eCommerce PPC Campaigns
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Our PPC strategy implements the following services
Campaign Strategy & Execution
Keyword Research & Development
Remarketing, Display, Youtube & Shopping
Conversions & ROI Tracking
Unique Ad Creation & A/B Testing
Account PPC Management & Reporting
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Pet SuppliesPPC: A Staple of Digital Marketing
No catalog of digital marketing services or strategies would be complete without eCommerce PPC services. Like eCommerce SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, outreach and rewards campaigns, and even email marketing, PPC, or pay-per-click marketing, is a staple of digital marketing.
However, it is not entirely the same as some other digital marketing strategies, like SEO. The good news is that it can often be used in tandem with them as a part of your overall digital marketing strategy and your long term game for your online business goals.
What Are eCommerce PPC Services?
Essentially, PPC, or pay-per-click, is a form of digital marketing in which businesses pay every time a visitor, a potential customer, clicks on one of their ads, hence the name. This type of marketing enables advertisers to pay for visits to their site rather than attempting to gain them organically, using strategies like SEO.
PPC encompasses groups of different types of ads that show up online; businesses pay to have their ads display in these locations, such as embedded in YouTube videos, at the top of Google Search results, in social media feeds, and elsewhere, and when an interested user clicks on the ad, it will take that user to a landing page on which the user can then “purchase” the advertised goods or services.
Each time a user clicks on a PPC ad, the hope is that the user will convert (conclude a sale) and so the business that pays to have the ad listed pays a fee every time there is a click on one of their ads. There are many different ways in which users can convert, and we track for a multitude of these, including qualified leads, sales on your website, phone calls to your business, and even actions users take such as downloading brochures, files or other materials.
This is a very high level overview; further on we will elaborate on some of the different types of paid ads campaigns that there are, but first we need to understand the difference between eCommerce PPC and eCommerce SEO, since they are often utilized together.
PPC and SEO: What’s the Difference?
Whereas PPC stands for pay-per-click, SEO stands for search engine optimization. Both of these strategies hinge on the keyword research that is performed at the outset of a campaign, but they perform and generate results in different ways.
SEO is a set of strategies that attempts to “streamline” or “optimize” a business’s website to make it more appealing to search engines as well as users. By optimizing different features of the business’s website such as publishing fresh content, updating the site structure and developing a linking strategy, that website will be more crawlable to search engines.
As a result, when a search engine (such as Google) crawls the website, it will index it more favorably for certain search terms. Then, when a user types those search terms into that same search engine, the website in question will appear higher on the search engine results page. The idea of SEO is to get an eCommerce website to rank as highly as possible for as many competitive, relevant keywords as possible, putting them high on the SERPs and in front of as many target customers as possible.
PPC, like SEO, is an effort to get certain listings to appear at the tops of search engine results pages, except in pay per click campaigns, businesses bid directly on keywords and placement. You can effectively “buy” the top spot for ad placement in order to get in front of more users. This is not the case with SEO, nor is it possible.
However, due to the nature of PPC and SEO, they are often utilized together as a part of a long term digital marketing strategy, for a number of very good reasons.
Utilizing PPC and SEO Together
The best, most effective digital marketing strategies make use of SEO, PPC and other digital marketing strategies, but SEO and PPC, when used together, can result in significant gains for eCommerce businesses.
Advantages of PPC Marketing
PPC campaigns often generate quick turnaround and upticks in traffic, making them effective components of a holistic digital marketing strategy. There are actually quite a large number of draws to pay-per-click advertising that make it viable and lucrative for businesses in many industries to pursue.
It’s not that paid search campaigns are better than any other aspect of digital marketing. Rather, it’s that they combine a large number of beneficial attributes that other avenues of digital marketing don’t offer. Together with these other initiatives, PPC can make up a completely robust digital marketing strategy.
That being said, here are some of the distinct advantages that PPC marketing offers over other methods, such as SEO and social media marketing.
Users Often Click on the First Search Result
Whether for better or worse, the fact is that many online shoppers will click on the first listing that comes up when they enter a search. Those that don’t click on the very first listing are highly likely to click on one of the other top results, and the top spots are usually occupied with ads.
In fact, as the user scrolls, the likelihood of clicking on the next listing in the lineup increases, and results at the bottom of the page experience fewer clicks and conversions than higher search engine results listings.
