Retail vertical advertisers sell products directly to end users.
Retail includes Mass Merchants, Auctions, Apparel, Books and Magazines, Consumer
Electronics, Flowers/Gifts/Greetings, Home and Garden, Jewelry and Antiques/Collectibles
(among others). The optimization tips below are designed to drive qualified traffic
to retail sites.
As always, when running Google AdWords™ advertising, make sure your ads
comply with our guidelines, as well as all applicable laws and regulations. For
more details, please review our Terms
and Conditions.
Keywords – Be Targeted & Thorough
Are you a comparison-shopping site or direct seller? Your audience
and keywords will shift depending on your answer.
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Comparison-shopping sites should append terms like find, search for, compare, and comparison to their high-volume keywords. |
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Direct sellers may want to add those same terms as negative keywords, while appending terms like store, shop and retailer. |
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Both groups should append terms like buy, purchase & order to their high-volume keywords, while using negative keywords like discounts, cheap and free if appropriate. |
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Both groups should use product-oriented terms: beatles cds instead of beatles. |
Use your ad text to separate your site from the competition.
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Comparison-shopping sites should use calls to action like "Find great deals" or "Compare prices to save." |
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Online superstores can emphasize site-wide deals and breadth of selection: "Shop for pens and other office supplies." |
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Niche sites should make sure their ad text highlights their specialty: "Low prices, reviews and tips from the digital camera experts." |
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Holidays start earlier online, so focus on appropriate holidays at least 1 month in advance. Use targeted ad text as well as additional keywords: mother's day flowers or back to school sale. |
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Where appropriate, use location targeting and add keywords to reflect your areas of focus.
• toronto cell phones, los angeles furniture
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Use specific product details to ensure that users are looking for the items that you carry.
Ineffective Creative:
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Descriptive, Effective Creative:
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Attract repeat visitors by pitching the overall value of your
site as well as individual products.
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Use ad text to highlight unique
site-wide benefits and deals:
• "Low price guarantee
on all products"
• "Spend $50 and get
free shipping" |
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If space allows, work your store
name into the ad text. (But don't do it at the expense of including the
keyword or listing specific benefits.) |
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Make sure your landing page
makes the desired product easily accessible and features your brand name
prominently. It's best to include some sort of introduction to your company,
too. |
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Help users do their research.
Internet research leads to increased revenues and ROI both online and
offline.
• For every dollar consumers
spend online, they spend an additional $6 offline as a result of their research. |
| The Importance of Sound Account Structure |
While there is no way to predict how well an AdWords account will perform, there is a popular strategy among Retailers that helps maximize
scalability, effectiveness and relevancy. These, of course, are the building blocks of a successful AdWords campaign.
In the Retail world, the most successful clients base their account structure around their webpage’s sitemap.
This practice will...
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Ensure full product coverage |
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Allow you to market each type of product you sell based on each products’ individual
profit margins |
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Make it easy to turn on/turn off certain Ad Groups if your products (or budgets)
are seasonal |
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Show you exactly what groups of keywords are converting well and which ones aren’t
– so you can concentrate on improving only those
areas of your account that need help |
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Allow you to write actionable, specific ad text |
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Bring your highly relevant ads to Google’s expansive content network, reaching
over 80% of the web (the technology that feeds your
ads into the content network thrives on tightly clustered Ad Groups – it
doesn’t understand mixed themes). |
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Allow you to isolate high traffic keywords and stop them from eating up your
budget |
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Allow your AdWords account to grow as fast as your business with as much accuracy
and relevancy as when it began |
| The Importance of Sound Account Structure |
I. Leverage your Sitemap/Top-line Categories
- Your major product categories (often the ones listed at the top or on the sidebar of your site) should be your Campaigns:
Campaign = "Category".
- If you have many different large product categories, an extra layer of categorization might be necessary: Campaign =
"Category: Major Sub-category"
- Your Product Groups should be your Ad Groups: Ad Group = "Product Group"
- Most of your keywords should point to a specific product, with a specific, easy to navigate landing page: Keyword = "Product"
- Be detailed in Campaign/Ad Group names – this allows your AdWords account to be a daily "dashboard" for your online sales
initiatives. Additionally, it allows for quick and easy navigation for you and your co-workers/associates.
II. Isolate certain keywords for easy analysis
- Brand terms (yours and/or the products you sell) should be kept in separate Campaigns with separate budgets. This way, you
can measure the strength of these brand terms separate from your general keywords. Many marketers measure the ROI on
brand terms with a different metric than they measure product specific terms.
- Keep your core high traffic words in a separate campaign. This will allow you to monitor them so you can save adequate daily
budget for your other keywords. Words like "shoes," "furniture," and "flowers" bring high traffic, but can also be very expensive.
III. Make sure Destination URLs are accurate and specific
- The real success of your AdWords account is measured after the click – be sure you are sending your potential customers to a
page that is easy to navigate and contains the product for which they were searching.
- The broader the search term, the more general the landing page. Consumers at different stages of the buying cycle use
different types of terms when they search. A person searching with a SKU# is more likely to be ready to buy a specific product
than somebody searching for "gifts under $50."
Return to Retail overview page |
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| TIP: Holidays |
January: New Year
February: Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras
March: Spring Break
April : Easter, Passover
May : Mother's Day, Memorial/Victoria Day
June: Father's Day, Summer Weddings
July: Independence Day (US), Canada Day
September: Back to School, Grandparents Day
October: Halloween, Thanksgiving (CAD)
November: Thanksgiving (US)
December: Christmas, Hanukkah, Boxing Day (CAD)
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