When you’re first launching an ecommerce website, there are a few absolutes. Your website should be secure, easy to shop, and able to fulfill orders. Aside from the technical architecture of the website, you should also have a few essential marketing elements in place.

In this post, I’ll cover four pay per click marketing tools accessible through Google AdWords. I’ll provide resources for understanding standard text ads, walk you through the importance of display advertising, provide insight on creating a retargeting campaign, and demonstrate the function of product listing ads.

Standard Text

I’m only going to say this once: if you have an ecommerce website, you need a text-based pay per click campaign. It’s the single most effective way to drive quality, measurable traffic that can be carefully mapped to your ROI goals. Here are some helpful references from previous blog posts on Spartan Insights:

• Setting up a campaign: Here is the barebones guide to starting your Google AdWords campaign
• Segmenting traffic: Make sure you can segment and track your PPC activity effectively
• Writing good ad copy: Learn how to create stronger calls to action and improve click-through activity
• Boost Quality Scores: Don’t pay more than you have to by increasing you quality score
• Target the right audience: Make sure your ads are showing the right geographic audience
• Maintain and improve performance: Check these settings to improve performance a bit more

Display Ads & Managed Placements

Display ads can be incredibly effective at improving brand awareness and driving view-through conversions. Google’s ad inventory is significant as well, which will ensure you’re showing up on most of the available websites online. To get the most out of your display ads, make sure you do the following:

• Create a separate campaign. Do not run your display ads through an existing campaign. Create a new campaign with the sole intention of showing image ads. This allows for better performance tracking and management.
• Make sure your ads are targeted properly. Create ads with your target audience in mind. If you’re trying to drive more leads, consider including your phone number and a link back to a contact form. If you’re selling a product, include images of the product and a defined “Shop Now” call to action. Ultimately, you need to build awareness and drive conversions.
• Run a URL report. To see what URLs are driving traffic through your ads, follow the directions below.

Start by selecting “Networks” from the campaign tabs.

Select the URL list drop down menu and select “See All”. This will populate a list of every site sending visits your way (this is similar to the search terms report for keywords).

From here, you can adjust your bids, exclude certain websites, or download the spreadsheet of data and analyze further. Just like your keyword selections, you’ll want to make sure that only the top websites are showing your ads. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your money.

Retargeting

Retargeting (or remarketing) through Google AdWords is incredibly simple and effective. What is retargeting? It’s the process in which you reach out to individuals who have already visited your site. The setup doesn’t require much effort and the payoff can be tremendous.

• Create a new campaign specifically for retargeting. As mentioned previously, always create a new campaign for the purposes of tracking and managing more effectively. Learn more about setting up a retargeting campaign.
• Identify your audience. Who are you targeting? Perhaps you want to drive back anyone who visited the site previously, or maybe just people who abandoned a specific page. Either way, make sure you understand these market segments and create the appropriate remarketing lists for them.
• Incentivize. One way to improve the performance of retargeting ads and gain long term customers is to offer an incentive for clicking through the advertisement. This works best with an ecommerce website since you can provide coupon codes in the ad.

The code provided during the setup process needs to be added to the website for the campaign to start tracking.

Product Feeds

A product feed allows you to show your products in a Google-based advertisement. There are two ways this can show up. 1). In a separate campaign which only shows the product and product info, or 2). in an existing campaign which shows the product as part of a text-based advertisement.

• Setup a product specific campaign. By setting up a specific campaign that only shows products, you can double your search real-estate consumption for certain keyword searches. To setup a product only campaign, simply create a new campaign, enter your bids, and select “Product Extensions” from ad extensions. You’ll also need to have an account created in Google Merchant Center with a valid product feed.
• Use the Product ad extension for existing ads. If you have an existing campaign that needs a boost, go to the “Ad Extensions” tab for that campaign. Select “Product Extensions” and sync it with your Merchant Center account.
• Keep your inventory up to date. To ensure you’re getting the most out of your product campaigns, keep your product feed in Merchant Center updated. Learn more about Google Merchant Center.

Bringing it all together

A typical customer flow might look something like this.

• Start with a display campaign to boost brand awareness
• Run a text-based campaign simultaneously to drive a steady flow of qualified traffic
• Bolster each campaigns’ performance by adding extensions like products from your Merchant Center Account
• Bring the audience back your site with retargeting

Wrapping Up

Google AdWords offers a ton of great features for ecommerce platforms. I encourage you to experiment with these tools and extract the most value possible from its free interface. Got other suggestions? As always, leave them in the comment box below.