Every e-commerce business requires a solid marketing strategy in order to reach its target audience, increase conversions, and stand out from competitors. While there are many different types of advertising models, PPC is one that often yields the quickest results.
In this article, we will explore 10 tips for optimizing your e-commerce PPC strategy for success.
What is Pay-per-click Advertising?
Pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC, is a form of online advertising that allows advertisers to pay for clicks on ads that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs), webpages, and other online destinations.
When someone clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged according to the terms of the agreement between them and the publisher or platform through which the ad was served.
What are the Benefits of PPC Advertising for Ecommerce?
There are a number of benefits that can be derived from using PPC advertising for your e-commerce business, including:
- First and foremost, PPC advertising can be incredibly effective in driving traffic to your e-commerce site. By targeting specific individuals or demographics, you can reach a large and relevant audience with minimal effort.
- PPC advertising can be used to improve brand awareness. By exposing your site to a wider audience through paid search results, you can create a more positive first impression for your business. Plus, by targeting specific keywords that are relevant to your target market, you can optimize your ads for maximum conversions.
- PPC advertising is an affordable way to reach a large audience. With the right strategy in place, you could potentially spend less than $1 per click on some of the most profitable e-commerce keywords.
- Unlike most other marketing strategies, PPC often yields very quick results.
- PPC ads are fairly easy to manage, even if you’re a novice.
10 Ways to Optimise your PPC Strategy for Ecommerce Success
1. Identify your target market
Before you start planning your PPC campaign, it’s important to first identify your target market. This can be done through a variety of methods, including demographic research, audience analysis, and keyword research.
Once you have a good idea of who your target market is, you can begin targeting your ads specifically toward them.
2. Choose the right advertising platform
When planning your PPC campaign, it’s important to choose the right advertising platform based on data you’ve collected about your target audience.
Google Ads offers a wide range of targeting options and is generally considered the most effective platform for online advertising. Other viable options include Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Yahoo Gemini. The advantage Google offers over the other platforms is the ability to target people based on keywords they’re actively researching.
3. Choose the right keywords
It’s important to use keywords that are relevant to your business – otherwise, you’ll likely end up spending money on ads that no one will see.
By conducting keyword research before starting your PPC campaign, you can identify which keywords are most popular among your target market and focus your ads on those terms.
4. Set maximum bids and optimum scheduling
When setting your bid (the amount you’re willing to pay for each click), it’s important to make sure that you’re bidding on keywords that are relevant to your business.
By setting a bid that’s too low, you may not be able to reach your target market and could end up spending money on irrelevant ads.
Likewise, by bidding too high, you could end up wasting money on ads that no one will see.
5. Create compelling ad copy
Your ad copy should be clear and concise; otherwise, no one will want to click it.
6. Create a Quality Score for each ad
Quality score is one of the most important factors for success in online advertising. When you create a quality score for each of your Google ads, you can ensure that they are shown to the right people at the right time.
There are several qualities that should be considered when creating a quality score: relevance, accuracy, engagement, and dwell time.
Relevance is determined by how closely your ad matches the interests of your target audience.
Accuracy measures how closely your ad’s text matches the actual keyword or phrase used in a search query.
Engagement is determined by how often people click on your ad and how long they remain on it.
Dwell time measures how long people spend viewing your ad before leaving it or clicking on another one.
By taking these factors into account, you can create quality scores for each of your ads and make sure that they’re reaching the right people at the right time.
7. Create an effective landing page
By creating a landing page that is engaging, informative, and easy to navigate, you can encourage more visitors to stick around and keep browsing through your products. This is the key to reducing your bounce rate.
8. Set up conversion tracking
Conversion tracking is a key component of any successful ecommerce advertising strategy. By understanding which actions result in sales, you can improve your overall customer experience and boost conversion rates.
An important metric to always keep an eye on is click-through rate (CTR) – a measure of how many visitors click on a given ad or banner before proceeding to the website’s main content. Higher CTRs suggest that your ads are attracting attention from potential customers, and can lead to increased traffic and sales.
Another important metric is average sale value (ASV). This figure reflects how much money each visitor spends on products during their visit. Knowing which items are selling well can help you identify which products to promote on your website.
Overall, conversion tracking provides valuable information about how visitors interact with your website. By using this data to improve your marketing efforts, you can increase your sales dramatically.
9. Analyze your competitors’ ads
Analyzing your competitors’ ads can give you clues about how to improve your e-commerce strategy. There are many ways to go about this.
You can compare their ad copy to yours, and ask a neutral person which is more compelling. You can take a look at the products their currently promoting and who they’re targeting them to. If they’re running social media ads, you can browse through their comments to see what people are saying.
10. Optimize your ads as you get more data
Optimization is an essential part of any successful e-commerce strategy. One of the most important things to remember when optimizing your ads is that you need to be specific about what you want potential customers to buy.
This means tailoring your ad copy and images to match the products and services offered by your business. It also means making sure your landing pages are optimized for conversion so that visitors who click through get taken directly to a purchase page.
BONUS TIP: Increase conversions by setting up retargeting ads
Retargeting (sometimes referred to as remarketing) enables you to show ads to people who previously visited your product pages but didn’t convert.
The majority of your visitors most likely won’t buy anything on their first visit. Retargeting allows you to show them ads for the specific products they were interested in as they browse through different sites on the web. You’ve probably seen it in action many times. You visit a site once and suddenly keep seeing its ads everywhere.
Retargeting is one of the most effective strategies for increasing e-commerce conversions. Both Google and Facebook Ads have such a feature.
