Convert more paid traffic—9 strategies that always work (eCommerce)

Running a paid ad? It’s normal to worry about your conversion rates. Especially since you have a budget to defend. While paid ads have proven successful in driving traffic to websites, leads from paid traffic tend to be a lot more hesitant when compared to other channel acquisitions. This is because they might be skeptical about your brand, product, or even pricing. 

That’s why you need a road map that outlines how you’d convert this traffic into actual paying customers. In this article, we’ll be sharing nine strategies you can implement in your next campaign. 

eCommerce Conversion Strategies for Paid Ad Campaigns

Here are nine ways you can get shoppers for your eCommerce store through ad campaigns; 

1. Let them land on the right webpages

Many marketers make the mistake of using a generic landing page for their Facebook or even Google Ads. While some might argue that your leads can still find their desired product from this page, it almost always doesn’t work. Asides from feeling confused when they land on a page that has nothing to do with the initial ad they interacted with, they’re likely to bounce. 

The typical bounce rate for landing pages is between 60-80% and that’s because 77% of these landing pages are homepages. So you want to create a unique landing page when you’re running unique campaigns. Landing pages should be super targeted so they help you convert better. 

For an ad campaign called ‘Ditch the Zero’, Olipop create a specific landing page that immediately highlighted the benefits of opting for Olipop instead of a Pepsi Zero. Since it was their first major campaign, they directed all traffic from their paid video and social media ads here. They also knew that people wanted to know how they are better and still recognize the brand. So it was a highly effective conversion tactic. 

Another instance is when you need to run a product ad. When a user clicks on an ad for a specific running shoe, they shouldn’t land on your shoe section. Instead, they should be taken directly to the product page of that running shoe. 

The same applies to your discount ads. Rather than taking users to your homepage, ensure the URL destination is a product page where the discount is automatically applied. This reduces the number of steps required to bounce and ensures that they purchase your product and checkout faster

2. Use influencers

While influencer marketing is becoming increasingly popular, integrating it with your paid ads is a great way to record more conversions. For starters, you’re showing your products from multiple sources - the influencer and the ad. So it automatically increases your reach. 

A great example of this is how Caruselle created a partnership between influencers and Radha beauty products. After running traffic-optimized social ads, they were able to exceed their traffic and conversion goals by 15%.

However, when you use an influencer, it’s important to choose someone that has your target market as their followers. This ensures that you have only high-quality leads. So for example, if you’re a fitness brand, you want to use influencers who build their content around nutrition, how to navigate exercise routines, gyms, and other similar topics.

Ensure you have a landing page that’s relevant to the influencer’s ad post. Once a shopper clicks on that post and lands on your website, it should have either tags or a dedicated section for that influencer. See how Molly-Mae, a British social media influencer, has a specific collection on the Pretty Little Things eCommerce website. This makes it easier for her to convert whatever traffic she generates to this store.

You also want to create specific affiliate links in your ads for this collaboration. That way, you’d be able to track the amount of traffic each influencer is driving to your page. It’ll also help you calculate the exact number of conversions in contrast to the traffic generated.

3. Give more than what was promised in the ad

Since customers have certain expectations based on certain ads, referrals, or offerings, the business should meet those expectations. Now, when you promise less so you can exceed them, you’re practicing the “under-promising and over-delivering” marketing strategy. 

While this is applicable whenever you’re offering services, it’s also useful in driving eCommerce conversions from your ads. 

Let’s say you have an ad offer for certain clearance sales and you let your customers know that there’ll be a discount when they shop. Even if you’d be offering free shipping too, we recommend that you wait until they get to your website. When they see the price anchor along with the free shipping badge, they’d be motivated to purchase immediately. That’s because they are getting an even better deal than they were expecting. 

See how Rothy’s offers free shipping on all orders once you add an item to your cart. This wasn’t stated in their ads or other landing pages.

