Ecommerce ads are important for every online business, now more than ever. Are you looking for the best strategies to transform your shopping ads? Then you have arrived right where you should be. After spending a lot of resources in terms of money and time in starting your online store, doing product development and onsite store optimization, you need real and targeted traffic for your efforts to bear fruits.
That is where advertising for ecommerce comes in handy. To get this important web traffic to your site, you need a well-thought out and long-term ecommerce ads strategy to start making money from your online business.
Outline
- Changing World Of Ecommerce Businesses
- What Is Ecommerce Advertising?
- What Are The Popular Types Of Ecommerce Advertising?
- Display advertising
- Search engine optimization and marketing (SEO and SEM)
- Social media advertising
- Native advertising
- Pay per click (PPC) advertising
- Content marketing
- Other types of ecommerce advertising
- What Do Businesses Need To Know Before Running Ads?
- Ecommerce Advertising Techniques For Businesses
- Use of multiple advertising channels
- Personalize ecommerce ads
- Optimize your customer conversion rates
- Use mobile advertising
- se artificial intelligence in your ecommerce marketing strategy
- Optimize your redirects to your ecommerce business
- Use social media platforms
- Use the power of augmented marketing
- Examples Of Excellent Ecommerce Ads For Inspirations
- Conclusion
I. Changing World Of Ecommerce Businesses
New methods of selling products online keep on emerging. As a result, starting an online business is no longer difficult or costly, and anyone can venture right in, even for teenagers. This has led to an increase in online businesses in all niches. As an ecommerce website owner, you therefore need to find new ways of attracting and retaining customers amidst lots of competition.
Because 80% of the American population shop online, you should have a strong online marketing and advertising strategy. Luckily, we are here to save you the headache of doing this by providing you with the 8 best ecommerce ads techniques to transform your business. Read on!
II. What Is Ecommerce Advertising?
Ecommerce advertising is the process of placing paid content on both online and offline channels with an intention of attracting and retaining traffic on your ecommerce business. It is a form of ecommerce marketing that seeks to promote a store that sells products and services through online means. However, the defining factor here is that you’ll have to pay for the promotion of your store on ecommerce advertising platforms. In this way, you spend money to drive traffic to your business. You also spend in order to convert these visitors from just raw traffic to paying customers.
After the customers make a purchase, you also spend money to retain or re-attract them back to your store using paid advertising. This advertising uses paid ecommerce adverts placed on strategic channels and pages to promote your ecommerce business in the eyes of the internet users. You do not necessarily need an ecommerce ads agency because we are here to offer you all the information you need to succeed.
Digital marketing channels
Some of the ecommerce advertising platforms that you can use to place adverts include social media channels, websites, search engines, newsletters, podcasts, chat rooms, instant message platforms and email platforms among others.
Offline channels that you can use in your ecommerce advertising strategies include traditional media such as radio, TV, newspaper, creative billboard design and direct mails among others.
Ecommerce advertising therefore incorporates three important elements;
- Paying for advertising content
- Placing ads on online channels for digital marketing
- Using offline channels to promote your ecommerce brand
III. What Are The Popular Types Of Ecommerce Advertising?
According to eMarketer, Google, Facebook and Amazon ecommerce ads are popular and you should consider them for your online ads. The main objective is to reach traffic that may or may not be aware of your online store. Depending on your niche, you may advertise with a goal to create brand awareness, attract subscribers, or make sales. In this way, the type of ecommerce ads platform and strategy that works for another business may not necessarily work for your store. That is why you should be aware of the different types of ecommerce advertising.
01. Display advertising
Display advertising refers to the use of paid visual and text content in a website environment. The most common methods of display advertisement include banner ads and popups. Display ads are by design different from other types mainly because they do not appear in search engine results. In essence, you will find them on blogs and websites appearing technically to divert the user to the store’s products or services. As part of display advertising, you can use Facebook ads, Google ads, billboard content and all manner of displays.
Display ads are especially useful when using them for brand recognition and awareness. Most display advertisements and messages perform even better when placed on channels that you have control of. These include your business websites and blogs.
02. Search engine optimization and marketing (SEO and SEM)
As the title suggests, SEO and SEM use search engines in order to provide your store with the much needed search ads visibility and brand awareness when different people use different keywords to search for products and services. The chances of your search ads or ecommerce store appearing on search engine results depends on both SEO and SEM.
