1

Market analysis

After putting heads together, we found that the online gardening industry is the most competitive in the USA and that it will continue to boom. Research showed us a growing number of gardening brands that were marketing on CSEs. Our hunt for a platform that could give Ansel & Ivy both sales and an increased ROI ended with Google Shopping Product Ads as we foresaw this unexplored marketing platform bringing promising results.

2

GMC account set up

Google Merchant Center (GMC) account helps get the product info into Google, making it available to shoppers across Google. Since the website didn’t have their contact information displayed, we requested them to mention it upfront so GMC could be created with ease. While, earlier, Google’s Insufficient Contact Information Policy stated having two forms of contact information as mandatory, it has now been reduced to one (starting Aug 2021).

3

Product feed optimization

Since product feed is at the centre of the Google Shopping campaigns, its optimization is essential so the listing ads can be displayed for relevant shopper search queries. For this, we took the following steps:

• Reviewed the product catalogue.
• Configured fields.
• Created custom fields.
• Made sure images were high-quality.
• Used long-tail & short-tail keywords in titles & descriptions.
• Ensured proper categorization for each product in the Data Feed.

4

Attribute specifications

We ensured that we had correct and sufficient data in all possible attributes to help Google display accurate product listings for relevant search queries.

5

404 error fixation

We checked each product URL to ensure no 404 errors or out-of-stock products. This was important to offer shoppers the best ad-to-landing page experience.

6

Product URL customization

In order to track visits through Product Listing ads (PLA) in Google Analytics, we customized the product URLs and added tracking parameters to them.