Ecommerce and ppc campaigns

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Should the campaigns only bring traffic to the home page or both home and also individual product pages? If you have 200 products on the site its not feasible to have campaign running for all products. Or should you only target home page and key products that you think you could run profitable campaigns for?
#campaigns #ecommerce #ppc
  • Profile picture of the author themubeen
    It depends on your eCommerce website. If your website is niche specific then just diverting traffic to your Home page is much wiser. But, if your website targets to more then one categories then divert your traffic to each specific page.
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    • Profile picture of the author Anton543
      Originally Posted by themubeen View Post

      It depends on your eCommerce website. If your website is niche specific then just diverting traffic to your Home page is much wiser. But, if your website targets to more then one categories then divert your traffic to each specific page.
      This is why I am doing niche sites (relatively niche anyway) because I figure broader sites will be too much work and difficult to compete in, especially if you are running ad campaigns. Sure, it will be easier to get traffic from search in having broader sites possibly, even if only that's due to there being more product pages, but I figure if its too broad you lose the specificity, in which case customers may just as well go to Amazon or the like.

      The tighter the niche, the better possibly. However, if its too tight you possibly restrict yourself to too few customers.
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  • Profile picture of the author pavv
    Advertising with PPC can get expensive so it needs to be converting well to be viable. The best converting traffic is of course when people search for a specific product and then arrive from your ad to the product page - in this case people already know what they want, they just need to buy it. The next two are category and brand pages - people have an idea of what they want but are still researching options.

    I'd have to check with my Adwords manager but I don't think we send any traffic to any homepage with PPC.

    I haven't seen your store but I think the only instance where you should pay for traffic to your homepage is if it's a very tight niche your targeting (ie few products max) and customers can buy from your homepage.
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    • Profile picture of the author Anton543
      Originally Posted by pavv View Post

      Advertising with PPC can get expensive so it needs to be converting well to be viable. The best converting traffic is of course when people search for a specific product and then arrive from your ad to the product page - in this case people already know what they want, they just need to buy it. The next two are category and brand pages - people have an idea of what they want but are still researching options.

      I'd have to check with my Adwords manager but I don't think we send any traffic to any homepage with PPC.

      I haven't seen your store but I think the only instance where you should pay for traffic to your homepage is if it's a very tight niche your targeting (ie few products max) and customers can buy from your homepage.
      I think you are right. I think the best place to land the traffic (unless you want people to land on a specific produc) is to have them land on category pages.

      "The best converting traffic is of course when people search for a specific product and then arrive from your ad to the product page"

      Do you mean Adword ad?

      By the way, is your own Adword campaign profitable?

      To be honest, I am going to eventually try and have only 5 to 8 stores and then try to make each of them profitable. If you try to have a store in every niche it just gets to your head and could lead to bad mismanagement as a result.
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    • Profile picture of the author NJDevil
      Originally Posted by pavv View Post

      Advertising with PPC can get expensive so it needs to be converting well to be viable. The best converting traffic is of course when people search for a specific product and then arrive from your ad to the product page - in this case people already know what they want, they just need to buy it. The next two are category and brand pages - people have an idea of what they want but are still researching options.

      I'd have to check with my Adwords manager but I don't think we send any traffic to any homepage with PPC.

      I haven't seen your store but I think the only instance where you should pay for traffic to your homepage is if it's a very tight niche your targeting (ie few products max) and customers can buy from your homepage.

      this guy has it right.

      Branded campaigns should point to your homepage

      Non-Branded campaigns should point to product and category pages.

      If you need some advice on ppc, pm me. This is what I do for a living.
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  • Profile picture of the author Captain Kent
    thats a winning strategy if you are a pro at what you are doing, and I totally recommend you start small and if things work out than scale it
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  • Profile picture of the author pavv
    Do you mean Adword ad?
    Well yes I use Adwords but it can be any PPC campaign.

    By the way, is your own Adword campaign profitable?
    Yes all ongoing campaigns are profitable - I wouldn't keep them going if they weren't. However, with any new campaign you can't be 100% sure it will be profitable. If it's not profitable after spending $100-$200 then you need to look at conversion rate optimisation for your site - do a search for 'conversion rate experts' for more on this.

