Now that most businesses operate online, the competition has increased exponentially in many industries.
It’s becoming harder to increase revenue without employing advanced eCommerce marketing strategies that help you stand out across various marketing channels and search engines. When running paid ads on multiple advertising platforms, it’s getting more expensive to acquire new customers, and successful ads require more planning than ever before.
Although an increase in competition doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. It just means you need to work a little harder to get results. The good news is you can start driving more online sales and organic search traffic by using the following 11 simple and effective eCommerce marketing strategies to enhance your eCommerce marketing.
Remarketing, also called retargeting, is a PPC ad strategy and one of the most important eCommerce marketing tactics you can use. This is a successful eCommerce marketing strategy that allows you to reconnect with potential buyers who have already interacted with your brand through various digital advertising initiatives. This paid advertising campaign type can be simple or highly advanced depending on your experience.
Retargeting is when you run PPC ads that specifically target only users who have previously interacted with your brand, either by visiting your website, clicking on your ads, or adding items to their product pages but not completing a purchase. Since 92% of first-time visitors don’t intend to buy, you can influence them into making a purchase by showing them more ads. This keeps them in your digital marketing funnel and increase eCommerce sales; even when you don’t know who they are.
The statistics vary between organizations, but generally speaking, a solid remarketing campaign can boost conversions by around 50%. When people see your ads more than once, your brand becomes familiar, making them more likely to click and convert. To maximize performance, use Google Analytics and other website analytics tools to monitor user behavior, PPC advertising, and adjust your ad spend accordingly.
This tactic reduces your customer acquisition cost and helps grow your customer lifetime value by re-engaging users who already know your brand. Combining remarketing with email marketing follow-ups can further enhance repeat purchases, strengthen your customer loyalty program, and build brand loyalty over time. This is why market research and selecting your target audience—and analyzing customer preferences—are important for online retailers looking to reach prospective customers.
Google Shopping campaigns are are an essential part of any eCommerce marketing plan because they reach consumers right when they’re searching for something specific that you happen to offer. When a user searches for a phrase related to your products on search engines, your ads will show up at the top of the search results. You can include important information in your ads, like product images, prices, special offers, customer ratings, product descriptions, and anything else designed to persuade users to click.
How it works is pretty simple. First, you create a master list of product data in a spreadsheet that identifies your products and all the pertinent information. This gets uploaded to Google’s Merchant Center, which you’ll connect to your Google Ads account. From there, Google’s algorithm automatically matches your product offerings to user queries, helping you generate leads efficiently.
Instead of creating one campaign with one Ad Group that gets divided into product groups, consider running separate Google Shopping campaigns tailored to attributes that are important to your market. For instance, you can run a generic campaign, a brand campaign, and a campaign that runs ads based on brand and size queries.
This way, you’ll reach people searching for generic terms (like “men’s hoodies”), brand-specific terms (like “Nike men’s hoodies”), and size-specific searches (like “Nike men’s hoodies XXL”). This type of structure is superior because you get better control over negative keywords, and increasing your bids will increase sales and yield more targeted impressions and clicks among prospective customers.
Integrating search engine optimization (SEO) and a content marketing program with your Shopping ads enhances your visibility across search engines and improves your organic traffic and organic search traffic. Combine this with a loyalty program to reward loyal customers and encourage repeat purchases after an initial sale.
You’ll have more campaigns to manage, but it’s worth the effort because it will get you more targeted traffic in the long run. If you’re looking for ways to drive traffic to your eCommerce store, you need to run Google Shopping ads. These ads not only help you generate sales but also improve your brand’s visibility across search engines, advertising platforms, and other marketing channels.
One last tip is to use remarketing with your Shopping ads. The average conversion for Google Shopping ads is just under 2%, which doesn’t seem like much. However, these ads work well as the foundation for a powerful retargeting campaign. Leveraging digital marketing techniques like pairing Shopping ads with email marketing and social media posts can increase your repeat conversions, long-term revenue, and customer loyalty while appealing to new audiences.
Did you know that Amazon’s brand ads convert an average of three times higher than Google Shopping Ads? This makes them a powerful component of a winning eCommerce marketing plan for online retailers. The sponsored brand ads, in particular, will promote up to three products at a time and get displayed in search results across the site.
