PPC strategies in a competitive ecommerce market
-
Hello,
What's the top 5 things to keep in mind when doing PPC in a competitive ecommerce market? Our competitors are buying PPC leads based on gathering long term customers that only have to get bought once and then they are repeat customers with no more cost.
Thus, PPC cost is through the roof in this niche.
Anyways, what's the top 5 pieces of advice you would give and you're also welcome to reference any good or harder to find references for me to read or watch.
Thank you,
Bob
-
Hi BobGW,
Wow, what a question to ask; it's fairly subjective and dependent on quite a few variables (like experience, life cycle of the campaign, ect), but that means we should get lots of answers!
Here is my Top 5 contribution (in no particular order):
Optimize Your Landing Page
I like to optimize the bottlenecks first and that means making sure that my website and landing pages are ready to receive paid search traffic.
Ask yourself these questions:
- does my website load as fast / faster than my competitors?
- Are the call to actions clear and on my landing pages?
- Is all the on-page SEO complete?
Make it Easy to Purchase & Proper Ecommerce Tracking
Make sure that your purchase funnel is simple and easy. Only capture the necessary information (save the extra for follow up emails and visits) and reduce any unnecessary steps in the checkout process.
Have thorough and accurate Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking integrated (make sure to link your Adwords account to your GA profile as well).
Develop an Efficient Adwords Account Architecture
A proper account infrastructure highly impacts the success of a campaign. Take the time to brainstorm how it's best to lay out your company's campaigns and ad groups. Many times referring to the website's navigation (sitemap) can help develop this portion.
Keyword Research & Maintenance
Once you have your campaigns and ad groups decided, you can begin to fill them with keywords (often times keywords will help you identify new ad groups or campaigns needed too). Remember to keep the keywords focused and tightly grouped.
Consistently set time aside to go through your keyword reports and matched search query reports in order to improve your keywords, add negative keywords, and identify new groups of keywords.
Research, Experiment, Promote, & Improve
Learn as much about Web Analytics as you can and how it applies to your Ecommerce strategy. Invest in the appropriate marketing tools for competitive research, SEO, and analytics. If you don't already love digging huge data, then you should get acquainted with it as quick as possible.
Make sure to continually test new ads, ad copy, banners, ect. Find the higher performing ads and ditch the ones that are costing you money.
Have campaigns ready to go for special occasions like Flash Sales, holidays, graduations, ect.
Making sure to keep a disciplined routine with your PPC campaigns will have a high impact on their success. The consistent, incremental improvement is usually what contributes the most for long-term success.
Bonus: Understand Your Customer Lifetime Value
"Our competitors are buying PPC leads based on gathering long term customers that only have to get bought once and then they are repeat customers with no more cost."
It sounds like your competitors have an understanding of the customer Lifetime Value of their customer's. In addition to Sales Revenue, as a metric for measuring success, they could be using the CLV of all the new customer's acquired.
I would highly suggest an ecommerce company compute its CLV to most accurately understand its Customer Acquisition Cost, which will enable the marketer to do a better job in the PPC market.
-
1- check what words competitors use with sites like semrush , keyword spy
2- run words that show intent to buy or buy in larger amounts- buy, wholesale, item sku, item full name, bulk, etc
3- be competitive on price and have a nice selection
4- google shopping tends to give you better cpa
5- weed out negatives and structure tight campaigns based on user intent with exact keywords if possible
6- track calls, sales, micro conv etc
7- pray
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will pausing my AdWords PPC campaigns impact my organic rankings?
Over 95% of my revenue comes from organic search; less than 5% comes from AdWords PPC (all other sources account for about 1-2%). My ROI on AdWords is roughly zero. It's negative if you include opportunity costs. My question is: if I pause all of my AdWords campaigns, is there ANY chance that my organic rankings (and organic click-through rates) will suffer? This is really two questions. First, could Google retaliate to my reduced ad spending by dropping my rankings? Second, will searchers think differently about my organic link if they don't also see the accompanying paid link on the SERP?
