So I've just launched a new ecommerce site that has literally hundreds of products. Would I create separate PPC ads for EVERY product? Is that what most people do? It just seems extremely time consuming...but if that's how people do it, then so be it. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious.
You have to consider how people would search for your products. For example, let's say you sell widgets on your website. If people search for your products by "blue widgets" then you can create a grouping. You would create a pay per click ad that grouped together all of the blue widgets you offer. The important point is that your landing page show the visitor all of your blue widgets. If people search for your widgets like "blue widget 900xp" then they are looking for a specific and individual widget. You should create a pay per click ad and the landing page should be the product detail page for "blue widget 900xp". You want your ads to really speak to the search requests. Give them what they are looking for as specifically as possible and you will do better.
Well I can program just fine...I just don't see how that plays in to this. Right now the way I'm viewing this is that I've got, lets say, 150 products and 10 major sections of my store. Creating 160 total ad groups all with different keywords and ad variations would take ages. How does programming play in to this?
I don't recommend programming the pay per click ads. If you want them done right they will be very specific and unique to each product. For example, it would be ideal if you can include the price of each product in the PPC ad. The cost and other product features will likely make the pay per click ads unique enough to do each one separately. I would only automate it if you are short on time.