By: Craig Smith
In the competitive world of retail, more brands than ever are turning to paid media and ecommerce ads management to compete with the likes of Amazon and Walmart. Whether you’re just getting your feet wet in the world of paid search campaigns or have active campaigns that you want to improve, follow these 10 steps to optimize your eCommerce paid search performance.
1. Break Down Your Mega Ad Groups
Effective ecommerce PPC management begins with tightly structured ad groups that align search intent and ad relevance. Experts recommend limiting each ad campaign to 10-20 keywords, but some people grow their ad groups to dozens (if not hundreds) of words and phrases. Breaking down big ad groups is one of the easiest paid search optimizations for improving campaign precision. What’s more, the vast majority of the time, the ad is only served on a few keywords, rendering the rest of them useless.
Look at your ad groups and find opportunities to break them down. Your customers aren’t afraid to put in long-tail keywords to get exactly what they want, and you should consider developing your ad groups with their needs in mind. Some paid search professionals even go so far as to recommend a unique ad group for each keyword. While this may be a little drastic for your needs, it highlights the importance of microtargeting your customers instead of blasting one ad to keywords across the web.
2. Look for Underperforming Keywords
Once your ad groups are organized by intent, the next step in paid search optimization is evaluating which keywords drive real sales and which simply waste budget. For some, Google’s Keyword Planner tool is a gateway to irrelevant and cluttered ad groups. Some people add any keyword or phrase that Google suggests without considering the intent behind the search. Additional tools include Semrush or Google Ads Recommendations for broader insights
Use your ad group breakdown to conduct a keyword purge. Look at keywords or phrases that aren’t getting clicks despite their impressions—or are getting clicks but not conversions. You may need to adjust the ad copy or remove the words entirely.
3. Make Sure Your Feeds Are Optimized
A healthy product feed is the foundation of ecommerce ads management. By keeping your data accurate and up-to-date, your product listing ads stay eligible and visible across shopping search campaigns. Google is quick to pull the trigger and stop your ads if your feed is outdated. After all, it’s in the search engine’s best interest to offer a reliable product without pricing or inventory mix-ups.
4. Check Your Conversion Tracking
Every successful ecommerce paid search campaign depends on precise conversion tracking. Without accurate ad-driven sales measurement, you’re flying blind on what’s actually driving revenue. Targeting click traffic is great if you operate a lead-generation website and are primarily trying to gain exposure for your brand. However, for ecommerce paid search, you need conversion tracking. This is as simple as adding a code snippet to your confirmation page that can pick up the items, value and time of purchase.
As you work to improve your ad campaigns, you can better understand what ads and ad groups are driving sales with this tracking. You might be surprised to see what products are moving and generating revenue.
5. Sort Your Campaigns By Gross Margin
Smart ecommerce ad campaign management means prioritizing profit, not just clicks. By sorting campaigns by margin, you can focus your PPC optimization efforts on the products that deliver real ROI. It may be time to completely retool your campaigns based on performance and profit to the company.
Many eCommerce brands sort their campaigns by department. For example, a home improvement store would create the following campaign:
- Plumbing — Toilets — Toilet Flappers: Instead, you may want to prioritize your campaigns based on the gross margin of your products. This way, you can bid more aggressively on brands and products that provide a higher ROI for your business and bid down on items that don’t benefit your company.
Let’s continue to use the home improvement store as an example. The store might realize that their Craftsman tools have a particularly low ROI. While they sell well in paid search, the company breaks even when they factor in shipping, ad cost, and other expenses. However, the same company might have a significant gross margin for private-label tools. By promoting these private label brands, they can make more money for the company.
Private-label brands also tend to have less competition than national brands, which means CPCs are lower, and your ROI is already naturally higher. That’s as good of a reason as any to create unique campaigns and bid more aggressively for them.
