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Need more customers? Need more efficient acquisition costs? Need to upsell existing customers to the rest your catalog? Or doing everything perfectly but need to scale growth across dozens if not 100s of SKUs seamlessly?
As marketers, we’ve faced all of these challenges, and if you haven’t yet then you most likely will at some point. When faced with any of these challenges you’re going to need to start experimenting and one of the most effective and increasingly popular options to consider are product ads.
We've made this guide about product ads on Facebook, Google, and Amazon for both those new to the ad format as well as those who may already be utilizing them in their marketing mix but not unlocking their full potential yet.
Product ads promote a physical product rather than your entire brand or service. ecommerce company owners use product ads to maximize the sale of each of their goods individually.
The campaign should showcase the best features of that product and why it will benefit a person if they decide to buy it. People who use product ads primarily aim to build product awareness and establish their market presence.
Product ads can be run across plenty of different platforms, but the three most popular options are Facebook, Google, and Amazon. However, since these are three unique platforms, they each have their own approach to how they work and have their own unique set of pros and cons.
Let's break down the product ads system for these three different platforms and show you their features:
The number of businesses that use Facebook product ads is growing daily, mainly because of their function of allowing companies to advertise more products at the same time. But, let's make sure we're using the right language as we should now reference these as Meta ads - allowing you to manage one campaign across both Instagram and Facebook.
Instead of advertising just one product, Meta allows you to upload your entire product detail page to develop campaigns that target their users with specific ads based on their preferences. Don't worry if you don't want to showcase a couple of products; they will also help you advertise one if you'd prefer.
Meta prices their ads on what's called an 'ad auction.' They make companies bid against each other to win a space in front of the eyes of a consumer that's willing to purchase your product. Sometimes, it won't always be the highest bidder that wins the spot; Meta may decide that another ad with a lower bid fee but is more relevant to the user could be a better option and show them that one instead.
When you're developing your campaigns, you'll be able to choose whether you want to target people who've already been on your site in the past or someone who's shown interest in the type of product you're selling.
Google's product ads are a little different from Meta's. Their search ads are displayed based on specific keywords that their users type into the search bar. Think of a time when you searched for something about television you own, and you saw that type of television pop up below the search bar on Google; that would be one of their product ads.
Not only will your ads be displayed below the Google search bar, but they'll also be shown on YouTube, Gmail, Google Shopping, and Google Display Network.
To get started, you'll upload your product listings to their system and begin to design your campaign with the product you want to sell the most. Before your ads can go live, you'll have to set a monthly pricing cap based on your budget. Remember, Google charges based on a Cost Per Click (CPC) system, so they'll only charge you whenever someone clicks on your advertisement.
If you own an Amazon store but are struggling to get the first few sales for one of your products, Amazon product ads could be the right way to go.
Amazon offers companies 'sponsored product ads,' which are very similar to Google's ads; only the advertisement is shown in the Amazon search results to users who've been looking for the type of product you're selling. It's a way of beating the competition that has already established its place on Amazon and exposing your product faster to paying customers rather than hoping they'll click on it after a couple of pages.
Sponsored product ads are run on a pay-per-click system, so you'll only pay whenever a person clicks your ad. You'll be able to set limits on the amount you want to spend, so you'll always have control over how much you pay to Amazon every month.
After you've made your campaign with the products on Amazon from your ad account, they'll give you a chance to choose between their manual and automatic targeting options. With the manual, you pick who to show your advertisements to based on keywords and product categories. Whereas, when you go with automatic, Amazon does the targeting for you based on the information they've got on each customer.
There isn't a best ad platform as it's evident that Meta, Google, and Amazon ads all have their place in the marketing mix and will suit different ecommerce company owners based on their strategy.
If you don't own an Amazon store and are focused merely on targeting as many people as possible then both Google and Meta are foundational to your advertising strategy.
However, anyone who's an Amazon seller should allocate their budget to advertising on Amazon because you get to expose your product to those interested and who are also actively looking to buy something. In comparison, the "noise" and ability to target advertisements on Meta and Google may reach someone who's not actively in a purchasing mindset, may have already bought a competitive product from someone else, and sometimes may already be a customer but are being targeted based on past search & engagement history.
