PPC for E-commerce: Winning Strategies for Online Retail
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is one of the key pillars of online commerce. At YRV Dynamics, we’re the champions at driving success for our e-commerce clients. PPC offers distinct benefits for e-commerce expansion, setting it apart from other PR, organic social media marketing, or SEO strategies. Nonetheless, integrating multiple approaches often leads to successful outcomes. Here are some ways PPC can help your business:
- Immediate Scaling: As opposed to organic or PR, inventory can be purchased for traffic, conversion, or awareness goals
- Targeting: Audience targeting is usually included within within the platform. However, the recommended strategy is to upload with your own CRM data.
- Shopping/ Conversion Placements: Google Shopping and Meta Conversion placements allow for ease of conversion for purchase.
- Accountable ROI: This is getting tougher each year. Recently, this has been due to the FB Click ID vs. Google Click ID being removed from UTMs on Android and iPhones. Location opt-outs, such as iOS 14.5 and 17 updates, are great examples of Apple’s tech blocking Meta and Google’s ad tracking. However, other signals and additional benchmarks, such as MER (discussed in another article), should be included in your performance review.
- Consumer data: This includes additional demo and behavior analysis on users who purchased through PPC. It can also be included for people who click, engage, or view advertisers’ content.
- Secondary tasks can be influenced: PPC can influence supplementary measures such as scaling email or social following. This is due to the volume of traffic being sent to the site.
PPC Basics
It starts with a smart funnel. High, medium, and low media approaches separate the smart funnel layers:
- Awareness: top of the funnel, general awareness. It can also include video view campaigns. This usually lands within YouTube, Meta, Tik Tok, and Display.
- Mid-level: frequency and further muscle memory with various creative, also includes traffic and or video view campaigns
- Bottom/Conversion: Purchase, typically done with the final offer. This involves Buy Now, promo codes, or sales offers. This is typically Search or conversion campaigns in Meta.
There are also other approaches, such as conversion, video, and traffic-only campaigns. This means the objective should match what you want to fix, although the smart funnel provides the most coverage for a new brand.
Typically, most PPC spending lands in Meta and Google with supplemental coverage in X, Pinterest, or TikTok. The factors are generally which platform has the most reach and engagement with your target audience.
Product Specific
Products are usually targeted with shopping campaigns, where users can promote key content. This can also be done with keyword, search campaigns. For instance, targeting key terms that are relevant to the product category. This includes “jeans,” “t-shirts,” “shoes,” etc.… Products can also be included within the search extensions, although limited space exists.
More niche approaches in the buying landscape include PMAX and Shopping campaigns. Those can be discussed in detail in our other article, which can be viewed here.
Leveraging Retargeting Campaigns/ CRM Targeting
Retargeting audiences are defined as anyone who views, clicks, or engages with your ads. Once they’ve engaged, they are entered into a retargeting pool. These audiences are identified as users who are hand-raising for your product and visiting your site. Technically, these are mid-funnel users who are 2 or 3x+ frequency. These are considered “warm” audiences where key messaging activates those users to purchase. This can be a promo code or special price callouts.
Regarding CRM data, the best practice is to load your key purchase data into the platforms and leverage look-a-likes-based extrapolated from those users. This is a 1:1 you can match to your top-performing seed audiences. Generally, these do better than interest audiences from the platform. Using CRM-look-a-like audiences is a best practice for the top part of the smart funnel.
Optimizing Creative
More and more importance is placed on positioning the right creative for each phase of the funnel or objective. Also, A/B testing will reveal top-performing creatives. The campaign should challenge hero content to outperform others in the creative mix. Advertisers should be running experiments honing the correct creative image sequence to unlock a purchase.
Capitalizing on Season Trends and Sales Periods
From a small business perspective, the recommendation is to go strong two months before sale events. This includes the use of promo codes and key creative. Our YRV Dynamics team noticed with key shopping events, such as Black Friday, higher CPCs are due to competition. The goal is to bring users into your event funnel early, so they continually get messaging to convert early or during Black Friday. The only way that happens is to go early with messaging with the event messaging and the compelling offer. This approach also gives the advantage of lower CPCs and targeting earlier handraisers looking for a deal.
In terms of spending, that should be adjusted in a positive ROAS/MER benchmark. This should be highlighted in the performance reporting supplied by your agency or buying contractor. Also, the data should be in a dashboard format, tracking performance history. YRV Dynamics enhances our value for our clients by supplying detailed, performance and platform dashboards. This offering aligns with our recognition as a “Power My Analytics: Premiere Partner” and is free of charge to all of our clients.
AI and Tech Within Your PPC Mix
This pillar should be included within your contractor or agency PPC mix. Because of the variety of factors, there needs to be a streamlined approach when it comes to viewing data (discussed above). Tech-infused storytelling is needed to analyze the peaks and valleys within the performance data. Excel sheets are outdated; various nuances in the performance can be missed. If you receive reports in Excel, you’re working with an outdated contractor or agency.
AI also needs to be included in the creative process. This is why YRV Dynamics uses AI learned in ad copy and reporting reviewing. Please note this is through Chat GPT 4, which is more advanced than the free Chat GPT 3.5 version. This version trains the AI to use special Google and Meta ad formats. Please make sure your contractor is using the most up-to-date tech available.
Please note that outside of PPC, other spokes in the marketing wheel include email marketing, SEO, and organic — to name a few. However, PPC or paid search and social media offer compelling targeting with scale for measurable results.
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Yousaf Yunes is the CEO/ Lead Founder / Principal at YRV Dynamics, with more than 15 years of expertise in the advertising industry. He’s garnered a Top Rated Plus status on Upwork, earning a perfect job satisfaction score of 100% with twenty-one 5-star reviews from his Upwork clients. Yousaf earned certifications in Google Search and YouTube/Video and holds dual Blueprint certifications in Meta’s planning and buying. Yousaf has also won the Monty McKinney Award for the Institute of Advanced Advertising Studies (IAAS).
During his downtime, Yousaf is the lead moderator for the largest Meta group focused on Blueprint, known as “Facebook Blueprint Certification Prep,” which boasts a membership of over 30,000 individuals.
