Outside of Facebook, there is a whole world of traffic that many dropshippers miss out on.
Don’t get me wrong Facebook is a great way to get traffic, and it’s not going away any time soon. However, it’s not the only game in town, and depending on the type of e-commerce store you’re running and the products you’re selling, Google Ads can often get better results. So let’s get into how to use Google Ads for dropshipping in a good way.
If you’ve never used Google Ads before, you should know that there will be a pretty steep learning curve. I think that the Google Ads platform is much stronger than Facebook’s. Mostly because they can watch so many different channels.
You can make ads that run on Google Search, the Google Display Network (GDN), Youtube Ads, Google Shopping Campaigns, and even Gmail Campaigns that only show up in people’s inboxes from a single Google Ads account.
If you’re like most people, that last sentence probably made you feel anxious, but don’t worry. I’m going to tell you about a few ways you can use Google Ads for dropshipping that will get you on the right track.
How to Start Dropshipping with Google Ads
Before you start using Google Ads, you need to make sure that the Google Remarketing pixel is set up and installed on your website. You’re also going to want to set up Conversion Tracking.
I won’t go into detail about how to do these things because that’s not the point of this article. However, if you don’t already have this set up, here are some links from Google’s own help center.
Tag your site for remarketing
Set up your website to keep track of conversions
After putting the Google Remarketing tag on your site, it’s also important to make the necessary remarketing lists or audiences in the Google Audience Manager.
Here is a short video I made showing how to use the Google Audience Manager and make the right Remarketing Lists.
Google Shopping
Google has a campaign type called “Google Shopping” that is just for dropshippers and online stores that sell things. I think this type of campaign is probably the easiest and fastest to start if you have a big online store with lots of different products.
You’ll need to set up a Google Merchant Center account and create product feeds for all of your store’s items before you can use it. Google Shopping campaigns are great because you don’t have to make any ads. Google pulls the information (image and headline) it needs right from the product listing in your Merchant Center account.
When Google sends the ad to a possible client, it will look like this…
There are a few different ways to set up the campaign to reach them, but to get started, I’d suggest going after remarketing lists first and foremost. If you only send shopping campaigns to people who have been to your site before, you have a much better chance of getting people who have been there but didn’t buy anything to come back and finish what they started.
People often visit your site, look around, and then leave to do more research on Google before deciding whether or not to buy something. Running your shopping campaigns to your remarketing lists will make sure that your potential customers don’t forget about you. Those who do see you again and click to come back will be much more likely to buy this time.
You can do a lot more with Google Shopping campaigns, but that could be the subject of a whole article or series of articles. I wanted to give you a simple but effective way to get started quickly and start seeing results.
Check this out if you want to learn more about what you can do with Google Shopping campaigns…
The Full 2023 Guide to Google Shopping Ads
Search campaigns for brands
A Branded Search Campaign is another type of Google Ads campaign that you should run. It’s easy and works well. This is a campaign where you can literally bid on your own Branded terms. Things like the name of your business or website and different forms of it.
Let’s say that the name of your site was “Awesome Blue Widgets.” You should bid on the following search terms at the very least:
Awesome Blue Widgets
Awesome Blue Widgets Reviews
You could add other variations over time, but by bidding on those in Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match forms, you can be sure that your brand will be shown prominently to anyone who looks for it on Google.
If you don’t know what I mean by saying there are different kinds of matches, read this…
About the options for matching keywords
If this is all new to you, you might think… “Why would I bid and pay to run ads on my own branded search terms when my site should already show up in the organic search results?” That’s a good question, and there are three main reasons for doing this.
First, you want to make sure your brand has as much space online as possible. When you have both an ad and an organic listing running at the same time, your site takes up more of the available Google listings. This means that when people search for something related to your brand name, your site will be at the top of the page.
Second, if you bid on broad and phrase-matched terms, you’ll start to see what people are actually typing into Google that is related to your brand name. The search terms report gives you raw search data that can help you figure out what people really want to know about your brand. Then you can talk about these things on your site and in your marketing. You won’t get that information if you only use organic.
If you don’t bid on your own terms, your competitors most likely will. Since Google Search ads almost always come before organic results if you don’t bid on your own brand terms, it would be easy for a competitor to take the #1 spot on the page and steal some of your traffic.
Search campaigns for your competitors
As I said, your competitors can bid on your branded search terms to show ads when people are really looking for you. So, what do you know?! The same thing will happen to you.
If you know who your competitors are, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t make separate campaigns to bid on their brand names and bring their potential customers to your store instead.
Most of the time, these are good clicks to go after because if someone is looking for your competitor, they are probably also interested in what you have to offer. It’s kind of like marketing to the list of your competitor… LOL!
Google Display Campaigns (Remarketing)
Oh, it’s the Google Display Network (GDN)
The Google Display Network (GDN) is probably the most scary and often misunderstood type of campaign you can run from your Google Ads account. In Google Search campaigns, you bid on actual keyword terms that people are searching for. The GDN, on the other hand, is a collection of Display or Banner ads on thousands of Google-partnered sites.
Display ads are a type of marketing called “interruption marketing.” This means that the person who sees the ad isn’t looking for it; it’s just there on the site they’re looking at, like a billboard on the side of the road as you drive by.
This Grammarly ad is a good example of how they are usually shown to end users…
I suggest that you only use the Google Display Network for Remarketing campaigns when you first start running ads on it. Trying to get new people to your site or products who have never heard of or seen them before is a good way to waste a lot of money without getting any results.
Please believe me…
I’ve made that mistake more than once, and I’ve learned a lot from it.
By using the GDN for your Remarketing campaigns, you can be sure that your ad is being shown to a real person who has already been to your site. When they see your banner ad following them around the web, they are much more likely to click on it and hopefully make a purchase.
You might want to try Remarketing ads like giving them a discount code for 10% off or a simple message like “You Forgot Something!”
Just don’t keep following them around FOREVER! Set up your remarketing audiences so that they only follow people around for a couple of weeks. This way, you don’t waste money showing ads to people 2 months later who still don’t want to buy and are just annoyed by seeing your ads all the time.
Campaigns for dynamic remarketing (GDN)
Google’s Dynamic Product Listing ads are used as part of Dynamic Remarketing campaigns. You already use Dynamic Product Listing ads in Google Shopping campaigns, but this time you are using them on the Display Network. Just like with Google Shopping campaigns, you need a Google Merchant account with product feeds from your website in order to use them effectively.
The goal of these, like any other remarketing campaign, is to show ads on the Display network to people who have already been to your site. Google, on the other hand, will actually show them the products they looked at on your site. If you’ve done remarketing with Facebook’s Dynamic Product Ads before, this is the same idea.
Check out this article in the Google Help section for a detailed explanation of how to set up one of these bad boys…
Make a dynamic campaign for remarketing
Conclusion
I could have listed a few more campaign strategies above, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to give you too much information. The five tips above are more than enough to get your e-commerce business up and running with Google Ads.
Also, please don’t think that you have to do all of these things to start seeing results.
YOU DON’T!
Even though I think you’ll want to use most of them in the long run, it’s important to start with just one or two at most and focus on making them successful before putting any of the others into place.
Last but not least, I wanted to leave you with the video below, which shows you some advanced tricks and hidden settings that can really help your campaigns do better. Most people don’t take the time to figure this stuff out or look at it, but it can be very important if you want to get the most money out of your Google Ad campaigns.
