The PLA — Product Listing Ads campaign is a popular idea for advertising on Google. What's this all about? This is an advertising box that appears at the top of the screen, even before the search results. That means that a potential client can almost immediately see what he's looking for.
The word “see” was not used here by accident. When your client reviews the search results, he must enter your website and hope to find exactly the product he needs. He can't see him right now.
PLA, from the client's point of view, simplifies everything. A photo of the product and its price are displayed immediately. At the same time, several similar products are displayed, so the customer can immediately compare the individual options.
PLA in its current form was established in 2017. At that time, the EU imposed a penalty on Google. Google's commercials so far have made customers less able to compare prices and products. Currently, a potential customer, looking at ads, not only sees different products from different stores. He also sees products from various aggregators.
Is it worth choosing to campaign for PLA?
Many entrepreneurs treat PLA campaign as any other advertisement. In the meantime, this is a specific type of advertising. The campaign goes to a customer who is looking for a very well defined product.
This means that your store is more often visited by customers who are determined to have a specific product. The entire decision-making process and the product purchase can be significantly shortened. This also makes this type of advertising a good conversion. It means that Internet users are more likely to perform the action you want. In this case, it is the purchase of the advertised product.
PLA campaigns are relatively cheap. Even for the most popular industries and keywords.
When is it worth deciding to campaign?
There's not one moment that's the deciding one. The most general advice is: Decide to campaign when you think your store (or products) need distinctions. When can it be?
Start of season
In your store are products that peak in a particular season, such as spring coats, Christmas decorations or skates? So it is worth to advertise them just during a certain season or shortly before it.
Start of sale
Have you prepared attractive offers for your customers? The sale is a good time to invest in the campaign.
When you want to increase the popularity of products (and therefore the store)
For the campaign it is worth to choose products that are already tested and sell well. The campaign will make them even more popular. Your store will also gain popularity.
How to start the PLA campaign?
The PLA campaign should be created through an account in Google Merchant. Is it enough to add photos and prices, and finally pay the invoice that Google has issued?
It's a little more complicated than that.
The addition of the campaign consists of several steps.
Fill in the registration form
If you add your first campaign, you must register first if you have no Google Merchant account. You have to fill in such data as:
- I'll name my store and link it to it.
- type of product range
- the country where you operate
Google also wants to verify that you own the store. You can do this by installing the file offered by Google on your server.
Add campaign
The campaign can be added in a few steps. First you have to enter your Google Ads account and then:
- Click on + icon and create a new campaign
- Select Product Campaign
- Choose preferences
You can find options such as:
- daily budget
- campaign priority
- stocks
- click cost
Exporting of products
One of the most important steps is to add products. This is done using the product file you export to your account. This is a very detailed list, also called feed. It contains all the products you want to advertise.
Additional data may also appear, such as information about sale
You can generate such a file, for example: using Woocommerce if you use WordPress.
Feed update
Adding a list of products is not all. It is also worth adding an automatic option, thanks to which the product condition and their prices will be updated on an ongoing basis. This will keep your customers from displaying outdated ads.
How do you campaign?
In traditional advertisements, the start of advertising is often the end of worry. The entrepreneur hopes that the potential client will see the commercial and report to his store himself. In the case of Google advertising boxes, the situation is a little more complicated. This is mainly because PLA is really effective only when it goes to a strictly selected group of customers. How do you get to her? There's a few ways to do that.
Keywords
It is not possible to add keywords for product campaigns. This search engine automatically matches the display of products to the query
However, you should focus on excluding the keywords to which your ads are to be displayed. These may be very general keywords or ambiguities. If you are selling brake pads, you do not want your ads to be displayed to people looking for blocks to play with.
Among the mixers for the sound was a kitchen blender. That is why it is so important to exclude similar words or synonymous words.
The right choice of words excluding keywords will make advertising go only to people who need the products you sell.
The exclusion of words can work on several levels. It depends on the option you chose.
If you choose to opt for a non-expressive fit to the expression, then the advertisement can display when the user types a part of the phrase matching your product. Suppose your exclusion phrase is “the mirror to the bathroom”. Advertising will not be shown to users who will type “crystal mirror into the bathroom”, but can see it when they search “the mirror into the small bathroom”. The advertisement will also show when the internetnaut writes even a part of your phrase, e.g. “bath mirror”, or “small mirror”
You can also opt for a close match option. Then your ad will not be displayed only if the user types exactly the phrase you excluded. The user will not see an advertisement for the phrase “the mirror to the bathroom” , but can already see it when they search for “the crystal mirror to the bathroom”.
The solution that combines both options is the exclusion of keywords in the approximate match. Then your potential customers will not be displayed advertising after entering a phrase with one specific word. No matter where he shows up. If you exclude the word “bath”, the advertisement will not appear with the phrase “luster bathroom or bathroom mirror”.
Appropriate Photo
Have you noticed what the product photos look like in most stores? Often these are called packshots. These are photographs of the product against a neutral background. Such a picture allows you to view the sold item carefully. It makes it easier to buy.
The exception is pictures of clothes or shoes. Customers prefer to see how a garment item looks in shape. So here, the photo of the product itself will not work very well.
Select the right products
Intuition suggests that the most popular products do not have to advertise. That you should advertise those that sell worse. However, this is a very risky step, especially when you don't analyze why a product is not sold. For the advertising campaign you should choose products with better sales. This is because customers are most often looking for these most popular, latest and most recognizable objects.
Select Product Categories
This seems to be a cosmetic procedure, but it is necessary to assign it to individual articles. Such a division is very detailed, which helps even if you sell goods even from the same category, e.g.: decorative items for windows.
Why is it so important to establish the right structure of the campaign? This will give you the best-matched CPC rate.
You can choose several product groups. Here entrepreneurs usually use two tactics. You can assign one product to one group or assign several similar products to one group.
How much is it?
I mentioned earlier that the PLA campaign is relatively cheap. It shows not only good conversion, but also ROAS. This means that the investment in such advertising is characterised by a large return.
You need to know that campaign costs are not fixed and depend on many factors. But first you need to know that the cost of the campaign is based on the PPC system. That means you only pay for every click of your ad. So you pay for conversion, not e.g.: just for displaying advertising. What does the CPC depend on?
The cost of every click of advertising may vary even in the same campaign. There are many factors that affect the amount of costs. One of the most important is the quality of your website and the advertising itself.
If the Google algorithm considers your website to be valuable, e.g.: it will be fast enough, then the rate per click will be lower. And what does that mean that advertising is valuable enough? The more information you find in the box, the better. These include information on price, available variants, or discount. If there are many, then the price per click is lower.
You also need to know that the more people click on your ads, the more you pay for every click.
Competition is also an important element. The bigger it is, the higher the CPC is. Why? The fixing of the rate shall take place on an auction basis. If there are a lot of volunteers for one phrase, then the rate for each click increases.
There is therefore no clear answer to the question: How much does PLA campaign cost? At the start of the campaign, you can set your budget as well as the maximum rate for each click. Here, there is often a problem with setting the right rate, which may sometimes be too high, which makes you incur unnecessary costs.
Summary
The PLA campaign makes your products more recognizable and sell better. And you have more people on your website who are already determined to buy. It can bring many benefits and significantly increase the sales in the store — even in a new one. However, the appropriate setting of the campaign and above all the click costs may cause problems, especially in the case of beginners.
