Maximizing Presence: Effective Strategies for Ecommerce Advertising

“Hey Alexa, give me the best recommendations for office furniture.”

Searches like this often feature unknown brands or brands you just glimpsed at while scrolling through other suggested products. Once you’ve searched, that unfamiliar brand is suddenly everywhere: Google, your Facebook feed, even showing up on certain streaming services. So you give in, buy some items, and now what was once just another company in the vast sea of retail options has become a household staple.

How did this unknown brand create such an impact? The answer lies in strategic advertising. Long gone are the days of using newspaper and billboard ads to attract new customers, hoping you’ll reach the right audience. It's now about leveraging online platforms to build brand awareness and drive sales.

Advertising: Then and Now

Advertising, fundamentally, has remained the same for decades: targeting an audience with appealing visuals and text to drive sales. What has evolved is how we advertise—the mediums and channels today differ greatly from those of even just 25 years ago. In the past, when someone mentioned advertising, you would picture television ads, magazine ads, radio, newspapers, and billboards. Those traditional platforms still exist, but we've entered the digital age of reaching specific audience segments, tracking performance, and being on multiple platforms at once – all with their own unique benefits.

Google: Google's online advertising platform allows businesses to create ads that appear on Google search results and its network of partner sites. This can help visibility, traffic, and sales.‍

• Cost-Effective Advertising: Unlike traditional advertising methods, Google Ads operates on a pay-per-click (PPC) model. Brands only pay when a user clicks on their ad, ensuring the money they spend is only used on potential customers.
• Flexibility and Control: By offering flexibility in the budget, ad format, and campaign settings, brands can start small and scale up as they see results by adjusting bids and targeting parameters in real-time.
• Remarketing Opportunities: Google Ads supports remarketing campaigns, enabling brands to re-engage users who have previously visited their websites but did not make a purchase. This helps in converting potential leads into actual customers.
• Targeted Reach: Google Ads enables brands to reach potential customers based on keywords, location, demographics, interests, and online behavior. This ensures that ads are shown to individuals who are more likely to be interested in the products offered.

Facebook: The world's largest social network offers ecommerce brands a robust toolset to engage with a highly targeted audience directly on their social feed.

• Engaging Ad Formats: Facebook’s ad formats include images, videos, carousels, slideshows, and collection ads. These different formats enhance the way brands highlight their products, capturing the attention of potential customers and encouraging them to explore further.
• Lookalike Audiences: By creating lookalike audiences, brands can expand their reach to users who resemble their existing customers. This feature helps find new potential customers who are more likely to be interested in the brand’s products.
• Integration with Instagram: Since Facebook owns Instagram, brands can simultaneously run ads on both platforms, maximizing their reach and engagement. Instagram’s visually driven nature complements Facebook’s ad capabilities, providing a comprehensive approach to social media advertising.
• Mobile-Friendly Advertising: With most users accessing Facebook from their phones, these ads are optimized for mobile viewing. This ensures that ads are presented effectively to mobile users, who account for 66% of the global ecommerce market.

Display: These ads consist of graphics, images, and text that appear on various areas around the internet. Specifically designed to attract user’s attention as they browse the internet, they are a powerful tool for brands to enhance visibility.

• Wide Reach: Display ads are shown across a vast network of websites, apps, and social media platforms. This extensive reach helps brands increase their visibility among a diverse audience, attracting potential customers who might not have discovered the brand through other channels. ‍
• Brand Awareness: Consistent exposure through display ads helps build brand awareness and recognition. By repeatedly showcasing logos, colors, and products, brands can establish a strong presence in the minds of consumers, making them more likely to remember and choose the brand when making a purchase. ‍
• Cross-Device Compatibility: Display ads are designed to be compatible with various devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. This ensures that the ads are seamlessly displayed across different screens, reaching users wherever they are. ‍
• Complementing Other Marketing Channels: Display ads can complement other marketing efforts, such as search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, and email campaigns. By integrating display ads into a comprehensive marketing strategy, brands can create a cohesive and multi-faceted approach to reaching their target audience.

Amazon: Amazon Advertising is a powerful marketing tool that allows ecommerce brands to promote their products directly on Amazon’s platform, reaching millions of active shoppers. This advertising solution leverages Amazon’s vast customer base (over 310 million active users worldwide and generating 300 million website visitors per day) and sophisticated targeting options.

• High Conversion Rates: Since Amazon shoppers are often ready to buy, ads on this platform tend to have higher conversion rates compared to other advertising channels. “Sponsored Products” can drive immediate sales by appearing directly where purchase decisions are made.
• Brand Building: Beyond driving immediate sales, Amazon Ads also contribute to long-term brand building. “Sponsored Brands” and “Sponsored Display” ads help increase recognition and loyalty by keeping the brand top-of-mind for shoppers through consistent visibility.
• Increased Organic Rankings: Successful ad campaigns can lead to higher sales and better product reviews, which in turn can improve organic rankings on Amazon. As products climb the search results organically, brands benefit even without ongoing ad spend.
• Seamless Shopping Experience: Advertising directly on Amazon ensures a seamless shopping experience for customers. Shoppers can discover, click, and purchase products without leaving the platform, reducing friction, and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Why Your Brand Should Advertise  

The days of spending thousands of dollars on advertising with no way to measure performance are long gone. Now, you can be much smarter with your advertising efforts. By targeting specific audiences and measuring results through clicks and sales, you can optimize your ad spending and achieve better outcomes.  

While advertising is beneficial for most brands, it is particularly crucial if you fall into any of these categories:

You are trying to rank for specific keywords.

• By bidding on your focus keywords, you can place your ads at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), ensuring visibility for those specific terms. This approach allows you to capture immediate traffic and potential customers while you work on improving your organic search rankings.

You want to drive more brand awareness.

• Leverage social media, particularly through platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These platforms offer robust targeting options, allowing you to reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviors that align with your target audience. Create visually engaging and compelling ad content that tells your brand story and highlights what sets you apart.

You are growing your market share.

• Employ a competitive strategy using Google Ads. This involves bidding on keywords that include your competitor's brand names and product names. Create highly targeted ads that emphasize your brand's unique selling points and advantages over competitors. This strategy helps divert potential customers from your competitors to your own brand.

You want to see which keywords are driving traffic.

• Create multiple ad campaigns that target different sets of keywords but have similar ad copy and landing pages. Monitor the performance of each campaign by tracking metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost per conversion. By analyzing these metrics, you can identify which keywords drive the most traffic and conversions, allowing you to optimize your campaigns and focus your budget on the most effective keywords.  

You want to sell specific products in your catalog.

• A highly effective advertising strategy is to use targeted Facebook and Instagram ads with dynamic product ads (DPAs). By using dynamic product ads, you can effectively display specific products to a highly targeted audience, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Where to Put Your Ad Dollars

Where you allocate your ad dollars should align with your brand goals and objectives. For brands selling on platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Target, investing in advertising to appear for key search terms on those marketplaces is crucial, particularly for newer brands seeking visibility and sales.

If you sell products on your own ecommerce site, investing in Google Shopping and Search ads is essential. Additionally, launching ad campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, and other social networks can effectively drive traffic to your online store.

Ultimately, focus your advertising efforts on where your target market is most active and where you aim to boost sales. If your aim is to expand to more marketplaces and increase brand awareness and sales but you feel overwhelmed by managing multiple ads, partnering with an ecommerce accelerator could be the solution. Spreetail, for example, operates across more than 12 top marketplaces and manages all advertising, deals, and promotions for our brand partners. If you are interested in exploring how we can collaborate with your team, contact one of our buyers.