Google Shopping Campaign With No Impressions?
Sara Jones What do you do when your new shopping campaign just doesn't get going? This video will give you some ideas....
So, you've painstakingly created your shopping feed and built your campaign only to find it just doesn't do anything!
If this is you then this post will help you troubleshoot what the issue is.
Check your billing
Yes, may seem obvious, but make sure your billing settings are all correct. If there's an issue you should see a big banner in the account but it never hurts to check all the same...
Check your feed setup
Are your products active in Google Merchant Center (GMC)?
Are your products still pending? Or are they disapproved?
If they're pending you just have to wait I'm afraid, but if there's a problem with disapprovals then follow the info provided to get them fixed and active.
Check that GMC is linked
Merchant Center and Google Ads need to be linked together. Go to tools & settings and make sure you can see the right GMC account linked to the Ad account.
Check manual bidding
Now that we've checked the tech side of things it's time to look at the campaign itself. The single most common reason that a shopping campaign doesn't serve is because the initial bid is too low. If you think this is the case for you, head in a bump up the bids by a significant amount to try and kick start the campaign.
Don't forget to keep an eye on things after so you don't suddenly spend a load without getting conversions, but doing this usually does the job to kick start things in a sluggish campaign.
Check automated bidding
Another very common issue is setting a target ROAS that's too high. This applies to both Smart Shopping and Standard Shopping with the Target ROAS bidding strategy.
If Google's machine doesn't think it can get you traffic at the target ROAS you've set, then it simply won't bother! Setting a target that's too aggressive will therefore strangle the traffic in that campaign. This is especially true if you don't have enough conversion data in the account for the machine to learn from.
if you think this is the problem for you, go in a adjust the target ROAS down and see if it has an effect on the amount of traffic you start getting.
If the campaign remains slow even after dropping your target, you may need to switch to manual bidding for a while in order to get some conversion data in the account.
Check negative keywords
If you've added global negatives when building the campaign (and I strongly advise you do...) then double check to make sure you haven't inadvertently added one that is stopping your ads from showing.
Check location targeting
Make sure you haven't put too narrow a geographic target on your campaign. Most retailers will want to target the whole country but if for some reason you want to be more localised then make sure it's a big enough area to have enough search volume.
Check budgets
Another one that should be obvious, but make sure you've set a proper budget. I use £0.01 when I build campaign to make sure they don't run until I'm ready - if you do something similar make sure you set the correct budget to override it.
Check feed optimisation
Could it be that your feed isn't optimised for the right keywords? If your product titles don't match what people are searching for on Google then your products aren't going to show up.
This is a massive topic in itself but vitally important to ensure you get great visibility for your shopping ads.
If you'd like to learn more about feed optimisation then consider joining the Online Retail Academy as a paid member and you'll get access to the full Get to Grips with Google Shopping course, including a module on feed optimisation.
Categories: Google Shopping Tutorials