No two e‑commerce marketing strategies are the same

An effec­tive e‑commerce mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is made up of many parts. Some parts work to gen­er­ate leads and inter­est, while oth­ers cap­ture sales and seek out new ones. Some parts aim to opti­mise the shop­ping expe­ri­ence, while oth­ers try to boost the brand’s reputation.

A suc­cess­ful e‑commerce busi­ness will be run­ning sev­er­al dif­fer­ent cam­paigns at once. Per­haps it runs a YouTube chan­nel, a week­ly email newslet­ter, and a blog strat­e­gy. Or per­haps it cre­ates bi-week­ly Shorts, adver­tis­es through PPC, and analy­ses cus­tomer data to make per­son­alised prod­uct recommendations.

Some e‑commerce busi­ness­es will do all this while con­tin­u­al­ly opti­mis­ing their web­site to ensure leads are suc­cess­ful­ly nur­tured through their buy­ing journey.

There’s no per­fect way to mar­ket an e‑commerce brand. Busi­ness­es will need to eval­u­ate their resources and capa­bil­i­ties and select a hand­ful of meth­ods that suit them best.

In this arti­cle, we’ll run you through 11 ways of mar­ket­ing your e‑commerce brand so you can iden­ti­fy gaps in your exist­ing strat­e­gy and be inspired to try new tactics.

11 Ways to Market Your E‑Commerce Brand

1. JOIN THE RISING TREND OF SHORTS

There’s no doubt that short-form videos have tak­en the inter­net by storm.

Since Vine hit our screens in 2013, these enter­tain­ing short-form clips have steadi­ly gained the atten­tion of bil­lions of smart­phone users, result­ing in an immense­ly pop­u­lar form of con­tent. Though Vine is no longer avail­able, sev­er­al plat­forms have filled the gap it left, includ­ing Tik­Tok, Insta­gram, Face­book, and YouTube.

Some­times known as “shorts” or “reels”, these videos can be edu­ca­tion­al, fun­ny, artis­tic, pro­mo­tion­al, dra­mat­ic, and con­ver­sa­tion-start­ing. At the moment, videos are the most share­able type of online con­tent, and 25% of con­sumers dis­cov­er brands through social video ads.

So, it’s no won­der that 91% of busi­ness­es use video as a mar­ket­ing tool!

By lever­ag­ing this trend, your e‑commerce busi­ness can cap­ture the atten­tion of a large audi­ence and show­case its prod­ucts or ser­vices in an engag­ing way. Cre­at­ing shorts will allow you to con­vey your brand’s per­son­al­i­ty and dri­ve traf­fic to your web­site or online store.

Here’s how you can get involved or improve your cur­rent approach:

• Cre­ate “stitch­es” with oth­er con­tent (per­haps user-gen­er­at­ed) to weigh in on dis­cus­sions and con­tribute to trends.
• Tease new products.
• Share UGC of your prod­ucts (per­haps unbox­ings, videos explain­ing how they work, or show­cas­ing real results).
• Show the “behind the scenes” of your busi­ness (per­haps in your ware­house or office or intro­duc­ing the team).
• Cre­ate edu­ca­tion­al shorts (which have been dubbed “micro-learn­ing”).
• Cre­ate a chal­lenge to encour­age engage­ment and UGC.

There are count­less cre­ative ways you can make short-form videos work for your busi­ness, and it does­n’t have to be con­crete when you’re just start­ing out. Be sure to be con­sis­tent and reply to any cus­tomer mes­sages and com­ments so you can build on those relationships.

2. DON’T FORSAKE SEO (or content marketing)

Search engine opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO) is cru­cial for improv­ing your e‑commerce web­site’s vis­i­bil­i­ty in search engine results. With­out it, most of your efforts will be stabs in the dark because SEO pro­vides a tan­gi­ble frame­work with which to analyse your website.

If you’re on a low bud­get or don’t know where to start with SEO, experts rec­om­mend improv­ing your site’s load­ing speed first and fix­ing any bro­ken or faulty aspects of your site. Once you’ve done that, you can begin a sim­ple con­tent strat­e­gy that’s sup­port­ed by fun­da­men­tal on-page SEO best prac­tices. For instance, ensure the fol­low­ing are optimised:

• Meta titles
• H tags
• Key­word research
• Out­bound links

On the oth­er hand, if you’ve already tak­en steps to boost your site’s SEO, you can fur­ther your efforts by cre­at­ing an exten­sive blog strat­e­gy that’s inter­nal­ly linked or boost­ed by an out­reach cam­paign. You might also want to have your web­site audit­ed by an SEO spe­cial­ist and fix all the errors they uncover.

