eCommerce Advertising – When you think of eCommerce advertising, you probably think of banners and interstitials. You might also have images or videos in mind.
However, eCommerce advertising is much more than that! It can take many forms, from traditional methods like banner and video ads to in-app advertising, contextual advertising, and native advertising.
All of these methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to understand the different types of eCommerce advertising before deciding which method is right for your business.
We’ll take a look at the different types of eCommerce advertising so you know what to expect when you start the campaign planning process.
Your advertising approach should start with the type of transaction your business supports and the audience you want to reach. Reviewing the main types of e-commerce helps distinguish business buyers, individual consumers and other transaction models before you develop campaign messages, offers and landing pages.
Table of Contents
1. Search Advertising
We’ve all heard about the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), but what exactly does that term mean?
SEO isn’t only about optimizing your content to be optimized for search engine result pages (SERPs). SEO is also about optimizing your landing pages and product pages to ensure that they rank well in search engines as well.
There are many techniques you can use to improve your SEO, but the most important is to understand your target audience and what they’re looking for.
All in all, it’s all about driving consumer behavior through content and ads that encourage a motivated search. The best way to do this? With content and ads that encourage the “what” question. Once they have the answer to that, they are more likely to make a purchase.
2. Display Advertising
If you’re looking to boost your ecommerce store’s conversion rate and drive more sales, then you should consider including display ads as part of your advertising strategy.
Display ads are advertisements that appear next to or within an ecommerce store’s product pages. Similar to search ads, display ads allow you to connect with your audience on an ad-driven basis. You can also use them to directly support your product or service by directing interested parties toward a specific page or section of the store.
There are a few different types of display ads but are mostly split between digital and traditional methods. Traditional ad types are Banner and Pop-up ads, and digital ad types include Interstitials, and wall posts.
Managing these different formats can become difficult for website owners who want to maximize their space. Many publishers now use an ad network with multi-format ad options to make this process easier. This setup automatically rotates different types of ads within a single placement on the page. It helps keep the layout clean while it displays relevant offers to visitors. Using this kind of automation saves time and keeps the user experience consistent.
Regardless of which type of display advertising you choose, you want to make sure it’s relevant to the shopping journey your customers are on.
3. Amazon Advertising
As the owner or manager of an eCommerce store, you probably know by now that Amazon is a leading brand for purchase decisions. However, many businesses don’t know that Amazon is actually an advertising platform! The fact that it has nearly 200 million users every month gives it even more potential.
As an Amazon Advertising customer, you can manage your ad campaigns through the Amazon Advertising API. The Amazon Advertising API allows you to access data like cost per click, number of impressions, and more for any campaign running on Amazon. Furthermore, you can also create and manage your own Ad campaigns. When campaign management involves remote employees or contractors, account access and connected devices deserve attention alongside performance reporting. These cybersecurity considerations for remote businesses offer background on network protection, updates and phishing awareness. Include these topics when documenting how your team accesses advertising systems and handles business information.
While there are plenty of tools and services to help you create ads for Amazon, the company itself isn’t particularly user friendly when it comes to the creative process. That means you have to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to finding the right ad format and creating the ads that best represent your business.
You can, however, take advantage of Amazon’s massive scale and flex its advertising muscles by creating highly targeted ads for products that may or may not be available for purchase on the platform. The ads you create for Amazon should be as attention-grabbing as possible but still be appropriate for the platform.
4. Affiliate Advertising
Affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular ways for businesses to promote and sell products over the Internet. The programs are online contracts through which businesses offer to provide a link to a third-party website or an eCommerce store that sells related products or services.
Users of the third-party website or eCommerce store will automatically be directed to the business’s site if they click on a merchant’s affiliate link.
For example, suppose you sell home products on your website and want to promote your listings on other websites. You could create an affiliate program with a website or URL where users go once they finish searching to see new listings.
Once they visit your page, they will be taken directly to your site because you hosted their request there first. This process is called referral traffic generation and is how most affiliate programs work.
Affiliate marketing is a win-win-win situation because you get to improve your brand awareness and make money from people who buy your products through affiliate links.
This is the beauty of affiliate programs: You choose the affiliate network you’d like to partner with, the brand, and the product and you never have to pay out a commission to someone who doesn’t buy anything from you.
5. Social Advertising
Social advertising is all about connecting with customers on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Advertising on social platforms is all about creating a “connection” with your customer.
Unlike with other forms of eCommerce advertising, social media ads are more about creating a “relationship” with your customer. That means the ads you create should be more about building a relationship with your customer than about selling products.
The connection between you and your customer will grow stronger over time through these ads, and the more connections you have with your customer, the more likely they are going to become loyal customers.
Advertising works alongside the experience shoppers receive after they click. Reviewing mobile navigation, product presentation and follow-up communication can reveal problems that additional traffic alone will not solve. These ways to improve your eCommerce business provide a broader checklist for coordinating store improvements with your promotional activity.
Advertising works alongside the experience shoppers receive after they click. Reviewing mobile navigation, product presentation and follow-up communication can reveal problems that additional traffic alone will not solve. These ways to improve your eCommerce business provide a broader checklist for coordinating store improvements with your promotional activity.
Winding It Up
The world of eCommerce is changing so fast that it’s impossible to keep up. New technologies, new online payment methods, and a growing list of vendors are all trying to one-up one another in the space of online sales and customer service.
To stay abreast of the latest in this rapidly developing industry requires a high level of understanding of the different ways to advertise your eCommerce store as listed above.
All of these methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to understand the different types of eCommerce advertising before deciding which method is right for your business.