E-commerce lingo requires an entirely different set of language skills, it sometimes seems. E-commerce PPC and campaign management are two areas that can significantly grow your E-commerce businesses when done well.
Today, we’ll break down the meaning of both terms and how you can leverage each element to increase your online traffic and conversions.
Romain Berg is a comprehensive digital marketing firm dedicated to producing results for our clients, not hype.
What is E-commerce PPC?
PPC stands for Pay Per Click and is a type of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee whenever their ads are clicked. E-commerce refers to the activities of the buying and selling of services and goods on the Internet.
Some popular E-commerce services are Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Romain Berg is proud to be a Shopify and WooCommerce partner.
If you’ve Googled anything from raincoats to wedding chapels online, you’ve seen a Search Engine Results Page (SERP.)
Google PPC ads show up on SERPs with some variation.
There are three types of shopping ads that you can use for your PPC Campaign:
Product Shopping ads: these ads let you include basic information about your product. You can expect to see an image, item name, price, and your business name all in one ad.
You can streamline the ad creation process by forgoing the need for you to create unique ads for every item you sell because this information comes from product data you provide in your Google Merchant Center account.
Google Merchant Center is a free and simple way to store and organize all of your product information and make it available to potential customers. It is a must-have component of any PPC campaign.
To enhance Product Shopping ads, consider including any relevant special offers or sales, showing promising product ratings and your Google Customer Reviews. These added components may drive your audience to click your ad and boost your PPC Campaign.
Showcase Shopping Ads: These ads show relevant products that you select to represent your brand or business based on keywords users search for. Showcase Shopping Ads allow you to advertise multiple products at once, effortlessly. Give your audience the “big picture” about what your company is all about by showing off the products that most represent your business.
Local inventory ads: These ads show available inventory from your local brick and mortar store. These ads are great for bringing your online customers in-store, your in-store customers online and allow you to measure the effectiveness your online ads have on your storefront foot traffic.
Google uses responsive ads for PPC advertising. Responsive ads use assets provided by you to create ads that can be displayed where they fit. So, sometimes Google will generate small text ads or use a large picture. Responsive ads allow your information to display in many places throughout the Display Network.
Targeting Audiences
While you want your PPC advertising campaign to have a broad reach, you also want it to have a specific reach. Essentially, you want your ads to be shown everywhere your target audience virtually visits.
Your audience will be a group of people with specific demographics, habits, lifestyles, and interests. For example, if your product is a straw water filter, your audience might include avid travelers or outdoorsmen. There are many different types of audiences you can learn more about here.
Google will determine your ideal audience using an algorithm and boost the performance of your ad campaign.
Why should I consider PPC?
Random ads online or in real life successfully blanket a swath of your potential customers. Creating awareness is always going to be the first step in creating new traffic for your e-commerce site.
Using PPC enables you to laser-focus your advertising on people actively searching for the items or services you sell. This type of awareness is the key to making your brand a true industry leader in your niche.
You can select and bid on words or phrases, and if you’re the highest bidder, your ad will get priority listing in the PPC ad space on the SERP.
If a customer clicks your product page link, you’ll pay for that click in the amount you bid on the keyword.
For E-commerce businesses, it’s crucial to get your products in front of a searching audience consistently. Employing a carefully planned PPC strategy can help you increase your visibility at the precise moment your ideal customer prepares to purchase a product.
Here are several other reasons to rely on PPC advertising to increase your E-commerce businesses:
- You pay only when someone clicks your ad.
- You can begin getting sales quickly with a well-written, concise, relevant ad.
- Add look-a-like audiences to hyper-target your customers. Targeting similar audiences lets you show ads to people who share certain characteristics with people on your existing remarketing list.
- You can choose your ad-run schedule, down to the hour and minute of each day.
- You can track who clicks your ad and how well it converts browsers to buyers (which means you can regularly micro-tweak your ads for the most ROI)
- You can create ads that serve various objectives, from new customer browsing to inviting viewers to revisit their abandoned shopping carts.
Improve your chances to win PPC keyword auctions
Winning at PPC is not solely about spending the most money during AdWords auctions. The maximum amount you’re willing to pay combines with several other factors to determine your position in the PPC ad screen space.
