If you’ve been considering switching from traditional advertising to smarter and more effective ways to advertise your kitchen accessories online business, then digital advertising is exactly what you’re looking for. By creating Google Shopping Ads for kitchen accessories, you will be utilizing the best PPC platform for your e-commerce store, since Google Shopping Ads can effectively reach a greater audience, increase your advertising ROI, drive qualified traffic to your business, and overall protect your products.
1. Why Google Shopping Ads?
Google shopping ads are one of the best ways to advertise your online business. This is because Google shopping ads can effectively increase your visibility, drive more traffic toward your kitchen accessories online business, and gain new customers.
Google shopping ad campaigns can also drive more sales to your ecommerce business, because they are ideal for product-related keywords, allowing your products to appear at the top of Google’s search results, such as Google Shopping, Gmail, the Display network, and YouTube.
In addition, Google shopping ads for online kitchen accessories can also help promote your local and online inventory, drive traffic to your online store, and bring you high-quality leads. For these to be effective, you will need to include photos of your products, a title, price, your store name, and more.
1.1 Google Shopping Ads vs. Google Search Ads
Google Search Ads and Shopping Ads can both help you achieve your advertising goals, but it’s important to note the difference between the two campaign types.
Google search ads allow you to bid on specific keywords, and promote products and services, and these types of ads will include text displayed as links. Google shopping ads on the other hand do not allow you to bid on keywords, you are only allowed to promote products (not services) and your ads need to be visually appealing, which is achieved by including a product photo.
1.2 Google Shopping Ads vs. Performance Max
A campaign type that has very similar features to Google shopping ads is Performance Max. The main difference is that performance max campaigns will allow your Google ads to run across all of Google’s advertising platforms, such as Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, Maps, and YouTube, which is not a feature of Google shopping ads.
Performance max can provide you with richer insights into your campaign. You won’t have to manage multiple campaigns, you will have a broader reach and it will require less work from you while giving you the best results possible. Keep in mind that you will have limited control over your campaign in comparison to using Google shopping ads.
1.3 Google Shopping Ads vs SEO
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Google shopping ads will allow your kitchen accessory products to appear at the top of SERP (search engine results pages). This means you won’t have to work so hard to outrank your competitors who show up at the top of organic search results.
Google shopping ads will help you get better conversion rates and CTR (click-through rate) compared to SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is another effective strategy that can provide you with long-term results, but it’s important that implementing this strategy can take months before you see the results.
Want to start Google Shopping Ads and increase your ecommerce revenue?
Examples of Google Shopping Ads for Kitchen Accessories:
Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories will showcase the product as “sponsored“, with a product photo, along with its price, store name, and more.
For organic results or SEO for kitchen accessories search queries, only pages that have been effectively optimized will show up on the very first page of search engines, just like in the example below. As mentioned earlier, SEO is a process that requires continuous optimization but can produce long-term results for your business.
The most common and popular campaign type for Google ads are search ads. These ads will typically only display text with important keywords, and will usually be labeled “Sponsored” just like in the image below.
2. Create A Google Merchant Center Account
One of the first steps you need to do to create your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories is to create a Google Merchant Center Account.
Go to Google Retail and “Sign up for free”.
Answer the following questions. Only select “Yes” to the brick-and-mortar store question if you have a physical storefront.
Click “Continue to Merchant Center”. Remember, you may only advertise or promote products with Google Shopping ads, not services.
Next, enter your kitchen accessories business information, then click “Continue to Merchant Center“.
2.1 Switch to Classic Google Merchant Center
Then you will want to switch from Google Merchant Center Next to the classic version. This is simply because Google Merchant Center Next is the newest version, it currently has limitations, and it may not be available to all advertisers.
Consider Google Merchant Center Next only if your e-commerce business only has very few products that you want or need to advertise.
To switch to the classic version of Google Merchant Center, click the “Help” icon.
Then, select “Use classic Merchant Center”
A window will pop up. Tick the checkbox then click “Switch now“.
Your GMC or Google Merchant Center dashboard should now look like the example below.
Ensure you verify and claim your kitchen accessories website on GMC. This will guarantee your exclusive rights to use your website for product data on your Google merchant center account.
Don’t have the time to set up your campaign?
2.2 Link Google Merchant Center to Google Ads Account
After setting up your Google merchant center account, you can now link it to your Google ads account.
