Advertisement is the driving force for any business. It brings the business to the attention of the largest number of prospective sellers. But with the internet ruling the roost for the last few years, getting hold of digital marketing has become quite essential for businesses to thrive and expand. Digital marketing holds many tools in its arsenal for advertisement and promotion and one such tool is product listing ads or as is commonly known as PLA or product listing ads.
What is Product Listing Ads?
Product Listing Ads (PLA) is an online advertising tool used by e-retailers or online merchants to exhibit their products and services to a large number of potential customers. In the ad, a detailed description is given about the product and the brand under which it is selling. This way, the customers get to learn about the essentials of the product and if the idea behind it suits them they proceed to purchase the product.
But it is not as simple as that. There are many online merchants offering the same product under different brand names. So, what should be done to ensure that your product gets the attention of people amidst this competition? Here, many strategies and advertising tools are used that ensures the product can be used in such a manner that it can be reached to the maximum number of people possible.
Digital Marketing
As marketing is an important part of the business in the offline world, the same goes fAs marketing is an important part of the business in the offline world, the same goes for the digital market. Digital marketing is the pathway that leads businesses and merchants to establish a medium of communication with other businesses and customers. Pla Product Listing Ads is one of the integral parts of Digital Marketing. But to make sure that your PLA is not limited to opening an online portal with no optimization, digital marketing strategies come to the scene.
What does the Product Listing Ad Look Like?
A Product Listing Ad can easily be found on google searches when you type a keyword corresponding to the product. In this ad, three essentials are usually seen:
● The type of product
● The price of the product
● The image of the product
If the product belongs to a specific e-commerce platform, you might even see customer reviews on the same.
Google Ads
Most of the online retailers post their ads on Google pla Ads where visibility for the product and services is the highest in the online community. There are various ways in which ads can be posted on Google Ads. It can be keyword centric, where you will have to buy certain keywords that are associated with the keyword. For instance, if you are selling a “leather wallet”, the keywords for it like “ best leather wallet”, “leather wallet under 1000”, etc can be bought. This is done to optimize the product. So, if a customer searches on Google for that product with a specific keyword, your product will be shown on the top.
Another common digital marketing tool used by many online businesses is the Click Per Share (CPC). In this method, you do not have to pay anything for the posting of a Product Listing Advertisement. You pay only when people click on your ad.
Apart from Google, there are other platforms and tools that you can use for advertisement or all of them at once. They are as follows:
● Facebook Ads
● Amazon listing
● Bing Optimization
Apart from this, there are other advertising platforms where you can post your Product Listing Ad.
How to List Products Ads?
Advertising products on Google product listing Ads is simple and any merchant can easily advertise their products over there.
● The first thing you should do about the products’ images is to upload them on Google Merchant Center (GMC). There will also be a details section in the GMC where you will have to enter the specifications of the product. You can keep the website’s product data in a file that would be feed-in Google Merchant Center.
● In this feed will be present all the detailed information about the product that you are going to sell.
● Then upload the feed. To do this, select the products you want to upload and then click on the “+” sign to upload them.
● Now, you will have to enter the important details about the products such as title, price, etc. Cross-check all the details and click on Save. Once the entire process is complete, you will receive a message from Google saying, “Your product is being reviewed by Google.”
● The time Google will take to review the product will be around 24-48 hours.
Return on Investment in Product Listing Ads
When you post advertisements on Google Ads, it might be the case that your investment might not pay off. This has nothing to do with Google Ads. What you need here is a marketing strategy where you can channelize more customers on your platform. Google Ads is only a platform, how you are going to invest in it and how much return you can make out of it is totally your hard and smart work.
Tips to Improve ROI in Product Listing Ads
There are certain strategies that you can employ to make sure your Return on Investment (ROI) gets improved. They are as follows:
● Try to list products when you see that your store is able to sell above 500 items. This way your efficiency on Google Ads will be improved. If your store is too small, then Google might not be as interested in optimizing it as it is in promoting companies that have a good grasp of the market. So starting off at a small scale is not an issue, but make sure that it is not too small as in where you are able to sell only 10 items.
● Increase your spending limit as you spend more time on the Google Shopping interface. This is going to help your business in the long run. There are many merchants who despite getting new customers from Google Ads keep their spending limit the same as before. This is not an ideal measure to follow as it can turn your business stagnant in the coming times. It is always better to keep increasing your spending limit as the business grows
● Get your hands on other business tools such as inventory management software to keep your business more organized and listed.
● Work on your website. Try to make it as attractive as possible. If people spend more time on your website, Google will have no problem prioritizing your Product Listing Ad. On the other hand, if people leave your website within 10 seconds, then Google will stop showing your ad.
Smart Bidding for PLA
Another way in which you can enhance your Product Listed Ad is by using tools such as Smart Bidding. Smart bidding works generate automatic bids of a product depending on the past performance and the conversion rate. It uses the Cost Per Click methodology, where the expected number of clicks is charged at a specific rate. For instance, if you want to get 100 clicks for the day on the website, then depending on the Google analysis of your performance in the past and the product described, Google will charge a fee. You can also do this the other way round. You can set a spending limit, let’s say Rs 1000 for the day. Now, Google will run its matrix to find out how much click conversion you might be getting at this amount.
SEO Tools
One of the most common ways of optimizing a product is by going for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools. SEO is used to make websites more popular so that they can easily be found by people. Another advantage SEO provides is that it ensures that you remain at the top of the competition by keeping itself updated with new optimizations. One of the common ways in which SEO optimizations work is by using keywords. For instance, a company trying to promote its kitchen equipment website will hire a team of content writers who will write blogs and articles with relevant keywords to make sure the webpage remains well optimized. This way, if a person searches for “kitchen equipment near me”, the top lists will show the name of the websites that are well-optimized. There are many SEO tools that merchants use to stay at the top of the game in terms of Product Listing Ads.
Benefits of Product Listing Ads
With all said and done, there still remains the question of what benefits can the merchants derive from this tool. While it might seem to help the business grow and reach more people, there is more to it than that. Let us take a look at that:
● One of the first advantages of Product Listing Ads is that you will get greater traffic on your website than before. What the listing does is that it brings in more customers who click on the product and are redirected to the website. This helps in not only the sale and marketing of that product but of the other products listed on the website as well.
● The conversion rate also gets increased as the people who are clicking on your product have already seen the image of the product as well as its price. So one of the leading factors of their clicking on the product link signifies that they are visiting the website to purchase the product. This directly means that the conversion rate of your product will be much higher than before.
● The only way to increase the sale of your products is to make sure that the product reaches out to a large number of people. One of the great advantages of the internet is that it eliminates geographical boundaries and makes almost the entire world a potential customer. In such a scenario, going for a Product Listing Ads campaign can boost your sales to a remarkable degree, as it will expose you to new customers.
● With the help of the Product Listing Ads, you will be able to showcase more of your products on the same page.
Conclusion
As it turns out, Product Listing Ads hold great potential for merchants who do online business. But PLA on its own cannot do much. Just opening a platform is not sufficient, what you need to do to make sure the business stays ahead despite the competition is to use different tools. As it was mentioned, SEO and Smart Bidding are two popular options many merchants use to make sure their products remain at the top in Google Ads. Another important thing to keep in mind about the PLA is that you have to know your own limits: invest only when you are certain that you will be able to bear the expense.
Also Read: 3 Steps of Facebook Ad Strategy to Simplify Your Campaigns