In the online advertising world, using paid ads remains an invaluable way of driving traffic to your website. Once you design your e-commerce platform, add all your products or services, and set up the payment methods, the next is to ensure your customers can find you. Relying on organic traffic alone is no longer an option. You need to know how to create ads.
Paid advertising can help you generate more traffic, regardless of where you are with your SEO optimization process. It’s ideal for new and established businesses that want to increase their brand visibility and let the world know what they offer. Marketing experts report that an average person sees 4000 to 10000 ads daily, meaning you can potentially reach a wider audience with this strategy.
This article is a guide on how to create ads that aim to drive traffic to your e-commerce website. As digital marketing experts, we can help you maximize results from your ad campaigns. All you need is to tell us your business goals and target audience, and we will customize a campaign that drives results.
Which are the Best Channels for Paid Advertising?
When it comes to paid advertising, there is no shortage of channels. Each platform presents new markets and ways of communicating with your best prospects.
1. Google Ads
Previously known as Google AdWords, this is the most popular PPC (pay-per-click platform). Google dominates search engine use, with more than 3.5 billion searches every day, making it a perfect place to advertise your business.
2. Facebook
Facebook is the most popular social media platform, with roughly 2.96 billion monthly active users. It offers an excellent opportunity to laser-target your ads and build a responsive audience.
3. YouTube
YouTube is also a great channel for paid advertising, with more than 2.5 billion monthly users. It has skippable and non-skippable ads that show up before, during, and after a video, making it easy to reach your target audience where they’re watching.
4. Instagram
Owned by Facebook, Instagram has more than 1.21 billion monthly active users. The platform shares hyper-targeting ad capability based on location, demographics, and interests. It is a fantastic channel to focus your campaigns.
5. Pinterest
You can reach over 445 million individuals every month who use the Pinterest search engine to discover and purchase new products. The platform focuses on users’ highly-specific interests, which makes it seamless to tailor your demographic targeting.
6. Twitter
Twitter boasts more than 368 million active monthly users, allowing you to engage your audience directly with the right targeting. Using promoted tweets can create brand awareness and ramp up your business.
7. Reddit
Millions of people visit Reddit every day to find relevant content and interact with people who share their interests. The platform has niche groups called Subreddits, which you can use to create highly focused ads.
You can implement a full-funnel approach to build awareness and cast a wide net to capture as many leads as possible.
How to Create Ads that Drive Traffic to your Website
So now, you know the best platforms to focus your ad campaigns. Let’s look at eight effective tactics on how to create ads for your online store that will help you reach your target audience and drive more sales.
Define your Target Audience
When you already know how to create ads, you should target your ads to people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services. That means you need to know how to create ads because creating a targeted ad campaign with the right keywords is based on location, language, demographics, and interests. Trying to sell to everyone sounds interesting, but narrowing your audience helps you find high-value leads who easily convert to customers.
You can choose to focus your campaign on retargeting or prospecting. Don’t allow these words to intimidate you. Retargeting means selling to customers who have already expressed some interest in your brand. That means they have visited your website and learned about your business but did not buy. You can keep track of them and display ads persuading them to revisit your website and purchase from you.
Prospecting means reaching out to new customers. The secret is to select keywords that attract your target audience and a persuasive design on how to create ads.
Invest More in Successful Keywords
You may notice that certain keywords bring more traffic to your product pages, leading to more conversions. Consider expanding how you use them. If you’re using the exact match targeting option, consider using a broad match or phrase match modifier.
These changes may allow your ads to appear on more searches, helping you reach a broader target audience and increase traffic to your site. Once you change the keyword match type, track results to ensure the new keywords work well for your ad campaign. You may need to incorporate negative keywords to filter all irrelevant searches that your ad is showing up for.
Use Eye-Catching Visuals
Your ad should be visually appealing. It may sound like a no-brainer, but people are more likely to click on your ad if it has a video or photo that pleases their eyes. Low-quality visuals can make your prospects lose trust in you.
For instance, if you add product images that are smaller than the actual ad space size, they stretch and become distorted, giving a poor representation of your business. Focus on using perfectly sized and eye-catching visuals that best represent your goals and are not too busy or cluttered.
Keep your Ad Copy Short and Readable
Your ad copy must be well-written and persuasive enough to make people click on it. Unlike in email marketing, you only have a few seconds to catch your audience’s attention. So, you should plan on simplifying the copy with a clear value proposition. In other words, only focus on the benefits of your product or service and how it will help people address and solve their pain points.
Aim to use around five to ten words on your headlines, perhaps with thought-provoking questions that make consumers want to learn more. A good example would be, “Are you tired of stubborn acne or dark marks?” Those with such problems will want to know what solutions you have, and chances are that they’ll make a purchasing decision.
Be sure to add a small version of your logo in one of the ad corners and steer clear and decorative fonts to catch the attention easily.
Incorporate a Clear Call to Action
Your ad campaign should always include a solid call to action. This is your final instruction to the audience, and it will help them learn what you offer and what they get out of clicking your ad. Use strong and clear words like “Get the Limited Offer,” “Shop Now,” or “Learn More.”
Whatever call to action you choose, ensure that once someone clicks on the ad, they’re directed to your website or where they were promised. Use a clear button and eye-catching color so that viewers know exactly where to click.
Perfect your Landing Page
When visitors click your ads, the first page they will see on your website is the landing page. This page should allow them to take the action they want, especially if you’re running a lead-generating campaign.
Since you’re asking visitors to purchase your products and share personal information, the design and content of your website matter a lot. They’re less likely to take action if the platform is not professional and trustworthy. Here are the key factors to consider when designing your landing page.
- Credibility: You should ensure that your business information and contacts are easy to find. It promotes transparency while making it easy for potential customers to reach out to you.
- Load Times: When a prospect clicks on your ad, it would be best to redirect them to a page that loads quickly. If your landing page takes too long to load, they may leave out of frustration.
- Navigation: Ensure that your visitors don’t have to hunt around your site searching for what they want. By clicking your ad, they expect to land on a page that matches what they searched for. Finding the advertised product or service should be seamless.
Make your Ads Optimized for Mobile
In the modern world, HTML5 has become the ideal online ad format since it can be viewed on any screen or device. The mobile revolution has also changed the way we consume media. Research shows that more than three-quarters of people will only use smartphones as the primary internet source by 2025. For this reason, ensuring your ads are optimized for mobile is essential.
Keep Testing
If you want your ad campaign to be successful, you must be ready to test them continuously. Not all tweaks will work for your brand and target audience. But closely monitoring your campaigns and making small changes as needed will ultimately help you find a winning formula for your online store.
Get an Expert Help in Creating Ads for your E-commerce Website
Paid advertising is a powerful approach to driving traffic to your business. By using the above tactics on how to create ads that generate high traffic to your store, you can get results that will grow your business.
Nonetheless, customizing ads that align with your goals may require the intervention of a digital marketing expert like Romain Berg, who understands exactly what you need. Contact us now and allow us to take your website traffic a notch higher.
