Creating an online store is extremely hard work – even if you limit yourself to running it in a dropshipping model. However, despite everything, even the best designed and made online store will not become visible to search engines or recognizable among customers overnight. You need advertising for this to happen. There are no shortcuts here. It is worth emphasizing immediately that the effects of e-shop promotion are best visible in the long term and you often need to be patient. But this patience pays off – especially if the campaign is conducted in a thoughtful and consistent manner.

Where is the best place to advertise an online store?

Are you wondering how to approach the topic of online store advertising? First of all: before you act, plan what you will do. Especially that in the virtual world there is a lot of tools waiting for you that can be used to advertise an online store. However, if you rashly invest in advertising, without first specifying the basics, you may find that instead of gaining … you will only lose the funds spent on the campaign.

How to avoid it? Specify precisely the assumptions of the campaign before proceeding to the selection of channels through which the promotion will be conducted, as well as the content of messages that are to “go out into the world”.

What exactly needs to be specified before advertising?

A. What is the target group of your customers?
Who are you addressing your offer to? Are they recipients in a specific age range? A specific gender? With specific interests and lifestyle? Or maybe you want to reach a very wide group of customers? The more precisely you define your target, the easier it will be for you to plan communication and the better you will invest your funds. For this purpose:

– create personas representing the target audience of your products – give them symbolic names and surnames, specify their approximate age, needs, interests, expectations and possible objections, and even add sample photos,
– think about how the products you want to sell are supposed to solve their everyday problems,
– think what type of communication style will be appropriate in the advertisement – is it more “official” and neutral, or maybe “laid back” and bold?

B. brand DNA
Do you know what and to whom you want to sell? You still need to define what image your brand will have. What associations should the recipient build? What is it supposed to be associated with? With prestige? Or maybe with low prices and fast delivery? With high-quality products? Or maybe with “exotic” goods unavailable in USA in a stationary way? This will translate into both the manner of advertising and selected communication channels.

C. Objectives of the advertising campaign
What will be the aim of the conducted promotional campaign? If you are just starting your business in the e-commerce industry, first of all, you need to make potential customers aware that you exist on the market, and in the next step to build their trust. Only then will the campaign move towards promoting specific products and lead directly to the conversion. Most often you have to go through all these stages in order to gradually start to expand your portfolio of clients – not the one-time ones, but those who will come back again and again and recommend your services to friends.

So start by identifying a key campaign premise. Once that’s done, it’s time to define your specific goals. This can be, for example, an increase in traffic on the store’s website, obtaining sales leads, or strengthening the sale of a specific product. What course of action you choose will depend on what tools and channels will be used during the campaign.

D. Budget
How much money can you spend on an advertising campaign? Remember: it is not worth limiting expenses for promotion, because it is … very apparent savings. Why? Take a moment to consider where are you buying? In stores whose offers are readily available and visible in the palm of your hand, right? This visibility will not build itself! If you don’t tell the world about your store, nobody will hear about it and find it.
Nevertheless, there is no such thing as an unlimited advertising budget. It is worth knowing in advance how much money can be invested in the implementation of a specific campaign.

How to promote an online store?

Do you already know why you will advertise your e-shop, who do you want to contact and for how much? Now it’s time to choose the tools with which you will conduct the campaign. The decision is not easy at all because – as we mentioned – the number of options is really solid. Important hint: you don’t need to use all the available options during one campaign. Choose those that will match the assumptions of the promotional campaign or choose those that, with a limited budget, can potentially turn out to be the most sensible.

How? For example, a very large online store, which cares about huge ranges, may think about advertising using ATL channels, e.g. press, radio, and even television. However, this is a solution primarily for the largest players on the e-commerce market. Those who operate on a slightly narrower scale will focus on promotion mainly on the Internet.

So where to promote? The basic rule that is always worth having “at the back of your head” is: be where your customers are. Where? Here is an overview of the tools that are good to consider.

