Promotion in the field of e-commerce is a must in 2024. Keeping yourself in the mind and sight of the target customer is, moreover, a crucial thing that makes the difference between success and failure as an online store, especially when the number of competitors is in exponential growth, and the purchasing power of the population is in a continuous decline.

How do we make impactful digital promotion for e-commerce?

1. Do SEO for the online store - SEO is about getting your company's website to the top of Google search results when a search is performed using keywords related to your industry. But how do search engines know your site deserves to rank well? These are the 4 pillars of the Google search algorithm:

• Well-structured website – A well-designed website can help you make a good impression on your potential customers.
• Intuitive navigation – a user-friendly website is intuitive to navigate and understand.
• Quality content – high-quality content is honest, and clear and does not serve any hidden agenda.
• Relevant so that it contains useful information – From an SEO perspective, relevance refers to how well the information on a website matches a search query.

What are the most important ranking factors for the E-shop site?

1. From many tests and research we have done and studied, backlinks are the most important ranking factor even in 2024 and product page optimization is a 2nd factor – Google wants to understand what is the given page. It all starts with keyword analysis, followed by designing unique meta tags (add modifiers to your title tags like "buy", "cheap" and "offer" to get more long-tail traffic, i.e. on the common terms people use when searching for products on Google). Then provide more product details than your competitors (do this at least for the most important products), add quality images, and avoid duplicate content. These are just some of the essential online store optimization tips.

2. Optimize site loading speed - otherwise, your conversion rate of visitors to customers will suffer. Or, if your site loads in more than 4 seconds, 79% of those who visited it will not return to the site. And 52% of those who shop online admit that website loading speed is important to become loyal to an online store. A single second of delay could cost you about 40% of your visitors.

3. Ensure your good presence on social media - social media should not only be about products and promotions, aim to provide useful information to your followers through the content you create. No one likes to just be sold to, and the communication to be only about offers and promotions, because on social media people come for entertainment and socializing, in fact, not to buy.

A special emphasis must be placed on sponsorships on Social Media - remember the TOFU, MOFU formulas - that is, go for a full sales funnel approach, as follows:

TOFU is the cold stage and its purpose is to arouse the attention of the audience. Here you are addressing an audience with broad interests. With what content to come forward? Focus on funny, situational, or super valuable content.

MOFU is the warm stage and its purpose is to arouse the desire for action (conversion or sale). You want your audience to interact with your content, that's why you come up with testimonials and promotions.

BOFU is in the hot stage and its purpose is re-targeting. Audiences should come from Facebook Pixel, and Google Audiences and show them hot deals.

Paid advertisements can be a good method of promotion, for example in the feed on Facebook and Instagram you can promote an innovative service or product, which the world has not yet heard of. On the other hand, on Google, you target people who are looking for the service or product they already know they need.

At the same time, call for remarketing - through remarketing you will manage to stay in the mind of your potential customer and you will increase the chances that he will come back to make a purchase. Remarketing remains a very popular method of promoting websites through Google, due to its low costs and increased efficiency.

A little comment about the popular social media contests: they are OK if you are just starting and want to gain a lot of followers quickly, however, you have to understand that many of those who will subscribe will not be customers your potential ones, but only opportunists, so you certainly won't secure an audience of grade 10 through contests.

4. Use the newsletter - the key to the success of this promotion channel is for the newsletters to adapt to the needs and desires of the audience, you can add a subscription form as a pop-up, which clearly shows the advantages of this newsletter, thus also keeping in touch with potential buyers, not only with the faithful. One idea for attracting potential customers or repeat purchases is by offering discount coupons via email.

How do you attract newsletter subscribers?

Use a Lead Magnet, this can be a free e-book, guide, or webinar that you are willing to give away for free in exchange for contact details. The Lead Magnet must target an exact audience and solve a specific problem of theirs.

5. Make a YouTube channel - if you have the creativity to provide product reviews, useful tips for your audience, or tutorials, collect yourself in video form on an official channel. Then optimize your videos to create key moments, they will be more important in Google for video search, so that users get the exact answer to their questions.

For effective SEO, your video content must include: 

• optimized YouTube channel description, including an overview of what the channel is about;
• the basic keywords, they will also play an essential role in the optimization of the video content;
• while you don't want to stuff your video descriptions with keywords, a few useful keywords and hashtags can help you target your content to your target audience.

5. Practice customer care, with every order - What does customer care mean? Offer giveaways and trials, and customers will have the opportunity to test other products you sell. Likewise, you can offer free delivery on purchases over a certain amount, this greatly excites the clientele. Another way to instill confidence in your customers is to offer a 14-day 100% money-back guarantee. This way you will show that you have absolute confidence in your products, and if you offer a long warranty period, potential customers will know that you sell only quality products.

6. Don't forget about content marketing - this type of promotion helps you attract customers without interrupting them, such as writing blog articles with really useful niche information and designing interesting infographics, podcasts, guides, e-books, and webinars. All of these content formats can attract followers interested in your content, and indirectly, your product. Because through the content you create, you show people how your service or product can help them solve their problems. What's more, good content will also help you accumulate backlinks, which will propel the site in the organic search results in Google.

7. A special emphasis should be placed on UX – user experience: the creation of information architecture, convenient user interface, good site structure, logical site navigation, suitable colors, good characters, and images - all should have the ultimate goal of excellent user experience to the user (UX). In addition to an attractive design, think about functionality, a convenient and logical structure, as well as a responsive mobile version.

8. Use price aggregators and marketplaces - it's a good opportunity to create visibility for your products, their disadvantage being obvious, because here people will choose based on price rather than value and/or customer care.

9. Get involved in PR campaigns - if you're building a business that will last for years, you need to communicate responsibly and professionally with followers, stakeholders, and the general public. Organize CSR campaigns and be part of the community, and such activities will fit you better in the space where you carry out your activity.

10. Use User-generated content (UGC) - video, photo, or text reviews are very valuable for your brand. This content can help you a lot in promoting your business. A good idea is to reward your customers for promoting you with periodic discounts and gifts, or by turning them into brand ambassadors.

After applying one or more of the promotion methods discussed, it is important to measure the results obtained online. How do you measure these results?

At the end of the day, performance is all that matters. Key Performance Indicator or KPI is a performance evaluation tool that illustrates the degree to which a desired parameter has been achieved. So when we talk about a site's performance indicators, we're interested in how well our site is achieving its monthly lead collection goals. Of course, we can calculate both micro (subscribing to a newsletter, adding a product to the cart, downloading a PDF brochure) and macro conversions (purchasing a product, subscribing to a service, getting a lead). The important thing is to measure everything that matters and leads to the growth of our business.

If you don't have time to promote your online store, we can help you. We have more than 7 years of experience in digital marketing! Call us at +373 69 809 235 (Moldova), +40726794856 (Romania), or leave us a message at info{@}seolitte.com.