As with any business, e-commerce advertising is essential if you want to grow your brand awareness and attract new customers. Traditionally, offline advertising (print, television, and radio) was our only advertising option.
Online advertising has opened up so many fantastic ways to get your brand and products noticed. At first, coming to grips with intelligent online marketing platforms, like e-commerce ads on Facebook and Google, may be overwhelming. Trust me, I’ve been there.
I’m going to help you with the process. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to create the perfect e-commerce advertising strategy. You’ll be blown away by how, with a relatively small budget, you can take your e-commerce store to new heights. You’re about to learn how to create the best ads for e-commerce.
What is E-Commerce Advertising?
Essentially, e-commerce advertising is no different from that of any other business. Though, advertising your online store is more important than with a traditional “bricks and mortar” store. An e-commerce store does not have walk-in trade. In other words, people don’t just walk by your store and pop in to take a look.
As an e-commerce business owner, you have to get noticed online.
While best SEO practices are vital to the success of any online business, it is not always sufficient. This is especially true for new and small businesses that cannot compete with established brands for the top page ratings on Google. Nine times out of ten times, Amazon (or one of the other big players) dominate the first page of search results.
Fortunately, you don’t need to spend much to create an effective online advertising campaign. Using the advanced tools offered by social media and search engine products, you can hone your ad-spend to target specific audiences. This helps you maximize your sales potential without spending more than you have to.
Though, you need to have a good idea of your objectives and how the various types of online advertising options work.
What You Need to Do Before Advertising Online
At first, navigating the pages of marketing tools, like Facebook Marketplace and Google ads, takes quite a lot of getting used to. I made a lot of stupid mistakes in the beginning, wasting money in the process. By learning from my mistakes, you can avoid doing the same.
Before you sign up with Facebook, Instagram, or Google Advertising platforms and start spending your money, make sure you have a clear idea of what you aim to achieve and who you are targeting.
In order to make full use of the myriad of tools available to you, you need to establish the following.
1. Get to Know Your Customers
Here’s something you don’t hear too often in the media these days: Big Data is your friend.
Search engines and social media networks have received a lot of flak in recent times for collecting user data. As an advertiser, this is your best tool to identify and target potential customers.
Google Analytics and social media tracking information can empower you with most of the information you need to determine exactly who to target with your advertising campaign. Gather all the information from these platforms to gain a better understanding of who is visiting your site and how they react to your social media pages. What to look for:
- How old are the majority of visitors and followers?
- Demographic – where do these people live?
- Gender – is it better to target male or female customers?
- Likes and interests – Facebook Audience Insights is an excellent tool for determining likes, hobbies, and interests. The Google Analytics Interest, Geo, and Behavior pages also provide a lot of insight.
- Devices used – Do most of your visitors use desktop or mobile devices?
- Think about which people are most likely to buy your products.
Using analytics tools and your own intuition, you can form a clear picture of who you want to reach with your advertising. This will help you get the most from your e-commerce advertising budget.
2. Establish Your Objectives
Ask yourself these important questions:
- Do you want to generate interest in your brand?
- Do you want to promote specific products or services?
- Do you want to increase traffic to a specific page on your site?
- Do you want to increase traffic to your social media pages?
3. Optimize Your Website
When people land on your site, your advertising spend will be wasted if they don’t result in conversions. Your site needs to be fast and user-friendly.
A lot of e-commerce shoppers abandon their purchases because of complicated checkout procedures or long time delays. Make sure you have an efficient and user-friendly checkout page.
Easy page navigation is essential. People should find what they are looking for without wasting time clicking on several pages that don’t interest them.
Multiple payment options. People may decide not to buy if they don’t see their preferred method of payment.
Optimize your site for all devices – desktop, mobile phones, and tablets.
What Types Of E-commerce Ads To Try?
E-Commerce Advertising on Facebook
I’ve had a lot of success using Facebook ads and post boosts. It is cost-effective and flexible. You can choose your budget, starting from $1 per day for the duration of your campaign.
To get the best bang for your buck, you need to make the most of the Facebook tools for reaching the perfect demographic. In the beginning, I was not too successful at this. Unfortunately, Facebook does not offer much in terms of real-time help. You have to use their online tutorials which can sometimes leave you more confused than you were initially.
With a bit of experimenting, and searching for the best online tutorials, you can become a Facebook advertising master pretty quick. A Google search for “how to use Facebook Marketplace” will provide you with a bunch of useful YouTube videos. I’d strongly advise checking these out before commencing with a Facebook ad campaign.
