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PPC Tricks Every E-Commerce Business Should Know

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Tag Archives: PPC ads

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Written by Caroline Cox on Jun 5 , 2020

From creating your account to optimizing and testing, these expert tips will ensure your e-commerce PPC ads are set up to stand out. 

Here, you’ll find:

  • How to create a proper PPC ad foundation
  • Tips for keeping campaigns organized
  • Ways to optimize your e-commerce PPC ads
  • What to test when it comes to your campaigns

People are buying almost everything online these days. Whether you’ve been doing e-commerce for years or have recently switched to a digital platform amid the pandemic, it’s always good to know what elements make up a successful search engine marketing (SEM) ad.

Let’s break down the must-haves when it comes to creating paid search ads for your e-commerce brand.

hawksem article: e-commerce ppc

How you get your products into Google Merchant Center to create the feed mostly depends on how many products you have. (Image via Rawpixel)

1. Set a good foundation 

It should come as no surprise that proper setup is key to creating successful e-commerce PPC ads. But that doesn’t mean that plenty of companies, whether they realize it or not, don’t have their accounts set up properly — which can lead to improper tracking and unnecessary steps. So, how do you ensure you’re starting off on the right foot?

To begin, you need to create a free Google Merchant Center (GMC) account. It’s best to use the same email you also use for programs like Google Ads and Google Analytics. That way, your accounts will all be linked together. From there, you can link your Google Ads account to GMC. It’s also a good idea to install “Ecommerce tracking” in your Google Analytics account for even more insight into performance metrics.

2. Stay on top of your product feed

How you get your products into GMC to create the feed mostly depends on how many products you have. If you have a large amount, you can integrate your e-commerce platform with the merchant center. If you have fewer products, you can integrate manually via a Google spreadsheet or even add products one by one. 

Making sure your product feed is updated is just as crucial as proper setup. After all, the last thing you want is to have someone click on your ad and see that the item is out of stock or priced higher than advertised.

Once you input products, they’ll remain active for 30 days. After that, those products will expire if you don’t update their info. You can update your products either by reprocessing your feed or setting up automatic processing on a daily or weekly basis, depending on how often your product inventory changes.

3. Get granular

Why is getting granular so important? Because the more specific a product search is, the higher the purchase intent, most likely. Therefore, the more you segment out your products, the more targeted your PPC ads will be. 

If you have a small number of products, each product can be in its own product group. Otherwise, you can split your campaign into ad groups, and then split those into product groups from there. 

You can also divide in other ways, like by devices. Simply put a -100% bid adjustment to separate desktop and mobile. For your desktop campaign, you’d put in a -100% bid adjustment on mobile to show only on desktop, and vice versa. You can also separate out traffic based on how specific the search is. You can do this by setting up campaign priorities and then using negative keywords to separate those searches.

hawksem: e-commerce PPC blog

Including prices in your ads can be a highly effective way to get more clicks than your competition. (Image via Rawpixel)

4. Remember to optimize

Without optimizing, your PPC campaign can only go so far. Optimizing will help you better manage your budget by putting more spend where you’re seeing more success. Many e-commerce companies optimize their bids by starting low, then adjusting accordingly. The more data you gather, the more informed your decisions will be.

Other ways to optimize include:

  • Experiment with different ad types (like product listing ads vs. text ads)
  • Leverage ad extensions to give ads more context
  • Add pricing to ads for a competitive edge
  • Test different campaign structures and categories

5. Consider including prices in ads

Speaking of pricing, including prices in your ads can be a highly effective way to get more clicks than your competition. Not only is this another way to qualify your traffic to ensure you get the right clicks, but it doesn’t take up a ton of valuable ad real estate.

As HubSpot explains, “This saves your ad spend for those qualified leads who saw your prices, know what to expect, might not be scared away by price, and are much more likely to convert into a sale.” 

Even if they don’t end up buying your product or service, you’ll have a higher chance of snagging them through remarketing, since they already know what your pricing looks like.

6. Test your ads — consistently

If you’ve read our past articles, we might sound like a broken record when we talk about the benefits of testing. But it can’t be denied that, if you want high-performing e-commerce PPC ads, testing repeatedly is an important step.

With e-commerce ads, you can A/B test elements like your imagery, verbiage, call to action (CTA), and more. After all, what works on your paid social media campaign might be a flop when it comes to SEM. See how a flat-lay image of an item on a white background performs against an image of a real-life scenario. 

