How to use Pay Per Click to Drive Traffic to your eCommerce Web Store

If you’ve got an ecommerce store but are struggling with getting traffic and conversions, Dare Marketing has some tips for you in this easy to understand article on pay per click advertising.

What is Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click or PPC advertising is a mechanism where you display an advertisement online and pay the advertiser every time someone clicks on your ad.

Benefits of PPC Advertising

You only pay when someone clicks!

No more wasting money.  You only pay when someone clicks.  In comparison to buying a magazine ad, you pay per view.  Many people you are paying to view your ad have little or no interest in buying.

Better Quality Leads

Generally, you find you get better quality leads with PPC rather than any other type of advertising.  If people search for “Nike Shoes” and then click on your ad, you’re pretty much guaranteed that the person wants to buy “Nike Shoes”.

Tracking and Optimization

With many forms of  advertising it’s hard to track who saw it, how many saw it, how many turned into customers and what was the ROI.  With PPC this is easy.  Most PPC advertisers give you the ability to track views, clicks, conversions and sales dollars.  Making it easy t calculate ROI and invest in the best PPC ROI campaigns.

Common Misconceptions about PPC Advertising

My competitor will click on the ads and use up my budget.

This is a very common question that PPC advertisers have.  If this was possible it would make PPC pretty much useless.  That’s why PPC advertisers have the ability to filter out unwanted clicks.  Everyone connects to the internet through an IP address.  The PPC advertiser is able to determine the IP address of the person who clicked.  If you get 10 clicks from a single IP address, most PPC advertisers will not charge you for the clicks.

What do I have to do to get top listing?

While in organic Google searches being in the top 3 is what you’re going for, in PCC it’s not really that important.  Depending on your strategy, most people want to reduce their cost per click.  It’s expensive to be listed in the top 3 and you will pay more for your bids.  As long as you’re getting traffic, why do you care whether you’re on the top or #8?  If you can get 10 clicks at $1.00 in the top 3 or 20 clicks at $0.50, being in the 8th position, what would you rather have?  Traffic at the lowest cost!

Wow, $15.00 per click is expensive!

Most pay per click is an auction.  Other advertisers bid to have their ad shown instead of yours.  I’ve seen some cost per click as high as $30!  Keep in mind it’s not the cost per click, but the ROI that’s important.  Let’s take the example of a locksmith.  Cost per click is $15.  You might think that’s outrageous, but let’s look more closely.  Let’s say out of 10 clicks the locksmith gets 1 service call.  So that’s $150 cost per sale.  People are generally not Googling for locksmiths to do research, they look for locksmiths when they are locked out of their car or home.  So a $150 investment gets you a $300 service call.  Doubling your money!  Now how many $15 clicks do you want to buy?

Best Practise in PPC Advertising

Pick longtail keywords to bid on

For example “plumber” is pretty general and could searched for a number of reasons not leading to a sale.  Now consider “24-hour plumber”.  Someone searching for “24-hour plumber” has an emergency and needs a plumber!  You would want to bid higher for these types of keywords as they will convert better.

Don’t send people to your home page

I see so many PPC advertisers sending the clicks to their home page.  This is not best practise.  If you are a shoe store selling red shoes, when someone clicks on your ad for red shoes, you want to send them to the “red shoes” category page in your ecommerce web store, not your home page.  You’ll get better conversions that way.

Marketing 101 still applies

Just because your advertising online doesn’t mean you throw out everything you know about marketing.

Your ads and landing pages still have to incorporate:
1.  Offer
2.  Call to action
3. Reply device

Track Everything

To get the most out of PPC, track everything.  Try to link the click on the ad to the sale.  You’ll be able to tell what’s working and what’s not.  This way you’ll be able to invest in the PPC advertising that has the highest ROI.  This is easily done through your ecommerce software, or simply sending the completed sale, contact form, or reply device to a “thank-you” page and tracking that.

Dare Marketing Can Help

If you’re an ecommerce retailer Dare Marketing has solutions for you from consulting to software and fulfillment services.  We have a complete suite of solutions from end to end that will help you sell more online and improve your profitability.  Contact us today for a free consultation.