Give Your Business an Edge in eCommerce Advertising with Google Ads

Introduction to eCommerce

Despite eCommerce’s prevalence in the era of COVID-19, eCommerce has been a popular shopping option for a few years. In 2019 alone, an estimated 1.92 billion people purchased some form of product or service online, and eRetail sales surpassed 3.5 trillion US dollars. In the wake of the pandemic, consumer shopping habits shifted to predominantly online shopping, thus forcing businesses to rethink their digital marketplaces and marketing strategies to meet. Many businesses employed contactless shopping, curbside pickup, and offered delivery services to retain their consumer base. As businesses reopened, a large number of consumers still preferred online shopping options as opposed to brick and mortar options. Approximately 62% of Americans say they shop online more now than they did prior to the pandemic. 

More consumers chose to shop online during 2020’s Cyber 5, which is the five day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, as the Coronavirus continued ravaging the country. Many businesses developed several options for consumers to safely shop: order online and have your products shipped to your house or order online and pick up in stores or use curbside pickup. These expanded shopping options allowed Black Friday and Cyber Monday to set sales records and reinforce the importance of businesses having eCommerce options. Cyber Monday 2020 set the eCommerce sales record at 12.16 billion USD, and Cyber 5 is projected to generate 38.2 billion USD in eCommerce sales. 

The pandemic forced companies to reinvent their eCommerce strategies or create one if they previously lacked one. They’ve created company specific websites or apps and sought optimization solutions to accommodate the increased traffic without slowing their loading speed. They’ve developed a more comprehensive digital marketing strategies, such as digital advertisements and coupons, exclusive online only sales, SEO, increased social media usage, and email marketing to resuscitate their business as the pandemic threatened to suffocate them. Brands have been forced to grapple with how to advertise their company, raise brand awareness, and attract consumers in the digital age, whether they were ready or not. 

Advertising on Google

While digital advertising options exist on a plethora of platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google, businesses should focus their ad strategy on the platforms most likely to reach their target audiences. Social media platforms are great for specific industries; for example, Instagram ads are perfect for beauty or fashion brands; however, all brands can benefit from utilizing search ads, which can boost brand awareness by approximately 80%. 

Search engine users have a myriad of options to choose from, such as Yahoo, Bing, Google, and DuckDuckGo, so companies may be overwhelmed when deciding where to place their advertisements. Self-made Google God and founder of Black Label Digital LLC, Van Dennis, recommends selecting Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords. 

Google is the most used search engine, with the platform averaging 40,000 searches a second and 1.2 trillion searches worldwide per year. The vast majority of search engine users click one of the first four search results, with few users viewing the second page of search results. The heavy traffic to Google improves the likelihood consumers will see your advertisement, especially if you know how to optimize your search engine ads. The key with optimization is to get your ads on the first page of Google’s search results. Luckily, Google offers a variety of ways to help your brand optimize your digital advertisements. 

Google is Budget Friendly

Digital marketing campaigns can be costly, but Google Ads allows users to optimize their ads at a relatively low cost. Users can remove data columns that they don’t really need so they can focus on what metrics are actually important. If Google Ads doesn’t already have a specific metric users want, users can create their own custom columns to collect their desired data. 

Dennis recommends businesses master keywords to imrove their searchability on Google. Finding the right keywords for your brand can be difficult, but he recommends using your brand’s name and product or service names as a starting place for your keywords. For example, if your company sells clothing, some of your keywords could be “sweater,” “blouse,” and clothing. 

Even though Google ensures typographical errors still lead to the desired search results and asks “did you mean *insert correct spelling*,” your brand may want to include common typos as keywords to ensure your brand appears on Google searches even with typos in the search bar. Brands can use keyword research tools, such as Google’s Keyword Planner, to discover new keywords to bid on, research keywords to determine which are still productive, and determine your company’s advertising budget by suggesting bid estimates for keywords.

After determining which keywords your brand should use, brands should also identify negative keywords, which tells Google which search queries are irrelevant to your business. Google Ads generates a search term report, which can be used to help businesses identify potential negative keywords. 

Google Products to help your business

In addition to Google Ads, Google provides users with a variety of other helpful tools to help your brand optimize your digital advertisements, and users only need a valid Google account to access these tools. Google My Business is a free option that allows businesses to keep their consumers informed, and Google Workspace, formerly known as GSuite, is available at a low monthly fee. The company also offers a variety of Search events, podcasts, guides, blogs, help communities, and YouTube tutorials that are available to Google users for little to no cost so companies can continually improve their online business presence. 

Google Search Console is a tool that helps users monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. It can help users generate keywords, optimize your search ranking, and monitor and resolve common issues with markup if you’re generating the actual markup or code for your site. Site administrators can use this tool to monitor and resolve server errors, site load issues, and security issues, such as hacking and malware. The Search Console offers options for users of all backgrounds, whether they’re just getting into digital marketing, are SEO wizards, or web developers. It can be used in conjunction with Google Analytics, Google Trends, and Google Ads. 

Google Search Central, formerly known as Google Webmasters, offers tutorials to users of all levels regarding SEO. Google also hosts a variety of office hour sessions, such as SEO office hours available in English and German, Google Search office hours available in Japanese, JavaScript SEO, and other topic-specific office hours. It offers tutorials on how to get your business on Google products, such as Maps, Search, and YouTube. 

While the pandemic thrust companies into eCommerce, companies must create long-term eCommerce strategies to remain competitive in the digital age. User shopping habits have migrated online, and eCommerce will account for an estimated 95% of all purchases by 2040. Companies that fail to utilize digital marketing platforms, such as Google Ads, will be unable to survive the transition to almost exclusively shopping online. Google Ads is the perfect tool for any business, regardless of their experience level or budget, to help their business stay competitive in the digital age.