Online store digital marketing - where to start?

Online store digital marketing - where to start?

Online store digital marketing - where should you start and what do you really need to know before starting? In this article, we will tell you what different ways you can start to increase the sales of your online store and what you should take into account in order to make digital marketing as effective as possible for you.

If you want to avoid the unfortunately common scenario where already high prices only continue to grow while sales decrease and growth slows down or stagnates in places, keep reading.

Here we gathered the most effective marketing channels as well as the most critical tips for truly successful digital marketing of online stores!

Digital marketing starts with your online store

Before starting the digital marketing of your online store, you must first fully understand and internalize one thing: all sales and marketing starts from your online store .

The goal of your online store is to achieve a conversion (sale or other targeted event), which for you may mean making a purchase or, for example, joining an email list. The main function of your shop is to make this event happen.

No other channels will ever sell for your online store, they can only increase visibility and traffic. That's why your own online store is your most important sales channel and all marketing should start there.

The purpose of digital marketing channels such as Some and Google is to increase brand recognition and bring people to the online store, where the actual purchase takes place. If the visitors to the online store are not convinced by what they see, no sales will be made either. No, no matter how many people you bring to your store from any other channel.

In order for your online store to generate conversions, i.e. sales, as efficiently as possible, its implementation must be such that it both meets the needs of your potential customers and drives your company's goals forward.

In the digital marketing of an online store, attention must therefore be paid to the shop's conversion ability , i.e. the ability to get visitors to complete a purchase or other desired action, right from the start.

Among other things, the structure, navigation, layout, elements and content of the online store form a whole that either together can turn visitors into paying customers or not. If your online store is not planned for conversions as the main goal, it probably won't be able to sell now and also when people are brought there from other channels.

Advertising alone is almost never enough to bring about really sustainable sales growth. For this reason, your most important marketing channel is always the online store itself, which should primarily be invested in.

Improving the ability to convert is the first and most important part of online store digital marketing

To achieve long-term results, you need to work on the conversion capacity of your online store . Advertising should only be implemented when the online store knows how to effectively convert the traffic that comes there into customers.

Digital marketing of an online store can be successful with Takuu when the store is first optimized to sell. Sales ability can be increased by making the online store as user-friendly as possible and driving the company's goals .

In practice, during conversion optimization, the user experience of the online store is improved and at the same time visitors are guided and helped towards the desired actions. Like to shop and pay.

The measures used to improve online store conversions and sales vary depending on the condition of the store.

In general, the most critical things that need to be fixed in an online store that sells poorly are slow loading time, difficult to understand structure and poor usability . In addition to these, the store's appearance, code, used elements and content can be faulty, among other things. Often shops are also overloaded with unnecessary and incorrect accessories .

The things that need to be worked on more precisely in the online store can be found out with the help of A/B testing .

So there can be many kinds of errors and it is often difficult to find all errors if you don't know what to look for. You can find some good guides on Google, but without experience, successfully performing conversion optimization can frankly be challenging .

If you are just starting out as an online retailer and want to have a selling online store right away, we recommend that you turn to a professional for help instead of doing it yourself . At Growly, conversion optimization is always included in the price when implementing effective online stores.

Conversion optimization can also be performed for an online store that is ready or in the construction phase. At this point, however, it is good to understand that if the best practices in the industry have not been followed in the implementation of the online store, a significant improvement in the conversion ability may require the entire store to be renewed.

Still, a comprehensive online store reform often turns out to be a cheaper and more efficient option than optimizing an old online store .

The most effective digital marketing channels for e-commerce and how to choose them correctly

Assuming that your online store is already conversion-optimized and tested to convert effectively, it's time to decide the marketing channels through which you will bring traffic to your online store.

Suitable digital marketing channels should be chosen according to one's target group and resources . As an online retailer, of course you want to be everywhere where your potential customers spend most of their time. If you don't have enough time and/or money to manage every potential marketing channel, it is not necessary or even profitable for you to be present everywhere.

When resources are limited, as many entrepreneurs are, you are much more likely to get something out of the digital marketing of your online store when you don't try to be in as many places as possible at half-power.

So choose one or a few suitable marketing channels for which your time and budget are enough and start investing in them seriously.

There are many digital marketing channels, but for us as an online retailer , search engine optimization, Google advertising, social media advertising, content marketing and email marketing have proven to be the most effective.

Let's go through them next.

1. SEO or Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to various measures that aim to increase the visibility and discoverability of an online store in search engines organically (naturally, with non-paid means).

There are many search engines, but the primary choice for most people is Google. You can also consider using other search engines in the digital marketing of your online store, but we will now focus on this by far the most popular search engine.

Of course, search engine optimization aims to get among the first organic search results.

SEO is worth it, because organic search results are proven to get significantly more clicks than ads on Google, and you don't have to pay for them (clicks) separately .

