What are the most profitable acquisition channels for your online business?
Do you own an online store?
Are you looking for a
Casaneo has identified and compared different e-merchant strategies to determine the most profitable acquisition channels for your industry.
affiliation platform for the Home & Fashion Made in France universe
of sales generated in 2023 for our advertisers
1 invested generates over €14 in sales
Search" acquisition channels
Search” acquisition channels encompass the various processes involved in positioning your web pages in the top results of search engines. They focus on searches carried out by visitors on Google, Bing or YouTube. In this category, also known as SEM (Search Engine Marketing), there are two channels: SEO, or natural search engine optimization, and SEA, or paid search engine optimization.
SEO (search engine optimization)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is considered a sustainable marketing strategy. It aims to position your pages at the top of the results in order to respond to Internet users’ queries.
Search engines evaluate your pages according to three main criteria:
- Technical: your pages must be easily accessible and load quickly
- Content: provide relevant text, images and videos of the highest quality
- Authority: you need to obtain quality backlinks, develop brand awareness and be active on social networks.
Search engine optimization is a long-term process requiring specific skills and a solid knowledge of the web. It generally takes between 4 and 6 months to see significant results. Nevertheless, SEO allows you to generate a substantial volume of high-quality, sustainable traffic. Once well positioned, your site will continue to receive visitors, even if you reduce your optimization efforts.
SEA (Search engine Advertising)
Also known as paid search, SEA is an acquisition strategy that involves buying advertising space on search engines. These targeted ads are generally positioned at the top or bottom of search results pages, often with the words “Annonce” or “Ad”. They appear when Internet users type in a specific keyword.
As a paid acquisition strategy, SEA is based on a bidding system. Ads with the highest bids and best quality scores get the best positions. This is because search engines take into account the quality of both the ad and the landing page. You need a good quality score to improve your ad’s position and reduce your cost-per-click or CPC.
SEA is an effective acquisition channel if you want to generate conversions quickly. It gives you immediate visibility on search engines.
Social acquisition channels
The so-called “Social” acquisition channels include social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest… This acquisition strategy or SMM (Social Media Marketing) consists of gaining visibility on these social networks and reaching your target using two methods:
- SMO (Social Media Optimization)
- SMA (Social Media Advertising)
SMO: a free strategy
SMO is all about using social networks organically. It means creating and sharing engaging, quality content (articles, videos or images) to attract and hold your audience’s attention at no direct cost.
The relevance of your publications will determine the number of interactions from your audience (comments, shares, likes, etc.). A social network algorithm considers a piece of content to be of high quality when it is interacted with. So the more quality and relevance signals you get, the more visibility you gain with a wider audience. So you increase your chances of growing your audience without paying.
To achieve this goal, you must not only create quality content, but also respond to comments and participate in discussions. You need to strategically use hashtags and relevant keywords to extend the organic reach of your shares.
SMA: advertising on social platforms
Like search engines, social networks also offer advertising solutions to help you reach your audience. Unlike search engine advertising, these take an audience-centric approach rather than a keyword-centric one.
So you need to define the audience segments you want to reach before launching an advertising campaign on social networks. Different criteria need to be taken into account, such as demographics (age, gender), geographic criteria (country, city or region) and your audience’s areas of interest. You also need to analyze historical behaviors such as purchase intent or retargeting to refine your targeting.
By adopting this approach to paid social advertising, you can generate qualified traffic quickly. It’s important, however, that your ads remain aligned with the specific interests and needs of your target audience. In this way, you can optimize your return on investment by maximizing the impact of your advertising campaigns.
Email marketing: a relevant acquisition channel
Email marketing remains a relevant and effective acquisition channel for many business sectors. Indeed, it’s much easier to reach your audience, especially if they use this communication tool. Thanks to email list segmentation, you can send targeted, relevant messages. This increases open and conversion rates.
Emailing is also a cost-effective acquisition channel compared to other marketing channels. It requires minimal costs to design and send campaigns. At the same time, it offers a potentially high return on investment (ROI). You can easily measure campaign performance with indicators such as open, click and unsubscribe rates.
Emailing can take many forms, depending on your objectives. It can be :
- Promotions: promotional email campaigns facilitate the launch of special offers, discounts or new products.
- Newsletters: these are used to maintain an ongoing relationship with your customers by sharing blog articles or useful tips.
- Loyalty e-mails: these can be thank-yous after a purchase or invitations to exclusive events.
To ensure the success of your email campaigns, we emphasize the importance of segmenting your contact list. This will enable you to personalize your messages according to recipients’ interests and behaviors. Properly segmenting your audience enables you to increase engagement and reduce churn.
Affiliate marketing: a powerful acquisition channel
Affiliate marketing is currently one of the most profitable acquisition channels. Affiliate marketing has quickly become a particularly powerful marketing lever. Based on partnerships, this technique involves encouraging other people or stores to promote your products in exchange for payment.
The advantage of affiliate marketing is that you can set up your own affiliate program according to your budget. This means you can attract more customers at lower cost. The most important step, and perhaps the most difficult, is to find valuable affiliates with diverse audiences. Affiliates can be bloggers or influencers.
For a successful affiliate campaign, diversify your affiliates to reach specific market segments. This will also enable you to explore niches that may otherwise be difficult to reach.
The best way is to turn to specialized platforms like Casaneo. As well as putting you in touch with credible affiliates, they make it easy to set up your program, monitor performance and track payments.
Boost your sales by exploiting the potential of affiliate marketing with Casaneo. Create a customized, effective and profitable campaign for your online store.