Since they show up when users are looking for something specific, it makes sense that they’d see a high conversion rate and can significantly increase sales for your eCommerce brand. Additionally, incorporating user-generated content such as reviews, testimonials, and influencer marketing into your Amazon strategy can boost credibility and engagement, further improving your sales by encouraging creators to showcase your products through authentic reviews and demonstrations. Featuring your key selling points in the ad creative and product descriptions increases click-through rates and appeals to consumer expectations for high quality content.
An influencer marketing campaign can establish trust, generate leads, and create social proof that boosts your credibility. For example, a beauty brand can collaborate with popular TikTok or Instagram influencers to demonstrate their product offerings in video marketing clips — a highly effective TikTok marketing strategy aligned with modern social media trends and industry trends. These collaborations not only reach new audiences but also improve customer retention through authentic, relatable storytelling that cultivates brand loyalty and satisfied customers.
Are you against using pop-up ads to avoid annoying users? This is common among eCommerce marketers, but it’s based on a myth. Pop-ups have a reputation for being off-putting to web users, but that’s not actually deserved.
In spite of this reputation, there are plenty of effective pop-up ad strategies that are proven to generate higher conversion rates, whether it’s sales or email list signups. Pop-ups can be an excellent content marketing tool when used correctly, as they capture leads and encourage immediate action, all while supporting your eCommerce marketing goals and broader digital advertising mix.
You can use pop-ups with your marketing efforts as long as they adhere to Google’s guidelines. For example, a pop-up offering 10% off for first-time buyers can reduce bounce rates and encourage repeat purchases. When paired with search engine optimization SEO and content marketing, these pop-ups can be an effective way to draw people to your product pages and encourage sales on both desktop and mobile devices. Track results via website analytics to measure how specific messages improve the customer experience and inspire prospective customers to convert.
If you’re not cross-selling and upselling, you’re leaving money on the table. These classic marketing tactics are essential for increasing average order value and boosting customer lifetime value while supporting your overarching business goals and business model.
Upselling is when you aim to increase the value of each purchase. Cross-selling is increasing the number of items on the sales ticket. For example, if you run a custom t-shirt eCommerce brand, cross-selling might include offering customers the same designs on a baseball hat, or providing a discount on additional t-shirts. Upselling might involve offering an upgrade to a higher quality, more expensive t-shirt fabric (like organic cotton or hemp), while emphasizing the key selling points in your product descriptions.
These marketing efforts will boost revenue, increase the amount of satisfied customers and loyalty, and support your efforts to build long-term relationships with current customers without raising your customer acquisition cost. With an automated loyalty program, you can reward loyal customers who take advantage of cross-sell offers, turning one-time buyers into long-term advocates. However, the items you cross-sell need to be relevant to customer preferences or they won’t work.
This approach also helps build customer retention while reducing churn, which is a cornerstone of any successful eCommerce marketing strategy. Use Google Analytics, social media analytics, and a clear SEO strategy to identify patterns in buying behavior and craft personalized offers that maximize your average order value.
One of the best examples of cross-selling can be seen in the marketing for Dollar Shave Club. Before a subscription box is mailed out, customers get an email asking if they would like to add any additional products to their order, like aftershave, wet wipes, or hair care products.
Cross-selling and upselling are convenient because they won’t cost you additional eCommerce marketing efforts, yet they can help acquire more prospective customers and boost repeat business affordably. With the right application connected to your shopping-cart system, all you need to do is program the offers once, and they’ll run on their own—helping online retailers achieve better ROI and expanding market share naturally.
You may have heard expert digital marketers say that social media marketing is only good for building brand awareness and isn’t ideal for sales. Well, that’s not entirely true. It depends on the platform and your market. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook have proven they can directly increase online sales and help eCommerce sites grow new audiences. For example, Instagram has a built-in shopping feature that makes it easy for people to buy from businesses. All you need is a Facebook product catalog, and you can tag your products in your Instagram posts. Now, when your target customers see your social media posts promoting your products, they can click on your tags to visit your product pages instead of having to search your website for the awesome products they just saw on Instagram.
By connecting your Facebook product catalog, you can tag products in social media posts, helping followers shop instantly. This strategy reduces friction, boosts engagement, and supports your eCommerce marketing plan by turning social engagement into sales.
Video marketing also plays a key role here — for instance, a beauty brand could share short tutorials that highlight products and link directly to shoppable product pages. Combine this with influencer marketing partnerships to expand your reach, cultivate brand loyalty, and increase sales across social platforms. This type of campaign strengthens customer experience, encourages repeat business, and creates satisfied customers who become brand advocates.