Figures associated with these claims vary depending on the source, but digital marketing firms and analysts agree that online shoppers are more likely to click on the top or one of the top listings than they are to scroll down the page. Some estimates suggest that nearly 50% of clicks go to the top three results, which are often ads.
Since these positions can be purchased, PPC represents an effective way to generate new traffic for your business.
PPC Campaigns Can Generate Fast Results
Another great thing about PPC campaigns is that they can be used to ramp up new traffic almost overnight. You can begin a PPC campaign and in a few days see noticeable results.
Since the results and structure of PPC campaigns can be managed from one dashboard (depending on the services you use) you can launch a campaign very quickly and start to see results almost immediately. Depending on what the goals of your online business are, PPC may represent the most effective way to improve reach and boost traffic to your website.
Complement to Your Other Digital Marketing Initiatives
SEO will slowly build your domain authority over time, bringing in more organic traffic and resulting in higher organic rankings for competitive keywords. Social media marketing will give your brand a voice and make it seem personable, cultivating trust with your customers – which is indispensable. An effective email marketing strategy can help you foster lasting relationships with your current customers, learn more about their interests, and create a higher lifetime value.
PPC is the complement to all of these initiatives, balancing out your digital marketing strategy with ads that appear in key locations at the perfect times. It can be used in tandem with all of your other strategies to ramp up traffic in the long term or during key competitive times, such as before holidays and at other times of the year when business would be slow.
You Can Control Who Sees Your Ads
One of the greatest benefits of PPC marketing is that you have complete control over nearly every element of your campaign. You can control more than just the ad copy and the keywords for which you want to bid.
You can control fine details of the campaign, such as the devices on which your ads display and when they display. You can even include the zip codes where you want your ads to appear – or not to appear. If you notice an uptick in clicks and conversions in one place, you can target that location more aggressively.
You can also exercise precise control over time-of-day targeting, which enables you to determine where you want your ads to display, with respect to the hours of the day and the days of the week. This gives you another layer of control over the performance of your campaigns.
Basically, if it is a factor that influences user behavior, you can exhibit a fair amount of control over it, creating ads that are perfectly optimized to profit from user behavior.
Campaign Optimizations Made Quickly and Efficiently
Let’s say that you notice, during the course of a PPC campaign, that a certain ad is not performing well. It could be due to the ad copy, the structure of the landing page, to the time of day that the ads appear or even to the keywords for which you bid.
All of these things can be easily managed and altered as you see fit during the course of your campaign. In fact, another great thing about eCommerce PPC management services is that they can be utilized to make continuous, ongoing improvements to your PPC ads. By allowing a campaign to run for a long enough period of time, you are able to obtain data that clearly displays what ads are converting and which are not. This allows you to make educated optimizations to your PPC campaign to ensure that it is generating the most cost-effective solutions.
This potential for ongoing optimizations and improvements is the result of another significant advantage of PPC marketing – the fact that data is easily visible and traceable.
Promote Your Brand, Increase Reach
Digital marketing strategies like SEO involve a lot of decentralized processes and the effects can be slightly difficult to track. With PPC, you can immediately get your ads in front of new potential customers, which will have an effect on your brand exposure and outreach.
Since you can have some control over what searches prompt your ads to appear and where they appear, you can decide which segments of the market you want to interact more heavily with your brand, increasing your exposure and reach, improving brand awareness and equity.
See, Trace and Manage Campaign Data
It wouldn’t be possible to make all of these ongoing improvements to PPC marketing if you couldn’t see exactly what users were doing and when.
You can follow click-through-rates (CTR), conversions, customer behavior with different landing pages, how ads perform with respect to time of day, geographic positioning and ad group, and so much more. You can even follow user behavior after they click on your ad, how they navigate through your website and what their ultimate actions as visitors are.
Your ability to trace and catalog this data is valuable because it will enable you to streamline and optimize your PPC campaign for performance, but it is also useful for two other very important reasons, which are listed below.
Learn more about your customers and their behavior. The first reason this data is valuable is because it can be applied to your current PPC campaign. Are you shoppers not buying at night? Then you can stop displaying ads at certain hours of the day – but that’s something you might not have noticed without the ability to track user behavior.
The same could be said for the other insight you gather about your customers during the course of a PPC campaign.
