annoying.
  • What if the visitor has already availed your service and still being targeted with the same product? It becomes just waste of an ad.
  • Visitor may feel like being spied or whether any of his/her critical detail has been  leaked in the public domain.

So get started with the Google ads or any other Social Media Ads and make it more effective by the retargeting technique. It greatly enhances online business growth with improved profitability. Maintain a fine balance considering the pros and cons of retargeting by ads.

You can also scroll through my facebook, twitter and instagram channels for more insights on digital marketing.