You’ve probably visited a website or received an email from a company that was promoting another eCommerce business. This is called cross-promotion, and it’s one of the most effective eCommerce marketing strategies around and another way to strengthen your eCommerce marketing plan.
The basic idea is that you find a company to partner with who will promote your products across multiple marketing channels and helps you access new audiences and target customers. For example, if your online business sells coffee, you could partner with a mug company for cross-promotions. This content marketing involves creating mutually beneficial campaigns that appeal to both audiences and align with your shared business goals.
Joint giveaways, co-branded ads, or email marketing campaigns can all generate leads while lowering the money you spend on customer acquisition. Partnerships are especially effective when combined with eCommerce marketing to build trust and awareness. This strategy also enhances brand loyalty, improves customer experience, and positions both partners to expand market share through effective digital advertising and advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, or TikTok.
One digital marketing tactic that gets big results is social proof. Your potential customers need to see proof that you are a trustworthy eCommerce business and that you have great products. Social proof (like reviews and testimonials on your product pages) goes a long way to impress potential customers and influence them to buy from you. Consumers rely heavily on customer feedback, especially when comparing products across search engines and eCommerce sites.
Your leads are most likely on a budget and they don’t want to risk wasting money on something that doesn’t work or meet consumer expectations. They’re going to be selective, so you need extra reinforcement to convince them to make a purchase. Reviews and testimonials are exactly that.
Make sure you display product descriptions, ratings and customer reviews on all of your product and social media pages. At first, it may take you a while to generate a substantial amount of reviews, but after a while, you’ll get them and they will help persuade current customers and new customers alike.
You don’t need to get only positive reviews, either. Having a mix of positive and negative is actually seen as more trustworthy than having a 100% five-star rating. Your products won’t be for everyone, and some reviews under five stars will still be helpful. Knowing what didn’t work for others might help people choose between different items, for example. Even if a review deflects sales from some people, that’s okay, because you can’t please everyone. Encourage users to leave reviews via your loyalty program or email follow-ups.
This strategy enhances organic traffic and organic search traffic, builds credibility for your online business, and helps improve retention through better customer experience and trust — all vital components of a scalable business model.
Referral marketing is another term for word-of-mouth marketing, and it’s one of the most effective methods you can employ. People take the opinions of others very seriously, and that includes friends, family, and online reviews. According to a BrightLocal survey, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations made by friends. This makes referrals a great way to increase sales, improve retention, and expand market share.
So, how do you start referral marketing? How do you get people to post reviews and recommend you to their friends? The short answer is to start incentivizing referrals. The simplest way to do this is through a loyalty program, such as offering a cash bonus to anyone who refers a paying customer to you. Give people referral links, and anyone who makes a purchase from a link will generate a cash reward for the link’s owner. This approach not only helps you acquire new customers but also reward them for spreading the word. Pair referral programs with email marketing campaigns and digital advertising to ensure your message reaches prospective customers and new audiences.
These small yet powerful steps keep your current customers engaged, strengthen customer experience, and naturally reduce churn.
One of the most powerful eCommerce advertising is to target only the people who are proven buyers in your market, either of similar products or similar price points. Defining a target market based on demographics is just the first step. When you target people known to spend money, you’ll increase sales and get even better conversion rates.
There are several ways to do this.
· Define a segment of customers most likely to buy through factors that go beyond demographics. Identify current customers and prospective customers most likely to buy through behavior, lifestyle, or location. For example, say you sell a product that helps baseball players correct their swing. Don’t target all little league parents. Not all parents actively participate in their child’s development. You want to target parents who already invest in their child. This can be as simple as running an ad in a magazine that parents buy for their kids. When their kid sees the product, they’ll ask their parents to buy it for them.
· Analyze your existing buyers. Find out what characteristics make up your most profitable market – the ones who spend the most money – and target those people with paid ads. For instance, maybe your top buyers are a specific gender or have a certain income level. Use website analytics and CRM data to find what characteristics make up your most profitable market. This data improves your SEO strategy, digital advertising, and PPC advertising performance.
· Target buyers of similar products through direct mail. Direct mail remains one of the most effective advertising platforms of all time. If you’re not using it, you’re leaving money on the table. In fact, now that online competition is so fierce and paid ad clicks are getting more expensive by the day, businesses that use direct mail stand out. In fact, direct mail gets response rates 5-9 times higher than any other advertising channel.