People simply trust natural search results more and the vast majority can't, don't want to or don't want to click on themselves beyond the first page. This can be seen in the statistics , according to which the websites placed on the first page of Google take 95% of all traffic . The Online Stores located on the second and remaining pages therefore receive a paltry five percent of the traffic.

The order of organic results that SEO aims to influence matters. For example, the first natural search result gets 10 times more clicks than the tenth result.

So it's no wonder that many people decide to invest in search engine optimization in the digital marketing of online stores.

‍

How is search engine optimization done?

Search engine optimization is different. There is external, internal and technical search engine optimization , all of which consist of their own procedures.

Part of search engine optimization, such as internal optimization , is easier to implement as long as you first manage to focus on the best and current practices in the field. In this case, the content of the site, such as texts, links and metadata, is optimized.

External search engine optimization includes links from other sites to your online store, which can be difficult to get without quality content and strong authority.

You can do search engine optimization yourself in the beginning, if you can find enough information and learn new things . But when doing it alone and without in-depth know-how, you probably won't get everything done.

Doing search engine optimization is more demanding, the more competition there is in your field for search rankings and the worse condition your online store is in . If the online store is conversion-optimized, it requires a little less work from the search engine optimizer, and in this case, with little competition, it can be relatively easy to get the online store visible in search engines.

In the most competitive fields, ranking high in the search results and staying there requires much more, even if the store is technically in order. In this case, you will get results faster and more reliably when you get the help of a professional for online store digital marketing and search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is also the constant monitoring of the functionality of the online store and the quick correction of errors that negatively affect search rankings.

This is where technical optimization comes into play, which involves many different measures, e.g. related to the functionality and structure of the online store, and the vast majority of which already require web development and coding skills, which can be found in the field.

‍

Search engine optimization vs. conversion optimization

To some extent, conversion optimization and Search Engine Optimization contain similar measures. They are not exactly the same thing, because they have different goals and to do them requires slightly different skills. However, when done correctly, search engine and conversion optimization have a positive effect on each other .

Whereas conversion optimization measures often improve search engine visibility, search engine optimization measures can equally increase conversions.

For example, improving the structure of an online store (conversion optimization) not only pleases people, but also search engine bots and thus has a positive effect on ranking in search results (search engine optimization).

On the other hand, for example, blog content and meta descriptions visible in Google (search engine optimization) can lead to conversions .

In the e-commerce world, there is therefore a kind of everything-is-connected-type effect. I hope that you too will gradually begin to understand why the implementation of an online store plays such a big role in the success of digital marketing.

2. Google Ads, i.e. search engine advertising

SEM, or search term advertising, is one of the most commonly used and most effective forms of Google advertising.

Google Ads, i.e. search keyword ads, are text ads that appear above the search engine's organic results, which are displayed whenever the user types the keywords you define in the Google search bar, or possibly close versions of them. With the help of keyword advertising, you advertise your online store and your products with the keywords you set.

This is how you can reach potential customers at the very moment when they are actively looking for information about the products .

According to Semrush, one person makes an average of 3-4 Google searches during the day , which is a very potential number for an advertiser.

With the right keywords and attractive texts, search word ads are a very cost-effective means of online store digital marketing and a fast way to increase sales.

For an online retailer, Google keyword advertising offers several advantages, the most important of which is the ability to reach targeted groups (ads can be precisely targeted according to the target audience, for example based on location, gender, age and interests), to have full control over the budget , and to analyze and track results accurately using Google Analytics.

3. Display or Banner advertising

Google's Display or Banner Advertising reaches an estimated 90% of internet users.

Here, Google succeeds by using the platforms it owns in addition to the search engine itself to send the Display advertisement: e.g. YouTube, Gmail, Play Store and various collaborative websites and applications. The network has a measly few million of the latter.

Display ads work great for reaching people who are not actively looking for any product, but fit well with your target group and the profile of your potential customer, i.e. could be very interested in what you have to offer.

In the huge network, advertisements appear at the top of the page being browsed, on the side, or during a YouTube video, for example.

Display advertising can be very effective as a means of digital marketing for e-commerce, as it offers a cost-effective way to reach a very wide audience.

However, before starting any kind of Google advertising, you need to know once again that the performance of your store will have a large impact on how much you will have to pay for ads and how high you will get your ad placed . Everything is connected to everything, and that's why conversion optimization and at least basic search engine optimization should be done before advertising in the online store. ‍

4. Social media advertising (e.g. Facebook and Instagram advertising)

You can generate a significant amount of traffic by promoting your online store on social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tiktok. In addition to traffic, social media advertising offers an effective means of increasing brand recognition.

Since each social media channel and advertising on them works a little differently, it is worth immersing yourself more deeply in the platform or platforms you have chosen before starting advertising. However, when advertising on every social media, you have to remember one and the same thing: your ad must be really high-quality and interesting .

Simply advertising without a thought or strategy will not lead to increased sales, and a bad or tasteless ad can even undermine trust in your brand.

