Cosmetic Store Advertising: How To Get Started?

Advertising activities should never be a coincidence – unless you want to waste the budget you spend on them. This principle is especially important in the cosmetics industry – whether you run a drugstore that offers a very wide range of mid- and low-priced products, or an eco-friendly or professional store. Each of these niches has to face a lot of competition. And that’s a real challenge – especially if you’re starting from scratch.

So the question is: what to do if your advertising budget is not unlimited and at the same time you expect quick results? First of all, choose the most promising sales channel, i.e. the Internet. There is even the slightest doubt that it is in the Internet that you can get the best ROI from promotional activities. Why? Because this is where your potential customers are present, and you can reach them through many channels.

Before you start thinking about starting a particular campaign, stop for a moment and think… if you really want to take these actions on your own. If you do not have too much experience in the advertising industry and you have never set up a campaign on Google before, you may waste a lot of time, energy and money learning the basics.

Meanwhile, cooperation with a digital agency, although it involves a slightly larger investment, can be a really effective way to reach a wide range of customers. Specialists know how to make the best use of the budget entrusted to them and act according to a precise plan. It takes into account:
– clearly defined campaign goals,
– precise definition of target groups of customers to whom promotional communication is addressed – it must be remembered that a different form will be advertising a cosmetics store addressed to a person who does not know what products he needs, and a different message for a customer who is looking for specific cosmetics,
– careful selection of communication tools and channels – so that your advertisement is where your customers are,
– clearly defined budget.

If you want, you can of course go through all these steps yourself. However, think about whether it will pay off for you.

And what elements should a cosmetics store advertising include? Here they are.

Paid ad for a cosmetics store, i.e. Google Ads

Google Ads is a very wide set of tools that allow you to take precise promotional activities – those that will be targeted at carefully selected recipients. What does this mean in practice? It’s just that you will be able to reach people who are potentially interested in buying the cosmetics you offer.

What is the secret of success? The fact that Google ads are not displayed to random people. They appear on the screens of computers and smartphoness of those people who have shown interest in your industry and offer. See what tools will be useful in particular for a cosmetic store.

Sponsored Links
Where are you looking for the cosmetics you want to buy? Perhaps you are just visiting a stationary drugstore, but a lot of people go to the web. Especially that on the Internet, products can be even several dozen percent cheaper. And if so, the Google search engine is the first source of information. The truth is that a website user will click on one of the first search results and … often stop there or even make a purchase.

Finding yourself at the top of the organic results are a real challenge. This is because the cosmetics industry is extremely competitive. However, you can jump over others by presenting your proposal in sponsored links. These are the ones that display over the results obtained by Google algorithms. And while they’re fairly clearly labeled as advertising, they’re eagerly clicked on by your audience. This means that sponsored links will allow you to quickly build more traffic on your website, which will translate into all other goals of the promotion: sales results included.

Product Listing Ads
… that is, advertisements displayed in the Google Shopping system. It is a form of promotion that will allow you to effectively present individual cosmetics and reach the recipient directly with a specific offer. If you use this tool, the link to the specific product related to precise customer search will be in the section above the organic results or on the side. It will be accompanied by a photo of the goods and the price. Therefore, it’s a good place to compete when you offer items cheaper than others. But not only. Being in this section also helps build your store recognition and brand strength.

Google Display Network
I am talking about contextual ads that are displayed to the user on external websites he visits – e.g. with news, lifestyle or any other websites that cooperate with Google in the display of advertisements. Their ranges are very large, and promotional messages are displayed to people with a specific range of interests, passions and demographic characteristics. Remarketing is particularly effective, i.e. activities consisting in displaying advertising banners to users who have already visited your store, e.g. those who have abandoned their shopping carts. An advertisement showing the products they are watching may prompt them to return to shopping.

Why Google Ads?

Advertising a cosmetics store in Google Ads is a natural and very sensible solution, because this promotion system allows you to very precisely reach people in the target group.

Google Ads is:
– quick building traffic on the website,
– support for short-term seasonal campaigns, e.g. aimed at selling specific products,
– strengthening the store’s brand,
– the ability to effectively monitor the effects of advertising activities – Google Ads campaigns provide a lot of analytical data that allows you to improve the conducted activities with a view to increasing their effectiveness,
– strict control over the budget – fees for displaying advertisements are charged in the PPC system, which means that you pay for impressions or clicks on the banner, and therefore for effective interaction with the recipient.

However, the question is: can such an advertisement of a cosmetics store be conducted on its own? In theory, yes. After all, all you have to do is reach for the tools commonly available on Google and pay for the campaign directly, right? However, in practice, the correct configuration of the campaign, as well as its testing and monitoring, are activities that require extensive knowledge and extensive experience. This is the only way not to waste the promotion budget. Therefore, it is better to invest in running a campaign with the help of specialists. You should also be aware that the effects depend both on the budget allocated to the promotion and on the competitiveness in the industry.

SEO of the cosmetics store

Cosmetics store advertising is one side of the coin. The second is SEO activities. Equally important, if not more important, because they bring the most long-term effects. How to run them? The goal is to get the best possible position in Google’s organic search results. To get this result, you need to take care of:
– page code optimization – so that it is friendly to all browsers and devices and displayed quickly and without difficulties,
– increasing the functionality of the website – e.g. its transparency, ease of passage through the shopping route or the possibility of searching for products,
– correct saturation of the content on the website with keywords – in the case of a cosmetics store, you will probably need “deep” positioning, i.e. penetrating the structure of subpages belonging to the website,
– improvement of page meta tags, URL structure and sitemap – so that they are more friendly to Google algorithms.

However, in order to start most of these activities, you need to very clearly define which keywords the positioning will be for. It’s not as easy as it sounds. In the case of a cosmetics store, it is not enough to choose keywords directly related to the main product categories, such as “shampoos”, “body gels” or “anti-wrinkle creams”. Yes, they are very important, but … your competition also promotes such slogans. This means that you need to invest in long-tail positioning. It is especially important for stores that offer hundreds or even thousands of products. By choosing to use the “long tail“, you have the chance to significantly increase your position on many queries.

Remember: positioning brings long-term results. Although you have to wait a few months for them, it’s definitely worth it.

Advertising of a cosmetics store on Facebook – is it worth it?

Facebook, as well as other social media like related Instagram or Pinterest, is also a great place to promote yourself. Facebook in particular offers wide possibilities of communication with recipients – both by running a fan page and contextual advertising, which are accounted for and monitored on the basis of similar principles to those offered by Google Ads. Likewise, Instagram offers a space to give your products a certain ‘entourage’ and character to your brand. All of this – especially in the cosmetics industry, is very important.