Reach the Right Shoppers at the Right Time With the Google & YouTube app for Shopify

Today’s shoppers are researching and searching for products in more ways than ever before, across multiple platforms and devices. And every day, hundreds of millions of them use Google to search for the products they want and need. This creates a lot of opportunities to get discovered by potential customers—but to get the results you want, it’s important to get in front of the right customers at the right time.

Today’s shoppers are researching and searching for products in more ways than ever before, across multiple platforms and devices. And every day, hundreds of millions of them use Google to search for the products they want and need. This creates a lot of opportunities to get discovered by potential customers—but to get the results you want, it’s important to get in front of the right customers at the right time.

That’s where Performance Max campaigns come in. They’re designed to allow retailers to access new inventory, formats, and audiences across all Google channels, including YouTube, Search, and the web. Performance Max campaigns will help maximize your reach and meet more customers wherever they’re shopping with the Google & YouTube app for Shopify. Using the Google & YouTube app can be a game changer for your marketing strategy—like it has been for businesses including Pono Woodworks, The Ollie World, and Xena Workwear.

How to get started: 

After installing the Google & YouTube app, you can easily connect your store to Google Merchant Center and begin creating new Performance Max campaigns.

This three-step guide shows you everything you need to know to get set up and to start creating Performance Max campaigns.

Why run a Performance Max campaign?

Performance Max Campaign is a goal-based campaign type that builds on top of your existing organic and paid strategy. Running a campaign empowers your business to:

Let Google’s smart technology do the work. Campaigns use Google’s machine learning to optimize your ads and automatically show your products to those who are more likely to buy and spend more. Just sync your products from Shopify to Google, set your daily budget, and let Google do the heavy lifting to get the best performance and conversion value out of your campaigns. 

Set your budget and track campaign performance. Whether you’re new to using Google Ads or a seasoned pro, campaigns are simple to set up and run. After installing the Google & YouTube app, you can easily connect your store to Google Merchant Center directly from your Shopify admin. This allows your products to sync automatically, so your products can appear across Google channels. 

Once you’ve got your products connected, you can launch a campaign, track traffic and your sales all in Google Merchant Center. By connecting your products, they will also appear in free listings to help you drive incremental traffic and reach even more shoppers at no additional cost to you.

Success stories

As busy business owners, these Shopify merchants were looking to grow their stores without devoting a ton of time to setting up, monitoring, analyzing, and adjusting marketing campaigns. Using the Google & YouTube app was the perfect solution, allowing each merchant to easily launch campaigns and leverage Google’s smart technology to save time, while achieving impressive results

Pono Woodworks

Brett Gontarek of Pono Woodworks started his Shopify store to bring his sustainable wood products online and reach customers across the world. While his experience was in woodworking, not marketing, he knew that Google was where people go when they’re looking for new products. So to get his products discovered by shoppers across Google, he installed the Google & YouTube app and created a campaign—and it didn’t take long for him to see results.

For every dollar Brett spent on his ads, he was getting $12 back in sales—a 1,200% return on investment. His online sales quickly grew by 106%, with sales from the Google & YouTube app, accounting for a third of his business.

I figured I could afford the cost of a latte a day to try it out. And it was worth it. The results of those first campaigns were mind-blowing.

—Brett Gontarek, Owner, Pono Woodworks

 The Ollie World

The baby product market is full of noise, and Hindi Zeidman, founder and CEO of The Ollie World and creator of the Ollie Swaddle, needed a way to cut through it. She knew she had to get it into the hands of tired caregivers who could benefit from the helpful sleep product.  

To help their small business stand out among the big players in their industry, Hindi and her team turned to the Google & YouTube app and launched their first campaign. To their delight, they attracted over 4,000 new customers and saw a 28x return on advertising spend in six months—all without having to manually tend to the campaign.

The great thing about campaigns is that they really run themselves.  They allow us to just sit back and make sure all the products are achieving a good return.

—David Poppell, Ads Manager, The Ollie World

Xena Workwear

As a maker of safety boots and other professional personal protective equipment for women, the team at Xena Workwear faced two challenges from the start: they needed to find and reach a niche audience, and they needed a way to demonstrate both the style and practicality of their products.

Xena Workwear CMO Eugene Furman knew that Google Shopping Feed campaigns provided a highly visual shopping experience, using product images to catch the attention of shoppers. He decided to use the Google & YouTube app to help sync and manage his products. After a few clicks, he was able to sign in to his Google Ads account and set up Shopping campaigns. The results were impressive: more than 90% of the shoppers the campaign drew to the Xena Workwear site were new customers, and the campaign delivered up to an 8x return on advertising spend.

I loved that the setup process was so simple…If you have a special product that has a really unique look to it, the returns on Shopping campaigns are just phenomenal.

—Eugene Furman, CMO, Xena Workwear 

Get started with a campaign

Performance Max Campaigns are a powerful way to reach more relevant customers. Google helps you find ways to improve your ads over time so that you can spend your time and energy focusing on what’s most important—running your business.

For more information about launching your campaign in Shopify, visit the following Help Center article and install Google & YouTube app.

* Source: Google/Ipsos, Global, Global Retail Study, February 2019.