Promotion strategy for an online store

You have an online store that meets all the necessary requirements, a quality product line and customer-oriented service. But where to start promotion? Everyone talks about the need for SEO and active social networks, but it's not quite clear what should be at the heart of promotion. If you recognize yourself, then our article will be useful to you. In this material, we tell you what the promotion strategy of an online store is, what it is based on and how it should be applied so that the store gets more customers and profits. 

Why do you need a competent promotion strategy

Marketing strategy when launching an online store is a set of planned actions that should increase sales and attract the target audience. 

The main goals of an online store promotion strategy are:

• increasing sales and profits;
• increasing the store's recognizability;
• increasing competitiveness. 

A promotion strategy helps you gather all the marketing tools to start a conscious and connected campaign. Without it, even if you actively manage Instagram and write seo-texts for products on the website, there is a high probability of wasting your budget. Therefore, the strategy of online store promotion is needed to form a unified vector of development based on business goals, optimize the budget and analyze the result. So where to start promoting an online store?

Promotion strategy: stages of development

If we want to have a result in the promotion of e-commerce, as well as any other niche, we need a deep understanding of our product, the market and the audience that will buy it. 

Target audience

To create an online store strategy, it is necessary to have a detailed portrait of the target audience. We need to gather data on:

• who are the people who will buy products from your online store (gender, age, education, place of residence, etc.);
• wealth and social status;
• needs of the CA in relation to the goods and products you offer;
• Behavioral characteristics (on which platforms the audience is most often found and which content formats they prefer).

You can make a portrait of the CA using various methods - analysis of user behavior on the Internet, surveys, marketing research.

Competitor and niche analysis

At this stage, it is necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of the market and your competitors. You should study what exactly they offer to their customers, what their level of service, pricing policy, marketing chips to attract customers. 

Thanks to this analysis, you will understand what area is not yet occupied by competitors, what their weaknesses and strengths are, how to build up and offer a product that will be the best for the CA.

Positioning

Creating a promotion strategy for an online store is impossible without forming a unique selling proposition (USP). It should meet the interests of the target audience, talk about the benefits of making a purchase in the online store and distinguish your product from competitors' offers. 

In addition to the UTP, for promotion it is necessary to form the values and mission of the brand, which will be associated with you and your products. 

Based on the interests of the target audience, the market situation and positioning of the online store, marketers make a promotion strategy. It sets out the goals of the campaign, the methods of its implementation and the measurement of the effectiveness of promotion.

Promotional tools

The promotion strategy clearly prescribes the tools with the help of which marketers will attract customers and increase sales in the store. The main channels for e-commerce promotion are SMM promotion, SEO, email newsletters, content marketing, and contextual advertising.

SMM

Social Media Marketing allows you to get the first customers and tell about yourself quite quickly. SMM promotion includes: 

• strategy development; 
• determining the format of presence in social networks (commercial or targeted); 
• drawing up a content plan to meet the audience's needs; 
• setting up an advertising campaign through targeting and buying advertising integrations from opinion leaders; 
• building brand reputation. 

SMM promotion requires constant attention to the project and advertising budgets.

SEO

SEO is one of the first tools we at MEGASITE recommend when answering the question, "Where to start promoting an online store?". It is SEO-optimization of the site allows you to lay a solid foundation for attracting a constant flow of customers, promoting it to the first positions of search results. It is worth paying attention to SEO both at the stage of development of the online store, and in its further promotion. 

Internal optimization is desirable to carry out even during the creation of the site. This includes the writing and placement of properly written content, internal linking pages, working out the structure of the resource. 

External optimization is carried out when the site is already fully ready. At this stage build up the reference mass from other resources, so that the search engine algorithm "considered" your online store reliable and relevant. 

All these actions are aimed at making the online store was on the first positions for queries that interest you. This will lead to the site audience with an already formed demand, ready to make a purchase in the near future. 

If you are interested in promotion of websites and online stores, IT-company MEGASITE is ready to offer its services. Our team has been developing and promoting websites for more than 13 years and is among the TOP-3 developers in Ukraine.

Contextual advertising

One of the leading channels to promote and increase sales is the launch of contextual advertising. This tool is able to bring customers immediately after the launch of the online store. This method has a lot of advantages:

• setup and launch can be very fast, from 1 week;
• orientation immediately on the "warmed up" audience;
• detailed statistics of results. 

As in the case with SMM, the promotion of goods and services through contextual advertising requires constant monitoring of results and budget control. 

Email marketing

This tool works with existing customers who have left their e-mail address. It can be used to send personalized offers, news about promotions and seasonal discounts. Properly built email marketing makes it possible to form a loyal attitude to the online store and competently remind about yourself. 

If you want to order online store promotion, please contact the web-studio in Kiev MEGASITE. We have extensive experience in the development and implementation of promotion strategies for the e-commerce segment for different budgets and business goals. Our team offers both SEO-promotion of websites and setting up contextual advertising, and complex promotion of websites. 

We invite you for a free consultation on your project! To do this, leave a request on our website or call us at +38 (095) 1000 119.