eCommerce PPC: Everything You Need to Know

Learn how PPC advertisingbenefits e-commerce businesses with data-backed results, scalability, andhealthy ROI. Effective for targeting ready-to-buy customers, PPC fits perfectlywith the data-driven nature of e-commerce.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisingis one of several standard models of online advertising, and it’s a favoritefor small and big businesses alike. As an e-commerce business, you want topursue e-commerce digital advertising because it’s backed by data, easilyscalable, and offers a healthy ROI — all of which matter when dealing withonline sales.

In this article, we’ll take alook at what e-commerce PPC is, how PPC for e-commerce sites works, and whyit’s a great choice for businesses like yours. Here’s an overview of what wewill cover:

• What is e-commerce advertising?
• What is PPC for e-commerce?
• What is PPC advertising?
• How does PPC for e-commerce work?
• Why use PPC for e-commerce sites?

Keep reading to get started now!Or, for professional help with e-commerce PPC, check out our e-commerce PPCmanagement services. You can also contact us online or give us a call!

What is E-commerceAdvertising?

E-commerce advertising is thepractice of promoting an online store by purchasing offline and online adspace. Most e-commerce advertising strategies target online ad space, like on asearch engine, social media network, or website.

What is PPC for E-commerce?

PPC for e-commerce, or e-commercePPC, is an online advertising strategy that promotes an online store and itsproducts through PPC ads. These ads can display on search engines, social medianetworks, and websites.

This video breaks down PPC fore-commerce even further:

What is PPC Advertising?

Pay-per-click advertising is aform of online advertising in which you only pay when a user clicks on your ad.It doesn’t matter how many times your ad is displayed or how many people see it– you only pay for actual clicks.

You can use several platforms toserve your ads, and the two largest and most well-known are Google andFacebook. Every ad you see above Google search results and most of the ads yousee on Facebook are PPC ads. Google Shopping ads, for instance, are one of themost common applications of e-commerce PPC.

How Does PPC for E-commerceWork?

PPC for e-commerce is prettystraightforward. There are a few different steps you’ll need to take to launcha campaign:

Ad Creation

Ad creation is very simple formost e-commerce PPC campaigns. These ads tend to be smaller (although someplatforms do offer larger ad sizes) and are typically made up of a headline, afew lines of ad copy, and in some cases, an image.

If you’re just dealing withGoogle’s Ads platform, you don’t even need images – just a link to your landingpage, a headline, and two lines of copy!

Keyword Selection

With the Google Ads PPC model,you select which keywords will trigger your ad. For example, if you’re ane-commerce store that sells camping gear, you might pick keywords like “besttent for the winter” or “best warm weather sleeping bag.” Your ad will onlyappear when users search for those keywords or close variations of them.

Bidding

Once you’ve created your ads andselected your keywords, you can decide how much you’re willing to “bid” to haveyour ad displayed. The standard bid varies depending on how competitive yourselected keywords are. If it’s a high-volume, profitable keyword that manybusinesses are targeting, you’ll end up paying more per click than you wouldfor lower volume keywords.

This is one of the reasons thatproper keyword research is extremely important for e-commerce PPC!

Why Use PPC for E-commerceSites?

PPC is an excellent advertisingmodel for e-commerce businesses for a number of reasons. PPC for e-commerceworks well for generating sales because it targets ready-to-buy shoppers. Youcan control your budget and marketing materials and direct them at those mostlikely to purchase.

There are even more reasons touse PPC for e-commerce, including:

1. It Fits in with theE-commerce Business Model

E-commerce is data-driven. Forthe most part, the entire business model can be represented by numbers in aspreadsheet. The main goals of any e-commerce business are:

• Selling more products
• Reaching more target audience members
• Creating a seamless brand experience
• Encouraging repeat purchases

The main issue with these goals(and others you may have) is the lack of awareness of your brand and marketsaturation. E-commerce companies rely on data to see where they are losingcustomers, how their competitors are doing, and what products are doing well.

PPC is a fantastic model fore-commerce businesses because it is also incredibly data-driven. You haveunlimited room for optimization, testing, and scaling, all of which complementan e-commerce business model perfectly. You can track your advertising campaignsexhaustively, right down to the last penny.

Plus, the process of optimizingan e-commerce store for conversions is fairly similar to optimizing a PPCcampaign for more clicks, meaning that it often comes naturally to e-commercestore owners.

2. You Set Your Own Budget

PPC is also an excellent choicefor e-commerce companies because your campaigns can be as small-scale orlarge-scale as you want. You don’t need a massive budget to reap the benefitsof e-commerce PPC advertising.

While traditional advertisingtypically requires a large or complete payment up-front before you see results,PPC is the direct opposite. You don’t pay until you start seeing results, andeven then, you can adjust your spend on the fly.

Let’s say you want to targetusers looking for a certain type of tea. Instead of running a full-scale adcampaign for this type of tea, you can use a smaller PPC ad campaign to targetusers already looking for that item. You can avoid spending on those users whohave no interest in your product.

3. You Can Get Very Granularin Your Ads

Perhaps the most beneficialaspect of PPC for e-commerce businesses is how incredibly targeted you can getwith your campaigns. You can choose exactly what you’re advertising and whoyou’re advertising it to.

Let’s say you run a clothinge-commerce store. If you get a new line of sweaters in, you can create a groupof ads specifically for those new sweaters.

Maybe the sweaters arewater-resistant and made of cashmere. You could have a series of ads with“water-resistant cashmere sweaters” in the copy, and you would then bid onkeywords like “best water-resistant cashmere sweater” and so on.

This means your ads are only everbeing delivered to people who you know are looking for exactly what you’readvertising in the first place. You really can’t get more specific than withe-commerce PPC.

Conclusion

PPC advertising offers e-commercebusinesses a powerful tool to drive targeted traffic and generate sales. Withits data-driven nature, scalability, and flexibility, PPC fits perfectly withthe goals and operations of an e-commerce business. Whether you are a smallstartup or a large enterprise, PPC can be tailored to meet your specific needsand budget. By leveraging the precision of keyword selection, the control ofbudget management, and the granularity of targeted advertising, e-commercebusinesses can achieve significant growth and a healthy ROI. Start exploringPPC for your e-commerce store today and experience the benefits it can bring toyour business.

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