Common Mistakes to Avoid When Selling on Google

With the internet becoming our greatest weapon of marketing, it is essential to understand the importance of Google ads. It is a very effective tool for marketing strategies and has been used time and again, since its inception to spread the kind of awareness that is necessary for a brand. 

There have been multiple ways by which selling and advertising of products have been carried out before the inception of such modern digital aspects such as Google ads, but now it has been made much easier and much more effective with just the tap of a finger. 

It is important to get a bit comfortable with these tools for a greater spread and recognition of your brand, product, and overall business.

Google shopping ads have gained a lot of recognition, especially for e-commerce optimization. It is an excellent showcase of ads that can usually be seen when one goes for any kind of an organic search on Google. 

These ads flash right above, in the form of a tile. These ads of various products also come with a relevant image, price, and the store where it could be found. 

This makes it so much easier for all those using this search engine to be more aware of the credibility of these ads and where to look for the products that are being advertised.

The reason why Google is the most advisable search engine for all your internet searches is because of the brand credibility it has grown over the years. 

Google is not merely a search engine now. Hence collaborating your brand with Google for marketing purposes is going to prove beneficial for your brand. It has an incredible reach.

Multiple benefits come by being associated with Google ads. You get to decide how you would want to rank your products for the shopping ads. You have the option of ranking it a bit higher when one hits the button for search results. 

The job of selling is made much easier as you can directly go ahead and sell your products from Google itself. Google shopping ads also help you to get a rating badge for your brand which boosts the percentage of credibility as well as the reach or recognition that you can create through such authentic tags.

However, it is because of such easy benefits that people often fall prey to a lot of Google shopping mistakes. It is bound to happen as so many benefits that can get a bit overwhelming.

Lets have a look at some of the common Google selling mistakes

1. Advertising low potential product

One needs to understand their target audience better to understand the potential of what they are selling. On Google ads, one of the most common Google shopping mistakes is the advertising of low potential products, that are not going to garden any consumers. 

It is because their target audience itself is not wrong. On a digital platform, you have to be very careful with the kind of potential your products might have a reach, that is what determines its selling factor. 

Advertising of low potential products which hardly has any reach is not going to help. The potential of a product is analyzed based on the usability, accessibility, and affordability of the product and brands often forget to analyze that and become a part of advertising low potential products.

2. Not using GMC promotion extensions

GMC promotion extensions are excellent ways to make sure your shopping ads look more enticing and interesting. No having an extension is one of the common mistakes to avoid when selling on Google. 

In the digital world of selling and marketing, it is always most advisable that you have ad extensions as it has a myriad of benefits such as the prospect of adding site links to your products. 

GMC which stands for Google Merchant Centre promotion is very useful as it helps in giving out all the offer related information that would be necessary for the Google shoppers. 

Hence adding a promotion ad extension to your Google products, helps in showing a special offer link to your customers. But most often this benefit is forgotten and not adding this extension only reduces the possibility of establishing a wider reach with your ads.

3. Having a messy campaign structure

Another one in the list of common Google selling mistakes is having an unrealistic and messy campaign structure for your advertisements. A marketing and selling strategy for a shopping ad will mostly need a campaign structure, however, most people go overboard with it, which ultimately never sees the light of the day. 

More people in the team, more ideas that pop up and there is no order in it. There are either too many keywords or more than one campaign or ad group and no one knows how to deal with it which leads to a messy structure. 

People often try to go with the old setup and not create an organized and up to date Google ad account structure and that is why the campaign gets messy.

4. Generic bid optimization

When it comes to digital marketing and selling of products, it is very important to have the right keywords in place that will assure maximum optimization of your Google shopping ads. 

One of the common mistakes to avoid when selling on Google is always to go for negative keywords while bidding for optimization. This is usually not thought of by most of the people who are opting for Google ads because they think negative keywords can never help in the optimization. 

But this is a wrong notion because if you set up your Google ads on both the search as well as display networks, the negative keywords can generate much more consumers than the generic set of keywords you use for optimization. 

This is the reason why going for very basic and generic bid optimization techniques on google is a very commonly occurring mistake.

 5. Overselling products 

On the digital platform, one of the biggest obstacles faced is when you are unable to directly make contact with the customers and understand their state of mind. 

It can get a bit overwhelming when you cannot understand how far your shopping ad might have attracted your customers and that is where it leads to the point of overselling. Now the perception of customers varies from one buyer to another. 

While one advertising strategy might seem okay to one buyer, too much social media hype might seem unnecessary to another buyer. This is the kind of balance that a lot of people putting up Google ads fail to understand and it leads to the point of overselling. And overselling or over advertising eventually leads to absolute failure in the marketing strategy and customer engagement.

 6. Incorrect, Incomplete, or Un-optimized Product Data feed

The Google shopping feed is set to have a plethora of specifications that need to be in place. It can often get a bit overwhelming and a lot confusing and this is also one of the most common mistakes seen in Google ads. 

Incorrect information or data on the product being sold is a huge turn off for the consumers.  Factors like incorrect, incomplete, or unoptimized product data on the feed will mislead the potential buyers and that is not going to help, no matter how interesting or attractive your shopping ad looks. 

What a lot of brands often forget is that the extensions they put in their shopping ads will lead the buyers to the data feed of that product, and will incorrect or confusing information on the feed, it is going to set a bad impression which wont be good for the marketing of the brand.