The advertising system provided by the Mountain View giant is the absolute basis of Internet advertising. Why? Simply put: because we all use Google, and the platform offers extremely wide opportunities to promote ourselves. What more can you reach for?

Sponsored Links
Where are the recipients looking for the products they want to buy? They very often start their hunt by entering a search term into the Google search engine, and then… they click on the first search results. However, sponsored links appear above them. The presence of your store in this section will increase the chances that its offer will be checked in the first place. Customers rarely distinguish an ad from organic results, and even so, these ads are very well targeted, and advertisers want the person who clicked on them to make a purchase. If the ad is set wrong, they will just blow your budget.

Google Shopping
In recent years, Google has improved its advertising tools and today one of the most interesting proposals for e-commerce is a “carousel” of products displayed in the search results – with photos and product prices. Such a mini catalog with promoted stores’ offers increases the probability that the recipient will click on your ad and then make a purchase!

Outdoor advertising
Google Ads is also advertisements displayed on various external portals – in the form of banners. This format, discredited some time ago, if only due to the fact that many internet users blocked banner ads, is now back in favor. For two reasons. First of all, more and more websites are introducing technological solutions to prevent ad blocking or asking their users to display them (it works!). Second, remarketing ads are widely used and are much more effective. What’s the thing? In remarketing campaigns, the recipient on the banners sees personalized ads that show, for example, the products he has previously viewed. Such constant reminders can be very persuasive!

Google Ads tools – as long as the campaign is run by a specialist with appropriate qualifications – can bring very good short-term and long-term results. Although the configuration of the campaign is seemingly very simple, in fact, specialists should watch over its course – they will make sure that every dollar invested in the promotion earns itself and brings the expected ROI. In the case of Paraphrase-Online.com, campaign optimization is entrusted not only to a specialist, but also to our self-learning algorithms that introduce even thousands of changes a day. This campaign optimization ensures that you invest resources in the time and place most appropriate for it.

Social media

If e-commerce advertising on social media is of course Facebook first. The portal founded by Mark Zuckerberg has today become a source of information, entertainment and inspiration. That is why it is worth being here and promoting your e-shop. How?

First, use the full potential of free solutions. So, first of all, run a fanpage of your e-shop. Regular, engaging posts will allow you to build a specific audience that will grow over time.

But that’s not all. On Facebook, you can use a wide variety of advertising tools. There are, among others:
– post promotion – so that they are displayed in the news feed of people from your target group,
– classic banner advertising,
– advertising in the form of a carousel of products – redirecting directly to the e-store,
– video advertisement, displayed during the presentation of film materials on the portal.

It is mainly these tools that the online store will use. Like Google, Facebook also allows you to set the purpose of the campaign and conveniently configure other details. It’s also easy to track the results your message is getting. Regular monitoring of the results allows you to implement any corrections in the campaign or draw conclusions for the future. Depending on the industry, remarketing on Facebook can also turn out to be very effective and it is worth to complement the activities carried out with Google Ads at least in the basic scope.

Remember that advertising an e-shop on social media is not necessarily just Facebook. Depending on the profile of your business, you can also reach your potential customers, e.g. on Instagram (especially in lifestyle industries), and even on LinkedIn (especially if you sell products intended more for business customers). Where is the best place to advertise an online store using social media? This question will be answered by e.g. an internet marketing specialist.

YouTube

Is YouTube a good promotion channel for an online store? In many cases, yes. And how to promote yourself in this medium? One of the options is to publish video ads that will be displayed during videos watched by users. However, it should be remembered that here you need to focus on short, several-second messages – especially since visitors to the portal most often “click” ads whenever possible.

But that’s not all. An increasingly common solution used by online stores is the so-called influencer marketing. In a nutshell, it is about starting cooperation with the creator running a popular YouTube channel and placing the store’s brand in its material. For example, online stores with cosmetics operate in this model. Collaboration can take many forms. An influencer can:
– mention in the material about the current promotion in a given e-store,
– recommend purchases on the site,
– offer your recipients a special discount code obtained in the affiliate program,
– link products used in the published video and available on the e-shop website.