Paid Search Marketing | | ahirai2 -
Seeking Critique on PPC Campaign Gameplan
Background: We're a home service business with potential for recurring clients. In the past, I've run PPC campaigns for a much larger company, and was profitable, but the business model was vastly different. The campaign also took place during their busy season, allowing flexibility I won't receive here. Campaign Details: AdWords only SERPs only (not partner network) Desktop users only Data Available: Lots of past data was incomplete, prompting my best estimates and judgment calls. For past leads data, I'm using Google as lead source (organic + local pack rankings), generated specifically from our quote form. Since our quote form doesn't render on Mobile/Tablet, I omitted those visits from our Analytics data, and only target Desktop in the campaign. I wound up with the following statistics: Organic (any web search), Desktop visitors who viewed our quote form page: Number of overall pageviews Number of overall leads generated from our quote form Number of overall leads which converted to sales And for our sales/numbers end of things: % our clients choose targeted package Revenue of initial sale on that package Profit generated from sale on that package Using these numbers, I calculated the % of clickers likely to bounce, complete the form, convert to clients, etc. Using our sales records, I calculated revenue/profit expected from each. And with that, I calculated the highest CPC to break even (unacceptable, obviously), as well as the projected ROI from lower, more reasonable CPCs. Notes: We're a home service business. Not all homes are created equal. Through data, I found our clients average home size and the average estimate for that home. Due to incomplete records, I can't know which Google _clients _are specific to our quote form. Some likely called through the local pack or manually dialed and said "Google" if our staff asked. To combat this, I found the % of Google _leads _who completed the quote form vs. phone call, email and applied it to clients for a reliable estimate (our system removes the quote form identifier upon lead to client conversion). I'm not factoring in the % of clients who become recurring customers as I don't have this data. Given that it's much higher than 0%, I think this allows a LOT of breathing room on my estimates. Many of our clients have stayed with us for years. If only a small number convert to long-term status, the current ROI shoots WAY up. Similar to above, I'm also not factoring in the % of clients who don't choose the initial package, but instead choose a lesser package. Again, I think this provides breathing room. Any PPC campaign will have a plethora of variables, especially intangible issues (damages, refunds, etc). I feel I have the important things down, but I'm far from an expert. I'd love to receive any advice or things I'm overlooking. Thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | kirmeliux1 -
PPC sessions being counted as organic in GA
I am coming across a very frustrating phenomenon in one of my PPC campaign reporting. In short: I believe that GA is counting some of my PPC sessions as organic (not provided). Has anybody come across this before? I believe they are being counted as organic because of the following: the website is brand new and does not rank for anything but their branded terms the few keywords showing up in GA are the terms we target our PPC towards the amount of sessions of Paid Search (in channels) and AdWords sessions don't match up (The number of actual PPC clicks is substantially higher than the Paid Search sessions) PPC clicks and sessions don't even match up in the AdWords part of GA GWT shows 0% CTR for any non branded terms Tell me I am crazy, but I really don't think I am. I just don't have the hard evidence to back it up. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Paid Search Marketing | | Rebecca.Holloway0 -
PPC seems to have had a seriously negative impact on organic rankings?!?
We've been targeting a keyword on behalf of a client for the last few months. The page had good content and had been steadily climbing the rankings. It reached a position of #12 and then suddenly dropped off. Within 2 weeks it was out of the top 50 and is now around the 10th or 11th page (useless). This drop off matched exactly with the cleint switching on a low level PPC campaign, driving traffic from this specific keyword. The stats on this have shown a really high bounce rate (so we'll need to ask some other questions about content) - but could this be the reason that organic stats have taken a hammering? If Google associated people landing n that page from that keyword (even though its paid) as not finding relevant content, I'm assuming this could have a negative impact on the organic rank? Any Thoughts Welcome....!!!
Paid Search Marketing | | Purestone0 -
Adword competition between exact match and related broad match
If I have two company A and B. Company A: bid on key word exact [Nike and Jordan] Company B: bid on broad match Jordan shoesks Considering that broad match use related words I noted that google display both ads if I search Nike and Jordam (shoes is related with Nike). My question is: bid of B is competing with bid of A? therefore CPC of A increase because of B? Tks
Paid Search Marketing | | fabrico230 -
PPC Question
After watching today's excellent WBF by Brian on Adwords, I still have a question. At one point do you believe a PPC keyword or adgroup has enough data to make a decision. Brian mentioned 30,000 impressions. I've heard 200 clicks. Is there a concensus or set of rules anyone could recommend as a guideline. I do PPC but it's not a daily focus, and find myself vacillating, and frankly, probably wasting time and money by not having a more defined approach to PPC.
Paid Search Marketing | | DenverKelly0 -
Facebook PPC - Number of Clicks According to FB Different Than Visits in Analytics?
Hi There So I was trying out my first FB ads with a client. I see according to FB there were 105 clicks. But according to google analytics there were only 69 visits. I am counting visits from facebook.com and apps.facebook.com Any reason for this discrepancy, or any tips? Am I missing something? Thanks! 687sfgMVaE 1j56Pm7nD
Paid Search Marketing | | evolvingSEO0 -
PPC Management Software Recommendations?
What is your favorite PPC Mgmt software? I was looking over my options and wanted to see if anyone has any recommendations? I've always done this manually but would like to find software that can allow my bids to put me (for example) in the third place position on Microsoft adCenter. Thanks,
Paid Search Marketing | | celife
Chris0