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Which method of promoting a new business will bring more customers at the start - SEO or SMM?
The optimal solution would be to develop all possible channels, but if you have limited resources, you need to choose one. Alexander, the owner of an online store for children's goods, tested these two areas and shared his results.
Further the story will be on behalf of Alexander.
In my online store, I play the roles of director, logistician, sales manager, marketer and developer.
The store sells educational toys online; purchases can be made through the website or through social networks. The site is a catalog of products with the ability to create a personal account and a shopping cart for placing orders. I am constantly working to improve the site, adding new functionality for SEO and improving usability. At the moment I am focusing on working with product categories and plan to introduce advertising in the future.
I have been involved in sales strategies, logistics and trade organization since 2007, and only recently took up website creation. I spend a lot of time studying promotion techniques and view the store as a hobby and a way to prove to myself that I can build a successful business. In this article I’ll tell you how I started promoting my store from scratch, and at the end I’ll share the results in numbers.
My online store needs to make a profit as soon as possible, so I analyzed promotion options and chose SEO and SMM as the two most accessible and understandable areas to start with. This may not seem like the most logical choice, since it is often advised to first bring the site to perfection, and then connect social networks as an additional traffic channel. However, I decided to try two methods at the same time, and in the end it brought me profit.
The first mistake was that I chose a platform for the site that was not entirely suitable for a full-fledged online store. Plus, I didn’t think through the site structure carefully enough, which limited the possibilities for SEO promotion. I am gradually correcting these errors, but the functionality of the site is not yet ideal.
From an SEO point of view, I currently have only one product category set up that fully meets the requirements: with keywords, links to blog articles, high-quality images and products selected by relevance.
When it comes to SEO, I primarily focus on Yandex, since this search engine, unlike Google, relies heavily on text content for ranking.
Promotion through search engines is limited by the audience coverage of the system itself and requires significant financial investments. The more resources invested in SEO, the higher the position in search results, if done correctly. I could put all my money into SEO, but it's a full-time job that requires recurring costs to maintain the site and create content.
Another option is to use the Yandex.Direct and Google Ads advertising systems. Then the site will be visible as long as there is money for advertising, but a young business does not have stable income for such expenses.
Search engine algorithms are changing, and I think it's more important for me to focus on customer needs. In the long run, a user-friendly and understandable website will bring more profit than one that is optimized only for search engines.
SEO promotion for online stores differs from methods of promoting content sites. Unlike sites with large texts, an online store requires high-quality content for each product in order to compete for places in search results.
The most important part of the site is the product card: completed specifications, high-quality photographs, videos, reviews, information about stock availability. I made descriptions and photographs of my products myself, and this is what happened.
A well-designed product card not only improves UX, but also helps you stand out among competitors. However, in a competitive niche like mine, this is not always enough to get to the top of search engines.
In online stores, it is often difficult to use all possible keywords, because all stores may have the same products, and it is impossible to create separate pages for each word. I ordered articles for the blog to attract traffic for low-frequency queries.
I tried to make the articles interesting and useful for people, and not overload them with search queries, in order to avoid negative consequences from search engines.
In the process of SEO promotion, I also began to actively develop social networks at the same time, since Yandex takes into account behavioral factors, including activity on social networks.
Most people actively use social networks, and my audience is young parents, middle-aged people who are often on these social networks. I chose several platforms: VKontakte, Instagram and others.
One of the main advantages of social networks is their accessibility and low costs of creating groups. At the start, I didn’t have a budget for complex developments, but on social networks everything is simple and fast. The cost of advertising on social networks is also lower than on search engines, making this channel accessible to start-up businesses.
Working with social networks was not difficult. Interesting texts, bright photographs and laconic calls to action helped to attract the attention of customers. I accepted orders through messages on VKontakte and Instagram, avoiding the need to direct customers to the website to place an order.
VKontakte and Instagram are convenient to use for advertising and sales. VKontakte has built-in tools for creating product cards, and on Instagram you can easily make product reviews using photos and videos.
One of the main disadvantages of social networks is the lack of ability to create a unique page design, which is available on a full-fledged website. Also, competition in the niche is very high, and without advertising and quality content it is difficult to stand out among many other stores.
In addition, it is not entirely clear to me how content from social networks affects SEO positions in search engines. It is impossible to create a full-fledged semantic core for social networks, as is done for a website.
When you don't have a subscriber base, social media doesn't help much in promoting your site, but it still brings traffic and conversions, so for my business, social media has proven to be the most effective in the short term.
After starting active work with the website and social networks, traffic through social networks amounted to almost 12% of total traffic.
Total orders from the website and groups on social networks amounted to 164,314 rubles.
After deducting delivery costs of 13,634 rubles, the net profit was 150,680 rubles.
Summer statistics showed that conversion from social networks was significantly higher: every 16th visitor to social networks made a purchase, while from search - only every 67th.
In the fall, results improved, with a total turnover of 271,691 rubles, of which net profit amounted to 77,469 rubles.
I tested advertising on VKontakte. Advertising expenses amounted to 500 rubles, and in two days four orders were made, bringing a profit of 3,042 rubles.
Website creation costs:
Design: 10,000 rubles
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