How to Set Up Your Google Shopping Campaigns for 2025: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide

Are you looking to set up a profitable Google Shopping campaign? In this guide, I’ll walk you through every step of setting up and optimizing Google Shopping campaigns for 2025. Whether you're new to Google Ads or refining your current campaigns, follow this comprehensive guide to boost conversions and sales effectively.

Why Google Shopping Campaigns Matter for E-Commerce

Google Shopping campaigns allow e-commerce businesses to showcase their products prominently in search results. By setting up your Google Shopping campaigns correctly, you can attract high-intent buyers, maximize clicks, and increase sales. Let’s get started on how to create an optimized campaign.

Step 1: Connect Google to Your E-Commerce Store

The first step in creating a Google Shopping campaign is to connect Google with your e-commerce store. This integration allows Google to pull your product feed and track conversions, crucial for accurate campaign performance. 

Step 2: Start a New Google Shopping Campaign

Once your store is connected, open your Google Ads dashboard and select "New Campaign." Choose “Sales” as your objective and set the campaign type to "Shopping." This will focus your campaign on driving revenue by showing products to potential buyers actively searching for them.

Important Tips for Setting Up Conversion Goals

Make sure you’ve configured conversion tracking. If you’re new to setting up Google Ads conversion goals, you can add these later or adjust existing ones. Remember, excluding certain conversion actions won’t delete them from your account; it simply adjusts their influence on this campaign’s bidding.

Step 3: Choose the Correct Google Merchant Center Account

If you manage multiple Google Merchant Center accounts, select the appropriate one during setup. Google may prompt you to use Performance Max, but to retain control over your bidding strategy, select “Standard Shopping Campaign.”

Step 4: Name Your Campaign with a Clear Naming Convention

Use clear, descriptive names for your campaigns to keep your Google Ads account organized, especially when running multiple campaigns across different regions. For example:

• USA Shopping Campaign
• Europe Shopping Campaign

A clear naming convention helps you differentiate campaigns by target location or product focus, making adjustments easier down the line.

👉 How to Set Up and Optimise Performance Max Campaigns for 2025

Step 5: Set Your Bidding Strategy and Budget

For beginners, manual CPC (Cost Per Click) bidding is a good place to start. Avoid setting a target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) at the beginning, as you won’t have enough data yet. Do some quick keyword research to estimate your cost-per-click (CPC) and set a daily budget accordingly. For example:

• If your CPC is around $2, set a daily budget of at least $20 to gather sufficient data (10 clicks/day) for optimization.

Pro Tip: Start small, monitor results, and adjust your budget as you collect data on campaign performance.

 

Step 6: Set Campaign Priority and Targeted Locations

Campaign priority is only essential when running multiple shopping campaigns targeting the same products, such as a remarketing campaign and a new customer acquisition campaign. For location targeting, restrict visibility to relevant regions—like targeting only users in the United States if that’s your main market.

Step 7: Organize Ad Groups by Product Category

Structuring ad groups by product categories or types gives you more control over bids for specific products. For instance:

• Product Category 1 Ad Group - set a bid based on CPC estimates.
• Product Category 2 Ad Group - adjust bids depending on the performance of similar products.

This approach prevents overlap in product targeting and enables accurate performance tracking. Remember, without unique filters, your products might appear in multiple ad groups, leading to mixed results and ineffective bidding.

Step 8: Monitor and Optimize Bids Based on Performance

Once your campaign is live, monitor CPC trends and conversion rates in each ad group. Adjust bids accordingly based on performance data:

• If CPC is high but conversions are low, consider reducing the bid.
• If CPC is within target and conversions are steady, you may want to scale up for higher visibility.

Regular optimization is key to maintaining an efficient campaign, so check in on your Google Shopping campaigns frequently to make data-driven adjustments.