Promote the store to maximise e-commerce sales
What is the simplest and most effective way to advertise an online store? Which advertising tools are best to use at the beginning, middle, and end of the year? Betonlogos s.r.o. would like to share with you the secrets of personalising advertising campaigns for your online store.
Let's divide the year into periods that are important for your business and target audience. How can you increase the number of users of your store? How can you ‘build’ traffic and get new customers?
February. Slow down
In February, you should actively promote product categories that are relevant for the season. For example, the winter period of active skiing holidays is an excellent time for online shops related to sports and sports products.
For businesses that are not associated with the January-February season, it is better to ‘slow down’ advertising and promotion (reduce the advertising budget and the number of advertising campaigns), while monitoring the target indicator of the advertising expenditure ratio (Price to Sales Ratio) — the ratio of advertising expenditure to revenue from this advertising.
This is the period when, after all the Christmas and New Year holidays, you need to maximise your promotion and advertising efforts.
The festive atmosphere is beginning to fade into everyday life, but emotions are still running high and online audience activity is growing. To avoid missing out on opportunities, you need to invest as much money and effort as possible in advertising at the beginning of January. Contextual and targeted advertising are most effective during this period. You can place ads with bloggers and industry leaders.
January. Maximising results
Above, we wrote about what you can do today for SEvO — a kind of ‘first aid’ for quick promotion here and now. Sooner or later, you will need to conduct a serious audit of your promotion strategy, taking into account the algorithms of different platforms. Both small and large businesses need to prepare for these changes.
Analyse your audience's search behaviour. Use Google Analytics and be sure to conduct customer surveys to find out where they spend their time on the Internet. Find out what podcasts they listen to, where they shop, and who they follow.
March. Gradual growth
April. Retargeting
The spring ‘hot’ period in the life of online business begins. Usually, most brands announce off-season sales this month. Stores offer discounts and bonus programmes on unsold and new collections that were announced in March.
It is in April that work begins with users who have visited the site in the last three months.
- During this period, companies that are focused on retargeting work well, with targeted actions on audiences who:
- visited the site and viewed 3-5 pages
- added items to their basket
- started to place an order but abandoned their cart
- made a purchase (except for those who did so in recent weeks)
Very often, it is in April that advertising with bloggers pays off. The traffic ‘brought in’ by media personalities begins to work.
May-June. Prepare for summer
Demand for seasonal (summer) goods is growing. During this period, advertisements are tested on Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks: advertising creatives are prepared, A/B testing is conducted, and ‘summer keywords’ are added so that in June, companies can compete for the top positions in search results and have optimised campaigns.
For effective and targeted promotion of summer collections, Betonlogos company managers advise launching Google Ads advertising campaigns in advance. This is done in order to ‘train’ the system, and only then do they set up automatic display of the most effective Google Ads.
Don't forget to test Google advertising promotion tools (retargeting, cold audience, connecting queries close to the target). This will allow you to select the most effective search queries for setting up your Google Ads campaign during the ‘hot sales’ period.
- Group and clean up search queries
- Exclude ineffective audiences
- Use relevant headlines
- Turn off automatic extensions
- Use multiple ad variations
- Work with automatic strategies
- Use bid adjustments
- Reallocate your budget in favour of effective campaigns
- Analyse average cheque, conversion, target metric, CTR, clicks, ad impressions, CPA.
Users are accustomed to the idea that ‘summer is the season for discounts.’ They are in the mood for relaxation, so they make purchasing decisions quickly and without much thought. During this period, you need to increase your advertising budget to work with a cold audience. High-quality goods and competitive offers are sure to attract traffic to the website and boost sales growth. Advertising campaign costs are analysed based on the average indicator, adding up all advertising costs together.
July-August. Get results
To maintain your position in search engines, don't drastically reduce your advertising budget. The autumn and winter holidays are important for the retail business. You need to activate email marketing by sending out newsletters to the contact database you have built up over the first nine months of the year. This is a good time to remind customers about your store and tell them about sales and new autumn products. Most advertising campaigns are aimed at customers who have already made purchases and left their contact details.
August-September. Don't stop
Late September-early October is a period of stagnation. Sales are falling, there is no growth in sales, or they are stable. But from mid-October onwards, the retail and e-commerce sectors enter a hot and busy season. About 40% of all online store sales occur during this period. The target audience is ready to make purchases: update their wardrobe, buy gifts, and buy warm clothes.
The following work well:
- contextual media advertising
- video advertising (all formats)
We hope that the plan recommended by Betonlogos will be a starting point for your business planning. Don't forget that only a good strategy can quickly adapt to the changing demands of digital marketing.
October-December. Back to maximum
Other BetonLogos company's articles
Quick links
Join to us
Contact Us
Adress: Dlouhá 715/38, Staré Město, 110 00 Praha 1