If you’ve been selling on bol.com for a while, you know that there is always room for improvement. Competitors are not slowing down, so continuous learning and adjustments are essential. In this article we explain how you can get the basics right, choose the best form of advertising and get the best return from your campaigns.
Create organic visibility
First things first. Before going all out with campaigns, you need to get your basics in order. If your products don’t have quality product information and photography, you will still lack conversion. But before visitors convert, your products must be found. These five steps will help you on your way:
1. Keyword research
Check the ‘bol.com search trends’ within the bol.com sales account. This shows how often and when certain keywords are used by bol.com visitors in the search bar. For example, you know whether you should call your product ‘tower fan’ or ‘column fan’. You also discover synonyms and long tail keywords of your products in this way.
2. A relevant product title
Place the keywords you found in step 1 in the title. Keep it as clear as possible. If necessary, add additional information to the title. For example, the M-line mattress does this cleverly and added ‘125 days of trial sleep’ to the product title, which stands out in the search results.
3. Link product families
If you sell products with different colors or sizes, link these variants together. Visitors can now click through to your other products, which increases conversion.
4. Optimize the product description
An extensive product description ensures a better conversion and that conversion contributes to a higher ranking. In the description, provide all relevant information about the product, but especially what benefits the customer. Make sure to convince the customer not to go to the competitor or get off the platform to look for more information.
5. Choose the right images
The main product image cannot contain text, but you can add it to the other images. You can choose to clarify the product size by depicting it with something recognizable, or by showing text with USPs in the image. This extra information also ensures that fewer products are returned.
Once you can increase the number of visits to the product page from organic search traffic, you will spend less budget on advertising. However, this does not happen overnight. It’s a long-term process.
The ultimate form of advertising
Once you get the basics right, you can start with to the fun part. We’re going to advertise! Previously, advertising was only possible via the bol.com advertising platform, but this year the bol.com API was released to give more power and possibilities to advertisers.
Advertising platform
If your product range on bol.com is limited, does not fluctuate often and is stable in terms of stock, we recommend that you use the standard advertising platform. In this case, the API does not provide you with many extras.
With these simple steps, you can get the most yield from your campaigns.
1. Set a goal and calculate your break-even ACOS.
Determine your goal per product or product group based on your break-even ACOS: the maximum amount you can spend on advertising without making a loss. Then subtract your net profit margin. If you can use 20% of the sales price for advertising and your net profit margin should be 5%, then set the ACOS to 15%.
2. Launch automatic campaigns
Use automated campaigns to gain insight into the highest converting keywords.
3. Launch manual campaigns
Once you have collected enough data from automatic campaigns, you can start with manual campaigns. Start with the best performing products and place the best performing keywords in these campaigns. By combining the two types of campaigns, you create a good mix of discovering new keywords and manual campaigns with the best performing keywords.
4. Optimize bidding and ROAS
Optimize when you have collected enough data (e.g. 100 clicks). Experiment with increasing and decreasing bids and adjust your ROAS.
5. Add negative keywords
Exclude search terms that yield insufficient results after data collection.
6. Reassess the campaign results
Give your optimizations time to collect enough data and then analyze. Review your ROAS and compare it to the goals you’ve set. It may take some time to achieve the desired ACOS or ROAS, but should improve as you make more optimizations.
Advertising via the API
Do you have a large assortment, regularly new (seasonal) products and many fluctuations in stock? Then we definitely recommend using the API! This requires a lot fewer actions in managing and reporting of sponsored products. In addition, you can set up a more complex campaign structure faster, which ultimately leads to a better campaign result. You can now automatically adjust campaigns based on rules related to products, bids and statuses. With the API, you as an advertiser can develop an application yourself or use a solution by a third party. If you want to develop the application yourself, you do need specialist knowledge.
