Online store marketing – what are the best strategies to deploy?

How to make an online store profitable

It will probably occur to you that – in order to be noticed by potential recipients – you should promote and advertise your store. And rightly so.

But how, among the many available methods, can you choose those that will actually bring measurable results?

Target group

Before you plan and implement a marketing strategy, you should specify exactly what type of recipients you would like to reach with your offer. Only after recognizing the needs of your potential client can you select the appropriate marketing channels. And how to identify it? You can do this by answering the following questions:

• who is your client – what is his gender, what is his age, what is his education and where does s/he live;
• what motivates him/her to buy;
• what purchasing budget does s/he have;
• where he gets information and what s/he looks for on the Internet;
• what his/her needs are and how our offer can meet them;
• what problems s/he is facing and how, if any, they can be solved.

It is worth making the questions as detailed as possible and the answers as comprehensive as possible. This approach will allow you to precisely determine your client’s profile. Then we will develop an effective marketing strategy tailored to his/her needs.

Analysis of competition activities

We can outsource it to a professional company or do it ourselves, using free and paid tools available on the Internet (e.g. SimilarWeb, Brand24, Sentuo, Majestic and others). They are intended to suspect the activities of competitors in order to determine how our offer can be more advantageous.

It is worth knowing the range of your competitors and customer opinions about their services and goods. You should also pay attention to what marketing channels they neglect and, approximately, what advertising budget they have. This is important because, for example, if your competitor is able to spend ten times more on it than you do, you should probably give up competing with him through the same channel, because it may turn out to be a waste of time and money.

Analyzing competitors’ activities will also help you find your USP (unique selling proposition). As a result of this, you will be able to stand out from dozens of similar offers.

Technical issues

Before you invest in marketing, make sure that your website works flawlessly from a technical perspective, so as not to discourage customers from making purchases through it.

You should also ensure full security of data stored on the website. For this purpose, you must purchase the SSL protocol. It is also necessary to apply a privacy policy by posting appropriate regulations on the website for the user to accept.

Advertising budget

Before making an investment, it is necessary to plan, at least approximately, the amount of funds that you can allocate to marketing activities. If you want them to have a measurable, long-term effect in the form of increased profits, it is definitely not worth saving on them. However, of course, they should be adapted to your capabilities.

A good idea, especially if you are just starting a business, is to consult a specialist who will help you plan the optimal budget.

Marketing channels – find your own way to promote your store

Finally, when you’ve finalized all the technical issues, it is time to choose a marketing strategy and decide which channels we want to invest in.

It is not worth using all of them at once, but, after taking into account the factors discussed above, choose those that best meet your expectations.

Social media

The following will work well in your marketing activities:

• Facebook – will help build a community around your brand and create relationships with customers. It is also worth using Facebook Ads, which have the ability to precisely target ads based on user interests. Importantly, they allow you to reach even those who use ad blocking software (e.g. AdBlock). To fully use the marketing possibilities of this medium, it is worth installing the Facebook Pixel tool;
• Instagram – it will be useful especially when product design is important to us;
• YouTube – on this website you can post videos containing product reviews and rankings, as well as, increasingly popular, unboxing;
• LinkedIn – can be used to establish cooperation with other professionals in your industry;
• Tik Tok – useful, especially if your target group is young people who cannot do without it.

Google Ads

If your store is just starting its operations, you should definitely use the potential of Google Ads. They will help you generate traffic on the website even on the day of its launch. Thanks to this, even if your store has not yet achieved a high position in search results, potential customers will be able to find it.

As part of Google Ads, you have at your disposal:

• sponsored searches – ads that appear in the results above the organic ones;
  product promotion thanks to the integration of your store with the Google Merchant Center application, which allows you to reach a wide audience;
• remarketing – displaying advertisements for products that viewers have recently viewed or purchased on websites they use every day. If you have the impression that Google is “tracking” you, you are dealing with remarketing;
• ads on YouTube – they have a wide reach, allow you to create a visually attractive advertisement and are paid on a CPC (cost per click) basis, i.e. only when the customer clicks on your video.

For your website to be highly visible, it should have a high position in search results. Therefore, make sure that the content is optimized for SEO.

You should consider, among other things, the selection of keywords. If, for example, you have strong competition with a large marketing budget, it will be difficult for you to break through in search engines for the most popular phrases. In such a case, it is worth choosing the more detailed ones, with the so-called long tail. Often, customers who enter them will be more willing to purchase the product since they already have specific information about it.

Naturally, all content on your website must be valuable and substantively rich.

It is also worth taking care of proper internal linking, which – apart from “showing” the customer around your store, will also contribute to their staying on the website longer, which is promoted by Google.

Content marketing

A powerful tool that can bring many benefits. In addition to providing SEO-optimized content, you can create blog articles, guides, product and category descriptions, and infographics.

To ensure that the content on your store’s website attracts customers’ attention, it is worth considering cooperation with a professional copywriting agency.

Price comparison websites

It may be a good idea to place product offers on price comparison websites (e.g. Ceneo, Nokaut, Domodi, or Opineo), because they are the first to appear in search results. Using them is profitable – most of them operate in the CPC system – you pay only when the customer goes to your store’s website.

Comparison websites place goods with the lowest price first. This does not mean, of course, that we should underestimate the value of our products. It is worth considering which of them we can price lower and which ones we can keep at a higher level, so as to, on the one hand, attract customers to our store and, on the other hand, not expose ourselves to losses.

Other ideas for marketing an online store

In addition to those described above, there are a number of other useful and interesting methods for undertaking online marketing activities:

• e-mail marketing – most often associated with newsletters, which, in order to be effective, must not be too intrusive and their frequency – too high. Then they can achieve the opposite effect than intended – tire out and thus discourage the customer.
• loyalty programs – if they are attractive, they will guarantee that customers will come back to you. You can offer them, for example, collecting points for purchases, a free product, small gifts, e.g. on birthdays, etc.;
• marketplace platforms – marketplace platforms may be helpful in acquiring or expanding the customer base – e.g. Konga, Jumia, Jiji, eBay, Amazon, or Shopify;
• opinions about the store and products – it is worth letting customers comment on your services and goods. Positive opinions are a great recommendation and undoubtedly motivate you to take action. Negative ones can serve as motivation to implement changes in the operation of the store;
• affiliation – establishing cooperation, consisting in recommending a store or individual products, with people related to the industry or those whose opinion is valued by representatives of your target group.

Analyzing the effectiveness of marketing activities

To check whether your marketing activities are achieving the intended effect, you can use the Google Analytics tool. By collecting data, you will find out which channels are the most effective in your case. This, in turn, will help you optimize your advertising budget, allowing you to decide which channels to continue investing in and which ones to perhaps abandon.