A skilfully and unobtrusive campaign can result in a quick and significant increase in traffic in the e-store. However, it should be remembered that in order for such effects to last long-term, cooperation with influencers should be repeated regularly.

Another option offered by YouTube is … running a video channel through the store itself. What could happen to him? In the case of an e-shop, specific industry guides will work best. Valuable films will reach a wider audience, thanks to which they will work in the field of image and sales.

Are the places where it is best to promote the online store the only channels you can use? No! There is also a whole range of inbound marketing and PR tools that are worth paying attention to. One thing is certain: the campaign strategy should be developed and implemented wisely, preferably under the supervision of specialists. Then it takes place in an orderly, not chaotic manner, and above all – translates into the desired conversion.

We left the positioning of online stores for the very end. In the long term, it is usually the cheapest method of acquiring new customers. However, among all forms of advertising, it is also the most “investment” nature. By investing funds today, you can feel it only in 3 or e.g. 6 months. Therefore – even though most people do not set up stores to operate, for example, only for a year – most of them decide to position themselves only after some time. It cannot be clearly stated that this is a mistake. Every investor wants to achieve returns as quickly as possible and can do it with e.g. Google Ads. However, if at the beginning you have a slightly larger budget for advertising, then it is definitely worth conducting your marketing in two ways and in addition to what is “now”, think about what “later”. The sense of investment in positioning – in relation to your budget and needs, will also help you determine the specialist – in this case, the positioner.

In a stationary store, customers count on the help of the seller. Kind, smiling and kind advisers can work wonders and convince even the least determined ones to buy. It can be said that in the online store this function is performed by a description. The better it is, the greater the probability that the customer will buy the product from you, and maybe even stay with you longer? Where to start creating descriptions?

Find out who your customers are

To get your customers attention, you need to get to know them well. First, think about who and why is visiting your online store? Gather as much information as possible about your customers: How old are they? How do they look? Where they live? What do they do? Are they singles? Do they have families? How often do they shop online? How do they spend their free time? What are their daily rituals? What annoys them? Remember that the customer is not interested in what you want to sell. For him, the most important thing is what he wants to buy at the moment. Try to discover his motivations, fears and needs.

Where to find information? There are quite a few sources of knowledge about consumers and the Internet. If you haven’t done research before, start with industry reports. Important information on the demographics and behavior of your customers can be found, for example, in online tools such as Google Analytics or Facebook Audience Insight.

Create your perfect client

Once you have the knowledge, analyze the collected information and use it to create a persona, i.e. your model client. Give her a name, age and place of residence. Write where he works. Let your persona have goals and desires, but also frustrations. Suppose you run an online store with organic cosmetics. One of the persona might look like this:

Jessica is 28 years old. She is the mother of the resolute five-year-old John and the wife of the architect Tom. She graduated in human resource management, and currently lives in the capital and works in one of the corporations in the HR department.
She tries to spend her free time with her family – actively, preferably outdoors. He cares about ecology. He does grocery shopping in a local grocery store. In order not to waste time, she kept visits to the shopping center to a minimum. Instead of at a drugstore, he buys cosmetics online. Before deciding to buy, she checks the composition of products and the opinions of other customers and influencers. It focuses on quality, price is a secondary criterion.

If you define personas well, you will discover what to focus on when creating product descriptions. You will write to satisfy the curiosesity and needs of a specific target group. You will also not waste time on too general or technical descriptions. There is a high probability that no one will read them. And if he doesn’t, he probably won’t buy it.

People buy emotions, not products

Before you start creating a product description in an online store, establish the strengths and benefits of having it. Think about what problems it solves. Customers will be happy to pay if you convince them that it is your product that will have a real impact on their quality of life: they will have more time for their family, they will take care of everyday matters faster, they will be more attractive or they will save a lot of money for holidays. This is where knowing your target group comes in handy. What will convince young mothers will not go to teenagers at all.