The wonderful thing about placing E-commerce ads on Facebook is the ability to narrow your audience down to the most specific detail based on age, demographic, search history, location, and interests.
Facebook Pixel offers additional tools to track visitors and encourage revisits. If someone browses your site but does not proceed to checkout, a revisit ad will remind them of their interest and they often return to your site and buy the product that they were initially interested in.
Facebook offers a lot of options for your objectives, which is why you really need to know what you want to achieve before you start. You can boost a post on your E-commerce Facebook page which will advertise the post with specific aims, like increasing page engagement or generating more clicks to your site.
Once you’ve mastered the Facebook advertising tools, you can choose how widely your ads will be displayed to get the best audience reach.
E-Commerce Advertising With Google
Along with Facebook advertising, I rate Google Ads as one of the very best ways to promote your online business. Unlike Facebook, however, I’ve found Google help to be incredible.
When I first started out with Google ads, a representative from Google phoned me without me even asking for help. He helped me in real-time. Providing advice on how to maximize my ad spend by only using the appropriate advertising options for my business objectives.
Using Google ads is also quite complicated. It takes some getting used to. The first thing to do is choose the type of ad you want to make use of. This is more complicated than you might think and there are several options for each main category.
- Text Search Ads: This will show your chosen webpage for the relevant keywords. Several options exist for text ads, which will place your page at the top of the search results with the word AD, along with a basic description of the page.
- Product and Showcase Shopping Ads: Shows products at the top of the Google search page, along with information like price, product name, product description, and customer star rating. When a user clicks on the ad, they are directed to the product page on your site.
- Display or Image Ads: These are static or dynamic ads appearing on sites that partner with Google AdSense.
- Video Ads: Video ads cost more to produce but are highly effective. Your ad will be displayed on streaming platforms like YouTube.
- App Promotion Ads: Promote app downloads.
Like Facebook advertising, Google allows you to target your advertising campaign to specific demographics, though not as detailed as Facebook. Google ads are displayed by the keywords that you select.
Pricing for Google Ads is done using a bid strategy. The highest bids take priority for the most popular sites or searches. You can get a pretty good result without a big budget.
E-Commerce Advertising on Instagram
Instagram advertising is similar to Facebook in that your advertisement is displayed in the user’s feed. Being a photo-sharing platform, it is much more geared toward image advertising with some pretty cool tools to help you.
Instagram advertising is relatively easy to use but you don’t have as many tools as you have with Google Ads and Facebook Marketplace. The in-photo tools are the biggest advantage that Instagram offers. You can provide hashtags for several items that appear in a photo. When the user taps on the tagged item, they will be directed to your chosen webpage.
E-Commerce Advertising on TikTok
TikTok advertising works very much like Facebook, with a few features that differ. This is an ideal opportunity if you want to target younger customers, predominantly young women. Around 43% of TikTok users are aged between 18 and 24, with about 24% of their advertising market being women.
Like Facebook, you set up your ad campaigns and ad groups. Determine your budget and choose a bidding strategy and you’re ready to start creating your TikTok ads. There are an incredible variety of ad types to choose from, many of which appeal to younger users:
- Carousel Ads – up to 10 images
- Pangle Ads – placed through the TikTok audience network
- Spark Ads – boosts organic content
- Video Ads – 5 – 60 second video
- Image Ads – run on TikTok news feeds
- In-Feed Ads – create your own ads using TikTok Ad Manager
TikTok advertisers who make use of their Managed Brands program deal with a TikTok sales manager and have access to additional ad types:
- Branded Effects
- Branded hashtag challenge
- Top view ads
A great feature, for those who are not all that tech-savvy, is an automatic ad creator that does most of the work for you.
E-Mail and SMS Advertising
By compiling a mailing and mobile phone list, you can have instant communication with your customers. Spamming is not always appreciated and can deter some people, so you need to be strategic about using e-mail and SMS advertising.
This type of e-commerce advertising is most effective for informing customers about new releases, special offers, and seasonal sales. A monthly newsletter with all sorts of information that your customers might appreciate is also a good strategy.
Conclusion
If you’re smart about how you approach things, e-commerce advertising can be hugely successful. The important thing is to do your homework by identifying your target audience and what you hope to achieve.
You can control your budget by targeting specific PPC campaigns. You can have several different campaigns for different products or categories. I’d suggest using several types of advertising to get the best exposure. Known as an omnichannel marketing strategy, integrating social media, search engine, content, and e-mail marketing into a single coherent campaign provides maximum benefits.