There are plenty of models used within the world of advertising. PPC or pay per click is one of the most favored, and is employed by both big businesses and small businesses.
Any eCommerce business will want to ensure they’re using digital advertising. Let’s face it, in terms of its best reasons, it’s the best for data, scalability and a strong ROI.
Perhaps the three main reasons you should be using Ecommerce PPC is because it easily fits with your business model, allows you to set your own budget and you are in control of the ads.
But there’s a lot more to know than just this. You’ll need to know how you can employ Ecommerce PPC.
This guide will examine these 3 reasons and tell you how you can do it.
Read on to learn more.
What Is Ecommerce Advertising?
Essentially, Ecommerce advertising is when you’re promoting an online store by buying online and offline spaces for advertising. This is normally done strategically by targeting ad space via search engines, websites or social media.
What Is Ecommerce PPC?
When it comes to Ecommerce, PPC is an advertising strategy that tries to promote their online store, product or service using PPC advertising.
These ads come up on social media, search engines and various websites. It has a very good success rate because it works by targeting customers who already are gearing up to make a purchase.
PPC advertising only works when a user clicks on the ad. If they do not click, you do not pay – and that is regardless of how many times it has been seen or where it is actually placed.
There’s almost an unlimited amount of room to optimize for PPC advertising and it’s very data driven. This makes it one of the most popular forms of advertising.
So Why Use Ecommerce PPC?
As we mentioned earlier, there are 3 main reasons you may decide to use Ecommerce PPC, although there are a lot more than this.
We’re going to look at these reasons in much more detail.
1. Aligns With Your Ecommerce Business Model
Of course, one of the biggest reasons to choose the Ecommerce PPC advertising method is because it’s highly data driven. As a result, it can easily be shown through a spreadsheet, using representative numbers.
This makes it ideal because it aligns directly into the business model with a clear structure. All of your advertising campaigns can be easily tracked all the way down to the end.
Additionally, optimizing in this format is highly similar to trying to optimize a campaign for more clicks. In other words, it’s a natural method to choose.
2. You’re In Control Of Your Budget
Another reason to use Ecommerce PPC is because of the large amount of control you have when it comes to the budget. Whether you’re planning a large scale campaign or something smaller, Ecommerce PPC works for you.
Luckily, if you are thinking of the smaller size – you do not need a massive budget to start, and you can still reap all of the benefits you are looking for.
This differs vastly from traditional or standard models for advertising, which often requires a huge budget, and this can be risky – especially for smaller businesses.
It is this risk that means PPC is a much preferred option. With traditional forms of advertising, you will need to pay a large amount of money without any guarantee of a return. PPC on the other hand works the opposite way.
You literally do not pay a penny until you start to see the results you’re looking for. After that, you can change and adjust any spend you’re making.
3. You’re In Control Of The Ads
It’s actually amazing how well you can target using PPC for Ecommerce businesses. You literally target and choose who you want to attract and aim your focus to.
This might be through advertising space or through keywords. For example, let’s say you want to advertise a set of shoes because you’re running a shoes Ecommerce store.
You want to advertise the fact that these shoes are water resistant and made of leather. You may decide it’s a good idea to run an ad campaign using the keywords of “best water resistant leather shoes”.
In the copy, you may decide to run with “water resistant leather shoes”. What this means for you is you are zoning in on your specific market. You know who you want to target and you know why you are targeting them.
Indeed, the specificity cannot be matched when it comes to Ecommerce PPC.
How Would You Use Ecommerce PPC?
It’s not a particularly complex process when it comes to Ecommerce PPC. All you will need to do is follow a few main steps when you’re planning to launch a brand new campaign.
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Create The Ads
The first step before we go any further into it is the actual ad creation process itself. These ads are generally smaller than your traditional forms of advertising. However, it’s entirely possible for platforms to provide much larger sizes.
Generally, you will have a headline, some lines of ad copy and possibly an image. However, if you’ve put your focus directly with Google Ads – images aren’t even required.
You will only need a link directly to your landing page, a few lines of copy and a headline.
Selecting Your Keywords
As we said previously, choosing your keywords will play a huge role in the process and success of your ad campaign. Google Ads PPC format will literally trigger your ad.
Using the example we said about water resistant leather shoes, the ad will appear when these keywords are typed into the search engine, or some sort of variation of these keywords.
Bidding
Bidding can be quite tiresome, but it is critical to the success of your campaign. Once you’ve got your ad ready to go and you’ve selected which keywords you want to include, then it’s time to start bidding.
The starting bid will vary depending on how competitive the keywords are. The more sought after keywords are the ones that businesses have proven to be highly profitable.
This means that you’ll be paying much more for PPC ads than if you chose lower trafficked keywords.
As a result however, this is why excellent keyword research is required to get the most out of your ads success.
How Can I Increase Ecommerce PPC Success?
There are various things you need to consider when you want to increase the success of your ad campaigns. Here are just a few of the biggest ones you should remember.
The Right Team
One of the biggest factors behind your success here will be the right team behind you. You may decide you wish to hire an ad specialist (such as a Google ad specialist) for example.
Whatever you decide to do, you must ensure that the team is fully knowledgeable about keywords and the research process. Remember, keyword research is critical to your success here.
If poor keywords are used, then you can expect your ROI to drop too. This means less exposure of your website, and ultimately – less revenue.
Ensure User Friendliness
Ultimately, your Ecommerce ad campaign will send potential customers directly to your website. Therefore, you need to make sure that the website itself is fully user friendly.
You don’t want users to be distracted when they’re attempting to make a purchase. This point feeds into the previous point about having the right team.
If you do not have the skills or the know-how of how to fully optimize your Ecommerce landing page for example, then consider hiring a staff member that is experienced in this area.
Keep Track
One of the biggest reasons that ad campaigns are successful is because the team is tracking the success of the ads. When it comes to PPC, you will be fully aware of the success.
However, you need to keep track of this on a month by month basis. If you notice drops – or no return whatsoever, then you will need to change your approach to Ecommerce PPC.
Be Realistic
You will also have to understand that a campaign will only be as successful as the targets you have set. However, you need to be realistic with your Ecommerce business and the advertising strategy you’ve employed.
Don’t expect massive returns instantly and understand the scale of your business before you think you’re going to receive a gigantic ROI.
The Bottom Line
Ecommerce PPC can be fantastic – and these are the main reasons why you should choose to use it. If you follow our guide for the things you need to remember and put into place, you’ll be fine going forward.
These days, everything is online. You can’t get your business anywhere without a great online presence. With search engines forever changing, it’s difficult to stay on top of it all! That’s where I’ll come in.
Hello, my name is Jack O’Neil and I have been in the marketing industry for almost 10 years. I focus on online marketing, SEO, advertising, and more.
