Ecommerce Retailers: To Pay Per Click or Not to Pay Per Click

ppc puzzle

Marketing your ecommerce store can be difficult. Since you’re selling things online, it’s best to market yourself online. One of the most common forms of online marketing that ecommerce merchants use is pay per click (PPC) advertising. PPC, however, can be a financial investment, and it can be an investment that doesn’t always pay off significantly. Why? PPC requires a lot of analysis and effort before it makes you any sort of profit. If you’re deciding whether PPC is right for you, keep reading.

Two reasons you might want to use PPC

1. Traffic to your store is low – If your social media efforts haven’t paid off, and traffic to your store is minimal, it may be time to consider PPC. PPC will undoubtedly bring you some traffic, especially if you’re willing to spend a good amount of money on it. Just remember that traffic doesn’t always equal sales.

2. You rank low in the search engines – If you sell rugged laptops, and you rank low for all the terms associated with rugged laptops on Google, you could launch an SEO campaign to try to get your store to rank higher for relevant terms. However, getting organic search traffic takes time. Even if you search engine optimize all of your site’s content and start networking with other sites to get some link juice, you’re still going to have to wait a few months for the search engines to catch on and move you up the ranks. PPC is instantaneous. As soon as you sign up, people will be able to see your store when they search for certain terms on search engines.

Of course, PPC isn’t right for everyone.

Two reasons you might be better off without PPC

1. Your marketing/advertising budget is limited – PPC requires that you spend money each and every day to attract visitors to your site. If your budget for marketing is rather limited, PPC probably isn’t for you. The ROI of PPC can be considerable, if you have enough cash freed up to invest. If you don’t, that’s ok. You can pursue other avenues. SEO and social media marketing, for instance, might be better matches. All it takes to launch a successful SEO campaign or social media marketing campaign is time and research. So, costs for that type of marketing are nominal (unless you hire an agency or employee to help you out).

2. Your site still needs some work – The first thing you should do when you open an ecommerce store is make sure that your site is attractive, professional-looking, and easy-to-use. If your site isn’t quite there yet, hold off on PPC. Your conversion rate will be low if you people visit your site and then leave it because it doesn’t look credible enough. So, spend some time working on your website and building your store’s brand. Once you have the basics in place, you can move on to aggressively marketing your store.

Takeaway

Consider the reasons PPC might benefit your store and the reasons it might not. And remember that you don’t want to spend any of your funds on a marketing campaign that may not have much ROI.

Author’s Bio: Carolyn is a guest blogger on the subjects of marketing, ecommerce, and software for ecommerce merchants, like the software provided by Ordoro

Author: Guest Blogger

idaconcpts.com welcome authors and bloggers. If you would like to submit an article please contact Damian at damian@idaconcpts.com.

One thought on “Ecommerce Retailers: To Pay Per Click or Not to Pay Per Click”

  1. Great post,
    You’re right if you have an e-store PPC may be not the way to go, however for network marketing it works pretty well.
    thanks
    Akos

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