where to start and how not to waste your budget
Online promotion is the key to success for any business these days. But where to start and how not to waste your budget? Let’s figure it out together, step by step. We will help you choose the right channels, distribute your budget wisely and evaluate the effectiveness of your actions.
1. Define goals and target audience
We set specific and measurable goals
Before you dive headfirst into online promotion , you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Attract new customers? Increase brand awareness? Increase sales? Set specific and measurable goals to make it easier to evaluate the results later.
For example, instead of a vague “I want more clients,” it’s better to formulate it like this: “increase the number of requests from the site by 20% in 3 months.” This way, you’ll always know whether you’re moving in the right direction.
Studying the target audience
To make promotion effective, you need to have a clear idea of who your target audience is. Create a portrait of your ideal client: age, gender, interests, pain points, and needs. This will help you choose the right channels and formulate catchy messages.
Let’s say you sell eco-friendly cosmetics. Your target audience is young girls who care about their health and the environment. So, it makes sense to promote on Instagram and YouTube, focusing on the naturalness of ingredients and the safety of products.
2. Select promotion channels
The website is your main asset
Whatever your business, you can’t do without a website in 2024. It’s your business card, showcase, and primary channel for attracting customers. Make sure your website is user-friendly, informative, and mobile-friendly.
Start with basic SEO optimization: work on the structure, meta tags, headings, work on the content. This will help you rise in search results and attract organic traffic.
Social Networks, or Where Word of Mouth Meets Hype
Social networks are a powerful tool phone number library for online promotion. Choose the platforms where your target audience lives and start communicating, informing, and engaging. Contests, challenges, and interactive activities work great.
The main thing is to be sincere and humane, to speak the same language as the audience. No one wants to read dry corporate texts. But everyone is interested in live stories, life hacks, memes (but without fanaticism!). Give free rein to creativity and get feedback.
Contextual and targeted advertising
If you need quick results, you can’t do without advertising. Set up campaigns in Yandex.Direct and social networks, target your audience, allocate a budget – and go ahead. Just don’t forget to analyze the effectiveness later, so as not to waste money.
For example, for our eco-cosmetics, you can set up advertising on Instagram targeting girls aged 18-35 who are into healthy lifestyle, yoga and proper nutrition. And for a Moscow beauty salon – context for queries like “hair coloring Moscow” or “manicure nearby”.
3. Distribute the budget
Setting priorities
Once you have decided on the channels, you need to decide how much money and effort you are willing to invest in them. Break down the overall promotion budget into categories: SEO, context, SMM, PR, etc. Set priorities based on the specifics of your business and goals.
For an online store, the most important thing is traffic and sales, so it is better to direct the lion’s share of the budget to SEO and context. But for a local bakery, word of mouth and work with review sites and aggregators may be more important.
We test and optimize
Remember: digital is always an experiment. Don’t be afraid sad life box to try different approaches, change creatives, channel mix, monitor analytics. In the first months of promotion, it is better to allocate 10-20% of the budget for tests.
Then, taking into account the data obtained, you can redistribute the budget in favor of the most effective channels and activities. The main thing is to do this not chaotically, but based on figures and facts.
4. Monitor the results
Setting up end-to-end analytics
To evaluate the effectiveness of online promotion, GA alone is not enough. You need end-to-end analytics that will link data from all sources and show the entire customer journey – from the first touch to the purchase.
The easiest way is to use ready-made systems like Roistat or CallTouch. But you can also set up data transfer between the site, CRM and advertising accounts yourself. The main thing is not to be lazy in analyzing the numbers and making decisions based on facts, not speculation.
We calculate ROI and cost of attraction
The most important metrics for evaluating what is accountability the effectiveness of promotion are ROI (return on investment) and CAC (cost of attracting a client). The first shows how much money you received from each ruble invested, and the second shows how much one new client cost you.
To calculate ROI, you need to divide the total income from the campaign by the expenses and multiply by 100%. Let’s say you spent 100 thousand rubles on advertising and received 300 thousand in revenue. This means ROI = (300,000 / 100,000 – 1) * 100% = 200%.
CAC is calculated even more simply: divide the advertising budget by the number of new clients. Spent 100 thousand and attracted 50 buyers – we get 2000 rubles per client. Just take into account all expenses, including contractors’ salaries and the cost of creating creatives.