SEO marketing refers to optimizing your business for higher search engine rating. On your business website, you need to use relevant keywords (some may say magic words) and phrases in your high-quality website content. Other SEO tactics include link building, regular updates, posting content regularly and even optimizing your website code and many more. The end result is high ranking in search engines and therefore attracting organic traffic.
Can you pay for SEO? The answer is no because that will not yield organic traffic and therefore will be SEM. SEM means paying search engines for your store to appear in search results and pay when visitors click on it.
03. Social media advertising
Social media marketing is another popular type of ecommerce advertising. According to a survey by Net Solutions, 11% of participants bought an item online immediately after discovering it on social media while 44% of them bought it later. Placing shopping adson social media is a highly effective method of advertising. The reason for this is, according to recent statistics;
- In a day, people spend two hours and 24 minutes on social media
- There are about 3.2 billion people actively using social media around the world. One million accounts are added daily
- Most social media users use mobile phones to access the platforms
How to use social media
You can use social media in two ways. You can use it to promote your ecommerce store by posting marketing content on different social media platforms. By doing so, you will attract organic traffic to your ecommerce store. This is popularly known as online word-of-mouth using social media.
Secondly, you can use paid social media to promote your business. This involves placing paid ecommerce ads on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and other popular channels. Many businesses use ecommerce Facebook ads as a good starting point for their best ecommerce ads.
04. Native advertising
Native advertising is a type of digital marketing that involves posting advertisements usually camouflaged as editorial content with or without links to your website, products or services. You may see native ads at the end of a particular content section like blog or social media posts. Depending on where they are posted, you’ll see native and dynamic product ads with such labels as “Others Liked ….”, “Others Searched for…”, ``Recommended …” among other labels.
05. Pay per click (PPC) advertising
PPC refers to any dynamic ads that are only paid for when users click on them. When using PPC, the link to your store, product or service is strategically placed and shown to internet users. You can commonly see PPC dynamic product ads on different websites and even search ads posted on engine result pages (SERPS).
It is important to note here that PPC adverts incorporate a wide range of ecommerce advertisements. The guiding principle here is the fact that if you pay for your ecommerce ad when a user clicks on it, that is PPC regardless of where it was posted.
06. Content marketing
This is a type of advertising for ecommerce where you create and post high-quality content on relevant topics relating to your business niche. In doing so, you are providing useful information to users and creating a ground where you can post paid advertising content for your online advertising needs.
In addition to this, you can include links to your website or product pages. Most businesses do post such information on their websites and get organic traffic. Other times, you can pay other channels such as a magazine to post content and include a mention back to your website. Do you have a content marketing team? I am sure you do!
07. Other types of ecommerce advertising
There are so many other types of ecommerce advertising. Depending on the criteria that you use, other ecommerce advertising includes the following;
- Adwords (Now Google Ads)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Brand Marketing
- Chatbot Advertising
- Cloud Marketing
- Conversational and Behavioral Marketing
- Email Marketing
Other types also include:
- Google Search ads, Product Ads (Google Shopping Campaigns)
- Influencer Marketing
- Mobile Advertising
- Programmatic Advertising
- Remarketing ads and Retargeting Ads
- Video Ads and Photo Ads
- Web Push Ads
IV. What Do Businesses Need To Know Before Running Ads?
Before launching ecommerce advertising strategies, businesses need to prepare adequately to make it possible for potential clients to get on board. To prepare for the ecommerce ads campaign, you need to do the following:
01. Know your ecommerce ads target audiences
In addition to knowing your audience demographics such as age, income levels, geographical orientations among others, there are quite a number of other important metrics that you should look for. You need to know what problems your audiences are seeking to solve, what products they are looking for, where they look, what their motivations are and what really matters to them.
When doing this, you are creating a perfect buyer persona that will help you come up with best ecommerce ads that resonate with your target group. This will help you create ads that solve your customers’ needs, address all their concerns and provide solutions to their pain points.
The best place to start in knowing your target audience is by looking at analytics and metrics provided by such tools as Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. If your store is on Shopify, you can learn how to set up Shopify Google Analytics.
