5 Efficient PPC Strategies For Ecommerce Campaigns

A 2022 PYMNTS analysis revealed that Amazon and Walmart combined account for about half of the U.S. ecommerce markets. Amazon accounts for 45% of all U.S. digital retail revenue. Walmart is responsible for 5%. Wayfair (1.5%), another big name, plays a significant role in U.S. Ecommerce.

Image source: PYMNTS

Independent ecommerce businesses spend a lot time thinking about how they can remain relevant in an industry dominated largely by giants like Amazon and eBay. You are also constantly looking for new product niches and avoiding direct competition with strong brands and better marketing.

Amazon is not the place to be.

Ecommerce businesses have found ways to adapt to the difficult environment by investing heavily in Amazon's seller network, effectively becoming captives to North America's largest online retailer.

Although this may seem like a safe bet for Amazon sellers, the competition is more fierce among them than between Amazon's paid and organic search traffic. Amazon's internal algorithms can be more opaque than Google's. Sellers who use Fulfillment by Amazon logistics services lose nearly half of their sales revenue.

It's safer to work with prospects outside of Amazon, even though it isn't easy.

Amazon is not the only channel you can use to sell your products, nor the most important. Instead of doubling down on Amazon you should develop an all-of the-above approach for ecommerce marketing that covers every aspect of your digital sales. This starts with flexible, sharp PPC strategies.

PPC Strategies Effective for Ecommerce Campaigns

These five PPC strategies can be used to increase visibility of your ecommerce assets, drive prospects to them, and boost conversions over the long-term.

1. Make smarter choices about campaign budget allocation

A typical SME spends between $9,000 and $10,000 per month on PPC campaigns. This is $108,000 to $120,000 annually. Although smaller ecommerce companies might spend less per month in absolute terms, their PPC intensity will likely be higher because they heavily rely on targeted searches to drive traffic towards product listings.

Optmyzr, a PPC automation platform, recommends third-party budget allocation software that helps advertisers manage their campaign spending. Optmyzr’s Optimize Budgets tool allocates and reallocates budgets based upon campaign goals. It also creates accurate performance projections based in campaign budget changes.

After your campaign has been completed, you can use a third party app or a spreadsheet-based program to monitor spend and evaluate it daily. Set up real-time alerts so you can monitor rare, but potentially fatal cost spirals and take immediate action if they occur. This will require a third-party app, but it is a small price to be able to keep your budget within reach.

2. Segment product keywords by intent, brandedness and query efficiency

This context defines "branded" as being associated with a particular label or manufacturer, while "unbranded" or non-branded means being associated with a brand neutral product type.

Search intent is measured in high-level terms by query efficiency. In spite of brandness, efficient queries are specific and descriptive. This suggests a higher stage in the buyer's journey. Inefficient queries can be generic or open-ended. This suggests that the prospect is still collecting information and isn't ready to convert. These queries are sometimes called "catch all" questions.

This is the general hierarchy of segmentation:

• Catch-all terms with low spend and priority
• Brand terms with high priority and low spend
• High priority and medium spend for unbranded terms

Budget control is the main reason why brands terms are not given high priority (since they have the highest intent and therefore the highest potential ROI). Google assigns high-priority terms to first so setting them as medium priority will avoid bidding wars against better-capitalized sellers.

3. To reduce wasteful spending, you can specify negative keywords

In the rush to make ads live, this is a common oversight in PPC campaigns. This can be costly.

It's best to review the specifications for each product and listing that you intend to add to your campaign. Then, compile a complete list of negative terms you would like to eliminate from your search results. Even if this takes you longer than you would like, be thorough. You should exclude "V-neck" or "low cut" from a crew neck T-shirt. Also, "long-sleeved" and "dress shirt" are not acceptable terms.

4. Get your PPC and organic content marketing campaigns synchronized

Why should PPC ecommerce marketers consider content marketing?

Organic content's potential is too great to ignore, even if ecommerce businesses are rightly focused on driving high-intent visitors to product pages or category listings. Marketing Insider Group research shows that organic SEO content generates eight-times the traffic as paid media and organic social networks combined.

You can improve the product listings. You can make them more descriptive and appealing, without being too salesy, and more focused on longtail keywords that are of high interest to your prospects. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool, despite its decreasing utility.

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A high-quality off-listing article can provide a greater indirect boost to your PPC ROI but could also drive more long-term benefits.

Particularly, you should focus on creating detailed product, category and decision guides to build your credibility with prospects. To get ideas, prioritize topics and create content outlines, you can use recent campaign performance data and general keyword and traffic data. To drive traffic to these assets, run lower-priority PPC campaign to increase traffic. However, don't let them take too much budget share as their target audience is usually low-to-medium in intent.

5. Make your CTAs short and direct

PPC advertising space is limited and high-intent buyers do not need convincing. Your PPC ad copy must contain the most important, decision-driven information regarding the product. This information should be presented clearly and logically to enable buyers to read, absorb, and incorporate it into their decision-making process before they scroll past it.

Let the product speak for itself. It doesn't matter if you have a long or creative call to actions; in most cases, "Buy Now" or variations thereof will suffice.

PPC will be relevant in the future

PPC is one the most popular ecommerce marketing channels. Many savvy marketers see PPC as obsolete, despite all the disruptions in ecommerce and digital advertising more generally.

Although this is understandable, it misses the current state and potential roles of PPC in marketing going forward. Even though there are important innovations such as Google's featured Snippets, the increasingly crowded organic search results pages (SERPs) are becoming less useful for today’s e-commerce prospects. These prospects are also more familiar with digital commerce than they were ten or fifteen years ago. They are more sophisticated overall.

PPC content that is effective solves the SERP degrading issue and provides relevant, high-quality solutions to savvy users.

This may be less important for advertisers in ecommerce in the medium-term depending on how Bing and Google integrate AI into search interfaces. PPC is the best way to break through the noise. Your competitors will use it as much as you do if you don't make the most of it.