When it comes to digital marketing, it’s tempting for eCommerce brands to launch their campaigns, sit back, and wait for clicks and conversions. This hands-off approach isn’t necessarily bad. However, search marketing offers far more to your brand in terms of learning about your target audience and optimizing your online campaign if you know how to use it as a learning tool. This is particularly the case for eCommerce brands that need to adapt to a quickly evolving marketplace. The good news is that there are ways to harness the full potential of paid search.
Here are four ways eCommerce brands can make the most of their search marketing strategy:
1. Establishing Benchmarks
One of the primary strengths that search marketing has over traditional advertising, and even some other forms of digital marketing, is its ability for tracking and optimization, such as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Tracking is important for all industries, but it’s especially crucial in eCommerce, where mastery of the online marketplace pays off. Having campaign benchmarks is a gamechanger. It allows managers to seek out patterns, measure success, and thoughtfully tweak their eCommerce strategy when performance is below par.
2. Learning About Your Target Audience
Search engine marketing is also a great tactic to learn where customers spend their time online. There are only so many assumptions you can make about a target audience before launching a campaign. Post-launch is another story. After a paid search campaign is up and running, you can see what your customers are searching, when they are searching, and where they are searching for it. This tactic of intent and audience-based targeting makes for ultra-precise eCommerce marketing.
3. Capturing Bottom of the Funnel Sales
Along the same lines, paid search is ideal for reaching paying customers. Search engine marketing captures in-market sales leads — AKA consumers with their wallets open. Someone searching for a video game console, for example, is likely in the market to purchase. As a result, search ads meet buyers at the bottom of the sales funnel. Compare this to display advertising. Although banner ads build brand awareness, they can resemble a call into the void. Meanwhile, paid search typically sees higher conversion rates because search results are aligned with audience intent. SEM meets buyers where they are online, making it an effective strategy for eCommerce brands whose goal is customer acquisition.
4. Adapting Quickly
Another advantage of search marketing is that it allows eCommerce brands to see results quickly. Other forms of digital marketing, such as search engine optimization, require quite a bit of patience. An SEO-only strategy is also vulnerable to ever-changing search engine algorithms. At the other end of the search spectrum, there is engine marketing. SEM allows brands to scale up or down as necessary with unexpected turns.
To find out more about how Ad.net can create a search marketing strategy that’s right for your brand, contact advertise@ad.net.