When you ensure the following, you increase your chances for a high-ranking PPC ad:
- Choose your long-tail and short keywords with precision (Google will rank your ad for relevance. Your product descriptions and meta tags must be on point and concise)
- Create a targeted landing page for the products, items, or services you are trying to sell with your PPC campaign. Creating a targeted landing page will make it much easier to track how effective your PPC campaign is using Goals in Google Analytics.
- Optimize the user experience on your website and landing page with quality imagery, outstanding content, and fast loading speeds. (One way to do this is to make sure all your image file sizes are uniformly compact.)
Google (and similar search platforms) will also rank the anticipated Click Thru Rate (CTR) of your ad and show you how likely users are to click your ad.
Getting started with E-commerce PPC Management
Seeing the efficacy of a well-thought-out PPC strategy isn’t hard. Getting started with a PPC campaign that enables speedy click rate increases takes more thought. Here’s what we recommend.
1. Create a Google Ads account: You don’t have to restrict your PPC strategy to one platform, but we suggest choosing one on which to practice and then widening your reach from there.
2. Get organized: you’ll group your ads into campaigns that house ad groups. If you lead a smaller company, you may run one campaign with one or two ad groups at a time.
If you’re more established or have hundreds of products and several buyer personas to target, you may run more campaigns with larger ad groups simultaneously. An ad group is a series of ads targeted toward the same type of buyer. It can work to your advantage to use the same keyword on an entire ad group.
3. Choose the most effective keywords: if you sell raincoats, you certainly could use “raincoat” as a PPC keyword. With such a broad keyword, you’ll notice that you will have a lot of competition, however. And getting ranked high in the PPC scroll could be expensive and elusive with such a broad match.
Selecting a long-tail keyword (a precise phrase your ideal customer might use when hitting the search engines) can get you closer to a sale with each click. Why? Because consumers who’ve done their homework search with more detail and intent when they close in on a purchase.
Instead of simply using “raincoat,” a relevant long-tail keyword might be “navy blue knee-length Gore-Tex raincoat under $200.” You’ll have to do a little more audience research to mine for these long-tail keywords, but the work generally pays off with a higher conversion rate for that keyword. You’ll notice it’s a matter of balancing your keyword selection between broad matches.
4. Create engaging ads that pull focus and inform effectively: winning a mention from Google with the right keywords is only part of the PPC marketing battle. Your ad must engage your customer to click it, after all. Use relevant, concise language to describe your products, quality images, and captivating, branded messages. Clearly depict the problems your product solves in your meta tags as well.
5. Ensure you have a landing page: having a landing page for your PPC campaign is a must. An excellent landing page will guide whoever clicked on your ad to reach the end-goal of your advertising campaign. Whether that means signing up for a free-trial, purchasing a specific product, or joining a mailing list, a landing page will help get you the conversions you want. Whatever your goal, a landing page will help boost your campaign’s effectiveness by guiding customers exactly where you want them to go.
6. Add video content: consider expanding your PPC E-commerce reach by using video content. You can use PPC video ads on YouTube or the Google Display Network. These ads can be in-stream and can be skippable or non-skippable.
You may also use out-stream video ads, and these are shown on partner sites while being viewed on a tablet or mobile. Outstream video ads are clickable, making them simple, interactive, and engaging. Video ads are an excellent addition to most PPC E-commerce campaigns and are suitable for advertising beginners or seasoned vets.
Outsource your E-commerce PPC to the experts at Romain Berg
While learning how to create workable PPC campaigns is wise for any business leader, you likely have a long list of to-do items each day, week, and month.
When your busy schedule doesn’t allow you to launch results-driven PPC campaigns and PPC management services, it’s time to outsource this vital piece of your growth.
Our team of PPC experts at Romain Berg has decades of combined expertise in creating PPC strategies that increase your clicks and conversions expediently. Fill out our contact form today, and we’ll be in touch to strategize and implement your next E-commerce PPC campaign.
We’re data-driven, and our PPC services work to get you the results you want, no hype included.
Fill out our contact form today, and we’ll be in touch to partner with you on a customized, winning E-commerce PPC strategy and implementation.
