One of the best performing markets in the eCommerce industry is the fashion market – hands down. The best way to leverage your success is by using one of the most successful online advertising platforms – Google Ads.
With approximately 5.4 billion Google searches a day, Google Ads provides the unique opportunity to get your fashion brand’s ads noticed by more people than ever before.
According to Google’s Economic Impact Report, for every $1 spent on Google Ads, you’ll see an average profit of $8. That’s pretty impressive.
With such a successful eCommerce fashion market, there’s tons of competition. It’s important to make sure your brand gets noticed in order to see conversions.
As a Google Ads agency, we here at K6 know Google Ads like the back of our hands. In this article, we’ll let you in on our top 7 great tips (with examples) to help step up your Google Ads game for your fashion brand. We’ll also give you a quick rundown of how to use Google Ads. Let’s dive in!
How K6 Can Help
As an experienced PPC agency, we know a thing or two about Google Ads. We can help you reach new heights by stepping up your Google Ads game in just a few short weeks. You’ll see more conversions and more traffic to your fashion brand’s website than you ever thought possible.
You give us a budget, tell us what kind of results you’d like to see, and we take care of the rest.
By the way, we can also help with other types of ads. Check out our article on the Top Converting Facebook Ads for Fashion Brands and reach out to our Facebook Ads Agency for more!
Additionally, if you’re just setting up your fashion brand and are looking to get the most out of eCommerce advertising, we’ve compiled the ultimate guide to help you.
Google Ads: The Basics
If you want a more in-depth guide on how to use Google Ads in general, check out our article The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Google Ads. If you just need a quick refresher or want to know the basics, keep reading.
Before we get into Google Ads tips, we should cover a few of the basics for those who are new to Google Ads.
First, you’ll need to make sure that your fashion brand’s website is ready to be promoted. Here are a few key questions to ask yourself about your website, according to Google.
- Is your website’s headline noticeable and clear?
- Can your website keep up with the fast speeds necessary for mobile browsing?
- Did you make the benefits of using your services or purchasing your products clear to the customer?
- Have you used images or video to elevate your website?
- Do you have a clear call-to-action?
- Can customers easily find your contact information?
- Have you made the most important information (the stuff you absolutely want the customer to see first) easy to find?
- Do you have an online presence for your brand beyond the website (social media, Google My Business listing, etc.)?
Make sure you’ve considered all of these questions before you begin your Google Ads journey, because advertising your website doesn’t mean anything if your website doesn’t keep customers online.
Choose Your Keywords
If you want to use Google Ads, it’s important to understand where your ads will be and what types of ads you can create. There are two places that your ads will primarily be seen:
- In a Google Search for any topic or term that relates to your brand
- On websites that feature content that is related to your brand
So it’s important to really nail down the essence of your brand and understand what topics and terms you’d like your brand’s ads to appear for.
This is where you’ll need to figure out some great keywords for your ads. Think about a potential customer making a Google search. If you want them to stumble upon your brand’s ad, what words do you think they’re searching? Make a list and narrow down your best ones. You can also do some quick research by using Google’s keyword planner to see how successful certain keywords are.
Enter the Ad Auction
Once you’ve got your keywords down and your ads finished, your ads will enter Google’s ad auctions. This happens every time someone does a Google search or visits a website that shows Google Ads.
This is quite complex process, so we’ll give you a quick rundown of what happens.
Google uses Ad Rank to calculate and assign a score to each Google Ad. These scores determine your ad position and eligibility to show the ad. It’s all based off of an – often unpredictable – algorithm, but it generally shows the top scoring ad first, the second highest next, and so on…
According to Google, there are 5 major factors that play into Ad Rank:
- Bid: You’ll have to set a bid when creating your ads. This tells Google Ads how much you want to pay per click. Usually, you’ll pay less than your maximum amount set, but you can never know for sure.
- Quality of ads/landing page: This is why it’s so important to make sure your website is up to par before launching Google Ads. Google will have a look at not only the quality of your ads, but also the quality of your website’s landing page.
- Ad Rank thresholds: Google Ads sets up minimum thresholds that ads need to meet in order to be shown. This is for quality purposes.
- Context of the search: When the search is being done, Google Ads looks into the context of the search. In other words, geographical location, time, device used, other ads/search results, and much more.
- Impact of ad extensions: Google Ads will also estimate how using ad extensions and different ads formats will improve your ad. Ad extensions give you the option to add more information to your ads, such as phone numbers, links, and more.
