1. Objective
To guide the setup of a Standard Shopping campaign for promoting specific products from an e-commerce store, allowing for granular control over bidding and campaign structure at the product level.
2. When to Use this SOP
- For e-commerce businesses with physical products.
- When you require detailed control over bids for individual products or product groups.
- When you want to use negative keywords to optimize traffic (a key difference from PMax).
3. Prerequisites & Inputs
- [ ] Google Merchant Center (GMC): A GMC account that has been set up, verified, and linked to Google Ads.
- [ ] Product Feed: A product feed that has been uploaded to GMC, approved, and is free of critical errors.
4. The Step-by-Step Setup Checklist
- [ ] 4.1. Objective & Campaign Type:
- Action: + New Campaign > Sales > Shopping.
- Action: Select the correct Merchant Center account and Country of Sale.
- Subtype: Choose Standard Shopping campaign.
- [ ] 4.2. Bidding & Budget:
- Action: Select a bid strategy.
- Best Practice/Setting: Manual CPC or Enhanced CPC offers maximum control. Maximize Clicks is a good choice to start and gather data.
- [ ] 4.3. Campaign Priority:
- Action: Set the priority (Low, Medium, High).
- Rationale: If the same product exists in multiple Shopping campaigns, the campaign with the highest priority will serve. This is useful for creating separate campaigns for promotional items.
- [ ] 4.4. Product filters:
- Action: Decide which products this campaign will advertise.
- Best Practice/Setting: You can leave the default (All products) or select Filter products to create a campaign for a specific brand, category, or custom label.
- [ ] 4.5. Ad Group & Product Group Structure:
- Action: By default, Google creates one Ad Group with an “All products” product group.
- Best Practice/Setting: You must subdivide the “All products” group into smaller, more granular groups based on attributes like Category, Brand, or Item ID.
- Rationale: This allows you to set different bids (Max. CPC) for different product groups, enabling you to optimize for profitability.
- [ ] 4.6. Negative Keywords:
- Action: Add a list of negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level to exclude irrelevant searches.
- [ ] 4.7. Final Review:
- [ ] The correct GMC account is linked.
- [ ] The product group structure has been logically subdivided.
- [ ] An initial negative keyword list has been added.