This is why you should always give more than what you’re offering in your ad. You can choose to offer free shipping in your ad, and show a discount on the website. Another example could be providing an exceptional return policy. 

One particularly effective nudge marketing strategy we would recommend is offering a freebie at the checkout stage. Aside from nudging them to convert, it’ll turn them into repeat customers. You’d also get a ton of referrals to your eCommerce store. 

4. Use a copy that relates to the ad

Are you retargeting your website visitors? Then your landing page copy should be written in a way that doesn’t imply that they are unfamiliar with your brand. Using a copy that relates to your ad ensures continuity and easier conversions. That’s because it’s more targeted and your leads wouldn’t feel like they are having two different experiences. 

In the example below, Casper has a Google search ad for the keyword “buy a mattress online”

However, when you tap on the “Don’t Settle Get the Best Sleep” link, it redirects you to this landing page.

As you’d see, it re-emphasizes that Casper is the best option available in the market. You can see the copy and multiple review options that help ensure a familiar experience in the user journey.

To determine what type of copy to write, you can research the local competitors and global players to identify what unique points your prospective customers are searching for. You can also write your copy based on whatever visuals or copy you’ve used in your ad.  Just ensure that your copy addresses the reason why they clicked on your ad or reemphasizes a benefit you’re offering. 

5. Offer a frictionless customer journey from the ad

If a prospective shopper lands on your website, how easy will it be to make a purchase? Having a frictionless customer journey is one of the most essential criteria for conversions. For example, you can’t expect your leads to spending hours waiting for every single product page to load. At some point, they’d get frustrated and bounce. 

So start by revisiting the average page speed on your website since web conversion rates drop by 4.42% with each second it takes to load. You can do this by visiting Google PageSpeed Insights to get the specific reasons why your load time might be slow. That way you can resolve any issues your potential leads might face when they land on your website.

Next, you want to offer customer support at each stage of their journey. This is for when they have questions about a specific product or your overall service. It could be more for insights on your return policies, size guide, or even your rewards program. For this, we recommend adding an in-chat option. Ensure that this bubble is visible at every stage of the journey so that they can easily access it. 

Here’s how Las Vegas Dresses offers help to sign up as a new customer via their chatbot.

If you’re offering a retargeting ad, you might also want to infuse some of the behavioral targeting using insights you’ve recorded in the previous session. For example, did they leave items in their cart before? Immediately lead them back to it. You can also show them items they’ve previously viewed so they can pick up from where they stopped. 

6. Don’t make your navigation difficult

When prospective shopper clicks on a product ad, it takes them right to the product page. However, what happens when they try to go back? Many ad landing pages don’t allow users to explore other sections of the website easily. It’s either you purchase that item or tap on the home icon that then redirects you to the homepage. 

This flow can be hurtful to your conversions because what if a shopper wants a similar item? It means that they have to then look through all product categories and figure out which one has that product type. 

So show the product category by introducing breadcrumbs to your product landing pages. That way, if they click back, they’d land on that product category and easily navigate around your eCommerce store. Here’s how Manitobah implements this on its product landing page;

If they’d prefer to go to the homepage, by tapping on the homepage section in the breadcrumb, they can also end up there. 

7. Don’t give them a reason to close the tab

When a shopper lands on your page, don’t overwhelm them with too many pop-ups. When you offer too many options, they might just choose to visit later - which in most cases can lead to never. You also don’t want to lead them to a boring landing page. If there’s no interest, they’ll just close that tab. Instead, offer helpful content that’ll ensure they stay glued to your website. 

You can start by showing them popular categories across your store. This could be best-selling products and specific links on the landing page that’ll further influence their shopping behavior. You want to be sure that whatever content you’re leading them to will fuel their interest in your product. 

For example, Meow Meow Tweet is a beauty brand that offers facial cleansers, lip balms, and other similar products. In this ad landing page, they immediately seize attention by providing a solution to the questions many of their leads might have. And so by offering this blog post, they keep their traffic engaged.