Pro tip: The best testing comes with an open mind. You may think you know what your target audience wants, but the results could end up surprising you.

7. Leverage remarketing

Ah, yes, remarketing — otherwise known as “those ads that follow you around the internet,” as your friends or family may describe them. But the fact remains that remarketing works, particularly for cart abandoners.

While remarketing (also called retargeting) can be effective in various industries, it’s particularly useful for e-commerce. It can help you land more recurring sales, increase your campaign’s clickthrough rate (CTR), boost your ROI, and more. 

As we’ve mentioned before, setting up e-commerce remarketing often requires adding certain code to your site and making sure your GMC account is set up and running properly.

hawksem: e-commerce ppc ads

Amazon operates like a search engine in many ways, with ad types and structures similar to traditional paid search campaigns. (Image via Rawpixel)

8. Think outside of Google

It makes sense that, when you think of e-commerce PPC, you automatically think of Google. And while it’s holding strong in its place as the top global search engine, it’s not the only one worth looking into.

Microsoft’s search engine Bing has a user base that searches nearly 6 billion times a month total. Its own ad platform, Microsoft Ads, encompasses advertising on Bing as well as Yahoo and AOL.

Depending on your e-commerce product, you could see less competition on Bing that you’d see on Google, and a potentially cheaper cost per click (CPC). Not only that, but Microsoft Ads has a simple process for exporting existing Google Ads campaigns into its own platform, making it easy for you to leverage both. 

Pro tip: Think Amazon Advertising isn’t related to PPC? Think again. Amazon operates like a search engine in many ways, with ad types and structures similar to traditional paid search campaigns. 

The takeaway

Whether your e-commerce business has tons of competition or not, you’ve still got to work to make your PPC ads stand out.

Use the tips above when creating, optimizing, and testing your paid search campaigns to keep your digital marketing strategy going strong. 

Looking for more help with your e-commerce ads? You’ve come to the right place.

This entry was posted in Blog, PPC Management and tagged e-commerce, e-commerce ads, e-commerce ppc, paid search, paid search ads, PPC, PPC ads on June 5, 2020 by Caroline Cox.
Caroline Cox

Caroline Cox

Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.

Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!

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Written by Caroline Cox on Oct 3 , 2019

So, you’ve got the PPC campaign thing down — or do you?

Here, you’ll find:

  • What makes a PPC campaign successful
  • Ways to determine your PPC campaign goals
  • How to pick the right keywords
  • Why campaign tracking is crucial

These days, having an established PPC campaign isn’t enough. You need one that converts. That usually means a set-it-and-forget-it strategy simply won’t cut it.

ROI should be the driving force behind every aspect of designing, launching, and monitoring your PPC campaign. Not sure where to begin? Keep reading.

HawkSEM blog: 10 Steps to a Successful ROI-Driven PPC Campaign

Your goal should be centered around overall ROI as well as year-over-year growth. (via Unsplash)

1. Determine your goals

Most marketing pros are familiar with the acronym SMART goals — that is, ones that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. This type of goal setting can be highly effective, no matter your company size or industry.

Applying this mindset to your PPC campaign can help you zero in on what you want to accomplish — maybe it’s more sales, market expansion, the desired CPA, more precise persona targeting, more effective lead nourishment, or something else. Whatever your goal, it should be centered around overall ROI as well as year-over-year growth.

2. Identify the right keywords

Having the right keywords is crucial for a campaign’s success. Now that you’ve determined your goals, it’s time to identify the keywords you want to leverage for this particular PPC campaign. These could include the services you offer, the products you sell, or phrases customers use in connection to your business.

Pro tip: Having a clear understanding of your target persona (or personas) will help you develop a list of high-performing keywords.

Create a list of keywords by pulling your own search query data or using a keyword tool like SEMrush or Google Keyword Planner. Add in factors like longtail and negative keywords, then work to identify those that are highly relevant but not highly competitive.

3. Expand on those keywords

Before checking “keywords” off the list, it’s a good idea to expand your list of keywords to make sure there aren’t any important words and phrases you’re missing out on.

You can do this in a few ways: by analyzing your competitors and seeing what keywords they’re leveraging, looking into your target audience’s search behavior to uncover more keywords, and using a keyword tool to see if there are any suggested keywords you haven’t included. For even more inspiration, you can look into a service like Answer the Public that aggregates questions people ask around different keywords, giving you more insight into their search motivations.