If you don’t already have an existing Google Ads account, you can sign up on Ads Google.
To link your GMC account, click the “Settings” icon, then select “Linked accounts“.
Click the blue button “Link to Google Ads“.
Then choose “Link to your Google Ads account” as the linking method, and click “Link & continue”.
A pop-up window will show up. Click “link account“.
Your GMC account should now be linked to your Google Ads account, and it the link status should be “Active”.
2.3 Add products to GMC
Now you can add products to your GMC account, by clicking the left side of the menu. Then go to “All products” and click the blue button labeled “Add products”
Click the drop-down button and select “Upload a product file“. Ensure you have downloaded or exported your ecommerce shop’s product list as a file, so you won’t have to add products individually.
Next, click “Browse”
Once your product file has been downloaded to your Google merchant center account, click “Add products from file“. Then wait for Google to approve your product list and you are done adding and linking your GMC account!
Need assistance setting up your Google Merchant Center Account?
3. Set up a Google Shopping Ads Campaign
The next step is creating the Google shopping ads. Log in to your Ads Google account, and click the blue button “+New campaign“.
For your campaign settings, select “Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance” as your campaign objective.
Then choose “shopping” as the campaign type.
Next, to add products to your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories, select your merchant center account.
For your subtype, select “Standard Shopping Campaign“, then click “Continue“.
Now that you’ve selected your campaign settings, enter your campaign name. Your campaign name can be the name of your ecommerce store, but we recommend adding “shopping campaign” at the end to help you manage any future and present campaigns.
Example: “Kitchen Accessories – Shopping Campaign”
If you only want to select a part of your product feed (for instance, a category or custom label) you will need to edit your inventory settings.
Select “Filter: Advertise only products that match all of your requirements”, then click “Product Type” and enter value.
You can opt to add this setting later on, but applying this setting now can help you avoid mistakes.
Bidding and Budget
Next is your bidding and budget settings. For your bidding strategy, you want to select “Manual CPC” and ensure you check the box for “help increase conversions with enhanced CPC”. Then select “Optimize for conversions“.
You can start with $10 for your average daily budget, especially if this is the first time you’re creating Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories campaign.
When your campaign is finally up and has been running for a few days (or even weeks), you can increase or decrease your daily budget depending on the performance of your campaign, your campaign goals, and your overall ad spend.
Select “low” as your campaign priority if you will be running a single standard shopping campaign.
If you decide to conduct multiple campaigns that will target the same products, make sure to select the correct campaign priority. The higher the campaign priority on Google, the less important the other campaigns will become, especially if they have a lower bid.
Targeting Settings
For your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories, you will want to select the checkbox to ensure your campaign will be seen across Google’s search partners.
Next, select the country you want to advertise your e-commerce products in, for example, “United States”.
If you wish to create a campaign and advertise your online store in a different country, select “Enter another location”.
For location targeting, select “Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations”.
Not sure how to optimize your targeting settings for better results?
Ad Group Creation
Next, you will need to enter your ad group name. You can create multiple ad groups for your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories campaign, wherein each ad group will focus on a product type or category, such as “Silicone Utensil Sets” or “Stainless Steel Collection”.
Then, enter your cost-per-click or CPC bid amount. If this is your first time creating a Google shopping ads campaign, you can start with “$1” for now.
After entering your ad group name and your CPC bid, click “Create Campaign”.
You have now successfully created your first shopping ad campaign with a single ad group for your kitchen accessories ecommerce shop.
3.1 Subdivide product groups
Now that you’ve created your first campaign, you can subdivide your products through product groups. When you create multiple ad groups for your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories, these ad groups will contain your inventory. This is where you will be able to place bids using product groups instead of keywords.
By creating a product group, which is a subset of your inventory, you can use the same bid for all products in that specific subdivision product group.
To start subdividing products for your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories, click “Campaigns” on the left side of the menu, then select “Ad groups“.
Then, click the “Product groups” tab.
Hover over “All products” under the product group table, then click the plus sign to “add a subdivision” just like in the example below.
Click the drop-down menu, then select “Product type”. You can also choose to subdivide products based on item ID, custom label, and more.
Once you are done selecting your subdivided products, click “Save without editing bids“.
You should now see all your added subdivided product groups in the selected ad group.
