The easiest and most direct way to boost your online store sales is to place ads. As the world’s largest search engine, Google has hundreds of millions of users; if you can advertise on Google, it will definitely help you reach more potential customers – let them know your products, or even attract them to shop online.

However, some merchants may not have the time to learn advertising. Plus, they are hesitant due to the cumbersome steps of placing Google ads. To make it easy for merchants to advertise their products on Google, Boutir has updated its “Self-served Ad Feature” to include the function of placing Google Smart Shopping campaigns. We suggest merchants read the following FAQ before trying to place ads.

Note: A 15% service charge will be charged for advertisements placed via Boutir

Boutir Marketing Tips: What are Google Smart Shopping campaigns?

They are fee-based ads designed for retailers that display product information and images across Google’s various platforms. Not only do they aim to promote products to existing customers, achieving the effects of remarketing, but they also help you reach new customers. Through Machine Learning technology, Google improves ad performance based on the situation of your online store sales. If you want to learn more, please read: About “Smart Shopping campaigns” – Google Ads Help

Contents

  1. What are the requirements for merchants before placing ads?
  2. What is an appropriate advertising duration for Google Ads?
  3. How many products should be selected for advertising?
  4. How much should I spend on my daily advertising budget?
  5. What bid strategies does Google have?
  6. When setting up a bid strategy, should I set a target return on ad spend (ROAS)?
  7. How can I see ads that are running at the moment?
  8. Why has the system not collected any payment yet even after several days of advertising? Does it mean that the ad was not placed successfully?
  9. If the ad is not well received after it has been running for a period of time, how can I improve it?

Q1: What are the requirements for merchants before placing ads?

  • Uploaded at least 50 items
  • Make at least 50 transactions per month
  • Set up a Google Merchant Center account through Boutir, plus:
    • Relevant products are of available status (Active) in “Shopping Ads”
    • Status of the account is normal, not suspended or in the middle of some serious issues
  • Advertise for at least 1 month*
  • Daily advertising budget is above HKD $50*.
  • Attached with product description*

* To prevent resulting in poor performance, if the ad fails to fulfill the above conditions*, an error will occur in the system, disabling the merchant for completing the ad setup.


Q2. What is an appropriate advertising duration for Google Ads?

When placing Google ads, merchants must preserve a period of time for the system to access sufficient data to improve the ad performance. Google refers to this period of time as the “Learning process”, which takes at least 3-4 weeks, depending on the actual ad performance. Therefore, merchants should run ads for at least 1 month to observe the effectiveness – it is possible that the ad performance will be less significant during the first 2 weeks. Most of the ads will show significant progress after Google’s system has enough time to collect data.

Note: After an ad has been stopped, merchants should restart the campaign as soon as possible if they wish to re-publish old ads, otherwise the system will need to go through the “Learning process” again. In addition, if merchants create a new ad, the system will need to go through another “Learning process” and will not improve the ad performance based on existing data.


Q3. How many products should be selected for advertising?

In order to achieve the best ad performance, we recommend that merchants have at least 50 products before they start placing Google ads. Moreover, it is suggested to select all products when creating ads. If the quantity of products is large – over 100 products belong to a certain product category, then you can consider creating ads by category. On the contrary, if the quantity of products is small, you can directly create a single ad to advertise all products.

However, when selecting products, merchants should pay attention to whether the products comply with Google’s “Shopping ads policies”. Please do not violate the policies by selecting products prohibited from being advertised by Google, including counterfeit goods and dangerous products. For some relatively sensitive products, such as adult-oriented products and alcoholic beverages, even though Google does not prohibit the promotion of such products, it is recommended that you avoid advertising them as much as possible, not risking affecting the operation of your account.


Q4. How much should I spend on my daily advertising budget?

It depends on the merchant’s financial ability, but we do not recommend spending a rather small amount of daily ad budget, as it may affect the exposure of the ad, which may cause Google’s system unable to obtain sufficient data, resulting in a longer “Learning process” and affecting the merchant’s efficiency in placing ads. For merchants placing Google ads for the first time, we suggest the daily ad budget to be HKD $50, with an advertising duration of at least 1 month, then to be adjusted afterwards according to the ad performance.


Q5. What bid strategies does Google have?

Referring to “Determine a bid strategy based on your goals – Google Ads Help“, Google currently offers a variety of bid strategies for different types of ad campaigns, including “Focus on clicks”, “Focus on visibility” and more. For Smart Shopping Ads, Google currently only supports “getting the most conversions” as a bid strategy. Merchants can choose to set a “Target ROAS bidding” so that the ads can achieve the target average return on ad spend as much as possible.


Q6. When setting up a bid strategy, should I set a target return on ad spend (ROAS)?

We do not recommend setting a Target return on ad spend if it is the first time that merchants place Google ads. This is because it imposes a greater limitation on the system, affecting the merchant’s efficiency in placing ads. Therefore, we recommend merchants set the rate of return based on the performance only after they have accumulated certain experience and when they are clear about how much return the ads will bring to you.


Q7. How can I see ads that are running at the moment?

To place an ad successfully, different factors are involved, such as bid strategies, quality of products data, and relevance between products and users. Therefore, even if the ad has been successfully approved by the system, the merchant needs to enter appropriate keywords in the search engine in order to have the opportunity to see the ad.


Q8. Why has the system not collected any payment yet even after several days of advertising? Does it mean that the ad was not placed successfully?

Even if the merchant has successfully placed an ad, the system will usually charge the merchant every few days. Therefore, when viewing the ad performance report in our Boutir APP, merchants may notice that the ad has already been running and accumulated some data, but the credits have not been deducted yet.


Q9. If the ad is not well received after it has been running for a period of time, how can I improve it?

First of all, this may be related to the advertising expense. As mentioned above, if the amount of daily ad budget is too small, it may affect the exposure of the ad and lead to poor ad performance. In addition, the performance of ads during the “Learning process” is likely to be less significant. Most of the ads will show significant progress after Google’s system has enough time to collect data.

However, if the ad has passed the “Learning process” and the return is still unsatisfactory, you are recommended to start improving the product itself, for example:

  • Assess whether the product is attractive and unique to a certain extent in the market
  • Observe how competitors advertise their products, then change the product titles and descriptions to make them stand out
  • Enrich product descriptions in more details, such as providing information of size, color, etc.
  • Try to highlight the selling points of the product in terms of pricing, delivery method, etc.

For any enquiries, please contact Boutir Customer Success Team m.me/boutir.hk

(For the functions of Boutir APP, the latest version shall prevail*)


We understand that everyone comes across difficulties when operating an online store. And you need professional assistance from us. Therefore we have prepared for you the following:

  1. Online Store Set Up Workshop

We empower you to open an exclusive online store, and to be outstanding even under the fierce competitions in the retail market. Build your own online store, and join our 2-hour hands-on workshop now: boutir.com/seminar

  1. 1-on-1 Online Store Set Up Consultation

Not only does our Professional E-commerce Team deal with a variety of problems regarding online store set-up, but we also provide consultations. We’d first get to know your business strategies in great depth, then give advice correspondingly.

Join now: https://www.boutir.com/consultation

Boutir Official Website: www.boutir.com

Contact Boutir Customer Success Team: m.me/boutir.hk

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