02. Check to ensure that your website is properly optimized
It goes without saying that you already have a website for your business. But is this online business optimized? For an effective ecommerce advertising strategy, make sure that your website has the capability to handle increased traffic and convert them from raw traffic to paying customers.
To do this, make sure to address the following;
- Check that your store is mobile-friendly. More than half of the audience use their mobile phones and other devices to access your online store. To succeed, make sure their experience is optimized
- Offer many payment methods. Customers are happy to see their preferred payment method is available on your ecommerce store. If the option is not available, they are likely to abandon the purchase. How do you solve this? By making multiple payment options available in your store
- Keep your sales process simple and short. By doing so, you are making it easy for the customers to spend in your store and give you money. Remove all the barriers that may make your customers abandon their carts before closing a sale
Having a well optimized ecommerce store that makes it easy for customers to buy, provides a perfect environment to start implementing your ecommerce ads strategy. You are now ready to start building and launching your effective ecommerce advertising and marketing techniques.
V. Ecommerce Advertising Techniques For Businesses
It may sound complicated but with the right ad strategies, ecommerce advertising is simple and beneficial. Well-thought out advertising techniques for ecommerce businesses provide the perfect recipe for business profitability. If you have not done it before, you may need to know how business advertising works and that not all platforms are the same when it comes to crafting best ecommerce strategies.
You can create and use advertising techniques regardless of the platform your store is running on. However, some ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify make some ecommerce advertising techniques easier or even pre-existing. For example, Shopify stores are already SEO-friendly from the onset. But with custom-made stores or with other platforms, SEO has to be done manually. Which one is better? Your custom website or Shopify?
Good advertising techniques for ecommerce businesses will seek to:
- Get new clients, visitors, and customers while retaining the existing ones
- Cross-sell or upsell in order to maximize customer value
- Ensure free and easy flow of information between the business and the customers
Without wasting any time, here are the 8 best ecommerce ads techniques to transform your business.
01. Use of multiple advertising channels
Using multiple channels to place ecommerce ads provides a perfect opportunity for your audiences to see and interact with your ads. This is an ecommerce ads technique that maximizes visibility and results for your ads. Online businesses have many channels to incorporate in their advertising campaigns. These include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google display and search, YouTube, LinkedIn and many others.
Businesses also use traditional brick and mortar channels such as in-store sales representatives, TV, Radio and newspapers. For example, when a customer buys pants in your store, he is able to see an ad that recommends a matching shirt for the pants he bought when he goes to Facebook. This is an Omni-channel technique that works well with ecommerce ads.
02. Personalize ecommerce ads
Before venturing into advertising, we mentioned that you should know your target audiences. When you understand your potential customers, you are able to craft ecommerce adsand personalize them to answer their needs, whenever and wherever they are. Personalizing your business ads to suit the needs of your customers and meet their expectations at every stage of the marketing process ensures better results.
How do you personalize, for example, Instagram ads? Or Facebook ads? This is by collecting customer data and segmenting it to the smallest possible scenario. The more you learn about your customers, the better your personalization will be. For example, if your customers use Twitter more than Instagram, you need to personalize your ads for better Twitter consumption.
03. Optimize your customer conversion rates
Conversion rate is the number of customers that see your business ads as compared to the number of people that actually take action or make a purchase. To improve this conversion rate, you need to engage in a little science. You need to come up with hypotheses, collect data, analyze the data and do testing. Most advertising executives use multivariate and A/B testing methods to decide which ecommerce ads design is better compared to another.
When you understand the business problem that you want to solve and then start looking for and testing the solutions using scientifically sound methods, you are sure to increase conversion rates.
04. Use mobile advertising
Mobile advertising techniques are a must-have. This is because customers are more likely to visit your store using their mobile devices than through any other means. Unsurprisingly, customers use their mobile devices to compare prices, read customer reviews, locate other stores and look for item related information even when they are physically in your store.
Increased use of mobile phones means that you should have a well-designed mobile ecommerce advertising strategy that meets your customers where they are and through the devices they are using. This is without mentioning that your store should also be highly mobile-friendly. Do you know 90% of consumers think you should improve their mobile shopping experience?