Example:
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- Ad Group: “Silicone Utensil Sets”
- Subdivided Ad groups: “Silicone utensils set of 2”, “Silicone utensils set of 4”, “Silicone utensils set of 5”, “Silicone utensils set of 7”, “Silicone ice molds”.
Want to strategically subdivide your product groups?
3.2 Creating More Ad Groups
- Ad Group Names: “Stainless Steel Kitchen Accessories”, “Wooden Utensils”, “BBQ Accessories”, “Pizza Tools”, “Measuring Cups and Spoons”.
Then, click “Save“.
Your ad groups should now be added to your Google Shopping Ads for Kitchen Accessories campaign.
4. Ad Extensions for Google Shopping Ads for Kitchen Accessories
To optimize your Google Shopping ads for Kitchen Accessories, consider adding ad extensions or assets to your ads. These will allow you to drive more traffic and conversions to your ecommerce store, maximizing the performance of your campaign. Ad assets or ad extensions will also enrich your product offerings, which will result in higher ROI and sales.
One of the many ad extensions you can consider adding is Google Merchant Promotions.
- Merchant Promotions usually appear as a “special offer” link below the product description, and the user will see the promotion details when they hover over or click the link. Merchant Promotions are great at increasing click-through rates, which gives your ad a competitive advantage over your local competitors.
- Product ratings and reviews are another shopping ad extension you can include in your ads. Displaying product ratings and reviews from trusted sources will indicate to potential buyers that they can trust the credibility of your ecommerce store, as well as the quality of your products. As a result, it will further encourage potential buyers to make a purchase.
- Annotations and labels are great to include as an ad extension if you want to provide or highlight additional information in your ads. These could include sale price annotations, price drop annotations, and promotion annotations. Consider adding these types of ad extensions to make your products and ad offers more appealing. It can improve your CTR, enhance consumer trust, and increase visibility for impressions and clicks. Sale price annotations specifically will provide a visual impact, transparency, and increased conversion rates.
- Shipping labels can help you build trust and transparency with your potential buyers. By addressing common concerns like shipping costs, delivery times, and return policies, you can enhance the user experience and encourage them to make more informed purchasing decisions.
How do you add ad extensions to Google Shopping Ads for Kitchen Accessories?
5. Product Feed
It is critical to have a product feed to run a campaign for Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories. This is because the product feed is the product file you will need to upload to Google Merchant Center, to access and display your data through Google shopping ads. This is where you can also add or remove product data, set feed rules, and set language and country targeting.
Your product feed should contain all your products and services, and all your product information such as titles, descriptions, attributes, images, ID, availability or in stock, channel, condition, and more.
What do product feeds look like?
Your product feed can be saved in different formats, such as a product file or spreadsheet. This is the typical format if you edit your product feed manually, but take note that if you build your product feed manually, it can be time-consuming which also allows more room for errors. Manually building and managing your product feed is only ideal if your ecommerce store has very few products.
If your product feed contains an extensive amount of products and product information, consider exporting your product feed using a Content API to manage your product catalog on Google Merchant Center. This is applicable for e-commerce stores that use e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce or Shopify.
Note: You want to ensure that your product data has enough product specification data. Failure to do so will increase the chances of Google disapproving your product feed. As a result, you will not run a campaign for Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories.
5.1 How do you optimize your data feed?
- Include negative keywords.
- Ensure that your prices are 100% accurate.
- Use keyword-rich and appealing product titles and descriptions.
- Advertising in multiple countries will require a product feed per country. You will also need to set up a new campaign per sales country.
- Product photos need to be high-quality and family-friendly.
- Only use images of the products you are selling.
- Don’t edit or include a watermark in your product photos, since this can cause Google to potentially suspend your Google shopping ads.
6. Conversion Tracking
An essential tool for any business that wants to run any Google ads campaign is conversion tracking. It can help you identify high-performing product groups, it allows you to manage and optimize your campaign, and it can overall maximize conversions.
Setting up conversion tracking for your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories is possible through Google Analytics. All you would need to do is install a global tag on all your landing pages, or you could also set up conversion tracking through automation apps, extensions, or plugins depending on your e-commerce platform.
An automation app we recommend considering for your e-commerce kitchen accessories store is Symprosys Google Shopping Feed. It will allow you to submit product feeds to different platforms, for instance, Facebook Shop, Instagram Shop, Google Shopping, and Microsoft Shopping.