With this, their leads are sure of making an informed purchase. It also shows that the brand cares about the results of its products which makes them trustworthy. This is a great way to drive up conversions for your product line.

8. Make payments easier

Let’s say you’ve done everything right with your ad and that your post-click landing page is very effective. To complete the conversion, your leads have to make an actual purchase. So you need to ensure that your payment section is optimized for faster conversions.

For starters do you have multiple payment options? As an eCommerce store, offering many alternative payment options is a great way to reach all demographics and receive more payments. In the past, you could limit your store to just the credit/debit card payment option. However, today, in addition to PayPal, there are more e-wallet services like Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, and so much more. So you want to add these popular payment options on your product and checkout page.

See how Ketnipz indicates that they offer multiple payment options right on the product landing page for their Haloween ad;

Another way to make your payment experience better for your incoming paid ad traffic is to auto-apply your discounts. If your ad announces that there’ll be a certain percentage off, you need to show that it’s been applied whenever they add that item to the cart. Else, it’ll feel like you just used a clickbait strategy. 

Besame cosmetics does a great job of immediately applying the 50% discount as advertised in their ad. 

9. Track your results

The journey to conversion never really ends. That’s because even when they make a purchase, you’d want them to return over time. This is why tracking your conversion results are important. You can do this by setting up conversion events in your Google Ads, or unique tracking links for social media ads. Asides from helping you identify the biggest point of conversion, you can also track where the drop-offs are. 

With this information, you can design conversion strategies like retargeting campaigns. So let’s say they add an item to the cart and drop it off. You’d want to send push notifications or email campaigns to get them to complete their purchase. If they just looked through your website, maybe it’s time to add a retargeting ad to the mix. For one-time purchases, you can send follow-up messages for review or discount codes that can be applied to their next purchase. 

You also need to know when to stop retargeting a user. Because if they don’t engage with a ton of your messages or campaigns, then they might be just not interested in your product. 

FAQ

‍1. What is healthy customer acquisition? 

As a general rule of thumb, most businesses use the CAC as a yardstick against their CLTV.  

While the ideal ratio is 1:3, it varies by industry. For instance, the CAC for retail is $10 while it's $22 for Consumer industries. 

To determine what’s a sustainable CAC, you need to decide if it’s economical to spend more on acquiring new customers instead of focusing on your existing ones. 

Here’s an extra insight to help you gain some perspective — 

a. Channel Metrics 

You need to measure the ROI on your acquisition channels. Here’s a list of to-dos for you — 

• Find the profitability of your advertising channel vs affiliate ads 

• When it comes to sub-channel, which gives more returns. Is it Facebook or Google Ads? 
• Which fares better in terms of profitability: Google non-brand advertising vs brand advertising
• Are keyword bids giving rich dividends?

b. Segment Metrics 

Segment metrics are divided on the basis of size, geography, and product. Here are the key things to note 

• Who brings more profits: cart abandoners vs discount-only buyers?
• Which geography is profitable for instance, the USA vs Canada?
• Which product has more sales: Shoes vs Clothes 

Wrapping up, a healthy CAC can only be achieved with growth driven by customer happiness. A growth at all costs is detrimental to your business in the long run. 

2. Is paid advertising worth it? 

Paid ads are a strategy that has worked wonders for many businesses. For every $1 spent on Google Ads, there’s a $2 return. 

In fact, 50% of users visiting an eCommerce site through a paid ad are more likely to buy as opposed to those who came via organic search. 

Gili Sports generated $2.8 million in revenue from Google Ads with a staggering 6x in ROAS. All this happened during the pandemic. 

79% of marketers opine that paid ads are highly beneficial for their business with 62% of them planning to increase their PPC advertising budgets the next year. 

Search ads help increase brand awareness by up to 80%. 

Paid ads can help in product discovery, brand awareness, and new customer acquisition while you are focused on driving organic growth. Remember, paid ads won’t work alone. A healthy mix of organic and paid ads can help lead to success in the long haul.

