As much as 75% of users say that paid ads make it easier to find what they need.
Not only does PPC marketing make your business more visible, it also comes with a great ROI: companies that invest $1 in PPC earn $2, on average.
By running PPC campaigns for your eCommerce store, you can reach an impressive number of people that are already searching for your products and are very close to a final buying decision.
In this article, we address the benefits of eCommerce PPC, identify the most effective channel for eCommerce PPC strategies and list out the reasons why hiring a specialized PPC company may be your best bet.
But first, we will look into the 5 essential steps of every eCommerce PPC strategy.
Table of Contents
What Is eCommerce PPC?
eCommerce PPC is the advertising strategy that promotes your online store, brand and products using Pay-Per-Click ads.
eCommerce PPC targets leads that are ready to buy and are likely already in your store’s conversion funnel, thus emerging as a highly-effective marketing strategy.
It includes running paid ads across various channels, such as search engines, social media and websites. PPC advertising works so that, no matter how many times your ad is displayed or how many people see it, you only pay when a user clicks on your ad.
5 eCommerce PPC Strategy Best Practices
When planning your next PPC campaign, before actually launching your ads, there are a few things you need to consider and get out of the way first.
Here are the 5 essential aspects of every effective eCommerce PPC strategy.
1. Keep Your Product Pages SEO Optimized And Updated
Your eCommerce store should be spruced up at all times. You should strive to dedicate a certain amount of time to keep your product pages well-optimized and updated.
For a start, make sure to have all your product pages properly optimized for search engines. This includes:
- Finding a good title for your products
- Adding the main keywords visitors use to search for your products
- Including detailed, unique and relevant descriptions for products
- Optimizing your product images’ size, names and alt tags
- Keeping your page loading speed fast
Since you are a store selling products online, using high-quality images is key. Videos are also a great way to display your products benefits and use to your buyers. These add value for your potential customers, increasing the chances of sales.
2. Design An Engaging Landing Page
According to Hubspot, websites with over 40 landing pages generate 12x more leads than those that have 1 to 5 landing pages.
For an eCommerce shop, quality landing pages that your PPC ads are going to lead to are critical for online conversions. When they are properly designed, these are a powerful means of attracting qualified leads and generating conversions.
In the context of eCommerce PPC strategy, a good landing page is the one that:
- Aligns with the ad’s copy and visuals: Consistency is very important when the users who click on your PPC ad land on your eStore. It’s essential that you use the same language and images on your page that you used in your ad. Delivering on your promise from the ad creates trust with the user.
- Has clear and bold CTAs: Concise copy, contrasting quality and understandable instructions are cornerstone to a highly-converting calls-to-action. Make sure your landing page’s CTAs are strategically positioned and follow the user’s natural progression in their journey.
- Is benefits-oriented: Communicate the qualities of your products and how they solve the prospect’s pain points. Keep your messaging to the point and benefits-driven.
- Keeps distractions to the minimum: A page with very little going on – beside the main content relevant to the product – has more chances of converting the user.
An unintuitive, slow landing page, with poor copy and content that doesn’t align with your ads can really damage a perfectly good PPC campaign.
3. Make Most Of Social Media Networks
As many as 83% of Instagram users say that the platform helps them discover new products and services.
To maximize your PPC strategy for eCommerce, you should consider running paid ads on the social platforms best fitted for eCommerce: Facebook and Instagram.
Aside from being able to reach a massive general audience, these two social networks provide sophisticated and granular targeting that you can use to get right in front of the target audience that would be the perfect match for your product.
Therefore, including social media in your eCommerce PPC strategy is a must - it has a huge potential to reach your target audience effectively and to significantly boost your sales.
4. Use Schema Markup For Your Product Pages
Another element that could spice up your eCommerce PPC strategy is using schema markup.
Adding schema markup to your web pages helps both search engines and users better understand your content so the search engine can show more explanatory results.
Adding schema markup to your product pages will enable Google searchers to view rich cards that display your product image with additional information directly on the search page - even before landing on your website.
This can increase organic visibility for your eCommerce store and, because your products are visible in search results, give you a major edge over your competitors.
Combining schema markup products with your PPC campaign increases the effectiveness of your overall reach and forms a well-rounded strategy that covers all the main bases.
5. Implement Email Remarketing Campaigns
It’s not enough to run PPC campaigns to win over people to make one single buy - you should do what you can to get repeat purchases from your eCommerce customers. After all, repeat customers are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase.
One of the best strategies for remarketing is sending emails to people who have visited your shop and already made a purchase. By implementing email marketing campaigns along with your PPC campaign, you remind customers to come back to your store and make another purchase (upselling).
You can set automated email campaigns for first-time customers, for different stages of the buyer journey, for holidays and so on.
After all, email marketing is the most effective channel for customer loyalty and retention.
What Are The Benefits Of PPC For eCommerce?
By creating targeted PPC campaigns that promote your products on multiple channels, you can drive qualified traffic to your eCommerce website and effectively grow your brand awareness, generate qualified leads and boost your conversion rates.
Here are a few other benefits your business will experience from an eCommerce PPC strategy:
Benefit #1: Target High Qualified Audience With Relevant Ads
PPC advertising allows you to create highly specific, relevant ads and deliver them straight to the users that are actively searching for your products.
Since you can choose precisely what you are advertising and the target audience you are selling it to, PPC for eCommerce is remarkably beneficial.