Find a company that sells to your ideal audience, but isn’t a direct competitor. Ideally, your price points should also be similar. Contact them and offer to rent or swap mailing lists. Or buy access to lists through a list broker.
Don’t forget, you can also send personalized direct mail pieces to your existing customers through direct mail. Bounce-back letters and coupons work exceptionally well. Targeting existing customers is a small, yet powerful (and cheap) way to boost sales.
· Steal the crowd from other people’s events. Leveraging other people’s crowds is easy and ethical. You don’t need to steal business from competitors. You just need to market your business where your target market hangs out.
Align your outreach with relevant industry trends to reach new audiences. For example, say you’ve just come up with a revolutionary gadget that makes it easy for people to fasten any kind of clasp on a tennis bracelet without help. You can sell directly to consumers, but if you can get your gadget into a jewelry store, you’ll make more sales. In this case, you can attend a convention for the jewelry industry and network with people on the inside. Meanwhile, have your assistant put a flyer or pamphlet on the windshield of every car in the parking lot. Your only advertising expense will be your admission ticket and the cost of printed materials.
When you put your message in front of people who already buy, you shortcut the entire sales process. They’re already in the habit of spending and their credit cards are warm. Your only job is to give them the next obvious thing to buy. So don’t waste more of your ad budget on cold traffic. Start putting your offers in front of people with warm wallets.
Books make amazing lead magnets because they establish credibility, trust, and education with your market all while generating leads that are more likely to buy and increasing online sales. To take advantage of this powerful strategy, write a book that solves a key problem in your niche. It doesn’t need to be long; it just needs to contain high quality content that resonates with your target customers and strengthens your eCommerce brand.
Next, create a dedicated book funnel and run ads offering the book for free when people cover the cost of shipping. Run an advertising campaign that drives traffic to your book’s sales page and retarget those who visit, but don’t buy. Once customers buy the book, upsell them to your main offer or subscription — dramatically improving your average order value. This is how you build a list of serious buyers, not people seeking freebies.
However, it’s important to spend the money up front to self-publish directly rather than using Amazon KDP. Amazon has specific rules that make it difficult to use a book as a lead magnet. For example, all offers need to be disclosed in the table of contents and external links (even in print) are heavily regulated. Even with printed books you can’t include a QR code or link that asks people to sign up for your email list.
If you want a successful eCommerce marketing plan, you need the right tools and the expertise to turn leads into sales. We can help you with this. Whether you need high-converting paid advertising campaigns, Facebook and Google ad management, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and eCommerce advertising that drive traffic and increase eCommerce sales for your brand, we have you covered.
We work with social media and eCommerce websites like Google, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, and LinkedIn ads, plus we offer display ads and retargeting management. We can create, manage, or improve any paid ad campaigns you need.
We manage Google Shopping campaigns, influencer marketing, video marketing, and more to help many eCommerce businesses thrive. Whether you need better landing pages, organic traffic, or comprehensive campaign management, we can help you generate leads and reward loyal customers with scalable results.
Contact us today to learn more about our PPC ad management services and get a free proposal for your business.
04/When it comes to PPC advertising, getting people to click on your ad is only half the battle. From there, you also need them to click on the call to action (CTA) on your landing page.
That’s the only way to actually convert leads. So if your landing pages are struggling to convert visitors, maybe it’s your CTA.
Fortunately, there are many ways to get more users to click on your CTAs. You just need to learn the tricks of the trade.
In this article, we’ll go over what those landing page CTA best practices are, but first, let’s define what a CTA is in the first place.
A call to action (CTA) is the most important part of a PPC landing page. It’s what converts visitors into leads and drives your conversion goals.
Basically, a CTA is a prompt that invites users to take a specific action.
Most CTAs offer something valuable (like a free ebook download or newsletter signup) in exchange for the user’s contact information (like their name and email address).
The point of the CTA is to lead potential customers into your sales funnel. From there, you can nurture them with more valuable content until they eventually make a purchase.
So how do you make the CTAs on your landing pages as effective as possible? Here are ten tips:
The call to action button is just what it sounds like. It’s a virtual button on your landing page that contains the CTA text. For example, the call to action button might be a green rectangle that includes the words “Download Your Free Ebook.”