3. What is paid advertising in eCommerce?

Here are the types of ad channels to explore 

a. Paid search traffic 

Paid search accounts for 28% of the search traffic. 63% of the users are 4x likely to click Google search ads compared to others. 

Pro Tip — Including your value proposition in your ad headlines can significantly improve your CTR

b. Social media ads 

Social media ads raked in a mammoth worldwide revenue of $153 billion in 2021 and are projected to reach $262 billion in 2026. 

Instagram ads are anticipated to gross 15.95 billion globally in 2022. 

You can do an Instagram story or do a sponsored post ad.

And its parent company Facebook is still the most used social media platform globally. With an MAU of 3 billion, it’s time eCommerce brands took notice and utilized the opportunity. 

Pro Tip — Including user-generated content in your social media ads sends greater trust signals

c. Native advertising 

If you want your ads to not look like one, native advertising is your best bet. It is considered the least invasive form of advertising. 

With the ability to stir an 18% increase in purchase intent, native advertising is a low hanging fruit. 

Talking about credibility, 68% of customers trust native ads over social media ads. 

 Pro Tip — Click to play video is the most preferred ad format. With 97% of customers confirming the same. 

d. Display advertising 

Display Ads have a gigantic reach with 210 million visitors seeing the ads served by the Google Display Network. 

What’s more interesting is that the display ads appear across 2 million websites and 6,50,000 apps. 

Pro Tip — Using animated images in your display ad banner can increase the CTR. 

e) Youtube video ads

The average conversion rate for Youtube is 14% while ads have a 1.4% conversion rate. 

With over 2 million monthly users, YouTube ads can help you strike gold. 

Pro Tip — Add in-stream and discovery ads in your campaign for increased conversions

f) Influencer advertising

Influencer advertising can help increase brand awareness in untapped markets with the help of influencers. 

While influencer marketing is normally associated with celebrities, not everyone can afford it. 

Micro-influencers and nano-influencers can help do a better job since there are higher trust signals since customers can relate to them. 

Pro Tip — The engagement rate and the audience of the influencers will greatly determine the ROI. So choose wisely. 

4. What is a good ROAS for eCommerce? 

A good ROAS is a benchmark but you don’t have to limit yourself to it. While the general rule is to have a 3-4x return on every dollar spent on ads. 

The ROAS varies according to product segment. Some need a 10:1 ratio to make profits while for some 3:1 is just enough. 

5. What is the difference between ROAS and ROI?

ROAS and ROI are similar except for a minute but significant differences. ROAS stands for Return on Ad Spends which refers to the gross revenue earned from the cost spent on paid advertising. While ROI applies to the net revenue earned after all the expenses. 

6. Why is my ROAS low? 

A low ROAS is a sign of failing ad campaigns. Here are three reasons why your ROAS is low —

a. High CPC 

Higher costs equate to fewer returns. When you bid for short-tail keywords, the CPC bid is always going to be high. Other possible reasons include bidding for a higher ad position or a low Quality Score that needs to be improved.‍

b. Abysmal conversion rates 

The fickle-mindedness of brands to generate more clicks instead of nurturing post-click customer journeys leads to abysmal conversion rates.

This becomes a vanity metric. To improve your low conversion rates, you can personalize your ads with value propositions, highlight pain points, etc. 

Second, the landing page experience must be pleasant for your customers. A responsive landing page design optimized for conversions can solve your abysmal conversion rates. 

7. Why is ROAS important? 

ROAS (in the context of eCommerce) is an important growth metric as most brands run ads on different channels. It’s a vital metric that can be used to measure performance on the channel, campaign, or ad level to find things that are working and things not working. 

The bottom line

Maximize the ROI from your paid ads by optimizing your post-landing page experience for conversions. You can do this by making the advertised product easier to discover, building trust, and analyzing everything. Start by finding conversion insights for your website with Convertcart today.