Social media advertising also has its own risks when it is used as the only digital marketing tool for an online store.

In recent years, the costs of advertisements have risen along with the growing demand, and the prices of advertisements can vary considerably depending on the current competitive situation.

Social media ads may work well today, but the results they generate are usually not as stable as organic traffic. Things can also change quickly in a day if a social media account is accidentally closed or hijacked.

Although social media advertising can be a very effective way to implement digital marketing for an online store, it should not completely replace organic traffic , because natural traffic always grows more steadily over time than paid traffic, and you don't have to constantly pay for organic visibility and the clicks you get from it.

For these reasons , social media advertising usually pays off best when it is done at the same time as search engine optimization and organic online and social media content production.

In the meantime, we remind you once again that no amount of traffic (purchased or organic) will produce sustainable results, if the online store is not polished before starting advertising.

Since time and money are valuable, and you have to pay for each click whether your ad results in a sale or not, it's best to have the groundwork done before you start investing properly in advertising.

5. Content marketing

Like search engine optimization , content marketing is part of a longer-term marketing strategy . Content marketing may not be the fastest way to generate sales, but it can be very effective and completely free if you do it yourself.

In content marketing, the focus is on creating valuable content for potential customers that genuinely serves them . Most often this takes place in the form of writing a blog, but content marketing in an online store also includes content, product texts, product images and videos, instructions and tutorials, webinars and including podcasts . This blog post is also an example of content marketing.

The goal of content marketing is to create content that is relevant to your target group, answers the audience's questions and helps build trust in the online store and develop customer relationships . When executed correctly, the previously mentioned content creates interest in the products you sell and helps potential customers complete their purchase path. Successful content marketing generates leads and conversions.

When you decide to invest in content marketing in the digital marketing of your online store, focus on supporting your customer throughout the entire purchase path. There are four different stages in the purchase path; awareness, interest, decision and recommendation , where customers in each need different information to move forward on the path. Your task here is to produce content that helps them and encourages them to move forward.

When doing content marketing, also make sure that potential customers get the information they need whenever it suits them - and through a channel that suits them . This way you can best serve your target group and create more desired results. ‍

6. Email marketing

E-mail marketing can be a very cheap and effective means of digital marketing for e-commerce. It's not completely free, and besides, email marketing divides opinion.

Many swear by the marketing channel, while some entrepreneurs find it completely pointless and ineffective.

Basically, sending any business email to a customer is email marketing. The online retailer can use e-mail, for example, in the form of current updates, abandoned shopping cart notifications and discount codes sent on the customer's anniversary.

Such individual newsletters can generate some clicks to the online store and occasional purchases, but their number is usually not staggering. You often get the best results when you try to create a series of email messages that focus on a topic that is really interesting and useful to your potential customers, and you send them at the right time.

However, many things can go wrong in email marketing. You can send e-mails too often or infrequently , at the wrong time and on a bad day . In addition, the content of the message may be uninteresting, otherwise wrong , and it may accidentally appear to the customer incorrectly or not at all .

Compared to all other digital marketing channels in e-commerce, successful email marketing statistically produces the most. However, without testing and learning from mistakes, results cannot be expected.

In addition to communicating at the right time, honing the messages to be really interesting and engaging requires work. E-mail marketing is often condemned too early, i.e. before all the mistakes made have been corrected or even noticed.

When you start email marketing for the first time, you should first implement the email tool of your choice and create an email list .

You can encourage people to join the list in your online store with, for example, a discount percentage, free delivery or a product that can be downloaded for free.

When implementing email marketing, you also need to be aware of the GDPR regulations regarding a few things. For example, the customer must always have the option to easily leave your email list, and the list's subscription forms must not have pre-filled checkboxes.

Summary: Online store digital marketing - where to start?

Although it's probably already clear, we'll say it one more time – digital marketing of an online store always starts from the online store itself and renovating it to be as convertible as possible, i.e. sellable.

If the online store can't generate sales, it doesn't matter how many people you bring there through other means.

For this reason, marketing measures should always start with conversion optimization . Only when the online store is first optimized to convert visitors into customers as efficiently as possible, you can start thinking about how to bring traffic to the online store.

Digital marketing channels should be chosen based on where your potential customers are. In addition, the choice is influenced by your company's goals and resources.

There is no need to please everyone in every possible place . With limited resources, it is often more profitable to do targeted marketing for your own target group using only a couple or a few channels.

However, if you know or even suspect that your online store is not selling as efficiently as it should, it is not (yet) worthwhile to invest in visibility . In this situation, the best thing is to start by fixing the basics, i.e. improving the user-friendliness and conversion ability of the online store, so that those purchases will come when traffic from other channels is later directed to the store.

Digital agency Growly is guaranteed to make effective online stores and digital marketing, which will achieve sales and sustainable growth. We have already helped +150 companies succeed online, e.g. with the help of conversion optimization and website reforms.