Whatever your call to action button is, you want it to stand out from the rest of the page. To do this, you can use a different text font (e.g., bolded or italic) and contrasting colors.
Humans are visual creatures, which means (among other things) that we are naturally attracted to sharp variations in colors. You can use this to your advantage by playing off different color contrasts. For example, if your landing page background is blue, you might make your call to action button orange so it really stands out.
You can also try using a free online color scheme generator to come up with ideas. A good CTA example would be one that blends seamlessly with the rest of the page elements while still grabbing users’ attention.
Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/color-scheme-definitions-types-examples
Another way to make your call to action button stand out is to play with its size. Make it big enough to call attention but not so big that it becomes too distracting from reading the rest of the page.
By focusing on the visual design of your call to action button, you can encourage users to click on it and improve the overall conversion rate of your marketing campaigns.
When writing a call to action, it’s easy to resort to phrases like “contact us” or “learn more.” But such calls to action are so overused that many people gloss over them.
Instead, try to put yourself in your target customers' shoes. What are their pain points? Then craft your CTA according to that.
For example, if your target customers have a hard time remembering birthdays, lure them in with a CTA that says “Install this scheduling tool to never forget another birthday.” It’s much more specific and tailored to the value proposition your service provides.
That said, you also need to make sure you keep your CTA clear and to the point. Most people skim the internet, whether they’re reading a blog post or browsing an online store. So if your CTA copy is too long or clever, people will probably move on. And if you can’t convince them to click on your call to action button the first time, they probably never will.
So make your CTA crystal clear. Say exactly what you want the web visitor to do and exactly what they’ll get by clicking. Use action words to evoke a quick reaction.
By writing clearly and directly, your CTA will be much more persuasive.
The last thing you want is for visitors to be looking for a call to action button on your landing page and not find it.
To ensure people always have the opportunity to click the call to action button, place it somewhere it can always be seen. For example, you could include it in a floating header or footer that moves along the web page as the user scrolls up or down.
The point is you want the CTA placement to be visible, no matter where the web visitor goes on the page. If you only place it at the end of the page, visitors may never get to it or see it.
The call to action button should be easy to locate. So, place it where it makes the most sense, whether on desktops or mobile devices.
That said, you don’t want to include so many calls to action that you come across as too pushy or spammy. This will only turn people off.
But you also don’t want web visitors to leave your page without clicking on the call to action button. Otherwise, what’s the point?
So, find the right CTA frequency balance.
Even if you place multiple CTAs across your landing page, you want to stick to just one kind. Here’s what I mean:
If the landing page’s main purpose is to get visitors to sign up for your email marketing list, don’t also include CTAs to order a product off your website.
You can have multiple CTAs, but they shouldn’t call on visitors to perform more than one action.
Why? Asking target customers to do more than one thing can be confusing. In fact, this may overwhelm them so that they don’t click on any call to action button at all.
If you have multiple marketing campaigns running, create separate landing pages for each of them. That way, each blog post or landing page is focused on one specific value proposition and action.
Having an attractive CTA is not enough. You also need to direct visitors’ attention to it with visual cues.
You can do this in two ways: subtle or not-so-subtle cues.
A subtle visual cue could be images or converging lines whose linear pathways indirectly point toward the CTA—like a photo of someone whose eyes are looking at the CTA. Users will then subconsciously want to look there, too.
Source: https://instapage.com/blog/what-are-visual-cues
A conspicuous visual cue could be bright red arrows that point toward the CTA. This can also be effective, but you must be careful not to make it appear too distracting or promotional.
Whatever you do, you want your landing page to have a clean visual flow that ultimately directs users to the CTA button.
Another way to make your CTA stand out is to put white space around it.
White space (aka negative space) refers to the areas of your landing page that don’t have any text or images—nothing.
While you might think white space is a waste of precious real estate, it’s not. It actually helps provide some balance to your landing page and, if used artfully, can actually make your CTA stand out.
For one, if you leave a lot of white space around the CTA, it won’t look cluttered—like it’s drowning in text and graphics. Instead, it will stand out because it’s set off by itself.
Play with the white space around your CTA to call more attention to it.
Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/the-power-of-white-space
To stand out, your CTA also has to offer something unique. What are the benefits of clicking on it? How will it improve your visitors’ lives? What’s in it for them? If your CTA doesn’t answer these questions, you may want to rethink it.
