Advertise for Online Stores: PPC Traps & Solutions

No matter who you are, we can all agree that digital advertising is compelling. With it, we can target the right people like never before. That helps us scale our business way quicker than any other method. And thanks to Shopify and Shoplazza, store owners can monitor the ad performance in the background. That makes entrepreneurs bolder with PPC ads.

However, while this type of marketing is powerful, many people fail to scale their businesses. That’s because they don’t have the right skills to do so. This article will help lift the burden by giving you tips for better advertising.

#1 Thing to Do Before Launching Your Next Ad

Before we reveal them, we want to tell you that these tips won’t help you if you don’t make one rookie mistake. And that mistake is not doing market research! The thing is, if you don’t understand your market, you’ll never create profitable ads!

That’s because, without it, you don’t know how to write compelling ad copy, what keywords to target, etc. So make sure you research your audience before, and you’ll instantly become a better marketer.

5 Common PPC and Pitfalls to Avoid

Now that you understand the importance of market research, it’s time to share with you the common pitfalls of PPC ads and solutions to avoid them! Here are five of them:

Pitfall #1 - Bidding With Too Many Keywords

When you first start advertising on Google, you might think the best thing to do is to bid for as many relevant keywords as possible. That’s because, with it, you’ll reach a wider audience. And with a broader audience, you have a higher chance of getting a sale.

While it might sound logical, there’s one problem! And that is that your audience becomes too generic. And that’s bad because with a generic audience, you need to create a generic ad that won’t convert anyone into a lead or a customer.

Instead, you only want to target a couple of keywords in one campaign. That way, you can create a more targeted ad copy, which converts way more! Plus, since you have fewer keywords, you better understand what keywords work for your business.

So make sure you only have a few keywords, and you'll see your ad performance improve.

Pitfall #2 - Focusing on Cost-Per-Lead Too Much

Having cheap leads is a great thing. That way, you can get more people to subscribe to your newsletters for cheap, which allows you to nurture them until they become your customers. However, you shouldn’t focus on it too much.

While it’s great when you get leads for cheap, it’s just a metric showing how well you perform. Stressing too much about it is never a good idea!

Pitfall #3 - Not Giving Attention to Your Negative Keyword Lists

Many beginners focus their energy on finding the perfect keywords to target. And that’s a good thing, as with this, you can find the keywords your ideal client uses. And that helps you be more profitable.

And while that’s a good thing to do, you shouldn’t overlook your negative keyword lists—those lists allow you to eliminate people who wouldn’t be interested in your offer.

Let’s explain with an example. Let’s say that in your online store, you resell MacBooks. For this, it might be good to target keywords such as “office laptop.” However, there are also some keywords you might not want to target.

That could be keywords like “gaming laptops” or “Lenovo laptops,” as these customers might not be looking to buy a Macbook.

When creating your next ad, narrow your audience by adding a negative keyword list.

Pitfall #4 - Solely focusing on the PPC Ad

Even if you have the best keywords and a high-converting ad copy that brings clicks in for cheap, you might still fail.

That’s because your ad is just one part of your ad campaign. To get more sales, you need to put as much effort into other areas as possible, such as the landing page, product descriptions, and others.

That way, when the audience clicks on your ad, they are greeted with a page they want to be on. And that helps convert them into leads or customers.

Make sure other areas of your campaign are up to par as well!

Pitfall #5 - Creating General Retargeting Campaigns

When done correctly, retargeting ads are one of the most high-converting ads out there! That’s because, with it, you know that the people who see the ad are interested in what you offer. However, many people make the same mistake as with keywords.

They make their audience too generic! While that might help to reach more people, they’ll never convert as well as hyper-targeted ads. When creating retargeting ads, ensure the audience is as specific as possible!

Conclusion

And those were the five common pitfalls of PPC ads. As you can see, most beginner marketers fall into the trap of creating too general an audience and focusing too much on a particular part of the ad campaign.

Make sure you avoid these in your next ad campaign. And then, you might discover that your e-commerce store has received more orders!

(Contributed by Andreas Ojala & Hermes Fang)