 7. Incorrect Unique Product Identifiers

A unique product identifier gives a unique identity to your product that the shopping ad you proposed, is trying to sell. It will also additionally help in providing search inquiries with the offers that you have linked as extensions with the products seen in the shopping ad. 

Hence it is all about making your product a lot more unique. There might be instances where not having a unique product identifier might lead to the rejection of the product as well. But mostly these digital shopping ads do have one. 

The mistake that is often seen is when there is a careless step of putting in an incorrect unique product identifier. This will again mislead the consumer into getting the wrong information about the product and the uniqueness will be lost.

8. Low-Quality Product Images

Images are a very essential and important part of anything in the digital world. Images are usually conversational and let the viewer know about the context in which it has been used instantly, without having to explain it. 

However, a lot of these Google shopping ads fail to understand the importance of these product images and put a low-quality one up. The buyers clicking onto these shopping ads and then eventually being let to the feed with product details often lose interest because of the low quality of these product images. 

Not only does it fail to give them an understanding of how the product might look, but overall it has a very unattractive and unprofessional approach to it which makes it instantly unlikeable by the buyers. 

As mentioned earlier, the overall look of the shopping ads might be well to look at, but tiny aspects such as these often lead to a failure of that ad and never garners the kind of attention needed.

9. Not Using Proper Google Category

The Google product category in Google ads is present to demarcate different products and put them in the right category. It helps Google in understanding the features that your product entails and in which shopping category will it be most suitable. 

The mistake that many people commit while choosing a category for their shopping ad is accuracy. You cannot just pick a category because it is the most used or approached one by buyers. 

You need to pick up a category that is the most relevant and relatable to the product that you are selling in the shopping ad as that is the only way to increase the visibility of the product. 

Increasing the visibility of the product you are selling is also the sole purpose of the advertisement. This is a very common mistake seen where the right category is not chosen and the product lands up in an automated category that Google might choose for you. 

Even though it is mostly right, there might still be a chance of a misfire and that can cost the visibility of your shopping ad as well as the accuracy of the product being sold.

10. Poor Customer Service

Though this is not a mistake that is solely seen while selling on Google, it is still a very important mistake that should be brought to focus to eradicate it. Customers are what builds your business when you are selling a product. 

Digital selling might have myriad perks but the basics remain the same and it is because people don’t take it too seriously that such mistakes are committed. It is very important to be always approachable to your customers. 

Customers might have a lot of problems with shopping ads online, where they might not be able to find the right link, or the special offer details or just being misled by some incorrect information on the product data feed these are a few of the mistakes discussed in the earlier points. 

This is when the customers might want to contact customer service to get some help in getting more accurate and proper information on the products being sold. 

But usually, these calls to the customer service or online chats messages are left unanswered and that creates a very bad impression of your brand. 

You cannot just believe that an attractive shopping ad will be easy to sell your products, there might be a lot of queries that might pop up when buyers are trying to navigate after spotting your ad, but most people don’t give much importance to helping out their customers and that is a big mistake when you are selling something.

11. Not taking Customer Feedback

There should always be a positive attitude while dealing with customers. Even more so when you are trying to bring in positive changes to the process of selling your product. 

It is obvious that in the initial stages there can be quite a few mistakes, mistakes that might be misleading for your customers. You must take such rectifications made by the customers in good stride. 

And more so, you must consider how important customer feedback is because it is based on their usage or the impression that the ad has created. This is also a very common mistake that is seen where customer feedback is not taken seriously and hence the other underlying mistakes are never rectified. 

And the process goes on in the same and that exponentially reduces the reach of your advertisement as well as the awareness of your product. Sometimes it is a matter of pride that gets in the way and hence customer feedback is taken too personally or as an insult. 

It is important that this mistake is rectified and one understands how it is important for the growth of your brand and a positive acceptance of the advertisement.

Conclusion

Google shopping ads might have made it a lot convenient and easy for a lot of people to sell their products online, but with such easy methods, there also come a lot of mistakes that would knowingly as well as unknowingly commit. 

It is essential to be aware of the mistakes that have been committed and try to learn from them because not rectifying them is only going to have a worse effect on the ad you create as well as the product you are trying to sell. 

Google is the most popular and successful search engine that millions of people use on an everyday basis. One must understand and educate themselves on the right tools to use and the right steps that need to be followed to come up with an effective marketing strategy. 

At the end of the day, the whole purpose behind doing research, proper study of the target audience, and the reach of a certain advertisement or the product being sold is to make sure that the advertisement campaign is received in the right way.  

Hence one needs to know about the key tools that can be used to make sure such ads have a strong impact, even more so when it comes to Google ads because there are so many ways of making it look enticing and approachable that might have not been possible otherwise.

As discussed earlier, these are a few of the most common mistakes that are usually seen when a lot of people go for selling their products on Google. 

Hence knowing about them might be like a guide for those who are planning to do it in the future and help those who have already done this and have probably committed the same mistakes but did not know the severity of it. 

Mistakes can be avoided if only you are taught about them and since the digital world is a dicey place, it is better to know about them beforehand because it can severely affect fields as temperamental as marketing and selling products, a business might get hampered and the downfall might be irreversible.