05. Use artificial intelligence in your ecommerce marketing strategy
Today, almost every device whether mobile or otherwise, connected to the internet, has a voice assistant. These include Google assistant, Siri and Alexa among the most popular voice assistants. Although they are not as popular as manual inputs in search, they are growing fast as tools for shopping. Consumers using voice technology to shop in the U.S. grew by 120% from 20 million to more than 45 million in 2021.
Another important tool that is growing fast in the artificial intelligence scene is the smart speaker with the number of people owning one increasing day-by-day. You are also supposed to recognize the power of chatbots in order to maximize your ecommerce experience.
By incorporating the power of artificial intelligence in your ecommerce ads campaign, you are sure to increase your results. For example, you can start and finish a trip booking experience without speaking to any real person on sites such as Kayak.
Related to AI is the use of Augmented Reality (AR). This refers to the use of digital technology to enhance the physical world through audio-visual and other sensory stimulating elements. According to a study in consumer marketing, 71% of consumers would shop more if they used AR apps.
06. Optimize your redirects to your ecommerce business
Many ecommerce advertisers fail to understand that different people require different landing places on a store when they click on an ad. In this way, they spend a lot of time and money on ecommerce ads that finally lead all audiences to a single page. This does not augur well with the spirit of customer personalization. This makes all customers get redirected to a single generic page or a homepage.
To optimize your redirects, you need to offer different landing places for different people according to their needs. This is where you need to understand pre-click (before clicking the ad) and post-click (after clicking the ad) optimization and post-click landing pages.
You can use post-click automation tools to create an instant landing page for every advertising circumstance. To get inspiration on how to make a good landing page, click here.
07. Use social media platforms
Tap on the power of social media to drive ecommerce traffic to your store. Most internet users spend time on social media platforms such as Facebook. As networking platforms, users consult their followers on social media when planning to buy an item. Ensure that your business has a strong social media presence.
Also place social media ads on multiple social media platforms depending on where your customers are. While using social media ecommerce platforms, avoid these 7 social media marketing mistakes.
08. Use the power of augmented marketing
Augmented marketing refers to adding an innovative, additional product or service to increase the value of your proposition. This is for example giving something for free when a customer makes a purchase for a product or service. The customer does not pay for the augmented product or service.
For most ecommerce sites, shipping is made free in the spirit of augmented marketing. In your ecommerce ads techniques, you can use this concept to appeal to more customers. In fact, free delivery makes 53% of consumers more likely to make a purchase.
VI. Examples Of Excellent Ecommerce Ads For Inspirations
Here are a few ecommerce advertising examples for your inspirations:
01. Samsung
Despite having a lot of other things that compete for space on the page, this Samsung banner on YouTube is an excellent dynamic product ads inspiration. With an auto-play video and proper size, viewers are drawn to the ad easily. The video provides a perfect look of the product making the viewers see all the angles of the product. It also provides much important product information such as 5G and wraps up with a perfect blue CTA button.
02. Nomatic
Using an auto play video, this Nomatic dynamic ad for a backpack is perfect in drawing the user's attention to its messages. It is strategically placed right in the inside of the users’ news feed. It provides all the information about the product using the right frames and images.
The ad also utilizes a perfect social proof technique by incorporating texts that speak to the fact that it has achieved close to three million dollars in cloud sourcing. Are you worried about your location? The ad indirectly tells you not to worry because Nomatic ships worldwide.
03. Verizon
Verizon provides us with another dynamic product ads inspiration with this phone banner advertisement. With a phone image on a white background, the ad draws the viewers’ attention without too much coercion. The ad incorporates legible texts that announce discounts as part of a marketing strategy, then uses a 5G freebie. The ad leads the customers straight away to the “Buy Now” button with an effort to convert users from viewers to buyers.
VII. Conclusion
With more than 3 billion people using the internet today, the web is the largest platform where you can market and promote your ecommerce products. Ecommerce ads are becoming increasingly popular and competitive with time. There are many ecommerce ads platforms where you can place your ads in order to reach your audience. However, you need a sound ecommerce ads strategy for your business.
The above 8 best ecommerce ads techniques to transform your business are a perfect starting point for ecommerce advertising success. It is also important to remember that leveraging eCommerce adverts does not happen in a vacuum. You need a perfect balance between the use of paid ads and posting on business-owned channels. If you do not have a good ecommerce advertising strategy, you are losing out, and here are the ecommerce stats and trends to back up!
