A definitive guide to optimizing your eCommerce advertising expenditure

Current eCommerce Landscape

eCommerce has become a lifeline for most of us. As the pandemic struck the world, most shoppers felt it safer to purchase goods and essentials online than in physical stores. The result - the number of online sales ballooned within a short span. The retail eCommerce market size has boomed to 4.28 trillion dollars worldwide.

Unfortunately, with more opportunities comes more competition. eCommerce is no different. You would have noticed hundreds of businesses selling the same product on platforms like Amazon. So if you are an e-retailer, how do you not only survive but beat this competition?

Advertisement is certainly the way to go. But in the current situation where most businesses are living on a shoestring budget, they cannot go full-fledged in it. According to a study, 69% of the brands are expected to reduce their ad spent this year. Undoubtedly, you have to optimize your advertising expenditure.

We have some tips. Following them can certainly help you make the best use of whatever little you are spending on advertising.

Let us start with the most useful tip of them all - Use multi-product landing pages.

1. Multi-Product Landing Pages

Before we talk about multi-product pages, we need to understand the importance of search ads in boosting sales. Did you know that Google shopping ads drive nearly 76% of the retail search ads? So, improving and optimizing your google shopping ads makes total sense while planning the optimization of the marketing expenditure.

Usually, when a user clicks on a search ad, he/she would be redirected to a product page where all the details of that specific product would be displayed. These are known as single-product pages. A major negative of such a page is that the users will leave if they think that the product doesn’t suit their needs. What if there are products on the website that actually match the user’s requirement? This is a lost opportunity for the business.

This is where a multi-product landing page can help. This page has multiple products on it rather than a single product matching the user's search term. This provides users with a better shopping experience as they can choose from multiple products that match their requirements instead of a single product. The bounce rate is also greatly reduced. Interestingly, Amazon is one of the leading eCommerce services that depend on multi-product landing pages.

2. Where to sell?

We all know that Amazon is one of the best marketplaces to sell as they are popular and has a global reach. However, Amazon has its limitations. You do not have the power to retarget, cross-sell, build a brand, control the margin, and so on. All these issues are sorted when you have your eCommerce website.

To enjoy excellent profits, you can simply develop an eCommerce website and post-Google ads for it. But remember to run shopping ads that will lead the visitor to a multi-product landing page which gives you higher conversions.

3. How to optimize spending on advertising: Step by step guide.

Here is a step by step guide on how to optimize your advertisement spending -

Step 1 - Set the right goals.

As a first step, set your goals right. Doing so will help you build the perfect eCommerce marketing strategy that can maximize your ROI. The goals can be one or many of the following -

• Improve website traffic

• Increase in sales, and

• Gaining customer loyalty

• Improved brand awareness

Whatever your goals may be, make sure that they are time-specific. Also, check if your goals are realistic and fulfill the current business trends. More importantly, they should be trackable and measurable.

Step 2 - Formulate the marketing strategy.

Once you have identified your goals, you need to finalize the marketing channels. There are several options for you, viz. pay-per-click campaigns, content marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, and so on. Now list out all the campaigns and activities you want to run in these channels before allocating the budget.

Step 3 - Allocate budget.

The best way to optimize your expenditure is by using advanced budgeting methods such as activity-based budgeting. The best way to do this is by increasing or decreasing the amount spent on each platform based on their performance. Understand your goals and check the ROI of all the marketing campaigns of previous years. If you are starting fresh, then you can study your competitor's marketing techniques and design your budget accordingly.

Step 4 - Define KPIs and establish a process to measure ROI.

A common mistake that most businesses make is that they ignore the tracking of the KPIs that measure how they gain revenue. This can be easily avoided by establishing a clearly defined process that helps to track the ROI of each marketing activity. Google Analytics is a must-have tool to define and measure various KPIs such as clicks, CPC, conversion rate, and many more. There are several influencer management platforms that help to measure ROI from influencer marketing. Similarly, SEO and Social Media Marketing also have their own tools through which the corresponding KPIs can be measured.

Everything is in place now. All you have to do is keenly track the different campaigns and understand how each one is performing. Keep making small changes to optimize the campaign fully.

Some takeaways to optimize your advertisement expenditure:

Whenever you build an eCommerce website next time, consider the below takeaways before you start spending on advertisement -

• Google Ads gives you a wide reach through multiple Google sites and Google partner sites with focused targeting. When opting for Google ads, ensure that the visitor is directed to a multi-product webpage. A business will waste around 48% if they use a single product page for their shopping ads.

• The landing page conversion offer differs based on the marketing channel. For example, in search ads, multi-product conversion is significantly higher than a single-product page conversion. In email ads, the conversion of both multi-product and single-product landing pages is nearly the same. However, in social media marketing, the single-product page conversion is higher than the multi-product page conversion. The reason for this could be the difference in mood, shopping style, and expectations of users in different channels.

What’s next?

So next time you build an online store, you now know how to optimize your advertising expenditure. Following the above steps can help boost your ROI in a short time. However, if you are new to eCommerce and find these steps difficult to implement or think you need support, you have help right around the corner. We are Powerhouse91, your one-stop solution to scale up your eCommerce business within a short span. To know more about us and how we can help you, contact us today.