Once your conversion tracking has been set up, you want to be careful and ensure you don’t end up with duplicate conversions. This is when 1 or 2 conversions are tracking the same thing. To avoid duplicate conversion tracking, add a transaction ID so that when someone makes a purchase and reopens a purchase confirmation page, Google will not count it as two different conversions.
Want assistance tracking your conversions?
7. How to optimize your Google Shopping Ads for Kitchen Accessories
Once your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories is up and running, create a document or spreadsheet first and keep track of all the changes you make. This will help you identify which changes you made to your campaign had the most impact on your campaign performance, as well as which changes made minimal to no impact on your campaign.
7.1 Optimization Pyramid
One way you can strategically optimize your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories is by using the optimization pyramid and optimizing each level one at a time. Similarly, you could also apply changes to your campaign that affect multiple levels of your optimization pyramid, which as a result, should increase your conversion rates.
When using the optimization pyramid as a guide, you want to start from the base, (or in this case from the account structure level) and make your way up for better results.
This is because your account structure serves as the foundation of your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories, hence the importance of providing Google ads with all the information needed through your data feed (in-feed product list).
Your account structure is also the level at which your products, ad groups, and product ad groups will be organized.
The next level of the optimization pyramid is the keywords level. This is where you want to ensure that your product titles and descriptions are appealing to potential buyers, they are keyword-rich and easy to read. You will also want to include irrelevant keywords as negative keywords to make sure your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories won’t show up in irrelevant search queries.
The bidding level in the optimization pyramid is where you decide the price you want to pay per click and per product group bid. If your Google shopping ads aren’t getting enough impressions and clicks, consider increasing your CPC bid. Similarly, you can also adjust the bidding for product groups
The ads level has one main purpose and that is to ensure your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories are as attractive as possible to potential buyers. This information will come from your product feed so make sure that your feed does not contain any errors, is updated, has all the necessary attributes, and has high-quality images of your products.
Lastly, the bid adjustments is the final level of the optimization pyramid. Some attributes where you can focus and adjust bids can be locations, devices, audiences, and ad schedules. We strongly recommend to only doing bid adjustments quarterly, since a lot of data is required to be able to spot real trends in your campaign before making adjustments.
7.2 Star Ratings in Google Shopping Ads
Star Ratings in Google Shopping ads give potential buyers indicators of how credible and trusted your brand and products are, and if your product is worth their money, based on reviews, feedback, and more. Star ratings also help catch the attention of potential customers, and help with product research and purchase decisions, which will increase conversion rates. These ratings will also help drive more high-quality customers to your e-commerce business.
7.3 Product Ratings
Product ratings can help potential buyers make an informed purchase decision when considering your products. To be able to include product ratings on your Google shopping ads, you need a minimum of 50 reviews across all your products, and you can also submit any existing product reviews through your Google Merchant Center account.
Even if you have more than 50 reviews across all your products, you will also need an overall rating of 3.5 stars out of 5 stars for Google to show your product rating. Take note that Google may still choose not to show your reviews and star ratings even if you meet all the minimum requirements.
7.4 Seller Ratings
When you have high seller ratings on your shopping ads, it indicates to potential buyers that your e-commerce store offers high-quality products and high-quality customer experiences, which also sends a message to potential buyers that your brand is trustworthy and worth their money.
Seller ratings can also drive more qualified customers to your landing pages, and improve the performance of your Google shopping ads for kitchen accessories, since these ratings may also show up across YouTube and the Search network.
To be able to have seller ratings show up on your Google shopping ads, you need a minimum of 150 unique seller reviews in the last 12 months. Keep in mind that seller ratings may not always be displayed, and it is also not available to advertisers in all countries.
Does managing and optimizing your campaign sound like too much work?
8. Why Performance Max for Online Kitchen Accessories?
Performance Max (also known as pMax) is an automated campaign type that allows you to access all your Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. Performance Max campaigns do offer a wider reach compared to other campaign types. Pmax uses Google’s learning capabilities by using AI, and it helps drive more conversions by utilizing the different available Google platforms, such as Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Maps.
When creating performance max ads, these are automatically created from your input, just like how display ads and responsive ads are created. Performance max campaigns are usually driven by specific conversion goals, allowing many advertisers to experience an average of 18% more conversions at a similar cost per action.