Consider your typical visitor’s pain points. Then show how your offer is a solution to their problems.
For example, if your CTA is to sign up for a weekly newsletter that offers actionable tips on how to double your productivity, point that out. In this case, your CTA might read “Sign Up for My Weekly Newsletter to 2X Your Productivity.”
At the end of the day, concrete and relevant benefits help sell visitors on your CTA.
People are heavily influenced by their emotions. Though the rational brain plays a role in the decision-making process, emotions play an arguably bigger one.
That’s why it’s important for your CTA to appeal to people’s emotions. If you tap into people’s emotions, visitors are more likely to pay attention and click.
For example, you might create a sense of urgency by promoting a limited-time offer. This may activate their fear of missing out (FOMO). Or you might appeal to their sense of danger with a CTA that says “Sign the Petition to Keep Your Neighborhood Safe.”
Don’t forget to also surround the CTA with relevant images (where appropriate).
So if, for example, the CTA calls on the reader to improve their life by getting a copy of your new self-help book, include a photo of someone reading the book with a smile on their face next to the CTA.
This will draw a more immediate emotional response from the user than words alone ever could. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Last but not least, subject your landing page CTAs to A/B tests.
An A/B test (aka split test) refers to developing two slightly different versions of something (in this case a CTA) and then running a test to see which performs better according to common marketing metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate.
You could test a CTA’s button size, copy, color, font, placement, page frequency, and more. Just make sure to test only one variable at a time so you can narrow down what exactly is contributing to a CTAs performance.
By constantly conducting A/B tests, you can gradually fine-tune your landing page CTA until it becomes a reliable conversion machine.
Now that you know the best practices for crafting effective PPC landing page CTAs, you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level.
Don’t have the time or manpower to handle your ad campaigns? That’s okay. We’re here to help.
Partner with PPC.co to take advantage of our managed PPC services. We can help you run ads across Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. Whatever your advertising needs, we have you covered.
We’ll also help you optimize your landing page CTAs so that they bring you more business. To get started, contact us for a free proposal. We look forward to chatting!
Keywords are, arguably, the most important piece of your pay per click (PPC) advertising strategy.
Choose the right keywords and you’ll reach the right people. You’ll get more impressions and clicks. You’ll get more purchases from the clicks you generate. And you’ll even spend less money in the long run, since you won’t be wasting money on bad matches or weak opportunities.
The problem is, choosing and controlling keywords in PPC advertising is challenging.
Yes, even for the pros.
There are so many keywords to choose from and so many different controls you can use to tinker with your campaign that it’s almost inevitable to make conversion mistakes – and if not outright mistakes, then inefficiencies that reduce your potential.
Fortunately, once you understand some of the most common and impactful keyword mistakes in PPC advertising, you can take caution to avoid them and optimize your campaign for the better.
These are some of the most common keyword mistakes in PPC advertising we see from clients, competitors, and other advertisers online.
Optimizing a PPC ad campaign is all about improving efficiency. It’s almost impossible to be efficient if you’re using too many keywords at once. On one hand, we understand the temptation to keep adding keywords; each new keyword is a new potential demographic segment and a new opportunity for your brand. But it’s usually better to keep your selection of keywords relatively narrow and focused.
There are a few main problems with using too many keywords. For starters, your attention is going to be split across too many different areas; instead of becoming a true expert on a small handful of keywords, you’ll end up knowing very little about the dozens you’re following. Additionally, you’ll be wasting money on keywords that are strictly underperforming your best options.
If you want to fix this problem, simply focus on a narrower range of keywords. Generally, you should only keep the keywords that are generating around 200 clicks or more – and filter out any keywords that seem to perform worse than your best ones (as well as ones that seem irrelevant).
At first glance, using broad match keywords seems like a no-brainer. With broad match turned on, your keywords are going to appear for a wide variety of different searches, including those that are synonymous with your main keyword and some types of related searches. That means your ad is going to appear to a wider range of people and earn more impressions.
However, using broad match keywords recklessly and without strategic focus is usually bad for your campaign. More isn’t always better in the world of PPC advertising; in fact, it’s usually worse. You’re better off targeting a small handful of people who are positioned to buy your product than targeting thousands of people who are practically irrelevant. This is one of the common keyword research mistakes that can drain your budget without delivering real results.