This data can be applied to your other marketing campaigns. The other benefit that comes along with being able to trace data associated with your customers and their behavior revolves around your ability to apply it to other facets of your digital marketing strategy. Remember, many businesses do not just run effective PPC campaigns – rather, PPC makes up just a portion of a digital marketing strategy.
This means that you can apply data gleaned about your users and their behavior to other digital marketing initiatives like eCommerce SEO, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing campaigns, and so much more.
For example, PPC could give you some insight into keywords that appear lucrative but are not well aligned with the search intent of your target market. Ad variations that do or do not perform well can help you fine tune your content strategy insomuch as it appeals to your customers. The data you gather from your PPC campaigns can serve as an indispensable tool in the refinement of your holistic digital marketing strategy.
Provides Fast Track to Tops of Search Engine Results Pages
SEO can get you to the tops of the search engine results pages (SERPs) but more often than not it’s a long game to get there. A well implemented PPC strategy can get you right to the tops of the SERPs. You just need to bid on the right keywords and in a day or two, your listings will be right there, front and center at the tops of the SERPs in front of your customers’ eyes.
Types of PPC Ads
Not all PPC ads are created equal, and an experienced PPC agency is more than likely to offer all of the following or at least some combination of the following eCommerce PPC campaigns.
Google Shopping Ads
A Google Shopping Ad, also known as a Google Product Listing Ad, or simply as a Product Listing Ad (PLA) is an ad that appears at the top of the SERPs in the form of a product listing, typically with a picture, brand and price.
These ads, which display above organic results and include pictures, can be highly effective channels for driving targeted, interested traffic to your online store and can result in significant conversions. They’re particularly effective for businesses that sell physical products or when customers are brand loyal or price sensitive.
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Amazon Ads
Amazon has over 12 million products, which makes appearing in the search results very difficult for many products. Amazon has become so huge that it almost functions like a search engine at this point. Amazon Ads are similar to other search ads, in that they are paid postings that appear on shopping results pages as well as on product pages within Amazon – these don’t show up on Google. They can be an effective method for reaching the eyes of interested shoppers who might not otherwise be put in front of your products.
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Search Ads (Multiple Search Engines)
Google Search Ads are the quintessential PPC ads. These are the ads that display in the form of text at the top of the search results pages, above the organic listings. These ads are highly effective at ramping up traffic to your online business in the short term, but an experienced PPC management company can tailor your approach to generate sustainable, higher quality leads through search ads, even in the long term.
In-Stream Ads
As the name would suggest, in-stream ads are ads that appear when data is streaming. Most often these ads are encountered on YouTube or embedded in different video content, but in-stream ads may also appear in other streamed content like music and games. Depending on how well you target in stream ads, they can be highly viable for reaching very interested, very engaged audiences.
Another benefit of in-stream advertising is that it enables the administrator of the campaign to exercise very precise targeting. They can be very closely tailored to demographics, such as students or first time parents, or even according to life events. This fine level of targeting enables users to be targeted according to their specific interests to capitalize on their unique needs and intent to purchase.
Social Media Ads
Social media platforms are immensely popular and users engage with them endlessly. Therefore, getting in front of interested eyes on social media can result in big gains for your business. Simply put, social media ads display in some manner, either as a video, a listing, or some other promotion, in the feed or display of a social media platform.
Social media ads are highly valuable because they can be used to pursue interested customers – but the other thing that’s valuable about them is that some customers might not even be aware that a given listing is an ad at all. This throws back in some credibility, since some shoppers are inherently distrustful of advertising. If they believe that an ad listing has organically appeared in their feed, they may be more likely to convert, or at least to explore your products or services.
learn moreIn addition to these types of ads, there are many others that might be utilized as a portion of your overall PPC marketing strategy. Get in touch with us at 888-982-8269 to speak with a PPC specialist about what types of ads would be the most beneficial for your business.
PPC for Lead Generation
While much of the value of a PPC campaign is measured in actual conversions and sales that arise from a visitor’s first click, there is also great value in the fact that a PPC campaign can be used as a highly effective tool for increasing brand reach and exposure. Not every first time click will result in a sale, despite the fact that many of those visitors may have a real, genuine interest in your products and services.
It may take a few visits to your website before a user actually becomes a customer, but sometimes it all starts with the exposure provided by the first impression – even if that impression doesn’t generate a click the first time around.