8.1 Performance Max vs Smart Shopping
Performance Max and Smart Shopping are very similar campaign types since both are 100% automated and powered by Google’s AI. If you are unsure about which campaign to choose from the two, here are their differences and similarities:
Differences:
- Smart shopping ads mainly focus on maximizing sale conversions through clicks and sales, whereas pMax allows you to select your choice of conversion goals. Pmax also allows you to add conversion values for sales, leads, promotions, local store visits, and website traffic.
- Smart shopping ad budgets are separated by network or objective which can limit the campaign’s effectiveness.
- Performance Max campaign budgets are combined across all your inventories and encouraged to be used across all goals to get better results and enhance the campaign’s overall performance.
- Smart shopping ads campaigns are limited to shopping ads only.
- Performance max campaigns can handle performance-based campaigns across various ad groups, keywords, and Google platforms, like display ads, shopping ads, Gmail ads, YouTube ads, and more.
Similarities:
- Smart shopping ads and Performance Max ads both use GMC (Google Merchant Center) for product feeds.
- Both campaign types enable product targeting and schedule adjustments.
- They both allow you to automate your bids, like setting a target ROAS, which can also measure your ad campaign profitability.
- Smart Shopping and Performance Max both use Google AI to optimize bids for each of your product categories and keywords.
8.2 Performance Max Strategies
As mentioned earlier, performance max campaigns can drive conversions and value through bidding, targeting, creatives, and more. Depending on your advertising goals and needs, consider some of the following strategies to help your performance max campaign gain the best results:
- Set up your Performance Max campaign for Shopping with a feed-only campaign for all products and avoid adding text or image assets.
- Ensure your pMax campaign will not show up to branded terms by using brand exclusions or negative keyword lists.
- Identify your best-selling products via ID or custom labels and enter an ad spend budget specifically for your best-sellers.
- Run a pMax campaign with a single product and scale, although it will need a minimum of 50-100 conversions in the last 30 days for it to be effective.
- Run a standard shopping campaign for any products on your feed that didn’t get many clicks or impressions in the last 30 days.
- Create a standard shopping campaign for any new products in your catalog and integrate them into your main campaign only after gaining enough data.
- Consider creating a dedicated campaign for products you want or need to sell quickly. These could be clearance or discounted products.
- Run a single product pMax campaign for your seasonal top-selling products whilst keeping the other products in other pMax campaigns.
- You could create a pMax campaign for products with very competitive pricing, but you will need to identify these products and monitor for any price changes.
- Consider running performance max campaigns if your shopping campaigns are not working or providing you with your desired goals and needs.
8.3 Performance Max Protection
When running a performance max campaign, it is important to understand that it will take priority over any other existing campaigns in your Google ads account.
Here are some ways in which you can protect any other existing campaigns to ensure pMax won’t affect them too much or negatively affect their results:
- Branded Search Ads: Consider using brand lists & exclusions or negative keywords in your campaign, and ensure to improve your quality score & ad rank.
- Generic Search Ads: Similar to branded search ads, you will want to improve your quality score & ad rank, which you can do by adding more keywords.
- Shopping Ads: To avoid product overlap with your Performance Max campaign, use pMax campaigns only for specific categories. Also, add your brand lists & exclusions or negative keywords for better results.
- YouTube In-Stream Ads: Run dedicated campaigns and improve your quality score and ad rank.
- Discovery Ads: These are similar to YouTube in-stream ads, so you will want to run dedicated campaigns and improve both your quality score and ad rank.
9. Conclusion
Creating and running a shopping ads campaign for your kitchen accessories e-commerce business as part of your marketing campaign will help your brand gain more visibility online, it will increase your advertising ROI, and overall drive more qualified leads.
Google shopping ads is a powerful advertising platform that can help you reach your desired goals, through high conversion rates for instance, since Google shopping ads can target a buyer’s purchasing intent, whilst also ranking at the very top of relevant search queries.
If creating, managing, and optimizing a Google shopping ads campaign for your kitchen accessories business seems like too much work, we can help! Schedule a free consultation with our friendly team of experts and check out how we successfully helped more than a thousand of our clients reach their advertising goals with Google Ads like our Google Ads for E-Commerce Case Study on YoYoFuMedia’s page.
