Shoptet in the Czech Republic is synonymous with e-shop rental. Thanks to its simplicity, intuitive operation and affordable price, it clearly corners the market. With a similar goal, it planned to start communicating in Slovakia, where it is also a leader in this area, but still sees room for significant growth. The number of e-shops per capita is significantly lower and the potential for new ones, on the contrary, is greater.

Communication preparation

The company decided to use content marketing to increase awareness of the Shoptet platform and its benefits. „We have good experience with content marketing from the Czech Republic, so we decided to apply it in Slovakia, too. It’s a format that provides plenty of room to bring Shoptet’s benefits closer together and build brand awareness. We also expected a positive impact on SEO, which was proved,“ explains Ivo Mrena, product and marketing manager of Shoptet.

On the basis of well-completed briefs, delivered staff, exchange of experience from the Slovak, but also stronger Czech market, we have prepared an editorial plan for paid advertising articles, native collaborations and press releases. We have also proposed a preliminary list of online media to reach different types of customers and created a list of journalists who might be interested in topics from the world of e-commerce.

Finding the right formats

When preparing the content, we decided to go in two directions in agreement with the client. One of them was building awareness of the Shoptet brand and its potential among the general public and potential future e-shop owners. The second direction was to focus on people who are already seriously considering their own e-shop, or they already have it.

In the first case, we decided to present to a large extent the stories of interesting Slovak e-shoppers. We described their beginnings, struggles, but also their first accomplishments, and we also focused on their attitude to Shoptet as a tool that enabled them to do their business.

As we anticipated, these articles drew the attention of many readers and reached several thousand reads thanks to their eye-catching content and good media placements. At the same time, the presentation of the Shoptet was combined with the presentation of the e-shops themselves, who appreciated this added value from the Shoptet as an extra bonus and help in business.

A smaller part of the communication consisted of narrower targeted articles focused on e-shoppers – for example, how to build a successful e-shop or explanation of the whole operation of Shoptet. On these topics, we have worked more intensively with experts from Shoptet, such as the customer service department.

Shoptet. Zdroj: Freepik

Native advertising articles can achieve great numbers in the media

When making the media plan, we took into consideration the quality and credibility of the individual media, but due to the budget, of course, also the price. We tried to reach an individual agreement with the media to take into account the estimated or guaranteed readership.

One of the KPIs for cooperation was the average price per reading –  € 0.30. For partly business target group it was a relatively risky amount, but we believed that thanks to the native concept of articles and several story-based outputs based on specific Shoptet clients, we will be able to achieve this together.

As different media measure traffic in different ways, we have placed measurement scripts in our articles. We were able to compare the same statistics in real time and we did not have to wait for reporting from publishers. Our method of measurement proved to be crucial, especially when some medium did not meet the conditions.

For example, if it did not place a preview of the article on the agreed position, or did not add the article to its social network, or simply did not achieve the readership that we agreed on as a minimum requirement.

In the end we together with Shoptet: 

  • Have prepared 5 press releases intended for the journalistic community, several of which have been posted on websites such as Strategie.sk, Etrend.sk and others.
  • So far, we have created and published 27 advertising articles, the so-called PR articles in professional, lifestyle and news online media.
  • Have collaborated with the media on 3 native collaborations.
  • Have reached an average reading price of € 0.11.
  • Have also showed the client other possibilities of presentation through participation and sponsorship in suitable podcasts or participation in conferences and events.