In this way, a PPC campaign also functions like a digital billboard, helping to catch the attention of interested shoppers from all over the web, even if the first few times they simply scroll past the ad. Lead generation, like PPC itself, is an important aspect of a complete digital marketing strategy, and a PPC campaign can be highly effective at generating leads for your business.
eCommerce PPC Management by 1Digital®
Every eCommerce marketing agency has its own PPC strategy. Over the years we’ve developed a pay-per-click management strategy that, while validated by results, is flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse clients. Our strategy also enables us to develop industry specific PPC campaigns that take into account the unique circumstances surrounding each industry; we even track specific KPIs for all of our clients, with respect to their industry, unique needs, and more. Here’s a look into what a PPC campaign with our PPC marketing agency looks like.
Developing a Strategy
Our process begins with developing a strategy for your eCommerce business. This discovery process is highly consultative. We meet with clients to gain an understanding of their business, its history, positioning, competitive advantages and its core competencies. At the same time, our PPC specialists conduct a thorough analysis to better understand our clients’ overall industry and their key competitors.
During our strategy development phase we’ll learn everything we can about your business so we can lay the groundwork for success in every digital marketing initiative that we pursue, whether it’s in PPC, SEO or in some other area. This is your chance to tell us all about your goals so we can create a game plan to meet and and even help you exceed them.
Ad Copy Creation
Original ad copy creation constitutes a portion of our PPC management services, and is provided by our team of professional copywriters. We’ll perform research on your target market, take into account existing copy on your website, your brand identity and voice, and then carefully craft targeted ad copy to appeal directly to the target audiences in each campaign.
We’ll also monitor the performance of each ad group in order to make changes to your ad copy as necessary in order to generate the highest possible performance.
Keyword Research
Keywords are critically important in the development of an overall PPC strategy, just as they are in an SEO strategy. Keywords will give you insight into search intent and customer expectations, and with the insight you can create ad groups that are optimized for conversions.
Once we’ve uncovered the ideal list of keywords to target, we can begin to develop the details of your campaign, which we will monitor and optimize over time for the highest possible return-on-ad-spend (ROAS).
Competitive Analysis
For our clients that are interested in their competitive positioning – or the positioning of their key competitors – 1Digital® Agency can provide a thorough competitive analysis. This analysis will vary according to competitive density and the industry at large, and will accommodate the needs of the client in question. However, these analyses can take into account competitor’s keyword share, their ad copy strategy, which products and services they are marketing most heavily, customers they may be targeting, and more.
Remarketing Analysis
Sometimes a user will visit your website but not convert. The fact that they’ve visited your website at all, whether to learn more about your products or just out of general interest, may very well qualify them as a potential lead. Remarketing refers to the process of displaying specific ads to users that have visited your website, allowing you to convert potential leads and one-time visitors into customers.
Dynamic Remarketing
Dynamic remarketing extracts even more value from your campaign than remarketing. Dynamic remarketing enables us to track which products or services visitors to your website have viewed, and then pitches product specific ads to those customers, even often when they are visiting other sites. It is a highly targeted and effective marketing technique that can be used to convert potentially highly qualified leads, and a highly valuable component of a comprehensive suite of PPC services.
Ad Campaign & Ad Group Creation
After we’ve concluded the keyword research portion of a campaign, the next step is for us to create ad campaigns and assign ad groups. A PPC marketing campaign will often consist of multiple ad campaigns and groups that have different budgets, goals and other settings.
For example, one ad campaign could be focused on spreading brand awareness whereas another could be aimed solely at increasing sales of a specific product or group of products. Since different ads will appeal to different target audiences, attentive ad management is necessary to ensure that the right ads display in the right places at the right times – and that the proper resources are allocated to each group to maximize both impressions and conversions.
Ongoing Optimization
In addition to setting ad groups and then assigning ad variants to them, there are a number of ongoing optimizations that we make to each campaign to ensure that we’re actively maximizing your return on investment (ROI).
Landing Page Optimization. A landing page is the page to which an ad will direct a user that has clicked on it. This aspect of website design can vastly impact the performance of your ad campaigns. The landing page that a user arrives on will either align with the expectations set by the ad copy or it will fall short – we call this landing page optimization and it is an aspect of web design that directly and significantly impacts conversions. Sometimes landing page optimization simply entails choosing the right web page – other times it involves suggesting or performing edits to given web pages. Of course, this varies by campaign, but the best eCommerce marketing agencies will optimize landing pages.