Google Ads Tips For Fashion Brands
Fashion brands have been seeing increasing success advertising on Google Ads. There are six types of ad campaigns that you can run:
- Search Network (Display Select)
- Search Network only
- Display Network only
- Shopping
- Video
- Universal app
As a fashion brand, you’re better off going with Shopping, Search, Display, and Video ads.
Keep reading and we’ll go over 7 of our best tips for using Google Ads campaigns for your fashion brand.
1. Use Google Shopping
Without a doubt, this ad format lends itself to the fashion industry extremely well. Google Shopping Ads (also known as Product Listing Ads -PLAs) have existed in some shape or form since 2002 and introduced as an integrated feature on Google searches in 2019.
In addition to your Google Shopping ads appearing on the Google Shopping tab, they’ll also often appear in the initial Google search results as well. This usually happens when the search query is for a product of some sort, so it works very well with fashion brands.
Setting up a Google Shopping ad campaign is a great way to showcase your products. The ad content looks native to the platform and blends into the search results. Additionally, customers are targeted based on their intent more than the keywords they use. Google will decide the intent of each search and match relevant ads to that intent. So a customer who may not have heard of your brand will be more likely to see it if you’re selling the type of product that they intend to buy. And, these customers are often much more driven to make purchases while searching Google Shopping.
With a Google Shopping ad, customers can see a high-quality image of your product, along with a price. And, the best part, Google Ads are featured at the top of the page, before the search results. You’re sure to be noticed.
Set Up Google Shopping Ads
Setting up Google Shopping for your fashion brand is a bit different than other Google ads. You’ll need a Google Merchant Center account to begin. Next, you’ll upload your product feed (this can come straight from Excel if you’d like) with all the information you need to add about brands, pricing, size, colour, and more. After you’ve done this, you’ll be able to link your Google Merchant Center account to your Google Ads account. And it’s that easy!
You can also use ad extensions as you would in search ads. For fashion brands in particular, product rating extensions, local inventory extensions, and Google Merchant promotions are the best choices.
2. Use Video to Grow Interest
Video is a great way to grab users’ attention. In fact, over half of online shoppers say that videos help them decide on purchasing a product, according to a study by Google and Ipsos. Create a great video ad showcasing your clothing and fashion products from every angle.
To set up your video campaign, choose Product and Brand Consideration as a campaign goal and then select Video for your campaign type. This way, your ad will be geared towards your campaign goal and you’ll see more success with it.
Additionally, you’ll need to create a great video for your ad. Google Ads recommends you use a video that is no longer than 20 seconds. This is because consideration tends to drop off on videos longer than that.
If you have more than one video you’d like to use, you can combine ad formats using video sequencing. You’ll be able to reach customers more than once during their journey to purchasing your products. Video ad sequences showed much higher ad recall and purchase intent than 30-second single video ads did, according to Ipsos. It’s almost like telling prospective customers a story through your ad videos, all shown to them at different points of the purchase journey, eventually culminating in a purchase (hopefully!).
How to Create a Video Ad Sequence
When you create a video ad sequence campaign, you can select either Product and brand consideration or Brand awareness and reach as your goal. You can also choose to go without a goal if you want. Select Video as your campaign type and Ad sequence as your campaign subtitle. After choosing your campaign name and bidding strategy, you’ll be able to enter more details about your video ad sequence campaign.
There are several templates to choose from:
- Introduce & reinforce features a long video to introduce your brand first, and then a shorter video to reinforce your brand to users. The longer video is upwards of 30 seconds and the shorter video is less than 30 seconds.
- Prompt & inspire does the opposite, starting with a shorter video to prompt interest and a longer video to follow that aims to inspire the user to check out your brand.
- Attract & direct works to show users a short video, a long video, and finally another short video.
- Engage and differentiate shows 4 short ads.
Remember, shorter videos get more attention. So we recommend using the engage and differentiate template for fashion brands. That way, you can include some variety while still engaging with your intended audience.
3. Make the Most of Search Ads
Let’s start with an example. Say you’re a fashion brand selling tops and blouses. If a customer is looking to find a silk blouse, they’ll enter the keyword silk blouse in the Google search bar. If you’re using Google search ads, your ad might appear as the first result! This is a great opportunity to introduce this customer to your brand.
