PPC campaigns are a great solution for increasing traffic and sales in your e-shop. However, launching only PPC campaigns is not enough for the e-shop to succeed and grow. E-shops should start with brand awareness campaigns as soon as they can. We understand that this can be costly but having a strong brand makes the difference between customers saying “I bought this dress online” and “I bought this dress on AboutYou.com”.
A strong brand establishes a powerful link with customers. It can be represented by a logo, colors, fonts, and an approach to the offer and quality of products or services. Branding of the e-shop includes aspects and helps to create all these strong positions in the market.
A strong brand can have many advantages for an e-shop. For example:
1. Higher credibility of the e-shop: Customers are more inclined to buy from e-shops with a good name and reputation. A strong brand can help increase customer confidence in your products or services.
2. Stronger customer loyalty: If customers believe in your brand, they are more likely to return to your e-shop and recommend your products or services to others.
3. Greater competitive advantage: When you have a strong brand, you can stand out from the competition and gain more attention.
4. Bigger value of the e-shop: A strong brand can increase the value of the e-shop for potential investors.
Which brand awareness campaigns should the e-shop launch?
You can use multiple types of campaigns for branding. Of course, we recommend using a variety of campaigns, but it should be taken into account that each advertisement should be tailored to your needs. Some types of campaigns you can use are:
1. Campaigns in the Display Network and on Youtube: Building awareness through quality creatives and banner campaigns can help with increasing brand awareness, and of course, has a positive impact on other campaigns as well.
2. Social media: Using social media for branding can be immensely effective as it allows an e-shop to share information about products or services with a wide audience. Users spend quite a lot of time on social media, and at the same time, social media allows for very precise targeting of your advertising.
3. Content Marketing: Sharing attractive and interesting content such as blog posts or videos can build the e-shop’s reputation in the field. Reputation means credibility, and credibility always attracts more customers.
4. E-mail marketing: You can stay in touch with your existing customers by sending e-mails with offers or news via e-mail. This is a great way to promote unique offers or discounts.
5. Affiliate networks: Cooperation with other e-shops or influencers helps the e-shop to gain more attention and trust from customers. E-shop can get additional orders, for example, through various affiliate programs.
6. Promotions: Creating promotions, such as contests or discounts, also helps the e-shop with both acquiring customers’ attention and increasing loyalty. It is recommended to create special promotions for important holidays or events in the country (e.g. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, etc.).
These are just some of the options that an e-shop should consider when building its brand. It is important to choose brand campaigns that are suitable for the target group of the e-shop, and that will help the e-shop achieve its short-term and long-term goals.
How much should the e-shop spend on brand campaigns?
This is a question we get asked quite often. The budget for a brand campaign in an e-shop can be very different depending on the size of the e-shop, and the goals you want to achieve. It’s hard to specify the amount since it depends on a variety of factors such as your target audience, campaign goals, where the campaign will be run, etc.
From our experience and from the budgets of many e-shops, it follows that the budget for brand campaigns is approximately 10 to 30% of the total budget for online marketing of the e-shop. Of course, it also depends on your goals, whether you want to put more emphasis on performance campaigns or brand building. Based on your goals and current situation, your budget for brand campaigns can be higher.
In the case of smaller budgets for brand campaigns, i.e. up to €2,000/month, it is advisable to run several banner campaigns on the Display Network, and possibly also on YouTube. With smaller budgets, you can set up campaigns yourself or a PPC specialist can help you with them.
With budgets over €2,000/month, it’s better to use programmatic platforms
such as Google DV 360, Managino Network, and AdForm.
Programmatic campaigns even for smaller e-shops
Programmatic platforms such as Google DV 360 or Adform provide a plethora of advantages for e-shops that are trying to strengthen their brand and increase sales at the same time. Programmatic platforms bring efficiency to brand campaigns, for example, by being able to target a specific target group, set the frequency of displaying ads, and have relatively low costs for impressions and clicks. Another advantage is that the programmatic platform actively seeks the best place to show ads at the lowest cost per conversion.
It is very likely that you know programmatic platforms as platforms that are used by a small percentage of e-shops. The downside was that programmatic platforms were not accessible to smaller advertisers. That is changing today!
It is for this reason that we created our own programmatic platform Managino Network, based on Google DV 360. And so even smaller and medium-sized e-shops can advertise through Google DV 360.
Google DV 360 (Display & Video 360) is a tool from Google that enables advertising agencies and e-shops to create, manage and measure effective display and video advertising campaigns. It provides the ability to target ads to a specific audience using various targeting options such as demographics, interests, behavior, or geolocation.
Summary
Strengthening the e-shop brand has a significant impact on the overall success of the e-shop. Launching PPC campaigns increases traffic and sales in the e-shop, but the brand strength increases its recognition and customer loyalty. This is why brand building is just as important for long-term success as performance PPC campaigns.
A strong brand increases credibility, customer loyalty, the value of the e-shop, and increases the competitive advantage in the given area. Therefore, the e-shop should pay attention not only to launching performance PPC campaigns but also to building a strong brand in order to achieve permanent growth and success.
