Marketplace Paid Marketing Solutions: How Effective Are They?

There are varying viewpoints about the efficacy of marketplace paid marketing solutions like Shopee MyAds and Lazada Sponsored Search in driving more sales and awareness towards brands. In this post, we are going to discuss the factors that lead to ineffective use of paid marketing solutions as well as some pointers on what you can do to maximize it. 

What are marketplace paid marketing solutions?

Marketplace paid marketing solutions are the ads/campaign services that are integrated within a marketplace. Some examples are Shopee MyAds for Shopee, Lazada Sponsored Search for Lazada, and Amazon Advertising for Amazon. 

These are the marketing campaigns that you run for your online store wherein you do not have to exit the platform to have your products advertised. 

What are the benefits of running paid marketing solutions in a marketplace?

Due to the numerous brands that are also selling their products on marketplaces such as Lazada and Shopee, one of your key challenges is to stand out from your niche competitors and convince potential buyers to choose your product. 

In doing that, one of the things that you can is optimize your product listings and then sprinkle them with keywords in all the right places. But it will take time for your product listing to appear on the first page of marketplace SERPs (search engine pages). 

Running paid marketing solutions allows you to stay on top of the algorithm right before your optimization methods take effect, which means that you don’t have to wait in order to accumulate leads and sales. 

To be more specific, running a marketplace paid marketing solution gives you the following benefits:

• Increased Sales

If you are a new brand selling on a marketplace, it can take time before consistent sales start to pick up. Running paid marketing solutions on your marketplace will help you become more visible as potential customers look through the catalog. Hence, conversion rate also increases considering that you also utilize proper optimization techniques along with your paid marketing. 

• Enhances Brand Awareness

When someone searches for a product on Lazada or Shopee, the PDPs  that will mostly dominate the SERPs are the ones with most positive reviews as well as the big brands. Therefore, if you only rely on organic growth, brand awareness can start off slow. By using paid marketing solutions, you make your brand visible to prospects. 

• Improves brand credibility

If your brand appears on the first page of SERPs through paid marketing solutions, you will appear more credible towards users and they will be more willing to make a purchase. 

• Quick Ranking Transition

SEO can take several weeks to months to take effect. If you have to wait it out, you will experience slow growth in the beginning phase of your brand introduction. Paid marketing solutions lets you stay on top of the SERPs even if you are just starting out. When you pair good SEO with paid marketing, it will speed up your rise in organic search and will positively impact your conversion rate. 

How to tell if your paid marketing is working against you?

The points that we stated above are what you can expect when you use paid marketing solutions successfully. 

But successful paid marketing doesn’t happen each time. So, here’s how you know that your paid marketing isn’t effective. 

• You don’t see an increase in ROI (return on investments)
• You’re getting the same traffic that you normally get without the paid marketing solutions
• You see an increase in views but not an increase in conversion rate

What factors lead to ineffective paid marketing?

If you’ve experienced any one of the symptoms of an ineffective paid marketing, this is most likely due to the following:

You Did Not Optimize Your PDP

Your paid marketing serves as a boost in terms of brand awareness and search rank but in order to drive sales, your product listing should be reflective of a good product. This means that you need to have a clear product description with bullet points that tells the potential buyer the benefits of using your product. You also need product images that are of high quality and are reflective of the best features of your product. 

Not Enough Social Proof

If you used a paid marketing solution on one of your product listings that hasn’t accumulated at least 10 or 15 positive reviews, your click throughs will increase but it will make little to no difference to your conversion rate because in online selling, buyers don’t have the luxury of seeing the quality of an item with their own eyes. Therefore, before making a purchase, they will look for social proof that says that the product is, indeed, good.

You Did Not Do Keyword Research

If you were running a keywords ad on Shopee for instance, and you were not able to choose the right keywords for your products, your product will be visible to people who

So when someone searches for a keyword and sees your sponsored ad, they will not click on it moreso make a purchase because the appearance of your product listing does not match the user’s search intent. 

Lazada & Shopee Paid Marketing 

In this post, we are going to bring focus to the paid marketing solutions of Shopee and Lazada to look at its blindspots and what you can do to maximize your campaigns. 

Lazada Sponsored Search is a paid marketing solution within the Lazada marketplace that allows sellers to bid on keywords and then when a potential buyer searches for this keyword, the seller’s sponsored product will appear on top of the results. 

On the other hand, Shopee MyAds is the integrated ads placement feature of the Shopee platform. It lets you run two kinds of ads: keyword ads and targeting ads. 