You can fix this in a few different ways. For example, you could stop leaning too heavily on broad match keywords and start focusing on phrase match and exact match keywords, which give you much more precise targeting options. This aligns better with search intent, ensuring your ads are shown to users who are genuinely interested in what you offer.
You can also use broad match more effectively with the use of modifiers, which allow you to control how your keywords are considered with respect to search engines and user searches. As examples, adding a + to a word will ensure it appears in every search – and including phrases in [brackets] will make sure the entire phrase is present in every search. Implementing these refinements is a crucial part of a strong SEO strategy and effective keyword research.
Ad groups exist to give you more insight and control over your PPC ad campaigns, so try to avoid misusing them by compiling keywords into bulky and unnecessarily large groups. If you put all your conceivable targeting options into one gigantic mass, you’ll have difficulty delineating the different elements of your strategy.
Instead, make sure each of your ad groups is laser-focused on a specific theme (such as a product or service you offer, a geographic location, etc.). The exact theme doesn’t matter much, as long as you’re using ad groups strategically.
Most newcomers to the PPC game are so focused on finding the perfect keywords to add to their campaign that they don’t realize how powerful negative keywords can be. In case you aren’t familiar with them, negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want to appear for a given search. You can use these to filter out specific types of people who may not be interested in what you’re selling – and save money in the process.
If you don’t use negative keywords at all, you’re probably missing out on your true potential in this field. For example, imagine you’re advertising a bakery and you’re placing ads for people who are searching for “chocolate chip cookies.” You want to appeal to people who might buy your chocolate chip cookies, but people who search for this phrase might be looking for recipes or instructions for how to make their own; you can filter out this traffic simply by adding negative keywords like “-recipe.”
There’s a certain point in most PPC ad campaigns when managers begin to feel confident in what they’re doing. Your ads are working period you’re getting clicks. You can claim the campaign is profitable. What do you do at this point?
Novices are typically tempted to keep things running exactly as they are, potentially indefinitely. After all, if it ain’t broke, you don’t fix it, right?
The logic here makes sense, to a degree, but if you go this route, you’ll be crippling your potential. You’ll miss out on all the experiments that could push your campaign further and all the little refinements that could make your campaign even more efficient. Instead of remaining complacent with decent results, you should always strive for better results. That doesn’t mean you have to change your entire campaign, but you should be allocating at least a portion of your budget to pushing for more.
What’s your ad conversion rate like? If this metric is disappointingly low, it could be an indication that your ads aren’t relevant for the keywords you’re choosing. This may sound like a simple and obvious problem, but it’s something that many advertisers run into.
Remember, the people searching for this keyword phrase are looking for something specific. If your ad isn’t carefully crafted to appeal to those people, it’s not going to get much interaction. Always make sure that your keywords and advertisements are very closely aligned.
When it comes to audience targeting, you have to think beyond mere demographics. You also have to think beyond simple product or service searches. If you want to add more power to your campaign, you need to think about your specific sales funnel and how searchers might fall into that sales funnel.
Different businesses and different industries model their sales funnels in unique ways, but usually, sales funnels follow a process similar to awareness > consideration > purchase. Targeting the right people at the right stage of the sales funnel could dramatically increase your results. Choosing specific phrases and including keyword modifiers targeted to people at the end of the sales funnel could greatly increase the number of people making purchases after clicking your ads. At the same time, targeting people earlier in the sales funnel could help you avoid some of the most prominent competition in your industry, saving you money while earning you customer loyalty.
The only wrong approach is to ignore the sales funnel in your strategy entirely.
Landing pages play a massive role in determining the success of your PPC campaign. No matter how well your ads perform or how much traffic do you generate, your campaign is going to fall flat if you aren’t able to convert your new visitors.
The critical flaw here for most PPC advertisers is a landing page that doesn’t match the ad or doesn’t match the keyword phrase. If you promise a special discount in your ad, that discount better be present on your landing page. If you’re advertising running shoes, don’t take your visitors to a landing page that features boots.
Obviously, you’ll also need to spend time optimizing this landing page so it’s as persuasive and perceptibly trustworthy as possible.
The bulk of your campaign is going to focus on product and service keywords, but if you totally neglect brand keywords, you’ll be sabotaging your own potential.
Many people ignore brand keywords entirely because they feel like these targeting options are practically irrelevant. After all, if a customer already knows about your brand, there’s no use trying to raise their brand awareness further. And there’s a good chance your brand website is already ranking at position one for brand keyword searches.