6. Find Opportunities to Lower Your Bids
One of the most impactful paid search optimizations involves strategic bid adjustments— balancing visibility and profitability so your ecommerce PPC campaigns stay efficient and competitive. There are some terms that you’ll win and others that you can’t compete with. Terms like Disney and Nike are incredibly competitive, which means you could be paying several dollars for clicks that may or may not sell profitable items.
More than 45% of clicks come from the top three ads on a page, which means your brand may benefit from targeting third—or even fourth-position—in the ads. You could still get the clicks you want, but your CPCs could be lower because you’re not bidding as aggressively.
Remember, your eCommerce paid search campaign is a portfolio of ad groups and keywords. You need to look at each segment individually to ensure it’s profitable.
7. Focus on Your Quality Scores
Improving your Google Ads quality rating is key to affordable and scalable ecommerce paid search optimization. When ad relevance and landing page experience align, you win more auctions for less. Some eCommerce paid search managers get so obsessed with bids and competitors that they forget about the soft tactics they can apply to save money.
Plus, AI-based bid automation and predictive Quality Score factors now impact visibility. Google assigns a Quality Score to your keywords that tells you how closely your ad and landing page experience match what your customers want. The closer your score is to 10, the greater the chance that you are creating a positive traffic experience.
There are multiple ways you can improve your Quality Score. Start by creating ads that are closely related to your keywords. (This is another argument for creating ad groups with just a handful of keywords—you can develop better ads.) Google also looks at the landing page experience, so consider building landing pages for certain brands to ensure customers land exactly where they want to go. If you’re driving all of your eCommerce paid search traffic to your homepage, you’re doing something wrong.
With a higher Quality Score, Google is more likely to lower your CPCs and increase your average position—meaning you’re getting more for less. This is worth it to Google (because they get a click) and helps you grow your sales.
8. Take Up as Much Real Estate as You Can
A smart search ad optimization tactic is to maximize your visibility in the SERPs. Ad extensions help your ecommerce PPC ads dominate valuable search real estate. Google creates opportunities for you to add a bunch of extensions and additions to your ads take—advantage of them. Google’s extensions include customer reviews, callouts, structured snippets, local addresses and your phone number. These extensions increase your credibility and convince people to click. However, they also have an added bonus: the more extensions people see on your ad, the more likely they are to ignore others.
Real estate is limited in the SERPs, and you should do everything you can to take up as much space as possible.
9. Invest in Retargeting for eCommerce Paid Search
Retargeting, or remarketing campaigns, play a pivotal role in ecommerce PPC strategy. They help convert warm audiences and recover potential lost sales through high-intent follow-ups. If you’re not remarketing to your customers, you’re significantly missing out on eCommerce revenue. You could win back more than 15% of your customers who were considering buying from your website. Retargeting makes it easy for people to remember your brand when they have already visited your website, and you can spur them into action with an added coupon or deal.
Website visitors who see retargeting messages are 70% more likely to convert than those who don’t. You’re already hitting your customers in the research phase of the sales funnel. Now it’s time to make them convert with retargeted ads.
10. Import Your Google Ads Into Bing
Everyone likes to make fun of Bing as the oft-ignored platform compared to Google, but there is real value in using their search campaign. Import your Google Ads campaigns into Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads), which now supports AI-driven optimizations and Shopping Ads expansion. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Plus, there are significant, tangible benefits to using this platform.
The cost of Microsoft Ads can be 30-70% cheaper than Google Ads. Demand is decreased from Google, so prices are lower. This makes it easier to hit your target ROI goals with the help of affordable Bing traffic.
In terms of market share, Bing is second only to Google. Consider your demographics as you invest in Bing; you may find that it’s more profitable than you realize.
Partner with OuterBox for Highly Successful Paid Search Results
Your eCommerce paid search campaigns can bring a steady stream of income and traffic to your website. However, if you’re struggling to grow your ROI or notice underperforming products and ad groups, it could be time for a tune-up. Contact OuterBox and ask for a free digital marketing review to identify waste and find ways to adjust your paid search campaigns for maximum impact.