For keyword ads, you need to bid for a keyword and then when a potential buyer searches for that keyword, your product will appear in the Shopee SERPs (search engine results pages). Meanwhile, when you use targeting ads, your product will appear on the Similar Products section of products that are closely relative to your product line. Targeting ads are similar to remarketing in a way that your products are continuously being shown to buyers who have historically shown interest in your product by way of adding to cart, viewing, or purchasing an item that is similar to your product. 

Lazada Sponsored Search & Shopee MyAds Pros

• Data Collection

When you run sponsored search ads/Shopee MyAds, you will be able to access real-time data in your Lazada/Shopee Seller Center dashboard. There will be reports and insights available. You can use it to assess your current strategies in terms of paid advertising. It can also be useful when you want to formulate a secondary strategy for your campaigns. These insights are downloadable for offline use

• Product Exposure

The best way to be on top of your brand awareness campaigns is to organically boost your search rank but the process can take awhile. So, if you are a new brand, you can pair your SEO efforts with Lazada sponsored search campaigns/Shopee MyAds. That way, you are able to reach out to your target audience and boost sales even at the initial phase of your business. 

• Boost In Credibility

There are lots of products online that look better in the picture than it does in person. Due to that, buyers often look for products that have achieved a certain level of credibility. Search rank is a good indication of credibility. So, if your organic search rank hasn’t reached the first page of Lazada/Shopee SERPs just yet, using sponsored search ads will help you be more trustworthy. 

Lazada Sponsored Search & Shopee MyAds Cons

• It Has Limited Value

Lazada Sponsored Search/Shopee My Ads can be a great boost for new brands but for already-established brands that are now looking to get their name beyond their target market, these ads don’t always hit the mark. 

• People Don’t Always Click Ads

There is a commonly held opinion that people don’t always click search ads.There are buyers who have a preference for product listings that appear on the first page of Lazada/Shopee SERPs naturally and organically due to their desire for a truly credible product. Therefore, there is a possibility that you will not meet your maximum potential when it comes to click throughs. 

• Your High Search Rank Is Temporary

If your long-term goal is to appear on the first page of SERPs, Lazada Sponsored Ads/Shopee MyAds may not help you achieve that objective since ads were created to provide short-term exposure. 

Tips To Maximize Lazada Sponsored Search/Shopee MyAds

• Pair Your Lazada Sponsored Search/Shopee MyAds With Facebook Marketing

Normally, your Lazada Sponsored Search/Shopee MyAds campaigns will only help you spread your brand name throughout your target market within the Lazada/Shopee platform. If your goal is to expand your current market, you should market your brand through Facebook alongside any other paid marketing solutions you are running through Lazada/Shopee. That way, you can encourage prospects to take a look at your product including the ones you are not yet using the Lazada/Shopee platform. 

• Do Not Lag Behind Organic SEO

Lazada Sponsored Search/Shopee MyAds  is only effective for as long as you are running the campaign. Once the campaign, lapses, your product will not appear on the first page of SERPs anymore. Hence, your previous product exposure will be put to a halt. 

Therefore, it is more strategic to start pushing organic search rank while your campaigns are running. With that, you will be able to capture the attention of prospects and make sales while buying time to improve your appearance in the Lazada/Shopee algorithm. 

Here is a gist of what you need to do to increase your search rank:

1. Do keyword research
2. Place keywords in strategic places in your product listing
3. Your product listing should have a professionally taken main image 

And if you want to be able to easily track your search rank, Split Dragon has an automation tool that would certainly help you.Our post on Search Rank Tracking – How To Track Your SEO in Lazada and Shopee is an in-depth guide that’ll walk you through everything. 

• Recommend Your Product To People You Know (friends and family)

Using Lazada Sponsored Search/Shopee MyAds will make your brand more noticeable towards buyers. But in order for your click throughs to be converted into sales, you need positive reviews to serve as social proof that your product is a good buy. 

Even if you are first on the Lazada/Shopee SERPs, buyers will choose another product over you if the former have lots of reviews and your product has little to no reviews. We recommend that you obtain 10 to 15 product reviews first before you run a Lazada Sponsored Search/Shopee MyAds campaign since doing so will immensely increase your conversion rate. 

Paid marketing solutions offer you an easier way to reach your target market. But to take advantage of its full potential, you need to pair paid marketing with organic marketing. This lets you acquire sales in the short term while setting the proper foundation (organic SEO) for your brand to compete with bigger names in the marketplace. What’s your take on marketplace paid marketing solutions? We’d love to know in the comment section.