8 Tips for Optimizing an Ecommerce PPC Campaign

It’s not easy being a small ecommerce site with giants like Amazon out there. But don’t get discouraged! We’ve seen great AdWords success with our ecommerce clients and we’re here to share our tips with you.

Please note: Even though AdWords is a self-service platform, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could be wasting thousands of dollars. Our team has years of experience getting our clients the LOWEST COST PER LEAD possible. If you’re worried you’re wasting money on PPC, check out the 3 question pay per click audit our team put together.

Tip #1: Track, Track Track!

You don’t have to rely on your gut anymore to know whether or not your marketing is working, so our first tip is to make sure you have proper ecommerce tracking set up in Analytics. Better data = better results.

Not sure if your tracking is set up right? Get a free Analytics analysis:

Tip #2: Use Broad and Branded Product Keywords

We always get super granular when it comes to our campaigns and ad groups, and with ecommerce, we make it a point to do both broad-term product campaigns and branded-term product campaigns. For example, you might have a “blenders” campaign and a “Vitamix” campaign (because apparently there are people out there who can afford to pay $800 for a blender).

Tip #3: Don’t Forget Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are keywords you DON’T want to target. Adding negative keywords to your keyword lists allows to you eliminate irrelevant traffic and erroneous clicks that are unlikely to convert.

For example, if you sell all high-end products, you might want to add “cheap” as a negative keyword. If someone is looking for used products on ebay or Craigslist, you might want to add those as negative keywords too. For people who aren’t ready to buy yet, you might want to add keywords that indicate someone is in the research phase of their shopping process: keywords like “reviews,” “info,” and “photos.” Monitor your accounts and add more negative keywords over time to continually optimize your ecommerce campaign.

Tip #4: Use Ad Extensions

Ad extensions can benefit a lot of campaigns, but for ecommerce paid search marketing in particular, it’s important to have the most relevant ad extensions for each campaign and ad group. For example, implementing the sitelinks extension to show your different product offerings in a broad category can help increase click-thru-rate on your ads.

One ad extension we like in particular for ecommerce companies is a new one to AdWords—the structured snippet ad extension. The structured snippet extension allows you to add descriptive headers to your ads in categories like brands, styles, types, etc.

Read more about the best ad extensions for ecommerce campaigns.

Tip #5: Add Calls to Action in the Ad Copy Headline

To achieve higher conversion rates for our ecommerce clients, we’ve successfully experimented with strong calls to action (CTA) in the ad copy headline (on sale, buy now, shop now, shop for). These CTAs can result in a lower click through rate (CTR) but also a much higher conversion rate. Always remember that clicks are not the goal in paid search advertising—conversions are the goal. A high CTR rate is not necessarily an indicator of PPC success!

Tip #6: Experiment with Keyword Level Bidding

Because we have a dedicated PPC team, they’ve got all day to set up and optimize accounts—which gives them ample time for aggressive keyword level bidding (if you’re running a business, you probably won’t have this luxury.).

Two tips for keyword level bidding when it comes to ecommerce campaigns:

1. Create two separate ad groups for singular and plural keywords. – this will allow you to bid higher on the plural keywords, which historically have a higher CTR and conversion rate.
2. Don’t forget about seasonality! – certain keywords perform better during certain seasons so adjust those keyword bids accordingly.

Tip #7: Maximize Online Real Estate with Shopping Campaigns

For ecommerce companies, it’s ideal to have as many listings as possible on the first page of search results—so having both a traditional text ad and shopping ad on page one for any give product search is desirable.

Read more about shopping campaigns.

Tip #8: Include Remarketing

Ever wonder about those people who visit your products page but don’t actually buy them? What about the people who put the product in a shopping cart and then abandon it? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could market specifically to those people? You can with remarketing!

Is Professional Ecommerce PPC Management Worth It?

Read our free ecommerce PPC case study, where we helped a kitchen equipment retailer increase conversions by 29% and year-over-year AdWords revenue by 124%.