Use the language of benefits

Remember that the language of benefits is the language of particulars. Support any benefits your product provides with concrete and true evidence. Avoid cliches and cliches. “One of a kind”, “top-quality workmanship” or “the latest fashion” – they mean nothing to the customer. The market is saturated with this type of desert returns, which is why consumers have learned to effectively ignore them.

If you absolutely want to emphasize that your product is in something “the best” – justify why, eg “The thinnest smartphones on the market. It’s only 1mm thick and you can fold it like a piece of paper”.

It’s important to be clear about the problem your product solves. If an orthopedic pillow relieves spine, head and back pain, say it simply, without any special words or fancy phrases. So that the message reaches all interested parties, not only those who have completed a doctorate in acupressure. When you make customers aware of a problem that you can solve, you will awaken in them an urgent purchase need.

The perfect product description in the online store

Length matters
An ideal description should be around 1000-1500 characters with spaces. Both your customers and search engines will like this length. In addition to the criterion of the number of characters, follow a simple rule – if you read the product description and still have questions, think again.

How much to reveal in the title?
The title should contain the brand, model and type of the product, and if possible, also a characteristic, e.g. color. It is supposed to attract attention, but above all, it should be understandable and legible. Write for people, not for the machine. Do not include detailed technical data and incomprehensible abbreviations in the name. Rely on relevant information that will help customers quickly decode what the product is.

Instead of “Tdx-18 gha roz. XS ”, write“ Alpine Tdx-18 gha (red) ski jacket size XS ”.
Also a mistake is the too general title, which says absolutely nothing about the product.
The title is of great importance for the positioning of the online store.

Show what cannot be touched

Photos are a showcase of your online store, not only the product. Don’t forget that we buy online with our eyes – we can’t touch the product or try it on. That is why it is so important that the photos are taken professionally and reflect reality as accurately as possible. They should represent exactly what you are selling, taking into account the characteristics of the product (color, shape, texture). Even if you have received photos from the producer, it is worth taking a few extra photos that will show exactly what interests your target group. Thanks to this, you will also distinguish your offer from the competition. A good example is Zappos, which shows the most important features of the products in the pictures.

Product description, or how to increase conversion?

The product description has two primary purposes: it explains the functions of the item and encourages potential customers to buy. Few of the elements on the page have such a direct impact on conversion. If you see customers entering your website, viewing products but not adding them to the cart, they are probably put off by the product description or the lack of it.

When creating a product description in an online store, follow the basic rules.
– Choose legibility and transparency. Present the most important features of the product,
– Split text into paragraphs,
– Use boldness to emphasize the most important things,
– Use bullets that help maintain clarity and make it easy for the client to scan the text with their eyes
– Use icons and graphics,
– List everything the customer gets, but also what he won’t get. If, for example, the set does not include batteries, be sure to write about it,
– Give advice and dispel doubts. Create a list of questions and answers and present possible applications of the product,
– Influence the senses and emotions that stimulate the imagination. Appeal to the sense of touch, sight, smell and hearing.

A language your customers will love

The right language is very important in creating descriptions, therefore:
– use short, single sentences,
– use the active side,
– avoid participles; instead of them use conjunctions: which, what, by what, therefore, etc.
– use dynamic verbs: decreases / increases, improves, soothes, speeds up / slows down, oils / dries, strengthens / weakens,
– avoid modal verbs that weaken the power of the message, e.g. “XYZ can minimize the risk of getting sick …”,
– avoid the verbs “to have” and “to be”; it is called energy vampires – sentences with their participation are simple, but also boring,
– use simple, user-friendly words and expressions, e.g. also instead of also, it reduces instead of eliminating, soothes instead of soothing,
– avoid the industry jargon,
– put on the language of benefits,
– give up terms that overly value products, exaggerate their advantages,
– translate more difficult terms to avoid the so-called “Knowledge traps” – a situation in which you think that a given concept is so obvious that you do not need to explain it to anyone.

