In PPC, the retail industry is one of the toughest areas to crack in terms of managing a successful campaign. There are many reasons for this, as online stores try to stand out from the crowd by holding frequent sales, product giveaways, offering free delivery and distributing voucher codes. Some online shops claim to have year-round sales which are always quite amusing as their prices seem to remain the same.

Searching for a product on Google is just like walking down a high street when the sales are on – SALE NOW ON, 50% OFF, EVERYTHING MUST GO. Don't worry folks, the capitalisation was intended.

Take the above for example, and don't ask me why I was searching for "party dresses". Look at all of the calls to action – Free Returns, 20% Off, Sale, Free Delivery. The below headings will explain some useful PPC tactics that online retailers can use to increase their market share and stay ahead of the game.

1. Product Extensions

Product extensions are a great way to increase click through rate, increase sales and drive targeted traffic to relevant landing pages. With Google's recent announcement of how they are going to put more emphasis on landing page relevance when calculating quality score it is really a no brainer when managing retail PPC accounts. Product extensions area form of sitelinks where Adwords pulls in a relevant feed that appears under the ad text when the + button is pressed (see below).

I have always been baffled as to why some online advertisers do not take advantage of this feature. It appears that the main reason for neglecting this is because they do not have a Google shopping feed. Gasp!

In several instances my clients have benefited from 6-10 extra sales per day from Google shopping, and that doesn't include increases they have seen when adding product extensions. Even if Google shopping brings about one sale a month it's still a free sale. Adding product extensions in Adwords is easy. Just follow these steps:

• Log in to your account
• If the Ad Extensions tab is not visible on the top bar just click the arrow to find it as shown below.

• Use the dropdown box to select product extensions and your Google shopping feed ID should be there.

• Then just select the campaigns that you wish to add product extensions to and save.

In my experience product extensions work better with branded campaigns rather than generic ones. For instance, we have seen that product extensions work really well for branded terms such as "dell laptops" and "sony hd tv" but not so well for generic terms such as "laptops" and "hd tv". It is clear to see why this has happened, as the users in the first instance are further down the buying cycle and know which brand they want.

Product Extensions are easy to track and I have found the best way to do it is by manually tagging your URLs. E.g. www.yoursite.com/product.html?origin=product-extension.

2. Product SKUs

A lot of online retailers are missing out on a huge opportunity by ignoring manufacture part numbers or product SKUs. Little by little, advertisers have copped onto this but there are still some markets where it's unrecognised. For models in the electronics market the competition is really fierce. The part number KDL-32CX523, for example has a full set of advertisers bidding on it.

The electronic part number STM32W is less competitive, however. This has only one advertiser bidding on it, and from experience in this market I know that there is massive money to be made from bidding on part numbers. In one example, part numbers accounted for 65% of the companies online PPC revenue, and it is still a function that is ignored by most of the advertisers in that market.

The traffic volumes for these keywords may not be as high as more generic keywords, but these visitors are extremely specific about what they want, and the conversion rate is much higher. All SKUs that an advertiser bids on should also have a specific product landing page.

3. Branded Products

A lot of online retailers sell a wide range of goods including branded products and own brand products. Own brand products are usually bought in from a foreign country or manufactured by the company, and branded products are usually bought from distributors and suppliers. Own brand products can usually be sold at a lower price, as they have been bought in bulk for a discounted price. The competition is usually high for branded products, so margins are subsequently low if a company wishes to remain competitive on price.

When creating a campaign structure for a PPC campaign for an online retailer, I believe that it is best practice to have several generic campaigns and several branded campaigns. For instance for a computer company I would create campaigns like the ones listed below.

• Laptops
• Desktop Computers
• Dell
• Apple

For the generic campaigns the split of sales could possibly be 50% branded and 50% own brand. For the branded campaigns there may be no split, and the branded sales would contribute 100% of the sales. For this reason it is extremely important not just to attribute revenue figures against spend per campaign when reporting. This is where finding the final profit figure is very useful, and decisions can be made on whether a campaign is really profitable or not.

Branded campaigns tend to convert better than generic ones but the profit on branded products is usually anywhere between 10% to 20%. For example an online retailer could sell a Sony TV for £1200 and an unbranded TV for £400 and make more money on the unbranded one. Finding the time to compile these reports is quite difficult but once the outline is created it can be very easy.

4. Seasonality

Using seasonality is very important in PPC management. Stepping away from website design during these periods, there are other ways that PPC managers can include seasonality in their accounts.

a. Text Adverts

• Including seasonality in text adverts has driven up click through rates for our clients on endless occasions. Using seasonal terms like Christmas in September always leads to a rise in click through rates for our clients. This gets a lot of people excited about the holidays (but really annoys some people as they hate Christmas adverts too early in the year.

b. Spend

• Increasing spend at certain periods of the year is also a very important strategy for online retailers. Depending on what you sell, the peak times could be Christmas, January sales, Valentine's Day and Mothers' Day. An advertiser should experience an increase in sales at these times, but to take real advantage of seasonality should be willing to increase their spend. There are also certain months during which an online retailer is busy and it is important to look at historical data in the account if possible to see when the peak times are.

c. Charity

• Charity really seems to hit home around the holidays, so any online retailers who donates to charity every time a purchase is made should see an increase in sales. This may be the overcoming factor as to whether a customer chooses your company or another.

External Studies

There are always external studies and reports being put together by market insiders on different sectors. These reports will aid a PPC manager in deciding what audience to target, and I have found them very useful in the past.

For example, while doing research for a recent proposal for a fragrance company, a study outlined that over 50% of women buy fragrances for their partners or relatives, and 34% of men usually get fragrances as a gift. This is very insightful information and gave us food for thought when putting forward creative ideas for the Google Display Network. The question was: "do we go for a male creative or a female creative?". Our proposal was to test both and see what results came back. The results are yet to be seen, but we will let you know as soon as they are in.

Conclusion

The online retail space is cluttered with competitor websites willing to do anything to take your business from you. Price cuts, brand bidding and continuous promotions make it tough to compete but keep you on your toes. The above insights should give you some food for thought when managing your online retail PPC campaigns. There are many more techniques out there, and I would love to hear them in the comments section.