Pay-per-click marketing, also known as PPC, is sometimes considered the most effective digital marketing channel because anyone can set up an account, launch campaigns and can start making money in a matter of hours.
The operative word there is “can.” There’s no guarantee that you’re going to make money with PPC and the truth is it’s very easy to lose money with PPC. Here are some of the biggest problems with PPC that make eCommerce PPC management a potentially viable solution.
Ineffective Bidding
In every PPC campaign, you need to select keywords for which you want your ads to display.
However, you’re not going to be the only one bidding on those keywords. The less you bid, the less likely your ads are to show up.
Setting up a bid strategy that is not aggressive is one quick way for a campaign to bleed money. You won’t lose money on clicks (cause you won’t get them) but your campaign also won’t make any money.
And, if you’re not returning any revenue and you have hired an eCommerce PPC management company, you’ll lose money because you won’t be able to cover the management fee.
Remember the old adage, “you need to spend money to make money”? That applies here. It’s critical to have an effective bid strategy in place that will have your ads displaying for the right keywords.
Ineffective Targeting
Bid strategy is one thing, ad targeting is quite another. Not all segments of the market are going to be attractive to your ads or your products and you need to qualify that.
To be specific – if all your sales come from consumers that are above 40, there’s no sense in marketing to those that are younger than 30. You’ll likely lose money.
If most of your sales go to women, there’s little sense in marketing to men.
These are just two demographics, though. You can also target according to device, time of day, geographic location, interests, life events and other qualifiers.
The better your targeting is, the more likely it is that your campaign will be lucrative.
Too Much Competition
One of the least appealing aspects of PPC marketing is that your operational costs will go up whenever a competitor enters your markets and bids on your keywords.
You could be running a completely profitable campaign one month, then the next be underwater just because a competitor decided to target your keywords.
Unfortunately, merchants who run PPC campaigns have no recourse here either to pay more or to shift their strategy by targeting other keywords or focusing on other revenue drivers.
Not Setting Negative Keywords
Lastly, one other big problem with eCommerce PPC is not qualifying negative keywords. If you’re not specific enough with your keyword targeting, your ads will display for keywords that are similar to your intended cohort but which will not produce a viable return.
Then, you’ll get clicks for those impressions but no conversions. Your cost per click will go up, your revenue will fall, and if bounce rate is high, there’s a good chance your quality score will suffer too.
This is one of the main reasons it’s so important to hire an eCommerce PPC specialist that actually understands the industry.
The Solutions: eCommerce PPC Management (or SEO)
There are two main solutions to these issues. One is to hire an eCommerce PPC specialist that knows that market and understands bid strategy, keyword selection, and targeting.
The other is to skip right over PPC and only do SEO, which has been shown time and time again, at least in most industries, to produce the highest return on investment.
