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Essential eCommerce Advertising Tips to Drive More Sales May 13, 2020 (0 comments)

Retailers want to generate more sales. That’s pretty much a given. Thankfully, in the age of the internet, eCommerce advertising tips are just a couple of clicks away. The fact is that there are tons of digital marketing strategies to boost sales–that is, if merchants know where to go for such information.

One of the most effective of those digital strategies is PPC advertising. No matter if we are discussing social media, search engines or other websites, PPC adverts are one of the most effective, highest-converting marketing tactics available to online merchants.

To help sellers elevate their advertising acumen, today, we will be covering eCommerce advertising tips that will enable sellers to craft better ad campaigns. Let’s get started.

1. Target Based on Buyer Personas

When merchants are just getting started with their advertising efforts, creating buyer personas is a necessity for reaching the right customers. The reason for this is that, when just starting out, retailers may not have a clear guide as to whom they are trying to reach.

Generating detailed buyer personas provides merchants with a definitive direction to move. While some might consider this task superfluous, the amazing granularity of Facebook targeting options enables sellers to drill down into their audience to an extreme depth.

Through such tools, merchants can reach consumers who are single parents living in a particular section of the world who hold a bachelor’s degree, make more than $150,000 annually and recently took a trip to Peru.

That’s an extremely precise subset of Facebook’s users.

While this degree of specificity is likely to be a bit much, the point remains that many of today’s advertising platforms allow merchants to get extremely narrow with their target audience. Therefore, merchants must have an audience in mind to reach those who are likely to convert.

Additionally, the more a retailer “knows” their target audience, the better they will be able to tailor their ad creative toward these individuals.

While concrete data will inevitably serve to better inform merchants about their target audience, buyer personas are a foundational necessity.

2. Invest in Quality Imagery

Humans are visually-driven creatures. It is for this reason why research has shown that well-presented food tastes better than thoughtlessly dished up plates. A similar axiom applies to the imagery that advertisers utilize in their campaigns. Ad campaigns that forge ahead with corny, contrived stock images are likely to receive significantly fewer clicks than those who invested in generating stunning images that sell. Regardless of what retailers sell, including high-quality images in their advertising campaigns is of the utmost importance.

While this eCommerce advertising tip may seem to be self-evident to many, there are tons of campaigns that seem to think that the pictures presented are less important than the copy.

3. Keep Copy Honest

Again, while this may seem to be one of the more obvious eCommerce advertising tips, we are all aware that some sellers aggrandize their ad copy a bit too much.

The fact is that honesty in ad copy is not only paramount to the success of the campaign, but it is also crucial to a brand’s reputation overall.

If a business makes claims that its products cannot cash, consumers will catch on sooner than later. The result will likely be disastrous for the company.

Moreover, brands that engage in hyperbole should tread lightly as consumers are extremely sensitive to marketing trickery. In fact, this is the reason why a whopping 96 percent of consumers don’t trust ads. Therefore, retailers should aim to craft honest, straightforward and approachable copy that makes a product sound good because it is everything it has been described as being.

4. Draft Copy that Addresses Potential Objections

One of the more significant advertising pitfalls that retailers can encounter is making assumptions about an audience’s insights into a product or service.

Through the presumptuous belief that a customer knows more than they actually do, retailers will inevitably generate copy that leaves vital questions or concerns unanswered. Naturally, this will reduce click-through rates and conversions.

While retailers only have a limited space with which to work, it is wise to establish some of the most common questions or concerns around a product and create copy that speaks to those issues directly. Moreover, retailers can A/B test their advertising efforts to determine which version of the copy resonates most with consumers and garners clicks. When attempting to establish the most common questions and objections to a product, retailers can find this information out by asking social media audiences, conducting consumer surveys and conducting market research of other forms.

5. Ensure Consistent Messaging

One of the most frustrating things for customers who click on a PPC advert is to be taken to an irrelevant landing page or the company’s homepage.

