For shops and online stores
Shopping ads for Birmingham retailers
The feed decides, the campaign follows
Google Shopping shows a product picture, a price and a shop name above the search results, and which products show for which searches is decided almost entirely by the product feed in Merchant Center, not by keywords. So the work starts in the feed: titles that say what a Bullring shopper types, prices that match the site to the penny, availability that updates, and labels for margin and season. Then Standard Shopping, then Performance Max where it earns a place. From £399 a month on the Growth tier, spend up to £3,000.
The feed
Seven feed fields that decide whether a Birmingham product shows, and for what
Google matches searches to Shopping ads by reading the feed, so a weak title costs more than a weak bid. The examples are what we would write for a Jewellery Quarter jeweller and a Digbeth homeware shop.
| Field | What Google reads it for | Weak | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title | The searches the product can appear for; the first words carry the most weight | "Ring 4" | "9ct Yellow Gold Diamond Solitaire Engagement Ring, 0.5ct, Size M" |
| Product type | Your own category tree; used for bidding and for reporting by range | Blank | "Jewellery > Rings > Engagement" |
| Google product category | Google's taxonomy; sets which attributes are compulsory | A parent category | The most specific leaf category that is true |
| GTIN and brand | Matching to Google's product catalogue, which unlocks reviews and comparison | Missing | The barcode from the box, the brand as printed |
| Price and availability | Must match the landing page or the product is disapproved | Updated weekly by hand | Synced from the shop every few hours |
| Custom label 0 | Anything you want to bid on separately; we use margin band | Unused | "margin-high", "margin-low", so the report can say which sales made money |
| Custom label 1 | A second dimension; we use season or clearance | Unused | "christmas", "valentines", "clearance", so budget can move with the calendar |
Standard Shopping
Run first, because it shows its working
A Standard Shopping campaign has a search terms report. That single fact is why it runs first on every retail account here. It shows that the diamond solitaire got clicks from “cheap engagement rings” and “engagement ring meaning”, and lets those be excluded before they eat the budget. Campaigns are split by margin label so that a low-margin product cannot outbid a high-margin one for the same search, and a brand campaign catches people searching your shop's name at a lower bid than the generic one.
Bidding starts on manual or Maximise Clicks until purchase tracking has proved itself, then moves to a target return on ad spend set from the margin, not from a round number.
Performance Max
Added when the account has earned it, never alone
Performance Max reaches Shopping, Search, YouTube, Gmail and Display from one campaign and tells you very little about which one spent the money. On an account with a few hundred clean purchases, a large catalogue and a proper feed, it usually adds sales that Standard Shopping did not reach. On a small account it takes the easy brand sales, reports them as its own, and starves the campaign that would have shown you what happened.
So it is added, not switched to: brand searches excluded, asset groups by product range, the feed as the main asset, and judged on what the account sells in total rather than on its own report.
The retail year
The Birmingham shopping calendar the budget follows
The plan for each season is written the month before. A flat monthly budget overpays February and runs out in the second week of December.
January
Sales and returns
Clearance labels get their own campaign and a lower target return; gift searches fall away and "sale" searches take their place.
February to April
Valentine's, then the wedding run-up
For the Jewellery Quarter the ring searches start in January and peak twice. Bids on engagement and wedding labels rise; everything else holds.
September
Term starts
Five universities bring tens of thousands of people to the city in a fortnight. Homeware, electronics and anything a student flat needs sees a spike that a static budget misses.
November to Christmas Eve
Gifting and the Frankfurt Christmas Market
Gift searches climb from the first week of November. Local inventory ads matter most now: a shopper at the market with a phone out wants to know what is in stock two streets away.
Shops with a door
Local inventory ads for the Bullring, the Jewellery Quarter and the high streets
A shop that sells across the counter can still advertise on Shopping. Local inventory ads show the product with an in-stock badge, the shop's distance and opening hours, and a storefront page instead of a checkout. They need a local product feed, a verified Google Business Profile for the shop and, for some categories, a stock check by Google. For a jeweller on Vyse Street or a shop on Kings Heath high street they reach the one person who matters: the one already nearby, phone out, deciding where to walk.
Measured properly
Return on ad spend against margin, not against zero
Every report shows revenue against spend, and then the number that matters more: whether the sales made money once the product cost is taken off. A retailer with a 25 per cent margin needs a return of 400 per cent on ad spend just to break even on the ads, before the management fee. Products are labelled by margin band in the feed so the bidding is told the difference, and the report shows which band the sales came from. Purchase values are tracked once, with the order value, and refunds are imported so the account does not learn from sales that came back.
Keep reading
Next door to this page
Google Ads management
The Search side of the same account, and the weekly routine.
Landing pages
For Shopping the landing page is the product page, and its speed on a phone is part of the price you pay.
Pricing
Shopping accounts sit on Growth or Scale; the tiers are on one page.
Get a quote
Send the shop address and the platform; the reply says what the feed needs first.
Questions from Birmingham retailers
What do Shopping ads cost to run for a Birmingham shop?
Management is the Growth tier at £399 a month for spend up to £3,000, because Shopping always runs beside a Search campaign and the feed needs weekly attention. Above £3,000 of spend it is Scale at £599. Ad spend is paid to Google on your card.
Do I need Merchant Center before you can start?
Yes, and setting it up properly is most of the first fortnight: a verified website, shipping and returns policies that match the site, contact details Google can check, and a feed with prices and availability that agree with the product pages to the penny. Mismatches get products disapproved, and a disapproved product cannot be advertised at any bid.
Can a Jewellery Quarter shop with no online checkout use Shopping ads?
Yes, through local inventory ads, which show the product with an in-stock badge and directions rather than an add-to-cart button. They need a local feed and a verified Google Business Profile for the shop. The searcher walking down Vyse Street with a phone out is exactly who they are for.
Standard Shopping or Performance Max?
Standard Shopping first, because its search terms report shows which searches spent the money and Performance Max hides that. Performance Max earns a place once the account has clean purchase data and a large catalogue, and even then it runs beside Standard Shopping rather than instead of it, with brand searches excluded.
Will you fix the product feed or do I need a developer?
We fix it. Titles, product types, GTINs, the attributes the category demands, custom labels for margin and season: most of it is done in a feed rule or a supplemental sheet without touching your shop platform. Where a platform change is needed we tell you exactly what and, on Shopify and WooCommerce, usually do it ourselves.
How do you report on Shopping?
By margin, not just by return on ad spend. A 400 per cent ROAS is a loss on a product with a 20 per cent margin and a healthy return on one with 60. Products are labelled by margin band in the feed, so the report and the bidding both see the difference.
What about the Christmas market and the January sales?
Budgets and bids follow the retail calendar rather than staying flat. Gift searches climb from early November, the Frankfurt Christmas Market brings footfall to the city centre until Christmas Eve, and January is returns and sale searches. The plan for each is written the month before, not reacted to.
Can you run Shopping for a shop outside Birmingham, in Solihull or the Black Country?
Yes. Online shops are targeted by where their customers are, which for most West Midlands retailers is the whole UK; local inventory ads are targeted around the shop itself. Either way the feed, the Merchant Center and the weekly routine are the same.
Send your shop's web address. The reply says what the feed needs before a penny is spent.
If Shopping is already running, add the customer ID and the free check reads the feed disapprovals and the search terms as well.