When it comes to PPC advertising for ecommerce businesses, advertising is one of the most powerful tools to get more traffic. And there are a lot of options out there. You have channels like Google, Meta, TikTok, Amazon, and other marketplaces, all with several types of ads.
Without fully understanding the differences between them and planning strategically, this can get ugly very quickly. I’ve seen a lot of ecommerce store owners getting too eager to conquer all the channels and they just end up spreading their budgets thin, not getting the results they wanted, and getting stressed by the amount of work.
So let’s talk about a better approach that will help you grow your business without losing your sanity.
Why Not All Traffic Is the Same
Every PPC platform has a unique role in your marketing efforts. And the type of traffic you attract depends on which channel you use. So, here’s a quick breakdown of the most used paid channels:
Google Ads
Google Ads, particularly Google Shopping, is the perfect tool for attracting high-intent traffic. Because the users are actively searching for products and they are ready to buy. And with the option to optimize your product data feed to make your shopping ads more compelling, it is a great way to showcase your products.
However, things have changed in recent years. If 10 years ago, you could list your products and they would just sell without much work on your side, nowadays the space has become more competitive (especially for generic product categories). So without some work on providing good data, keeping an eye on ad spend, and optimizing your product or landing pages, you will not get good results.
Meta Ads
Advertising on Meta allows you to build your audiences with great precision by using demographics, interests, behaviors, and even lookalike audiences based on your existing customers. Also, it is a great platform to retarget users who browsed your shop but did not convert.
However, unlike Google, they are not actively searching for your products, so if you use it to attract cold traffic, your metrics will be lower. This is because people are on social media to consume content. And you are disrupting that experience, so you might see lower CTRs and lower conversion rates.
Marketplaces
Marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, or Etsy are great when it comes to PPC for ecommerce. The platforms attract ready-to-buy users who trust them to deliver quality products. So all you have to do is to make sure that your products are visible on these marketplaces.
However, you do have to take into account the high fees these marketplaces are charging. Besides this, you will most probably need to advertise on them to increase your products’ visibility on the platform as you might find yourself in a sea of competitors.
Also, you need to know that marketplaces don’t like to share the user’s data with you. That is their whole business model. So you will not be able to build a customer base, nurture them, and increase their brand loyalty.
Other Channels to Explore
After you have a good, steady stream of customers coming in, you can try to explore some other channels. These are usually smaller platforms that work great for some, and not at all for others. It is important to know what type of traffic and what user demographics the app covers.
For example, Pinterest’s user base is 69.4% female and works best for visual products like fashion, home decor, or crafts. TikTok is most suitable for targeting youth demographics. And YouTube is best for building brand awareness with video content.
PPC Strategies for Small eCommerce Stores (Under $1M Annual Revenue)
When you’re starting out, we all know that every dollar counts. So, if you’re doing less than $1 million in annual revenue, you want to focus on high-ROI campaigns and focus on channels that offer the best value for your limited budget.
Start with High-ROI Channels
When it comes to PPC for ecommerce businesses, the best place to start is Google Shopping. The advantages here are that:
- You’re targeting people actively searching for what you’re selling
- You can influence the performance by optimizing your product data feed and not necessarily by spending more.
Expand to Google Search Ads
After you have your Shopping ads running, you can broaden your reach with Google Search ads.
- Create ads to target your brand name to capture the little demand you have and to keep competitors from stealing your traffic.
- You don’t need ads for every SKU in the beginning. Focus on your best-selling product categories and make sure those ads are solid and have great ad copy.
Introduce Meta Ads Gradually
Once you have a good thing going with Shopping and Search, you can try out a new thing. You can test some retargeting ads on Meta to see if you can capitalize on some of the non-converting traffic.
You can test this with a small daily budget of $10-$20) and see what results you get.
Risks to Avoid
You don’t want to spread your budget too thin. Focus on one or two channels until you have proven, consistent results.
And don’t start everything all at once. Managing campaigns properly requires a lot of time. And it can become overwhelming very quickly. If you find yourself in that situation, think about bringing in a freelancer to outsource some of the work.
For Google Ads, don’t start with an automated bidding strategy. If your account is brand new and you don’t have any conversion data, the Google Ads algorithm will have a hard time finding you customers. So start with manual and switch the bidding strategy when you constantly hit 30 conversions per month.