Bid Management. When and where your ads appear will vary according to how much you are willing to pay for the top positions on the page, as well as how others bidding on the same page are willing to pay. We utilize state of the art software to track spend as well as the performance of each ad group to ensure that the bid spend is exactly what you need to for each campaign in order to maximize conversions.
Negative Keyword Identification. In every pay-per-click campaign, there will be keywords that are irrelevant to the campaign that should be blocked from it. Negative keyword identification prevents your ads from displaying when these irrelevant keywords are searched, which will save you money and drive up the performance of your campaign. 1Digital® Agency performs bi-weekly audits of your campaign’s SQRs (search query reports) so that we can identify negative keywords and add them to our list.
Device Targeting. Not all shoppers are the same, and some shoppers will specifically use their mobile devices to look for goods or services. Furthermore, even the same demographic might not convert at rates that are consistent across devices. Only a fine level of attention to the details of device performance will yield this useful information to ensure that your highest performing ads appear on the proper devices for conversion rate optimization.
Time of Day Targeting. Just as not all users will convert equally across devices – even for the same ads – an ad variant that might perform excellently early in the day might flop if it displayed mere hours later or at night. Sometimes, market research will yield helpful insights into user behavior. At other times, this information will be picked up through the continuous monitoring of your campaign performance. Then, we can apply user behavior trends with respect to time of day to further optimize your campaign.
Geographic Targeting. Sometimes, the same ad variant will perform very differently with respect to location. Just like time-of-day targeting, this information can sometimes be gleaned from market research and preparation, but sometimes it’s not something that will become apparent until after the campaign has begun to develop momentum. Nonetheless, we keep a close eye on what groups convert, and where they convert – to ensure that your ads will only be displayed in locations that are conversion-optimized. Moreover, we will reallocate ads to locations that convert at better rates while cutting back on bidding to have them display elsewhere.
Demographic Targeting. If we find that certain demographics convert more highly than others, then we will make adjustments during the course of your campaign to ensure that we display your ads in front of conversion oriented audiences.
A/B Testing. Sometimes, the only way to know which ad or set of ads will perform the best is with old fashioned A/B testing. The truth is, sometimes user behavior can only be known by the data, and that some intangibles may encourage conversions whereas others discourage them. The only way to key in on these, and make the appropriate adjustments to the campaign, is by giving users two ads. The one that converts more highly is the one we’ll proceed with, in this manner making continuous improvements to the performance of your campaign.
Ad Copy Refreshes. During the course of your campaign, we may also provide ad copy refreshes for your campaigns, given the performance of your ad variants and groups. If we find that it is necessary to update the ad copy, we may provide you with additional variants to improve the overall performance of our PPC management services.
Improving Your Quality Score: Earn More, Spend Less
Our PPC management services are defined by one goal: helping you meet your goals, whether they revolve around growing sales or simply increasing your reach as a part of a lead generation campaign. Much of this will center on improving your quality score.
Quality score is a figure that is auto-generated by Google and assigned to your campaign. It gives an objective analysis of the relevance of the keywords you target as well as the relevance of your ads; it also takes into account the user experience associated with your campaign. Your quality score will take into account many factors, including but not limited to click through rates, historical performance, and keyword relevance. A higher quality score is associated with better overall campaign performance.
All of our efforts help to keep your quality score high, minimizing the amount you spend when compared to how much you earn back. In that way, we can keep cost-per-acquisition (CPA) down, while continuously driving overall return on investment (ROI) up.
Start with a Free eCommerce PPC Audit
Perhaps the best way to start is with a free eCommerce PPC audit from 1Digital® Agency. This will give you real, current analytical insight into the performance of your PPC campaign and uncover opportunities for improvement.
Get a Free PPC Audit Now
learn moreThis is one of the ways in which the ability to track all of the data and every aspect of your PPC campaign becomes very useful. A PPC audit will show you how your ad campaigns are performing with respect to audience, location, placement, device and more. It will show you where your campaigns are performing strongly, and where, if at all, the campaigns can be improved. We can then gather insight into what improvements can be made and what you can expect from them.
If there’s an improvement that can be made, our analysts will find it and introduce you to options for optimizing and improving your project, so you can invest with confidence in your eCommerce PPC campaign. To get started with a PPC audit, get in touch with one of our specialists to learn more about these PPC services at 888. 982. 8269
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