How to Create an Effective PPC Campaign for Discount Stores

As internet ecommerce and local stores slash prices, discount stores face ever-increasing competition to grow their brand and capture their audience.

Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can help you stand out from the crowd by capturing the attention of potential customers right where they’re searching — social media, search engines, and third-party websites. 

Our experts are here to walk you through the ins and outs of PPC for discount stores, including how your store can benefit and how to create a successful campaign for your business. Keep reading and remember to snag your subscription to Revenue Weekly for more free marketing insights. 

What is PPC for discount stores?

PPC is a popular model for advertising in the digital marketing world. It’s highly effective for reaching hundreds to thousands of potential customers quickly with accurate targeting. 

These advertisements appear at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) before the organic results. For example, if you type in “discount stores in my area,” you’ll probably see sponsored ads at the top for local stores.

Unlike traditional newspaper or magazine ads, you only pay for PPC marketing when it delivers results. In a traditional media model, you pay for an advertisement to appear before it’s printed. In PPC advertising, you don’t spend a dollar until a user actually clicks on the ad. 

When a search engine like Google loads a SERP, an almost instantaneous bidding process is happening in the background. Google decides what sponsored websites should appear at the top of the SERP and in what order based on two factors — the maximum bid each advertiser is willing to pay and the quality score of the advertisement. 

Beyond SERPs, PPC advertising is also available on third-party websites as well as social media.

Why does your discount store need a PPC campaign?

PPC ads give you the power to target a particular local audience. If you send out mailers to advertise your discount store, you won’t know whether they’re effective for certain people. PPC ads allow you to track who clicked and optimize your campaign for different segments of your audience. 

For example, a typical college student shops online, while a mom prefers to shop in the local store to try on clothes with the kids — but she might not always have time in her busy schedule to make a trip. PPC ads can now target these distinct audiences for the same store.

Through PPC ads, you can offer mom and dad free shipping and returns so they can send back clothes that aren’t the right size. In the meantime, you can offer college students seasonal discounts on bundles of products they need for school delivered right to the dorm.

These examples reveal that PPC ads can help you expand to new audiences while also honing in on the right customers with optimized ads for each demographic. 

How to launch a successful PPC campaign for discount stores

You can take four steps to lay the foundation for a successful PPC campaign for your discount store: 

1. Set your budget and goals
2. Select your campaign type
3. Perform keyword research
4. Test your ads

1. Set your budget and goals

One of the most critical steps in planning a PPC campaign is deciding on a budget. You’ll need to set your maximum bid — the amount you’re willing to pay for a click — in advance.

Google Ads provides the tools you need to create an effective budget for your campaign, including an estimate of how many clicks your budget will deliver so you can approximate your return on investment (ROI).

Next, you should set campaign goals. For example, if you’ve been in business for a while, you might want to focus on conversion. If you’re an entrepreneur just launching your discount store, your campaign might focus on raising brand awareness.

2. Select your campaign type

You can choose from several types of campaigns depending on the audience you want to target. Options include: 

• Social ads: Social ads appear on social media feeds to target users as they scroll. 
• Search ads: Search ads appear at the top of SERPs depending on the rapid bidding process that happens on the back end of the engine with every search. 
• E-commerce ads: E-commerce ads appear on Google Shopping to target users looking to purchase a product. 
• Instream ads: Instream ads appear before the videos load on the YouTube platform. 
• Remarketing ads: Remarketing ads target the users that previously visited your website and encourage them to return or perform another action. 
• Display ads: Display ads commonly appear on third-party websites. 

3. Perform keyword research 

The next step is to use a keyword research tool like Keywords FX to figure out what topics your customers are searching for online. For example, consumers might ask a search engine for “discount stores near me.” These types of queries give you an opportunity to target a highly specific request with a paid ad. 

The goal is to choose keywords that match your budget and the appropriate level of competition. If your discount store sells iPhones, you wouldn’t want to compete with a giant corporation like Apple for the keyword “iPhone.” You’d be better off narrowing your scope with a more specific term, like “discounted iPhones” or “cheap iPhones near me.” 

4. Test your ads

The final step is to test the performance of your ads and create new iterations to achieve maximum impact. You can begin the process by creating a series of A/B tests on your PPC ads.

An A/B test is when you change a single element of an advertisement and deliver two distinct, variable ads to users. Once viewers have responded to both types of ads, you can distinguish which one offers the best performance.  

You can also use the dashboard in your Google Ads account to track key metrics for which ads receive the most clicks.

Traffic attracted through PPC advertising yields 50% more conversions than organic advertising.

Are you leveraging PPC in your marketing efforts? Let’s get started.

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Do you want to take your discount store to the next level with PPC?

PPC can help you target a niche audience in your area and reach potential customers quickly. If you’d like to create a PPC campaign for your discount store, WebFX is ready to help! We’re a full-service digital marketing agency that offers online advertising services to companies in a wide variety of industries. 

Our extensive team of in-house PPC experts can walk you through the process step-by-step. We’ll perform keyword research to find the best target phrases for discount stores and design highly effective landing pages and ads. Then, we’ll analyze their success to continue optimizing and helping you boost your ad performance.

Ready to get started? Reach out to the WebFX team today for a free quote or give us a call at 888-601-5359.

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