The landscape for selling products online has drastically changed over the years. It’s gone from ordering products strictly from websites to now being able to purchase them right from the Google results page, Facebook, and Instagram – just to name a few.
Businesses must adapt their e-commerce strategy to remain competitive in this ever-changing sales environment. With more businesses adopting these new channels to sell products, it’s easy to get lost in the algorithm. Let’s discuss which strategies and channels are vital in helping you improve your e-commerce PPC.
Selling Products With Google Shopping
If you’ve searched for a product online, you’ve likely seen Shopping Ads before. These ads are most often displayed at the top of the results page and triggered by specific keywords related to the product. For example, if you search for “running shoes for sale,” you’ll be served various running shoe ads from different businesses.
These ads benefit your e-commerce strategy because they require a high-quality image of your product, the price, and ratings from past buyers. These are typically what most customers look for when deciding to make a purchase.
You’ll need to create a Google Merchant Account to set up these ads. The account setup is simple and easy to connect with many e-commerce web platforms. The Merchant Center can quickly crawl your website and products to create ads for the Google results page. Once you’ve set up your product feed, you can start showing your ads. All you’ll have to do is set up a weekly budget, select a few keywords to trigger your ads, and you’re good to go.
Facebook Ads for Ecommerce
Facebook has over 2 billion daily users, which makes it an excellent place to reach your target audience and generate more sales. One of the more straightforward e-commerce strategies, Facebook Dynamic Shopping Ads, is a quick and simple way to start generating more sales through e-commerce PPC.
You’ll need to upload your products to your Facebook Shop Catalog to set up your ads. Once you’ve updated your Facebook Catalog with your products, you can begin advertising them using Dynamic Shopping Ads. These ads utilize machine learning to help reach your target audience and people outside your audience who have shown interest in related products.
These ads are similar to Google Smart Ads as they require a small amount of management. They’re designed to reach your audience, find new ones, and retarget all on their own. This is incredibly convenient to most sellers as it gives them more time to review how the strategy works and more freedom to focus on other strategies that may require more involvement.
Selling Products With Instagram Shopping
Since Facebook has acquired Instagram, you can easily link your Facebook Catalog to your Instagram Business Profile. All you’ll need to do to get these ads started is link your Instagram account to your Facebook account and import the catalog of products. Once the link has been established between these accounts, you can start advertising your products. Like Facebook, Instagram will reach your typical audience, find new ones, and retarget all on its own.
You can take this a step further by building your Instagram Shop to help increase your visibility on the Instagram Shopping page. By building out descriptive product pages and adding specific product tags, you can improve your products’ visibility and increase sales.
It’s also a good idea to continue to post regularly with product stories or posts that allow users to click through to your shop and purchase products directly from Instagram Shopping. Be sure to utilize every facet of Instagram to make your business stand out.
The Takeaway
While it may seem daunting at first to run a PPC e-commerce campaign, it’s simpler and more hands-off than you may think. For most channels, you can provide accurate product information to your product feeds, set a weekly or monthly budget, and watch as they grow and reach more potential customers.