3-Step Guide to eCommerce Promotions

With holidays just around the corner (and 2022 a few calendar pages away), sales and promotion planning is in full swing. At Finch, we know the power of planning, and our experts aren’t shy about sharing some best practices. In Recharge Your Approach to eCommerce Promotions webinar, we discuss using buyer psychology in your promotions and using different eCommerce promotion ideas. This week, we’re diving back into our 3-Step Guide to Successful eCommerce Promotion.

With the rapid shift in attribution models and an increased global focus on eCommerce, it’s not a bad idea to brush up on Google’s Best Practices or to get a quick look at Amazon’s latest ad offerings before taking the plunge into planning. However, you start (and whatever your budget), here’s our 3-Step Guide to Successful eCommerce Promotion. To get a visual snapshot, check out our infographic!

Step 1 – eCommerce Promotion Strategy

In our everyday lives, we rarely take action without knowing the desired result. When we flip a switch, we’re expecting the light to turn on. Turn a key in a lock; we know the door will open. Sadly, in digital marketing, things aren’t quite so easy. 

Promotional planning can cover weeks (and even months) of ad campaigns, where the desired result can be as concrete as increased sales or as ambiguous as “brand awareness.” When planning your promotions (like everyday life), starting with a strategy tied to specific and measurable goals is essential.

Start by answering these questions:

• • What is your overall promotional goal? Brand awareness, site traffic, increased sales, customer retention?
  • What’s your budget? Don’t worry, this may change with your quarterly projections, but it’s important to have a place to start.
  • Who is your audience? You may have separate audiences and demographics for different promotional goals or markets, so it’s important to include them all in your overall strategy.
  • Where do you want to run promotions? Ad placement can be informed by data from your best-performing channels, channels you want to improve on, and (of course) your budget. Need help analyzing your existing promotional data? We’ve got you covered.
  • What types of promotions do you want to run or try, what’s worked well before, and which will best meet your goals?
  • When do you want to run promotions? Will you target holidays, seasonal events, do you need to do clearance sales, etc.?

Answering these questions will help identify your target audience, access profit-driving channels quickly, and help craft a strategy that reaches and engages your audience throughout your campaign. 

Step 2 – eCommerce Promotion Planning & Execution

We all love making a good checklist! But we love getting to cross things off that list even more. It should come as no surprise that step 2 after the strategy is planning and execution (the time we get to satisfyingly cross some tasks off the list).

Coming up with a promotional strategy starts with a few easy steps:

1. 1. Develop your creative. Decide on ad copy, visuals, & branding.
   2. Build your audiences. You can dig into copycat audiences, market research, retargeting efforts, or even adjacent industry demographics.
   3. Decide on promotional placement. A strong strategy includes a mix of paid ads, native website placement, email, social media, blog posts, and more.

Once you’ve mastered these steps, you’re on your way to a successful promotional plan that reaches and excites your audiences across multiple channels. While your campaigns are being executed, don’t forget to A/B test your ads to determine what works best. For paid advertising, check your bids and your budget daily to make sure you don’t overspend.

After your promotion ends, adjust your bids back and analyze your data. Need some help? Finch offers strategic services and an Advertising Management Platform with actionable, data-driven Insights reporting available to you 24/7.

Step 3 – eCommerce Promotion Analysis

The final step in your campaign should always be data analysis. It’s this data that will inform future campaigns, realign promotional goals, or offer fresh insight into your audience’s online behavior.

To drive your next round of promotions effectively, you always want to ask the main question first: “did you meet your goal?” Other data to gather includes:

• • Did you hit your target ACoS/ROAS?
  • Which channels or ad platforms delivered the best results for you?
  • Which creatives converted best?
  • What were your most successful keywords and product categories?

With that and other information in hand, you can determine how one campaign compared to another and decide where to adjust in the future.

Learn even more about a successful eCommerce sales promotion planning process in the infographic.