PPC Strategies for Medium eCommerce Stores ($1M – $10M Annual Revenue)
At this stage, you’ve already validated your products, have a steady revenue stream, and have identified the best type of traffic for your store. Now it’s time to scale these campaigns to maximize the income and continue growing your business.
Scale Existing Campaigns
Check whether you can increase your budgets for the campaigns that consistently deliver good results. Always increase your budget slowly – 10-20% per week. You want to scale your campaigns, not crash them by making big changes. Besides this, you can also try:
- To look at the best-performing products and promote them more
- If you haven’t done it already, try out different automated bidding strategies. In PPC for ecommerce, you will find people praising tROAS and some swearing by tCPA. You can set up an A/B test and see which one is for you.
- Add some more categories or some long-tail keywords to your existing product category search ads. Look in the Search term report for inspiration
- When it makes sense financially, try some PPC automation tools to help you create search ads for every SKU in your shop. There are some tools out there that can do this using your product data feed.
Allocate Budgets for Brand Building
At this point, you also need to start investing in building your brand awareness and fostering brand loyalty. So start investing a small portion of your budget (5-10% of your total ad spend) to prevent excessive spending.
For brand awareness, you can create a lookalike audience in Meta based on your customer base. Or you can go with campaign objectives like Reach or Brand Awareness. Just keep in mind that these campaigns will not deliver a clear, immediate return on investment. This is for the long game.
Explore Marketplaces
With traffic from Google and Meta becoming more competitive and costly, it is time to consider alternative channels such as Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and other marketplaces. These platforms provide access to large audiences that are ready to make a purchase.
Leverage Landing Pages and A/B Testing
You probably have a strong grasp of your audience and their likes by now. Use this data to fine-tune your sales funnel by creating dedicated landing pages and testing different elements to improve conversions.
Because you are at a stage where you have more traffic, you can conclude experiments faster. So, take advantage and test as many wild ideas as you can. In the long run, this will save you more advertising spend and help you scale your business faster.
Risks to Avoid
Do not try to apply everything all at once. This will potentially lead to losing focus and hurting your campaigns’ profitability. Prioritize the most important channel before moving to others.
If the workload is too much for you and your team, you might want to hire a marketing agency to help with some of the work. However, make sure that the fees are aligned with the value they provide.
Also, regularly check their performance and make sure they are not prioritizing vanity metrics like reach, impressions, or clicks over actual conversions and ROI.
PPC Strategies for Large eCommerce Stores (Over $10M Annual Revenue)
For an established brand, there’s little reason to limit budgets for effective campaigns. Your priority should be to take winning campaigns and make them bigger, better, and more effective—while also keeping an eye on testing new (and hopefully just as effective) strategies. However, you might want to consider some more advanced tools to do the job.
Invest in Advanced Analytics
The more touchpoints you have, the harder it gets to track the user behavior. And this is where ecommerce conversion tracking can get messy because you will not know for sure how channels are influencing each other.
So, at this point, it is time time to ditch GA4 because Google will have an incentive to attribute more conversions to its own channels. Luckily, there are quite some 3rd party analytics tools on the market to choose from.
And these tools provide you insights into how users are interacting with your business and where to put more money in.
Diversify your channels further
Test video campaigns for certain products or for overall brand awareness. Experiment with influencer marketing aimed at niche audiences or at going viral. Use YouTube Ads or TikTok Ads to communicate with the significantly younger audience that those platforms deliver.
Just remember to implement the smallest test possible to validate the idea before going all-out on sponsorships and professional video creation.
Build a Full In-House Team
Because of the scale and needs of your company, at this stage, it might make sense to bring all your marketing in-house. The agencies you’re working with might not be able to spend enough time to understand your business and do your marketing.
If that’s the case, consider hiring some specialists (Google Ads, Paid Social, Data Analytics, Growth Hacking)
Risks to Avoid
Attribution errors: Google Ads frequently overstates how much it contributes. Using a third-party tool helps eliminate this bias.
Unprofitable (big) experiments: Even when you have a larger budget, test new strategies with care and keep an eye on the performance metrics.
Final Thoughts
PPC for ecommerce businesses is a real game changer, especially in the early stages when there is no organic traffic.
But taking full advantage of all that PPC has to offer really comes down to customizing your approach—because what works for a big online retailer with a hefty budget doesn’t necessarily translate well to a small business with limited means and manpower.