When this happens, most will immediately bounce. When it comes to eCommerce advertising tips, linking to landing pages that increase conversion rates cannot be overstressed. When a shopper clicks a seller’s advert, they should be taken to a page that speaks specifically of the offered product or service.

Moreover, the destination URL should be consistent with the ad in copy, style, tone, appearance and (of course) offer. This means that if a seller clicks on an ad for 10 percent off a pair of running shoes, the first thing a customer should see is that offer and an image of the shoes. This will let them know that they are in the right place and make it more likely that they will convert.

6. Engage in Retargeting Campaigns

Fact: 92 percent of consumers visiting a retail site won’t convert on their first visit.

In reality, various studies have shown that it takes somewhere between six and 10 “touches” before retailers can make a sale. While this might be a bitter pill to swallow, it is the exact reason why retargeting is essential for eCommerce sales.

Through retargeting efforts, retailers can keep a brand or a specific product top-of-mind for those who recently displayed interest. Additionally, those who did not pull the trigger the first time around (or second or third) have yet another opportunity to consider their decision and return to the site to buy.

Given how fractured the customer journey has become, retargeting is the perfect tool for re-engaging consumers and getting them to convert.

7. Tap into the Voice of the Customer

As has already been expressed in some of the previous eCommerce advertising tips, the language that retailers deploy in their adverts is critical to campaign outcomes. Therefore, in addition to crafting honest, consistent messaging that addresses consumer concerns, retailers should also aim to use the “voice of the customer.”

For those who are unfamiliar, voice of the customer surveys are a research modality that describes the wants, needs and pain points of customers. When engaging in market research, voice of the customer serves to bridge the gap between customer expectation and actual experiences with a business.

Therefore, by engaging in this type of research and utilizing the exact phrasing used by a brand’s ideal customers, retailers are far more likely to craft resonant ads that produce the intended results.

8. Employ Google Shopping Ads

No article about eCommerce advertising tips is complete without a nod to Google Shopping adverts. The fact is that Google Shopping accounts for 76 percent of retailer search ad spending because it is so effective for online sellers.

Through engaging in product feed optimization best practices, retailers can reach their target audience at the moment that they are most likely to convert. Therefore, setting aside a healthy budget to leverage and experiment with Google Shopping adverts is highly advisable.

9. Showcase Facebook Offer Ads

People love a good sale, and when retailers run specials or give discounts, consumers are far more likely to click-through.

If retailers are running an awesome sale, it is wise to create Facebook Offer ads as a way to reel in shoppers. Part of what makes this ad type so powerful is that it provides users with social proof by displaying the number of people who have also claimed the offer.

Through this transparency, consumers are more likely to interact with the advert and make a purchase.

10. Create Custom Audiences

While we are on the topic of Facebook, utilizing Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature is a highly effective means of reaching the right consumers. With this targeting option, merchants are blasting out ads to those who have already shown interest in what the company offers.

While we are on the topic of Facebook, utilizing Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature is a highly effective means of reaching the right consumers. With this targeting option, merchants are blasting out ads to those who have already shown interest in what the company offers.

When retailers create a Custom Audience, there are three primary sources from which sellers can draw, including:

Customer Lists: Through this option, sellers can upload a list of customer contact information for Facebook to match to its users.

Website Traffic: Thanks to Facebook’s tracking pixel, merchants can retarget Facebook users who visit an online store within the past 30 days or added something to their cart over the past week.

Engagement: This Custom Audience type enables retailers to target those who have engaged with their Facebook or Instagram content.

While Custom Audiences is a powerful targeting option for increasing conversions, it does not help merchants to build awareness. For that aim, we turn to Lookalike Audiences.

11. Leverage Lookalike Audiences

With Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences, the social media company targets individuals who share similar characteristics, interests and behaviors of those who comprise the brand’s Custom Audience.

This is not only a fantastic eCommerce advertising tip for stretching the value of a company’s existing customer data, but it also helps significantly in building brand awareness and expanding a company’s user base as these individuals are highly likely to convert. Through this feature, a brand only needs to put in minimal work to reach a new subset of buyers.