Promoting your online shop is a key element of your business strategy. It allows you to achieve greater online visibility, increases traffic to your website and boosts your conversion rate. In other words, it directly affects the amount of revenue generated by the business. How do you choose the right marketing activities to achieve success in this area?
Promoting an online shop - what is worth paying attention to?
How do you advertise an online shop? First of all, it is not an easy challenge, requiring a variety of well thought-out strategies. A few key activities and elements we suggest addressing first are:
- definition of promotional objectives;
- understanding the target group;
- search engine optimisation (SEO);
- social media;
- campanie email;
- reklamy displayowe;
- content marketing;
- data analysis.
It seems necessary to articulate what the company wants to achieve. Some entrepreneurs may care primarily about reaching new customers. Others care about the loyalty of existing consumers. However, the individual tasks must be approached individually - otherwise the whole enterprise will not be optimal. To advertisement of the online shop was effective, it must be properly prepared.
Knowing your audience's preferences and needs allows you to tailor your product and media environment. On the other hand, optimising a website for SEO results in a high position for the website in Google search. Both methods not only increase the visibility of the advertising content, but also its effectiveness - it primarily reaches people who are receptive to it.
Social media is a great platform for building an engaged and loyal community. The same is true for email campaigns. They allow you to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis and thus provide them with information about, among other things, current promotions, new opportunities and personalised discounts.
Content marketing builds a consistent brand image and data analytics enables the strategies used to be adjusted in real time. The latter is particularly important, as promoting an online shop is an activity that requires staying up to date with what is happening in the industry. Otherwise, the business loses competitiveness.
Promoting an online shop - do you need to hire specialists?
Promoting an online shop is a task that requires specialist knowledge and skills. Although it is possible to attempt to carry out marketing activities on your own, we do not recommend this. In many cases, it only ends up being a waste of the interested party's time.
The specialists have expertise in a variety of areas, especially in areas such as SEO and SEM. Their many years of experience allows them to optimise a campaign so that it contributes to satisfactory results. They are able to work completely independently, without burdening existing employees with new tasks. They use advanced tools, applications and technologies.
Hiring specialists is a guarantee of a satisfactory result and, in addition, an action that saves time and makes better use of the advertising budget, and therefore money will not be wasted, because the activities implemented will bring a real, measurable profit.
How to promote an online shop on social media?
Many entrepreneurs are wondering how to promote an online shop on Facebook. This is because they have started to realise how crucial it is to have the right level of activity on social media. Such portals are a treasure trove of potential consumers (Facebook alone gathers more than 2 billion unique accounts), and reaching them turns into financial gain indirectly.
A few proven ways to gain additional visibility are:
- creating interesting and valuable content;
- organising competitions (giveaways);
- cooperation with influencers;
- drawing up a business profile;
- running paid advertising campaigns;
- publishing customer reviews and opinions;
- answering user questions;
- profile optimisation.
Paid marketing campaigns on Facebook offer extremely precise targeting. Advertisers can make use of sophisticated algorithms for the detailed definition of criteria. These include demographics, interests, location or even internet user behaviour. In addition, the service allows the use of a variety of advertising formats, including video and adverts.
It is worth noting that paid campaigns ensure budget control and cost optimisation. Stakeholders themselves decide how much they want to spend on a given activity, and the effectiveness of the implemented solutions can be checked on an ongoing basis - this allows the strategy to be adjusted just when it is needed.
Search engine promotion of an e-shop
It is impossible to talk about effective online shop advertising without touching on the subject of SEO. Search Engine Optimisation is a set of techniques and practices aimed at increasing the visibility of a website in the organic results of search engines (primarily Google, although Bing and Yahoo are gaining popularity).
By optimising various elements of the website and adapting it to strict guidelines, better positioning in search results for specific keywords is sought.
To tackle SEO yourself, there are a few steps to follow:
- research keywords
- reword the content;
- improve the site code;
- ensure correct internal and external linking.
Keywords should be directly related to the industry, products and services. They must appear in on-page content (e.g. a blog article), meta descriptions, headings and URLs. The texts themselves must be of quality and value, and the web site built to be fast, responsive, usable and easy to navigate.
Link building is a way to increase the authority of a website in the eyes of Google's robots. Its owner should focus primarily on acquiring so-called natural links - they are a great tool for building organic traffic.
How do I promote my online shop on comparison websites?
How do you promote your shop online using all possible means? Price comparison sites come to the rescue. They allow you to reach a group of potential customers who know what they are looking for, but want to find it at the lowest possible price.
