eCommerce pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be a great way to drive traffic and sales to your online store. But running a successful eCommerce PPC campaign takes more than just setting up some ads and crossing your fingers.
Strategies and Best Practices for eCommerce PPC Campaigns
To help you get started on the right foot, we’ve put together a guide on eCommerce PPC best practices and strategies to effectively increase traffic and sales from your campaigns.
If your ad isn't being clicked on, it won't generate any sales. That's why one of the essential parts of a successful eCommerce PPC campaign is having ads with high click-through rates (CTRs).
You can do a few different things to increase your ad's CTR and get more people clicking through to your eCommerce business site, but the most important ones are optimizing your ad copy (the headline, description, and call to action) and the offer you're making in your ad.
Ensure your ad copy is relevant, clear, and persuasive and that your offer is truly valuable to your target audience. You can experiment with different copies and offers to find what works best for your business by analyzing the difference in CTR between the different versions.
If you want your eCommerce PPC campaign to be successful, you need to make sure you're targeting the right keywords. That means choosing keywords relevant to your products and business with high commercial intent.
To find the right keywords for your campaign, start by brainstorming a list of potential keywords relevant to your business. Then, use a tool like Google's Keyword Planner to get search volume data and help you find the best keywords to target.
Pro Tip: It's best to target not only broad, popular keywords but also more specific long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords tend to have less competition and may be more likely to convert because they're more relevant to what people are actually searching for.
For instance, if your eCommerce market is selling shoes, you would want to target not only "shoes" but also more specific keywords like "women's running shoes" or "men's loafers."
Just like it's important to target the right keywords, it's also important to exclude keywords that aren't relevant to your products or business. These are called negative keywords, and adding them to your campaign can help you avoid wasting money on unqualified clicks.
For example, if you sell women's clothing, you would want to add negative keywords like "men's" or "boys" to make sure your ads don't show up for those searches. That way, you're not paying for user clicks from people who aren't interested in what you're selling.
To find negative keywords to add to your campaign, start by looking at the search terms that people are using to trigger your ads. Then, add any that aren't relevant to your business as negative keywords.
If you want to get the most out of your eCommerce PPC campaign, you should be running dynamic targeting campaigns, allowing you to run multiple ads on the same website – but targeted to different demographics.
For example, you could run one ad targeting men and another ad targeting women on the same website. Or, you could target people in different age groups or locations with different ads.
Then, dynamic targeting automatically shows different versions of your ad to different people based on factors like their location, search history, or what device they're using. This allows you to show relevant ads to the right people, which can increase your CTR and conversion rate.
Pro Tip: Dynamic campaigns also work well with retargeting, enabling you to show targeted ads to people who have already visited your website but bounced without buying anything.
Google Shopping ads are eCommerce PPC ads that allow you to showcase your products in an image-based ad format. These ads are triggered by product searches on Google, and they can be a great way to increase traffic and sales from your eCommerce store.
Like Facebook and Google Adwords, Google Shopping Ads shopping campaigns can also be monitored and tweaked to ensure that you achieve your business goals. For instance, you can use Google Analytics to track conversion rates, see which products sell the most, and adjust your ad campaigns accordingly.
Pro Tip: Google Shopping Ads can be a great advertising platform to increase traffic and sales during the holiday season, so start running these ads a few weeks before major holidays.
Finally, your eCommerce PPC campaigns will only be as successful as your product pages. If your product pages are poorly designed or hard to navigate, people will be less likely to buy from you – no matter how well your ads perform.
Without properly optimized product pages, your eCommerce PPC campaigns will ultimately be less successful. So make sure to spend some time optimizing your pages before you start running ads.
Ready to Start Running eCommerce PPC Campaigns?
Now that you know the basics of eCommerce PPC management, you're ready to start running your own campaigns. And if it all seems overwhelming, don't worry – we can help.
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