4. Prioritize your chosen keywords

As your campaign progresses, you’ll start to get a better idea about which keywords are top performers and which can be cut.

Because the frequent iterating and optimizing of these campaigns can be time-consuming, those without the expertise or bandwidth often turn to a digital marketing agency that can manage these types of campaigns on an ongoing basis.

HawkSEM blog - 10 Steps to a Successful ROI-Driven PPC Campaign

Put your keywords into different categories based on the type of advertisements they create. (Image via Unsplash)

5. Categorize your keywords

Keywords can fall into many categories: high-intent, branded, and feature-specific, just to name a few. A great way to stay organized and make sure you’re covering all your bases is by breaking up keywords into thematic Ad Groups.

You can group your keywords into the categories above, or by things like funnel stage, persona, service, and intent. Put your keywords into different categories based on the type of advertisements they create.

The eventual goal is to establish and track different types of ads based on the type of keywords. Basically, this ensures your ads directly relate to the search being made.

6. Set up ads

There’s no shortage of advice to be found about the best ways to set up PPC ads. But through our years of experience, we’ve narrowed it down and found that there are a few key facets to creating ads that convert.

They include:

  • Keeping ads short, catchy, and relevant
  • Having a consistent look and message from ad to landing page
  • Leveraging ad extensions
  • Targeting based on location
  • Taking advantage of remarketing when applicable
  • A/B testing

Pro tip: If you’re unfamiliar with the technicalities of ad management, your chosen ad platform or platforms should have step-by-step instructions for setting up your ads and their corresponding keywords.

7. Think about context and content

When planning your ad copy, be mindful of where the ads will be placed. With display ads, for example, it makes sense to keep the ad copy relevant to the content of the sites where they’ll appear — if you know what those sites will be.

That’s where the Google Display Network’s keyword contextual targeting comes in. As a more advanced and efficient way to choose the sites to place display ads on, this method allows you to create a list of keywords so your ad can be more closely matched to pages with similar context and content. Essentially, this lets you better target the sites where your display ad would show up.

HawkSEM blog: 10 Steps to a Successful ROI-Driven PPC Campaign

Think about the desired action you want your potential customers to perform, then make it easy for them to do so. (Image via Unsplash)

8. Determine the desired action for conversion

A “conversion” isn’t defined the same way across the board. Different industries and campaigns will have different definitions of what action they consider to be a conversion.

This could mean:

  • A submitted form
  • A completed sale
  • A demo or consultation request
  • A downloaded piece of content
  • An email subscription

No matter your conversion type, it can be measured by tracking the number of people that perform the measurable task once they reach your landing page. During the planning process, think about the desired action you want your potential customers to perform, then make it easy for them to do so.

9. Design optimized landing pages

We’ve highlighted 12 key ways to boost landing page conversions before.

Some of those ways include:

  • A strong call to action (CTA)
  • A special offer
  • An easy way to share
  • A mobile-friendly experience

Effective ads get people to your landing pages. From there, you’ve got to have a strong landing page poised to turn clicks into conversions.

10. Set up a means of tracking

Spoiler alert: Establishing a new campaign is just the beginning.

From there, you’ve got to have the means to test, track, and adjust your initial plan in order to achieve an optimal ROI. That means taking the time to pull reports, analyze the data, and pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in your campaign so you can iterate accordingly. By following the steps outlined above, however, you’ll be set up to see all that effort turn into a well-executed campaign that converts.

Creating a successful ROI-driven PPC campaign takes time and effort. Luckily, that’s exactly what we do — request a consultation to learn more about how we can help you get the results you deserve.

 

This post was originally published in August 2014 and was updated in October 2019.

This entry was posted in Blog, PPC Management and tagged keywords, landing pages, PPC ads, PPC campaign, PPC ROI on October 3, 2019 by Caroline Cox.
Caroline Cox

Caroline Cox

Caroline is HawkSEM's content marketing manager. She uses her more than 10 years of professional writing and editing experience to create SEO-friendly articles, educational thought leadership pieces, and savvy social media content to help market leaders create successful digital marketing strategies. She's a fan of seltzer water, print magazines, and huskies.

Questions or comments? Join the conversation here!

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