    Some stores have been VERY profitable with PPC and others we had to work hard making changes to the site to make the numbers work. It also depends a lot on how well the Adwords campaign is set up.

    I should note our Adwords manager is incredibly awesome at her job. I know all about Adwords but the campaigns she sets up are FAR better than I could do. Great ad copy (split tested), high CTR, high quality score and high rank - all with relatively low bids. A well set up campaign equates to more traffic and less ad spend which also affects whether it is profitable or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author Anton543
    Here is my plan with the PPC. I don't know what you think.

    I would run a single campaign with around 20 different ads, targeting the various category pages and around 10 to 15 individual product pages. Try and write compelling ad copy for each of those ads and target lots of keywords that are quite low in price but return decent amount of traffic.

    I set daily cap of $30 and run it for 5 days to test the waters.

    I have already used Adcenter a bit now. I only run a single ad per campaign. If I run multiple ads per campaign, do they run all ads at the same time until your daily budget is reached?

    Also, I have just received in the post a few days ago an Adword coupon and when I spend £25 (pounds) on it it will be topped up by a further £75.
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  • You want to remember the '3 click rule' with this regard.

    The three click rule for any website states that 'within a website a customer should be able to buy something within 3 clicks or less'.

    This is because on a website, typically you lose 1/3rd of your traffic every click on a website (typically called the tire-kickers) This results in an average bounce rate of 33%.

    That is why many websites have a conversion rate of 1%.

    Now. If you have all of your PPC clicks going to your homepage, that pretty much counts as ONE click - and if the potential customer now needs to click another THREE times to buy something? Your conversion rate suffers.

    You need to OPTIMIZE your PPC campaign with a DESTINATION url.

    My rule is that I have my KEYWORD (that I'm bidding on for that Ad) go to the URL that I'm optimizing for that keyword (typically a landing page or a product page)

    That way, the customer has clicked on and landed on EXACTLY what they have searched for.

    The clicked are minimized, and you have successfully allowed them to buy something within '3 clicks'.

    Enjoy!
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    • Profile picture of the author Anton543
      Originally Posted by Auctiondebteliminator View Post

      You want to remember the '3 click rule' with this regard.

      The three click rule for any website states that 'within a website a customer should be able to buy something within 3 clicks or less'.

      This is because on a website, typically you lose 1/3rd of your traffic every click on a website (typically called the tire-kickers) This results in an average bounce rate of 33%.

      That is why many websites have a conversion rate of 1%.

      Now. If you have all of your PPC clicks going to your homepage, that pretty much counts as ONE click - and if the potential customer now needs to click another THREE times to buy something? Your conversion rate suffers.

      You need to OPTIMIZE your PPC campaign with a DESTINATION url.

      My rule is that I have my KEYWORD (that I'm bidding on for that Ad) go to the URL that I'm optimizing for that keyword (typically a landing page or a product page)

      That way, the customer has clicked on and landed on EXACTLY what they have searched for.

      The clicked are minimized, and you have successfully allowed them to buy something within '3 clicks'.

      Enjoy!
      Yes, good logic. It makes sense to drive traffic to a product page to increase the chance of customer hitting the buy button.

      To that end, it makes sense to have significant number of related products on the product page. If a customer is not interested in that particular product, he/she may like something that showing under related products on the same page after product description of the original product.

      However, in some niches I also think it makes sense to drive people to the category page. The reason for that is in some cases people don't have a particular make in mind but want to search for a type of product without having a particular make brand in mind. You then present them a good list of products on the category page.

      But the most important thing that remains is, how do you best judge whether people are merely looking for information or, more importantly in our case, to buy? Of course, as store owner you want people that want to buy to come, not someone who wants read about a product (like a review). How do you filter them out? Is it in the ad copy and also the choice of keywords? In the ad copy you might make it clear that its products for sale rather than information, so people who are merely looking for information will less likely click on it.

      And also the keywords. Sometimes you can tell certain keywords that are buyer's keywords or information seekers' keywords.

      I suppose both these will fall under scope of optimization that you constantly need to do to the ads to find the winning combination in terms of high conversions.
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      • Originally Posted by Anton543 View Post

        Yes, good logic. It makes sense to drive traffic to a product page to increase the chance of customer hitting the buy button.

        To that end, it makes sense to have significant number of related products on the product page. If a customer is not interested in that particular product, he/she may like something that showing under related products on the same page after product description of the original product.