From General to specific

The amount of information contained in the description depends on the industry. However, it is a good practice to present the most important data in the main description (briefly and concisely presenting the most important information and including the basic keywords). The details should be transferred to the additional description (extensive, presenting the advantages of the product and benefits resulting from the purchase, examples of applications, including elements such as: technical parameters, product specification, pattern and other keywords). Additional description should be presented in the form of legible tabs.

Bet on a hard hit

First, indicate those features that distinguish the product from the competition. Focus on its strongest points and then move on to the less significant ones. End the description with information about add-ons. Take a clothing store as an example to see what a valuable description should contain.

– First, provide basic information: cut, size, color, cut, price.
– Below is information about the size worn by the model in the photo, so that the customer has the right point of reference.
– Include product care instructions – customers often want to know how many degrees they can wash the product or whether it can be tumble-dried before buying.
– Describe the history of the manufacturer.
– List the materials from which the product was made.
– Put customer reviews and opinions.
– Also find a place for additional benefits: free delivery and return.

Make friends with a blogger

A great way to enrich your product description is to use reviews or tests in the description. Many bloggers and YouTubers work with producers and create materials about specific products. This type of content is also created at the request of specific online stores.

SEO product descriptions

Creating product descriptions for SEO is a relatively easy task. However, here too, one can overdo it. Still, most sellers focus too much on positioning and forget about users. The high position of the store in the search engine is of course very important, but don’t write just to fill the description with keywords. If you take care of the customer with substantive content on the website, Google will repay you. See what to keep in mind.

Take care of unique content
Descriptions and titles must be unique. Copying descriptions from the manufacturer’s website will not help your SEO efforts. We realize that creating original descriptions for up to several thousand products can be troublesome. If you do not have the appropriate resources, it is worth outsourcing this type of task to a company that will prepare descriptions in a professional manner.

Choose quality, not quantity
It is a mistake to saturate the text with keywords. Focus on covering the topic and providing clients with the most accurate information. Usually the key phrase appears up to 3 times in the product description with a length of 1000 – 1500 characters including spaces. You can use synonyms and synonyms that sound more natural.

Search for relevant key phrases
Thanks to them you will find out what queries are directed by users looking for solutions you offer. Tools are also helpful that will provide you with information about the most popular phrases, their position, number of searches and competition, as well as how to write to arrange a given text for a given phrase as effectively as possible.

Use materials from your blog
This is a very good practice that provides customers with valuable content and additional linking within your website. You can place an article fragment on the product card and link it directly to your blog.

Relevant Product Names (Heading H1)
The name should contain popular keywords. Each product must have an individual name taking into account the manufacturer, model, distinguishing feature, etc.

Use subheadings (in headings H2-H4)
The subheadings are an important element that improves the readability of the text. At the same time, it increases the potential in search results – especially if you include relevant keywords.

Remember about ALT attributes in graphics
Thanks to ATL attributes, the search engine will know what is in the photo. This way, you can also smuggle a keyword.

Duplicate content

There was a bit of this on the occasion of SEO, but let’s repeat it again – don’t be tempted to copy the manufacturer’s description (the exception is the product specification). But what if the products described differ only in color? Repeated assortment is a problem for many stores. How to create original descriptions for this type of product? Of course, the optimal solution would be to prepare a unique description for each of them, but with large volumes it turns out to be practically impossible. In such a situation, it is worth preparing one universal description and 1-2 sentences characterizing the changing element.

Order or write it yourself?

As always: it depends. Take several factors into account. If you run a small online store, you have time and skills – you can create professional descriptions yourself, why not. Now you know what features a sales product description should have. You are aware of what mistakes not to make. However, if you are the owner of a large e-commerce with thousands of products, and your employees have hundreds of other tasks on their minds, it is better to outsource writing to a specialized company. The price for product descriptions is relatively low compared to the losses you may incur by giving them up.