Reach more customers by running paid ads with Performance Max

Performance Max helps you reach more shoppers across Google properties, including YouTube, Gmail, Search, and the Google Display Network. Your ads are automatically created based on products synced to your Google Merchant Center, so you don’t need to design ads. 

Google’s machine learning uses your product feed to create and show a variety of ads designed to reach the right shoppers at the right time. You can also add custom images, messaging, and URLs to existing campaigns to create highly personalized shopping experiences. Google then automatically tests multiple combinations to determine the most engaging version to help boost your business and drive better performance.

With Performance Max, your best-performing ads are shown more often. The tool’s automatic bidding feature takes the guesswork out of your keyword strategy, and its integration with other ecommerce tools helps simplify your workstream.

Below, we’ve highlighted some of the new Performance Max features you can take advantage of to drive more sales.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into four ways you can use Google for WooCommerce to get the most out of your campaigns and grow your business. Syncing your product feed, customizing ads, running product promotions, and advertising internationally can help you target customers, open your store to global shoppers, and make more sales. Let’s take a closer look at each strategy:

1. Sync your product feed

Your store is unique and so are your products. With Google for WooCommerce, you can map the custom fields (known as attributes on WooCommerce) of your product listings directly to the Google Merchant Center. 

To help shoppers find exactly what they’re looking for, it’s best to showcase the most relevant things about your products to target shoppers with ads that are relevant to them. For example, rather than showing results for a blue sweater, it’s better to give an attribute that specifies the kind of blue sweater. Is it soft, heavy, knit, button down, or zippered? Being specific with attributes can help increase conversion, because they’ll find exactly what they want to buy.

The Google Merchant Center is the first step to featuring your products with Performance Max. Syncing your product feed helps you:

• Increase reach: Find new customers wherever they’re searching or scrolling. Your products will appear across all of Google’s ad inventory and formats
• Understand customer trends: Gain actionable insights to improve your campaigns’ performance and understand your audiences.
• Drive traffic to your products: Convert more shoppers into customers with targeted ads and better insight.

Your next step

To map your unique product attributes, click on “Attributes” in the main navigation panel of the Google for WooCommerce plugin. You will be able to create, edit, delete, and see all the rules you create from this screen. 

2. Drive more sales with custom ads

Now that you have synced your product listings, it’s time to customize your ads. With Performance Max assets, you can upload custom copy, links, and images in addition to the content that is in your product catalog. You can then use those to create more dynamic ad options. Learn more about Performance Max assets in this article or by watching this video.

Uploading more text and image assets allows you to reach and engage with the shoppers that matter the most to your business. It’s important to have a handful of images attached to each product so that customers can get a sense of how the product will appear in real life. Additional images also help Google produce multiple variations that can draw the eyes of different audiences.

Performance Max assets and custom ads can help grow your sales with:

• Greater visibility: Assets like sitelinks and images give your ad greater visibility and prominence on the search results page.
• More clicks: Assets also can increase your total number of clicks by giving people additional, interactive ways of engaging with your store and products.
• Better optimization: Google will automatically switch out assets based on performance, so when one asset isn’t performing well, a new asset will be assigned to the ad.

Your next steps

• Create asset groups for your Performance Max ad campaigns. Upload more images and different headlines to drive greater customer engagement and increase sales. You can learn how to get started with the Google for WooCommerce documentation.
• Designate a specific destination URL for each ad in your campaign to offer shoppers a broader look at your product offerings.

Greater customization of your product assets gives Google’s machine learning tools more to work with, so it can create the best performing ads — the ones that drive greater customer engagement and more sales. 

3. Promote your products 

Promotions can be powerful incentives that grab the attention of shoppers, showcase your products, and increase your sales. When selling online, you’re not only competing with other brands but also with any media that takes customers’ attention away from your products. Promotions help capture attention so that customers remember your products when they’re ready to buy.

When you add a deal to one of your products, you can sync that deal to display in ad campaigns created through Google for WooCommerce. Shoppers will see a special offer link displayed with it, making your ad immediately stand out. Other benefits of promotions include reaching users on various devices, boosting clickthrough rates, and increasing conversion rates.

Once you have an active product feed in the Google Merchant Center, you can use Google for WooCommerce to create a variety of different types of incentives, like:

• Sales: The sale badge and strikethrough-price annotations automatically show when an item is on sale and meets Google’s criteria.
• Discounts: You can specify a percentage off; cash back; buy one, get one free; or buy one, get a second one at a percentage off.
• Shipping: Offer free or discounted shipping.
• Price drop: A prominent price-drop badge is designed to appear only when there has been a significant drop on a fairly stable price for a product.

Your next step

Create and launch your deals and promotions. When you create or update a coupon in your WooCommerce dashboard under Marketing > Coupons, you’ll see a Channel Visibility settings box on the right. Select “Show coupon on Google” to enable it. 

To learn more about how to set up promotions, watch this helpful video, read this short article, or look through our detailed documentation for specific help topics.

4. Go global to extend your reach

Multi-Country Advertising is an automated feature, and it puts any country within reach so that you can expand your opportunities. The end result: you can sell more and grow faster.  

WooCommerce is one of the first platforms to integrate with Google’s Multi-Country Advertising feature. It lets you reach audiences from multiple countries with one campaign, which can be set up by selecting the countries you want and removing the ones you don’t. You can add as many countries as you want on a single feed to maximize your opportunities.

Here’s how this feature can help you target shoppers around the globe:

• Expand: Extend your reach with multiple countries in the same language on a single feed.
• Budget: Manage it all with one campaign budget. 
• Showcase: Reach new markets across Google Search, Maps, Google Shopping, YouTube, Gmail, Google Display Network, and Discover.
• Track: Pay attention to your metrics and manage your campaigns directly from your WooCommerce store.
• Optimize: Enhance your performance across all regions.

Your next step

Get started with Multi-Country Advertising. First, however, it’s important to make sure your store is set up for international selling. This includes having proper currencies, shipping, and tax set up.

Try Google Ads in WooCommerce and earn $500 USD in ad credit*

To help you get started, new Google Ads customers can get up to $500 USD* in ad credit when they spend their first $500 USD on Google Ads within 60 days. View the full terms and conditions.

With more ways to expand your reach, customize your ads, and target shoppers with the incentives and details that matter most, Google for WooCommerce can help you continue to grow your sales and your business. Get started today.

Want to learn how one WooCommerce customer is growing with Google Ads? Read Root Science’s story.

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Mahrie Boyle