Online Store Promotion Strategy from Scratch

Nowadays, more and more businesses are moving from offline to online, or at least starting to use the internet as a sales channel. The first step a company takes is to turn to developers, and the result is a website—an online presence for their company.

However, a website alone won't generate sales. No one knows about it. How can you get people to visit your site? Which channel is better for starting out—contextual advertising or SEO? Should you use targeted advertising, and for what purposes? These questions will be especially pressing if you're a young brand and the internet is your primary promotional platform.

In this article, we've outlined a rough strategy to follow if you already have a website and don't know where to start promoting it.

Preparatory stage

Of course, you'd like to get sales from the very first days of promotion. But if users aren't yet familiar with your brand, even with a lot of traffic, you may not get enough sales. People don't yet trust your brand. Therefore, it's better if users hear about you before they need your products or services.

First, you need to create social media pages for your project (if you haven't already), design them, and fill them with a few posts. Then, to increase awareness of your brand, we recommend using YouTube and Facebook advertising campaigns aimed at maximum reach. For promotional content, we recommend using several short videos demonstrating how to use your products and their benefits.

Video advertising and reach campaigns are great because the cost per view and interaction is minimal. However, this type of advertising won't directly generate many leads or sales. It's a convenient tool for introducing users to fundamentally new features of your product and generating interest in your brand.

Stage 1 – Launching targeted advertising

We're connecting targeted Facebook advertising with the "Lead Generation" campaign type.

Different types of Facebook campaigns use different delivery algorithms. The cost per click for lead generation campaigns will be higher than for reach campaigns. This is because Facebook will aim to show ads to people who are more likely to order a product or service. For lead generation ads to be effective, not only precise targeting and audience testing are essential, but also properly configured analytics.

You'll need to install a Facebook pixel on your website and send all possible micro- and macro-targeted actions to your Facebook Ads account. We recommend making phone numbers and emails clickable and adding links to your Instagram and Facebook accounts to your website (preferably, opening them in a separate window). You can learn more about targeted advertising on our page.

Stage 2 – SEO optimization

We recommend starting with Facebook ads rather than Google because Facebook is less sensitive to landing page quality.

For Google Ads advertising, it's highly desirable for a well-optimized website. On-page optimization involves fixing technical errors, adding meta tags (tags that help Google understand your website's purpose), and placing relevant content on pages. We recommend at least minimal SEO optimization before launching advertising. Landing page quality is one of the factors considered when calculating the cost-per-click (CPC) and even affects the likelihood of your site being shown for a given keyword. A well-indexed website will allow you to utilize additional Google Ads tools, such as dynamic search advertising, which is especially effective if your target queries are long-tail. Learn more about how SEO promotion works, when you'll see your first results, and the cost of such promotion on our sales page. SEO

Step 3: Connecting Google Ads

Search advertising

Once on-page optimization is complete, you can implement Google Ads advertising. Google Ads search advertising targets the "warmest" audience—those who are already interested in services similar to yours and are searching for information about them online. This will potentially be one of the primary channels for attracting customers. However, for this tool to be effective, you'll need to spend some time optimizing it.

Remarketing

Users rarely make immediate decisions about ordering products. Many need some time to think. After considering their decision, these users may return to your site using organic search. However, they may be distracted by other companies during searches. Or they may not formulate the correct search query to return to your site. To bring back those who have previously visited your site but did not submit a request, we recommend using remarketing in both Google Ads and Facebook Ads. By using both platforms for remarketing, we increase the chances that visitors will see our ad at the right moment and return to your site to submit a request. For remarketing to work, properly configured analytics in both Google Analytics and Facebook are required, and remarketing audience building should be enabled from the very beginning of the advertising campaign launch.

Similar Audience Lists

Once your project reaches several hundred tracked completed orders, you can expand your audience using "similar to convertors" lists. These lists are available in both Facebook and Google Ads. Google also offers tools like Smart Campaigns, which are highly effective at attracting new leads in well-trained accounts. These ads are effective because they are highly targeted to your target audience and rely on statistical data rather than assumptions.