Why + How to Use Ecommerce PPC to Increase Conversions
6 Min. Read
If you’re an ecommerce business owner, you should always be looking to grow your store’s
revenue. Luckily, there’s a quick fix you can apply if you’re not using it already — ecommerce
PPC.
Organic SEO is essential, but if you insist on using organic traffic alone, you’re limiting your
potential. The reason for this is simple — PPC ads attract ready-to-buy users, boosting your
conversion rate.
At this point, business owners who are new to the world of ecommerce PPC will likely be
wondering where to start. Don’t worry; you’ve found just the post to get you up and running.
This guide will explore the following points:
● The importance of PPC for eCommerce businesses
● Three proven eCommerce PPC strategies
● How to set up eCommerce tracking
By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll be a bona fide expert in eCommerce PPC. But
before we start, let’s get one essential thing out of the way.
Understanding eCommerce PPC - Contents
Step #0 — Have a Well-Designed and Optimized Website
Before you decide to launch a PPC ad campaign for your eCommerce business, you should make sure that your website is designed to funnel visitors toward a particular goal. Otherwise, it can be very challenging to measure your campaign results.
Thankfully, we’ve found a web design company in New York that specializes in improving conversion rates through strategically placed call-to-action buttons and other clever design techniques.
Once you’ve optimized your website’s conversion potential, you’ll have much more relevant customer data, which you can then use to plan and implement a successful PPC campaign.
Why Does PPC Matter for eCommerce?
Now that you’ve audited and improved your website, we can begin with this PPC-focused guide. We’ll start by detailing the importance of PPC in eCommerce. Basically, there are two types of eCommerce marketers out there:
- Those who believe that organic SEO is the only thing you need
- Those who understand that PPC is essential
Organic traffic is vital; there’s no doubt about it. However, it is also important to have a multi-pronged approach to your digital marketing instead of putting all your eggs in one basket.
First of all, SEO is long-term, and it’ll take a while before you see any results. You might be wondering, “how long?” Well, with a high-quality SEO strategy, most business owners will start seeing a noticeable increase in organic traffic only after six months or more.
So, what happens in the meantime? If you have the cash to burn, you can use it to sustain your store until the traffic starts to come in, but you don’t need to. That’s what PPC is for! We mentioned earlier that eCommerce PPC brings in more buying-oriented traffic, but more importantly, it provides quick results — crucial for up-and-coming eCommerce stores.
3 Highly Effective eCommerce PPC Strategies
Now that (hopefully) you’re aware of how vital eCommerce PPC is, we’ll focus on the three best PPC strategies you can use to increase sales and boost your revenue. Let’s get started!
PPC Strategy #1
Shopping ads are available on every ad platform out there — Google offers Google Shopping Ads, Facebook has Facebook Product Ads, etc. For most people, the best place to start will be Google Ads, so we’ll focus on them in this section.
The most significant advantage shopping ads have over traditional text-based ads is how much more eye-catching they are. However, one thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is the fact that they are also more relevant to a conversion-ready audience because they display elements like promotions and pricing.
If you don’t know how to set up a Google Shopping Campaign, Google has a very helpful guide you can use to get started. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to maximize your results. Here are some of the best tips we can give you when it comes to setting up your campaign:
- Use high-quality images — This is pretty self-explanatory. If you have unappealing or low-res pictures, you’ll have trouble attracting much traffic.
- Be specific with the title of your ad — Instead of simply saying something like “Men’s Shoes,” say “Brown Men’s Ankle Boots, Machine Washable, Size 10.”
- Use the Promotions ad extension — There are a few useful ad extensions available, but this is one you should definitely not miss out on. Basically, it allows you to add promotional text, which helps your ad stand out from the crowd.
PPC Strategy #2 - Retargeting Ads
Although shopping ads are by far the most widespread ads in the PPC world, remarketing or retargeting campaigns are the bread and butter of the eCommerce industry.
You’ve probably been on the receiving end of a retargeting campaign once or twice. Here’s an example:
While getting ready for work in the morning, you click an Instagram ad for a new pair of headphones but quickly realize that you don’t have time to browse headphones right now; you need to get going if you want to beat the traffic.
You open the Instagram app again during your lunch break, and voila! There’s the same pair of headphones you looked at earlier, tempting you to come back and complete your purchase.
These ads are highly powerful because they reach out to people who are already likely to purchase an item. The target audience is already familiar with your brand, and they were specifically looking at one of your products. That means there’s probably quite a lot of buying intent.
Take a look at Google’s remarketing guide to get started with these types of ads.
PPC Strategy #3 - Negative Keywords
Although it sounds like it involves some sort of reverse psychology, the concept of negative keywords is actually deceptively simple. These are keywords that you don’t want your ads to show for.
You might be wondering why in the world you would want to limit your exposure like this, but again, the answer is simple — you don’t want to waste your budget on the wrong audience.
We’ll use a somewhat banal example to illustrate our point. Let’s say you run an eCommerce store that sells drinking glasses, and you create a Google Ads campaign for it. After a few days, you realize you’re getting many hits for glasses, as in eyeglasses. This is obviously wasting your budget, as the two products are entirely unrelated, and intent to buy one in no way signifies intent to buy the other.
All you need to do is add the keyword “eyeglasses” and any other related keywords you don’t want to be ranking for in your negative keyword list, and Google will stop showing your products in these searches.
Tracking is Key
When it comes to eCommerce PPC, as is the case with almost any other business aspect, PPC companies and professionals agree that data is everything. If you don’t properly track and analyze your PPC data, you’ll never be able to truly optimize your campaigns. This means you’ll keep running ads that don’t bring as much profit as they could.
The first and most important thing to do when it comes to PPC tracking is setting up Google Analytics. While the Google Ads platform offers plenty of metrics and stats within its dashboard, Google Analytics gives you a broader perspective of how all your digital marketing channels are performing.
If your Google Ads account is connected to your Google Analytics account then you can benefit from Conversific’s Google Ads Report. In addition from within your Shopify – Conversific Dashboard you can view all of your Facebook PPC ads, quickly and simply and check their progress.
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Carl Fisher
PPC and CRO specialist, but deep down - a passionate writer. Armed with a Bachelor's degree in English language and literature and extensive writing experience (songwriting, poetry, essays, and online content of all sorts), I continue to explore, soak in, think through, and translate the world as I see it, in my own words.
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