However, there are some good reasons to bid on your own brand keywords. Branded keywords have the potential to increase your account’s quality score. They almost guarantee your brand will be featured at the top of the search results page. You’ll generate more traffic to your website. And perhaps best of all, this serves as a competitive defense – so your worst competitors can’t try and dethrone you by targeting your branded keywords.
Targeting competitor brand keywords, eh? If you’ve never considered the option before, you’re certainly considering it now. Bidding on the branded keywords of a competitor can be a powerful, if cutthroat move. You can siphon traffic from a major competitor, increasing your traffic while dealing a blow to your peers simultaneously.
However, it’s reckless to approach this without an effective strategy. If your ads aren’t relevant to the people conducting these searches, you’re not going to generate clicks, and your quality score could go down. If you don’t have a plan to convert these prospects, you’ll end up wasting money trying to sabotage competitors rather than building your own business. And the worst part is, if you’re actively trying to sabotage your competitors, you could end up harming your brand reputation.
None of this means that you have to avoid targeting competitor brand keywords. It just means you need to have a carefully considered strategy in place for them.
We’ve covered 10 of the most common mistakes that people make with keywords in the PPC world, but this list is by no means comprehensive. There are many other strategic flaws and examples of poor decision-making that can negatively impact your campaign.
On top of that, the PPC ad world is always changing with new controls and features for advertisers, new competitors, and changing consumer attitudes. Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, which means what worked yesterday might not work today.
If you want to avoid all PPC ad mistakes (or at least as many as possible), you should follow these important golden rules:
Are you tired of PPC advertising mistakes bogging down your otherwise profitable campaign?
Do you need some extra guidance in targeting the best possible PPC keywords?
PPC.co is here for you. We’ve got the experts. We’ve got the experience. All you need to do is reach out and we’ll send you a free proposal. Contact us today!
So, you want to start a digital marketing agency.
Awesome.
You probably already realized this is a challenging endeavor – or else, you wouldn’t be looking for guides like this.
But don’t fret. With the right strategy, the right resources, and enough diligence and follow through, you’ll be in a position to make your digital marketing agency successful.
There are currently more than 90,000 marketing agencies in the United States. That’s a lot of competition. But it’s also an illustration of just how appealing the idea of owning your own successful digital marketing agency is.
These are just some of the reasons that attract people to the realm of digital marketing company ownership:
In this guide, we’re going to cover all the little elements of starting a digital marketing agency.
But first, it’s helpful to establish a high-level overview – the architecture on which we’ll build our next points.
Starting a digital marketing agency usually unfolds over four distinct phases:
Let’s start by focusing on the initial skills and experiences you’ll need to be successful in the digital marketing world.
As an agency owner, you may or may not be doing the ground-level work responsible for helping your clients succeed. Either way, you’ll need to have a grasp on the fundamentals of digital marketing so that you can communicate with clients effectively, appropriately pitch your services, and step in as a leader when necessary.
Digital marketing skills can help you significantly, but there’s more to running a digital marketing agency than just practicing digital marketing.
You also need skills and experience related to entrepreneurship and management.
In other words, how do you run the business?
Once you feel confident in your skills and experience, you can begin developing a formal business plan for your digital marketing agency.
While it’s not strictly necessary to have an official, written business plan, it’s typically helpful.
This is your opportunity to evaluate the idea behind your digital marketing agency, from start to finish, and project how it’s going to operate. This is also going to serve as the blueprint for founding and establishing your digital marketing agency.
Pay close attention to:
With a business plan and a solid vision for how your digital marketing agency is going to develop, you can find the business and begin establishing it.
At this point, your digital marketing agency has all the fundamentals in place to make money and continue operations.
But if you want to make even more money and keep growing, you’ll need to invest in scaling your operations. There are many marketing and advertising strategies that can help you here, such as:
It’s also important to recognize that people are going to pay close attention to how you market yourself. You’ll be describing yourself as a marketing expert on your website and throughout your marketing and advertising materials, so if the quality of your work doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you won’t be able to scale successfully. Think of yourself as your first major client.
Are you ready to start your own digital marketing agency?
Are you looking for a partner who can support you with white label PPC services?
Or do you need help scaling up your own PPC ad campaign?
We can help you with all of it. Just drop us a line and we’ll send you a free proposal for any of your PPC advertising needs!
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