Strategies and Best Practices for Effectively Advertising Your Online Store to Boost Traffic and Sales

 

If you are a novice Internet marketer or a store owner, then it will be useful for you to know what are the working methods to advertise an online store online.

 

Checklist before launching ads

Many people make the same commonplace mistakes, so before we move on to advertising channels, it is important to understand how to prepare for launching campaigns.

1. Set up analytics. To understand which sources are profitable, set up eCommerce in Google Analytics, then set up cost import from ad accounts and link to call tracking and CRM. Many people try to save money on setting up analytics, but this approach only slows down development.

2. Conduct a technical audit of the site. Make sure all important functions work - add to cart, checkout, compare products, filters, etc.

3. Research the target audience. At least gender, age, and core values. For example, if you know that the best buyers are people aged 27 and over, you can save some of your budgets by excluding younger people from advertising.

 

Free Methods

It is important to understand that there are no free methods, you just pay not with money, but with time, and the sales ceiling is very limited.

These methods are suitable if you, for example, have a micro-business selling your products or are just testing a niche and want to test the demand for a particular product.

If you have a full-fledged online store, it is better to immediately switch to paid advertising methods.

 

Notice boards

Platform "eBay" and similar for ads.

Keep in mind that if you have a product from the premium segment, then placement on free sites can cause reputational damage to the brand, even if it is still little known.

 

Forums

If the forum has good attendance, and the product is interesting/high-quality and suits the audience of the forum, then it is quite possible to receive a certain number of additional orders.

If the product meets or even exceeds customer expectations, you will begin to receive positive reviews, which will attract additional customers.

 

Groups in social networks

There are groups on social networks like Facebook to sell things. These are message boards, usually heavily spammed, but if the group has a moderator, then sales can be.

You can also try to place an ad in thematic groups for communication. For example, in a parenting group, you can offer products for children or parents. To avoid getting kicked out of the group for spamming, read the rules or ask your admins if you can post a sponsored post.

 

Personal page on social networks

If you have a lot of friends or followers, and they are real people and not bots, you can advertise products on your page. If you have your production and are just starting to sell, this is a good way to get first sales and feedback from buyers.

 

Paid Methods

Google Shopping

Product ads can appear on Google searches, just below the search bar; on the Shopping page, Youtube, Display Network sites, and mobile apps.

To add your store to Google Shopping, you need to:

• check if the store complies with the placement rules;

• prepare a data feed — a file with detailed information about products;

• register a store in Google Merchant and send the feed for moderation;

• if moderation is successfully passed, create an account in Google Ads and create a campaign of the "commodity" type.

 

Search advertising

Contextual advertising on Google and Yandex search is a popular way to advertise online stores, which, however, is often inferior in efficiency to Market and Merchant.

The benefits of contextual advertising for online stores include:

• great coverage. If the user decides to search for a product using Google, you can show him your ad;

• relevant traffic. With the right settings, you will get maximum targeted traffic;

The main disadvantage of search advertising is a lot of competition and, consequently, a high cost per click.

To increase the effectiveness of not only contextual but any other advertising, work on increasing the conversion and the average check of the store.

 

Google Display Network

It includes a large number of websites and applications, it provides high reach, the cost per click is much lower than on search, and the quality of traffic often leaves much to be desired, although investments in a GDN pay off with the right approach.

In the GDN, you can set up ads to appear on a specific site, page, video, or Youtube channel; choose one of the ready-made audiences by interests or behavior.
Due to its large reach and relatively low cost per click, GDN is well suited for informing a wide audience about promotions, sales, or new collections.

 

Retargeting

Retargeting (remarketing) is advertising aimed at users who have already visited your website or mobile application.

Retargeting allows you to remind yourself of old users who just visited the site or did not place an order and return them to the site, to the pages of products or categories that they are interested in an oval. Also, with the help of retargeting, you can offer a personal discount or inform people about new promotions.

Another effective way to use retargeting is to offer additional or new products to those who have already shopped in the store.

 

Targeted advertising

Targeted advertising usually means paid advertising on social networks, which is launched through an advertising account. The most popular platforms for targeted advertising are Facebook and Instagram.

You can set ads to be shown to a specific gender, age, city/country, interests, job title, marital status, or device.

They work well here:

• announcements about discounts and sales;

• dynamic retargeting;

• non-standard products designed for a wide audience;

• indirect advertising. For example, an article that is interesting and useful for the target audience, mentions your products but does not directly offer to buy something.

 

Advertising with bloggers

Also called influencer marketing. This is a type of advertising when social media users with a large audience post a post about your store or a specific product.

 

Such people have a loyal audience that trusts the recommendations of their idol, which makes such advertising effective for an online store.

 

According to a survey of marketers, 92% consider influencer marketing to be an effective way to promote products and services.

Video advertising

Video ads are most often launched on Youtube through Google Ads, but video marketing tools are also offered on Facebook and Instagram.

It is believed that the cost of advertising on Youtube is low - the cost of viewing can be cheaper than 1 ruble. However, effective campaigns are quite expensive:

• you need to order a good promotional video;

• you need a good specialist or agency to set up advertising, because. the advertising budget on Youtube can easily be spent on non-targeted impressions;

• for an advertisement to be remembered, it must be repeated many times. From 1-2 impressions per user, there will be no results.