Running PPC campaigns is crucial for e-commerce businesses because it helps them in increasing their online sales.
Many businesses launch multiple PPC campaigns on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Bing. And when there are many active campaigns, it becomes difficult for them to prioritize and manage them.
In this article, we will discuss how to prioritize your e-commerce PPC campaigns for better results.
What is Ecommerce PPC Campaign Prioritization?
For ecommerce businesses that are running PPC ad campaigns, prioritization means giving priority to campaigns and activities that help them meet their business objectives sooner.
For example, an online store may have the objective of generating leads that will result in sales in the future. In this case, it needs to give priority to campaigns that generate leads over those that generate sales directly.
How Do I Prioritize My Ecommerce PPC Campaigns?
There are many ways to prioritize your PPC campaign builds, let’s look at some of them.
1. High ROI Keywords
As a general rule, you should build keyword lists for ecommerce PPC campaigns that have high ROIs. The higher the value of each conversion from a keyword, the more it will pay to advertise for this term.
In other words, keywords with high ROIs are valuable investments, and you should allocate more of your budget to targeting them.
How to Find High ROI keywords
To find keywords that give a high return on investment, there are several free and paid tools in the market.
A tool like Google Ads Keywords Planner allows you to find keywords that have a high average monthly search volume and low competition.
For example, let’s say you sell shoes online. You could target the keyword “buy shoes online”, which has a high average monthly search volume of 10,000. However, the competition for this keyword is high, so the ROI may not be as good as other keywords.
A better option could be the keyword “discount shoes online”, which has a lower average monthly search volume of 2,000 but less competition. This means that there is room to rank higher in the search results and get more traffic for a lower cost.
So target those keywords that have a potential for higher Return on Investment.
2. Urgent Campaigns
Some ecommerce PPC campaigns are more urgent than others and need to be completed sooner rather than later.
For instance, if you’re running a sale, you’ll want to make sure your Ad campaigns are up and running before the sale starts. This way, you can ensure that your potential customers see your ads when they’re searching for related terms.
Another way to prioritize urgent campaigns is to decide what supports your business more than the others.
If your business is new and doesn’t have much capital to spend on Ads, you may want to focus first on running ads for items that are already selling well. You can spend on New or low-value services that do not affect the bottom line significantly later.
3. Difficulty Levels
No matter how confident you are about the performance of your ecommerce PPC campaigns, there will always be some uncertainty involved when it comes to optimizing them for maximum performance.
Therefore, it makes sense to start off by prioritizing campaigns with lower difficulty levels so you can test them out before moving on to more challenging ones. To determine difficulty levels, you’ll need to analyze the following factors:
- Competition: How many other businesses are targeting the same keywords?
- Avg. CPC: What is the average cost-per-click for these keywords?
- Keyword Difficulty Level: Use a tool to determine the difficulty level of your keywords.
If your online store is new, it is easier to first target low-hanging fruits than going after the highly competitive/difficult keywords. These might include product or service names and other related terms. You can then experience success and use this data to optimize your campaigns for more challenging and profitable keywords.
4. New Customers
You can also prioritize PPC campaigns by focusing on new customers. In most cases, it costs less to attract new customers than it does to retain existing ones.
If you have a good budget to work with, it makes sense to focus first on campaigns that will attract new customers instead of trying to retain ones that aren’t performing as well.
Of course, this tactic only works if you know which campaigns are attracting your best customers and which ones are turning away potential buyers. To do this, you’ll again need access to Google Keyword Planner.
You can use that to identify the keywords that your current customers are using to find your site. You can then use those same keywords in your PPC campaigns to attract more of the same type of new buyers.
Once you have a better understanding of which campaigns are performing well, you can focus on bringing in new customers who are more likely to convert into sales.
5. Targeting New Keywords
When building ecommerce PPC campaigns for the first time, you should prioritize adding new keywords that are driving traffic but aren’t yet included in your list of targeted terms.
You can find interesting new keywords by using tools like Google Autocomplete and other related searches.
There are several other ways to find new keywords such as:
- Using Competitor Keywords: Find out which keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their sites.
- Using Adwords Traffic Estimator: Find keywords that are highly relevant but don’t have a lot of competition.
- Reaching Out: Consult with individuals and businesses you’re already working with.
These are all not just keywords but potential opportunities for you to capture some additional sales.
6. Remarketing Opportunities
If you have an existing remarketing campaign or plan on launching one, then prioritizing your ecommerce PPC campaigns is simple.
You should only create keywords lists for PPC campaigns that you plan on remarketing to your website visitors who are already familiar with your brand, products, or services. To do remarketing effectively:
- Set up a good list of remarketing tags
- Segment your traffic by the actions they take on your site
- Create tailored ads for each audience segment
Some of the best remarketing tips include using dynamic ads, testing video ads, and using custom audiences. With these steps, your remarketing campaigns will be more successful and you’ll generate a higher ROI.
8. Seasonality
Finally, you should also take into account the seasonality of your products when prioritizing your ecommerce PPC campaigns. Doing your PPC advertising based on seasonality works in two ways:
a. It helps determine when to start your campaign
If you’re a retailer that sells Christmas gifts, then it would make sense to start ramping up your PPC campaigns in October or November. This will ensure that you have enough traffic and conversions leading up to the holiday shopping season.
b. It tells you when you need to stop your campaigns.
If you’re a retailer that only sells merchandized sportswear during Football World Cup 2021 or NFL 2021, then you probably don’t want to run ads after these events have ended. Because people are less likely to be shopping for those products then.
By following these tips, you can focus on building the most effective ecommerce PPC campaigns for your business. And as always, be sure to test and measure the results of each campaign so that you can continue to improve your performance over time.