Gaining consumers through them is easy but time-consuming. To begin with, it is important to identify those that are popular in the region and industry. Otherwise, any action will not deliver the expected results - each venture must be tailored to the target audience.
It will then be necessary to prepare a complete and precise product list with data such as:
- name;
- description (must be unique, otherwise it will be treated as plagiarism);
- photos (compressed);
- dinner;
- availability;
- marka;
- other relevant information (e.g. size).
Then you have to integrate the shop into the chosen platform - detailed information on this is available free of charge on the internet (specialist guides are created with specific comparison sites in mind). There is nothing left to do but to optimise the product data on an ongoing basis and monitor the competition in order to adjust the offer well.
When using price comparison sites, attention to positive reviews and ratings will prove crucial. Good reviews will increase the confidence of new, as yet undecided customers. If they are sufficiently favourable, it may even happen that consumers choose such an offer, despite its higher price. Our observations show that consumers appreciate the quality of the service provided - this should not be underestimated.
Display advertising - a way to promote your online shop
Where to advertise an online shop? This is an interesting question that requires a detailed answer. If stationary business owners promote their businesses using traditional means, e.g. billboards, then similarly online entrepreneurs should focus primarily on network marketing using available technological solutions.
Display ads are placed in virtual space, typically:
- on the websites;
- in mobile applications;
- on the screens of multimedia devices.
This is an effective solution for reaching consumers who are used to actively using online services. A major advantage of this approach is the precise targeting of audiences - by comparison, billboards are more effective with customers who prefer to visit stationary outlets in person.
Advertising of this type can be purchased from InPost. We offer the possibility of placing personalised marketing content both in the InPost Mobile application and on the screens of Paczkomat® machines - the latter are capable of reaching up to 4 million recipients in a single month! It's worth taking advantage of this, as our Paczkomat machines are located all over Poland, so it's a reliable way to ensure your shop gets the right publicity in a variety of locations.
Will working with influencers help you promote your e-store?
Working with influencers can be both beneficial and risky. On the one hand, influencers know how to promote themselves online and have considerable reach and authority among their followers. On the other hand, they can become embroiled in image crises, which can have a negative impact on the brand they are working with.
When considering how to advertise an online shop, it is worth considering whether joining forces with an influencer will really pay off. Choosing the right online celebrity is important because they are reaching a specific target group with their posts - and this target group should correspond to the company's target audience. However, if the influencer presents extreme or controversial views, this may result in a loss of consumer trust in the brand. Sometimes it even results in a boycott of the activity they are supporting.
How to promote an online shop for free?
Not all online shop advertising has to be paid for. Of course, allocating sufficient capital for this will speed up the marketing processes, although it is not a necessity, especially at the beginning of your business. A few ways to get publicity for free are:
- SEO optimisation;
- blogging;
- e-mail campaigns;
- social media (especially Facebook, Instagram and Tik-Tok).
Entrepreneurs wishing to find out how to advertise an online shop for free should be aware that the key elements of such an activity are regularity, engaging with customers and making conscious use of the tools and communication channels available. You always pay with something, and in this case with your free time. In order to perform these activities, it is necessary to acquire expertise beforehand, which is why most choose to hire experts or outsource marketing activities to agencies or other companies.
How to promote an online shop with InPost?
We are able to support any business! Cooperation with us has been appreciated by media houses and clients from the automotive, telecommunications and banking sectors, among others. We have prepared a special offer that will allow high-performance promotion of your online shop for anyone who is interested. For details, please visit our official website: inpost.pl/advertising.
We propose:
- wrapping of Paczkomat machines (more than 21,000 machines in Poland);
- product sampling;
- advertising banners;
- reklamy displayowe;
- newslettery;
- reaching out to customers via PUSH notifications in the InPost Mobile app;
- marketing content in Parcel Manager.
More than one million people receive parcels from our Paczkomat devices every day - we are proud of this and we know that it provides an opportunity for our business customers to ensure that their products and services get the right publicity. We want to make it easier for them, because we know that together we can achieve even more.
The combination of multiple methods is the key to developing your full marketing potential. This holistic approach enables you to build customer relationships, increase visibility and generate sustainable, lasting sales growth.
How to get in touch or find out more details? Leave a contact via the form below and specialists will provide an offer.
Advertising your company with InPost? Always a good idea!
Take a minute to leave your contact details and we’ll prepare a tailored offer for you.
There are plenty of possibilities:
- Branding on Parcel Locker machines
- Ads displayed on Parcel Locker screens
- Sampling of promotional products
- Banner ads on the InPost website
- Advertising in the InPost newsletter
- Push notifications in the InPost Mobile app
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