March 5, 2014
Whether you're advertising for Saks Fifth Avenue or a boho fashion boutique, pay-per-click advertising is one of the best ways to increase online sales.
If you've heard this before and are still not convinced, read on to learn how and why PPC advertising is effective & cost-efficient for retail.
Retail makes up the largest percentage of industries using PPC in 2014. (cloud-iq)
Retail (including tech & consumer goods): 16% of PPC usage
Lifestyle: 8% of PPC Usage
Education: 7 % of PPC Usage
Finance: 5 % of PPC Usage
Other: 54% of PPC Usage
Before we get started, here are a couple of general benefits of Pay Per Click Advertising:
Get traffic right away
Unlike SEO, you can see results from PPC right away. Once you enter your credit card in Adwords, your ads are ready to go live.
See your site on the top of search engines 
With SEO, it can take a few weeks to see improvements in organic rankings for popular keywords. With Adwords, you have more control over the placement of your ads based on your bids.
People DO click on the paid ads 
64 percent of high commercial intent keyword searchers (or people clearly looking to buy) clicked on PPC ad links, compared to the 35 percent who clicked on organic links. (Wordstream)
It's Mobile Optimized 
33% of Google ad clicks come from mobile devices. Adwords can track your advertising across devices so you can track mobile sales and site visits.
*** Note: I'm not hating on SEO. SEO is awesome for businesses including retail, but in my professional experience, PPC is generally more effective for retail eCommerce sites.
Create a MASSIVE PPC Adwords Account
People search for clothing in a million different ways. When people search for a very specific item of clothing, they know what they want and they are a lot more likely to make a purchase when they find it.
Long Tail Keywords: You need to make sure your Adwords account has all your bases covered.
If you're just showing advertisements when people search for 'mens shoes' or 'womens blouse,' you're really missing out. While those are great keywords with a lot of search volume, it's important for your ads to appear for more specific keywords. Search volume is important but it's not everything.
Generally speaking, the broader the keyword, the lower the conversion rate. Why is this?
1. Broad keywords have a lot of competition
Thousands of other retailers are competing for that same word
2. The visitor's intent is not clear
The visitor may search for 'womens blouse' when she really wants a button down cotton blouse in blue. What if you don't even carry that on your site or in your store? The visitor could also just be looking for information like what styles of women's blouses are hot right now as opposed to actually making a purchase.
3. Broad keywords are often expensive
Because of the competition, really broad keywords generally have a very high cost per click.
So should I not have broad keywords in my adwords account?
You should still have broad keywords in your adwords account but make sure your PPC analyst pays attention to the data to make sure that the cost of each sale from a broad keyword is low enough for you to make a profit. If you pay $100 in clicks and only one customer buys the 'red sweater' for $20, it's not really worth it, is it?
Conversion Optimization: Take Customers where they want to go.
Not only do your ads need to come up for every variation of every keyword but they need to take the visitor to the exact landing page they're looking for.
If someone searches for "white summer dress" and the ad links to the "Tops" page on your site, the customer is going to get frustrated. So where should that ad link to? Most people would say it should link to the "Dresses" page. Wrong. It should link to the product page displaying an actual white summer dress. This page should have a big 'Add to Cart' button. The page should also have a sidebar that recommends other white summer dresses in case the customer is looking for variation.
Make the sale as easy as possible.
Are you happy with your retail sales numbers?
"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."
- John D. Rockefeller (Exxon)