Because you have the freedom to select broad as well as ultra-specific keywords for your ads, you can deliver your campaigns to the people who you know are searching for exactly what you are selling.
Benefit #2: Beef Up Your Sales
PPC is the third biggest generator of high-volume leads, right after on-page website conversions and email marketing.
This means that users who click on PPC ads are more likely to make a purchase from your online shop than those who land on your eCommerce website via organic search.
This paid advertising model allows you to target a very specific audience group based on their interests and intent, which increases your chances of generating quality leads and conversions.
Whether search, social or display, pay-per-click ads can bring your eCommerce business valuable prospects that are highly likely to convert.
Benefit #3: Grow Your Brand Awareness
A Google research report says that search ads can lift brand awareness by 80%.
Also, according to the latest State of PPC report, 74% of brands say that PPC is a huge driver to their business.
Running Google paid ads is a forceful marketing tool that generates brand awareness about your eCommerce business and the products you are selling.
Even if you don’t get as many clicks as you want from your paid ads, PPC campaigns still bring branding value, displaying your business to a large pool of prospective customers.
Whether you’re a small or large eCommerce business, you shouldn’t miss out on the clear-cut opportunities of PPC advertising to promote your products to highly interested audiences, rack up your online sales and increase your brand awareness.
What Is The Most Effective PPC Channel For eCommerce?
Google Ads, also known as Google AdWords, is a PPC platform that enables businesses to display custom advertisements on Google’s search engine results pages. (SERPs)
For eCommerce businesses, using search ads – Google shopping ads in particular – is the most efficient technique to make your products known to the audience that is already looking for your products.
Your potential customers are consistently using Google to search for items to buy. If your products are not showing up on the keywords they use, alongside an engaging ad copy and appealing landing page, you are missing out on a great share of valuable prospects.
Google Ads provides plenty of channels to advertise your products, including display and YouTube ads. When it comes to PPC for eCommerce however, running Google shopping campaigns is by far the most effective.
These ads are displayed at the top of Google search results in front of users who are searching for a product like yours.
When someone is typing a keyword closely related to your product, the shopping ads with the image of your product, its price and short description, will appear above all the other Google results, making your offering extremely visible and giving users all the information they need to make a purchase.
If you own a small business, the Google shopping ads platform can really help you compete with larger businesses that are selling the same products.
5 Reasons To Consider Hiring An eCommerce PPC Agency
You can create and run paid ad campaigns in-house, but it takes specialized expertise, premium tools and constant tweaking to build PPC campaigns that convert.
To get more juice from your PPC campaigns, you may need the help of a professional eCommerce PPC agency. They specialize in running paid ads that drive brand awareness, boost website traffic and increase eCommerce sales for a variety of businesses and industries.
Take a look at all the major reasons why you should consider hiring an eCommerce PPC agency:
1. Experience & Understanding Of PPC Environment
In the overcrowded and competitive eCommerce market, it can get very difficult to stand out. Developing effective PPC strategies is the highest priority for your digital marketing efforts -Â consider hiring one of the best digital marketing service providers to help you with this.
eCommerce PPC agencies perform in-depth research of your brand, market landscape, audience and competition to craft strategies that deliver results.
Their long-standing track record in PPC advertising, understanding of different markets and target audiences’ behavior, access to first-hand data and dedication to this specific aspect of marketing make these agencies a much better solution than doing it on your own.
2. Knowing The Right Keywords
Finding the keyword phrases that people use to search for your products is yet another key element to your PPC strategy for eCommerce.
PPC companies that specialize in eCommerce use expensive tools to conduct thorough keyword research that helps them identify the right keyword sets and target them properly in different ad groups.
This will not only help you structure your PPC campaigns more effectively but it can also give you a competitive advantage.
3. Ability To Create Engaging Copy
The most successful ad campaigns that drive clicks and generate more sales are those that incorporate engaging, high-quality copy.
Agencies that specialize in PPC have skilled copywriters who can write effective text ads that convince leads to convert.
4. Tracking The Results Of Your Campaigns
Tracking and measuring the results of your campaigns is also important for a successful PPC strategy for eCommerce. Without it, you or your PPC agency wouldn’t know which tweaks and changes to make in order to optimize the campaign for full efficiency.
PPC experts know which metrics to set and track in order to constantly improve their strategy and deliver better results. They set realistic, measurable KPIs and have the tools to accurately measure them.
5. Staying On Top Of PPC Trends
The eCommerce industry is getting bigger every day, with new market trends emerging at a very rapid pace. Being a powerful marketing tool for online stores, PPC has to follow suit.
Specialized PPC companies consistently follow the ever-changing industry and invest their time and effort into maintaining your campaigns and keeping your messaging up-to-date.
eCommerce PPC Takeaways
PPC for eCommerce allows you to create and display ads online to promote your eCommerce store.
Leveraged by both small and large eCommerce businesses, this type of paid marketing comes packed with benefits for your online shop:
- Brand awareness
- More sales
- Highly-targeted ads
To stay relevant in the marketplace and stand apart from your competitors, you need to include new tactics to your PPC strategy for eCommerce, among which the most effective are:
- Keep your product pages optimized and updates
- Create an engaging landing page
- Run paid ads on social media platforms
- Use schema markup
- Implement automated email campaigns
As PPC is such a complex field, especially when it comes to the overly competitive eCommerce space, you might consider hiring a specialized agency to help you achieve better results.