The copy you choose for your search ad is critically important. In a standard ad, you’ll get one line of copy and your link, so make it count. The ad in the image above does a great job of utilizing every word possible to convince customers to check out their website. Here are a few things they’ve done well here:
- Including a promotion: They’ve included a promo code directly in the ad, showcasing their 30% promotion which will grab users’ attention immediately.
- 100% Pure: Customers searching for silk will be happy to find a result that promises 100% pure silk.
- Keywords: They’ve also loaded the copy with keywords, but in a way that doesn’t go overboard to turn it into keyword soup. Be careful to make sure your copy makes sense while still including the most important keywords.
4. Ad Extensions Make a Difference
Google Ad extensions can make or break your Google Ads strategy. There are a few different extensions to choose from, such as structured snippets, call and message, message extensions (mobile only), callout extensions, price extensions, promotion extensions, and more! For more about Google Ads extensions, check out their extension guide.
It’s also important to note that extensions won’t appear every time your ad does. This is because Google will decide what to show and when during the bidding process and depending on your Google Ads Quality Score. Regardless, it’s a great option to have, so they’re definitely worth setting up.
Choosing an ad extension can give potential customers that extra push that they may need to take the leap and check out your brand. Particularly good extensions for fashion brands are the price extensions and promotion extensions, as price is often a really important factor in a buyer’s decision making process.
5. Negative Keywords Are a Good Thing
Negative keywords are almost as important as relevant keywords! Google Ads allows you to enter keywords that you do not want your ads to rank for.
For example, if you’re selling high-end scarves and hats, you could add cheap, free, or acrylic scarf to your list of negative keywords. Additionally, you can do this with brands that you don’t want your ads to come up for.
You can take the time to go through your products and decide on a list of negative keywords you’d like to enter into your ad campaign, or you can consult a negative keyword tool, such as Wordstream‘s tool.
Once you have your negative keywords, click on your campaigns, go to Ad Groups, and select Keywords. Here, you can add branded and non-branded keywords. You’ll have the option to set negative keywords for one ad specifically, an ad group, a campaign, or your entire account.
6. Google Display Remarketing Campaigns
Google Display Network is a really effective way to reach lots of people. More than 90% of internet users and two million websites see Google Ads.
If you have a smaller brand or are just starting out, you might be wary of spending lots on Google display ads. In reality, you really don’t have to spend that much more on them. And, click through rates for Google display ads, on average, are only 0.35%. Compared to 1.19% for search ads, that’s not bad at all! You’ll have tons of free impressions and you’ll actually be able to save money by not having to advertise elsewhere.
Most visitors who see your ads are not going to purchase the first time they see them. Remarketing ensures that the money you’ve spent on your ads was not spent in vain. When you run a Google Display remarketing campaign, you can retarget customers who have seen your ads. This way, they’re more likely to make a purchase from you each time they see your ad.
Think about it, how often does this happen to you? You think about buying a new pair of shoes… you see an ad for a nice pair… you move on… you see it again… you think about it… you see it again and think Okay, okay! I’ll buy them!. It really works.
Setting Up Your Display Remarketing Ads
Click on Campaign and select your campaign goal. Here, you’ll be able to choose your campaign type – pick Display. Next, set your campaign name, location, language, bidding strategy, and your budget. You can also manage additional settings, such as ad scheduling, device targeting, and content exclusion. From here, you can click the Remarketing tab and check the audience you want to target. You’re ready to go!
7. Place Your Bids on Your Brand
Keywords that include your brand name are among the least expensive keywords to bid on. You’re most likely going to be one of the only ones bidding on it.
What’s more – a branded search means that a customer is searching with a high intent to buy from you.
The first three ads in the above image show Topshop ads, with Topshop as a keyword. The fourth ad result is for an Old Navy cardigan. While this is close and is a broad match, customers who search for topshop cardigan probably know exactly what they’re looking to buy – a Topshop cardigan.
If you bid high on your own fashion brand’s name, you can help ensure you’ll stay at the top of the search results.
Next Steps
So there you have it, 7 top tips to seriously step up your Google Ads game.
Don’t miss out on your opportunity to see some insane growth for your fashion brand. Google Ads is one of the best platforms to advertise on, and for good reason.
Our Google Ads Agency is always happy to help you out with your Google Ads campaigns! We’ll help you get your fashion brand on track for success.
And, if you want to know more about other kinds of ads we can help with, see how Google Ads stack up against Facebook Ads in this article.