        However, in some niches I also think it makes sense to drive people to the category page. The reason for that is in some cases people don't have a particular make in mind but want to search for a type of product without having a particular make brand in mind. You then present them a good list of products on the category page.

        But the most important thing that remains is, how do you best judge whether people are merely looking for information or, more importantly in our case, to buy? Of course, as store owner you want people that want to buy to come, not someone who wants read about a product (like a review). How do you filter them out? Is it in the ad copy and also the choice of keywords? In the ad copy you might make it clear that its products for sale rather than information, so people who are merely looking for information will less likely click on it.

        And also the keywords. Sometimes you can tell certain keywords that are buyer's keywords or information seekers' keywords.

        I suppose both these will fall under scope of optimization that you constantly need to do to the ads to find the winning combination in terms of high conversions.

        Yes, you're right here.


        That why what I drive traffic to that page I have optimized the keyword (on the AD) for. Even if it is a category page, informational page, OR a product page.

        Remember, you're just minimizing clicks. If they are searching for INFORMATION and you sent them to a product page, you MAXIMIZE their clicks because now they're confused.

        Scrutinize the type of keyword.

        Say you were selling fishing poles:

        If they keyword was: Shimano fishing poles - You'd send them to your shimano fishing poles category page - since they aren't looking for a specific one, and that is the PAGE that you've optimized that keyword.

        If you bid on the keyword, say, Shimano 5200x fishing reel, then you'd send them to the product page.

        It's all about minimizing clicks.
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        • Profile picture of the author lavmljl
          Not to but in, but looking to get into PPC. I have to thank all involved in this thread. You all were very informative in your take on setting up a successful adword ad. It might seem like very little was talked about, but what I learned from just your thread really helped alot. Thank you guys
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  • Profile picture of the author alksense
    Originally Posted by Anton543 View Post

    Should the campaigns only bring traffic to the home page or both home and also individual product pages? If you have 200 products on the site its not feasible to have campaign running for all products. Or should you only target home page and key products that you think you could run profitable campaigns for?
    With eCommerce stores you want every visitor (especially paid visitors) to be at your store because they want to BUY.

    Whenever I'm setting up an advertising campaign I always think "what term(s) would a BUYER be searching for?"

    Let's take the lighting fixture niche for example and assume you have an eCommerce store with over 10,000 products.

    You might think to bid on the keyword "lighting fixtures"... I would NEVER do this. It's way too broad of a term and there are MUCH better places to put your advertising dollars.

    Then you may narrow it down even further and think to bid on the keyword "buy lighting fixtures"... again, this is WAY to broad. There are other places to put your advertising dollars which will convert at MUCH higher rates and leave you with more net profit.

    I get as EXACT as possible when setting up PPC campaigns (even with Shopping Engines)

    The traffic I was is the visitor who is searching for "product abc in black" or "supplier name sku#134141"

    If you split test both methods (broad search terms to your homepage or category pages vs. specific detailed product pages) your jaw will drop once you see the difference in conversions. The best part is that you can actually bid much less per click for these specific keywords because there is less competition.

    Lower bids and a higher conversion rate.. can't go wrong.
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  • it should depend how you can target.If you choose a keyword then should choose a product.But better to target category for products or specific page for service.
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  • Profile picture of the author lukevdp
    Originally Posted by Anton543 View Post

    Should the campaigns only bring traffic to the home page or both home and also individual product pages? If you have 200 products on the site its not feasible to have campaign running for all products. Or should you only target home page and key products that you think you could run profitable campaigns for?
    You should do whatever is profitable.

    If it is profitable to run ads for each of your 200 products, then yes it is feasible. Normally I would run ads at a category level, but some products, especially branded products that people are looking for specifically, it can be profitable to run ads for a single page.

    Basically, if the search volume is there, and you can advertise profitably, do it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Anton543
    I noticed that phrase match seems to get cheaper clicks than broad match, at least so far anyway. However, the clicks are slow in coming when you select phrase match.
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  • The reason your clicks are cheaper are because your CTR is higher (at least on a quality-score based system) And with a higher CTR, the lower the CPC.

    On a linear based system - such as 7 search, it wouldn't matter because what you bid is what you pay.
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