eCommerce PPC Hacks That Work

Is a Hack Bad?Do not let the term hack strike fear into your heart.

An eCommerce PPC hack is a term coined to represent some of the quickest ways to achieve your PPC objectives around revenue, click-through rate and visibility.

These hacks are just prioritised tactics, they do not go against Google’s guidelines or try to “trick” the search engine.

a good solution or piece of advice: Here are 5 ppc hacks that will change your life for the better.

[hak]

hack

a PLA CampaignSet up

PLAs are a no-brainer. You get an image of the product and the price which removes ambiguity for the potential customer especially if you’re more of a luxury priced retailer.

Therefore, you only pay for the click if the searcher is interested and no matter what, you get your brand under their noses and pay nothing for this exposure.

Product List Ads vs. Text AdsCompare

Product listings ads (PLAs) now drive more non-brand clicks for

retailers than text ads

Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland, Ohio). 967 MTD El Rey Lowrider bicycle. Custom parts and candy paint and stereo. Source: Kiloz Oner This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

CustomiseThe best way to reduce your cost-per-click is to develop a customised product feed.

Google allows you to add a range of custom columns which you can use to ensure your budget is working as hard as possible and you don’t have irrelevant products being shown.

Columns to Reduce CPC

Columns Reduce IrrelevancySeasonalThe most critical custom column to add for the majority of retailers is a “season” column.

Hey presto, you can safely bid away, content that your Christmas range isn’t going to be turning up in the height of summer because of a gift keyword match in your product title!

Rock Creek Park Fall Foliage by Mr.TinDC. License Creative Commons

Ad Seller RatingsSet Up

If you’re running text based pay per click campaigns on Google AdWords, you can pull reviews through into your ads.

You do need 30 product reviews before they pull through, so the sooner you get product reviews the better.

ReviewsSpeak for Themselves

Our own research show

Ad seller ratings had a 28%

higher click-through rate

than those without

by Keyword Match TypeSegment If you’ve currently got a mix of broad match, broad match modified, phrase match and exact match keywords in the same campaign, you will likely see a major uplift in return on investment from separating these into their own campaigns.

Google only enables you to set budgets at a campaign level. So you can adjust spend into the top converting campaigns by keyword match type, driving up your Google AdWords Quality Score and bringing down your cost-per-click.

So your existing budget is free to go so much further and you multiply your return on investment.

One of our favourite quick wins, is to get a Google AdWords campaign up to scratch and then replicate this on Bing Ads.

Bing has a much smaller market share than Google at around 20:80%. But whilst Bing will drive 80% less volume in terms of traffic and conversions, that could be as much as a 20% increase in traffic and conversions.

Bing is especially good if you target an older or corporate audience.

Success in Bing AdsReplicate

Sit Backand Admire Your Work

Before you start implementing these hacks make sure you’ve got proper tracking set up, so you can admire your work and watch the results roll in.

Hungry for more eCommerce PPC hacks? Get in touch with ThoughtShift today.

Image by Sage Ross [CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia] Commons

ThoughtShift is an award-winning digital marketing agency specialising in eCommerce PPC & SEO.

Our expert team of consultants have helped increase eCommerce PPC revenue 222%, increase click-through rate 354% and decrease PPC spend 23% across the retail furniture and fashion sectors for clients including RED5, Biscuiteers and Gopak.

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