Ulti­mate­ly, good SEO can be achieved by con­duct­ing key­word research, opti­mis­ing a web­site’s struc­ture, and pub­lish­ing high-qual­i­ty con­tent regularly.

To learn about con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion strate­gies for 2023, check out our in-depth arti­cle.

3. CREATE A LOYALTY SCHEME

Build­ing cus­tomer loy­al­ty is essen­tial for sus­tain­able e‑commerce growth. Plus, it’s cheap­er to keep cus­tomers than acquire new ones.

One way of boost­ing loy­al­ty is by cre­at­ing a cus­tomer reward scheme. These can incen­tivise repeat pur­chas­es, increase cus­tomer reten­tion, and encour­age referrals.

A study from YouGov found that 59% of UK adults think all brands should offer a loy­al­ty pro­gramme and that one of the main rea­sons why peo­ple don’t sub­scribe to one is that “finan­cial mat­ters con­fuse” them.

It would make sense, then, for busi­ness­es to not only cre­ate loy­al­ty schemes but also make them sim­ple to under­stand. There are numer­ous ways you can reward your cus­tomers, but it’s best to keep it straightforward.

Some incen­tives are more attrac­tive than oth­ers; to make sure your loy­al­ty pro­gramme returns your invest­ment, make sure you know what your cus­tomers want. The YouGov study found that prize draws were one of the least pop­u­lar forms of reward, with dis­counts scor­ing the high­est in popularity.

We know that offer­ing exclu­sive dis­counts, rewards, or per­son­alised offers to loy­al cus­tomers returns actu­al mon­e­tary results, as 47% of mem­bers spend more with the brand whose pro­gramme they’re sub­scribed to.

So, how can you get a loy­al­ty scheme to work effec­tive­ly for your e‑commerce busi­ness? Make sure you do the following:

• Give mem­bers the type of reward they want most.
• Be clear about how your loy­al­ty scheme works.
• Let cus­tomers know their data is safe and kept private.
• Don’t has­sle your sub­scribers too much, or they’ll unsubscribe.
• Give them dis­counts and offers steadi­ly. Not too often and not too rarely, or they’ll lose inter­est or feel forgotten.
• Don’t add them to an irrel­e­vant mail­ing list. Keep your com­mu­ni­ca­tions focused on the loy­al­ty pro­gramme, or mem­bers will start to feel hassled.
• Don’t make it too dif­fi­cult to earn rewards.

4. EXPAND YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORTS

Social media has become an indis­pens­able plat­form for e‑commerce mar­ket­ing that allows you to con­nect with your tar­get audi­ence beyond the short-form videos we dis­cussed above.

There are numer­ous ways you can mar­ket your e‑commerce busi­ness on social media, which we’ll go into short­ly. Above all, it’s essen­tial that busi­ness­es cre­ate strate­gies that align with their brand and tar­get audi­ence, includ­ing the plat­form they choose to cam­paign on.

To read an exten­sive guide to build­ing your brand on social media, check out our last arti­cle. But for now, here are sev­er­al ways you can use social media plat­forms to build brand aware­ness, boost con­ver­sions, and dri­ve traf­fic to your website:

• Dri­ve users towards your web­site, blog, or YouTube channel.
• Share updates about your brand and shop.
• Receive and answer cus­tomer ser­vice queries.
• Announce new prod­uct arrivals or sales.
• Join and con­tribute to dis­cus­sions about your industry.
• Enter­tain and edu­cate users with con­tent about your busi­ness or its industry.
• Share user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent (UGC), such as reviews and how-to-use guides.

Don’t for­get to use audi­ence tar­get­ing to reach your spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ic and be con­sis­tent with your post­ing schedule.

5. REFINE YOUR PPC ADS

Pay-per-click (PPC) adver­tis­ing is one of the most pop­u­lar adver­tis­ing meth­ods in the world. It’s a sure­fire way for busi­ness­es to reach their tar­get audi­ence direct­ly and gen­er­ate imme­di­ate results.

It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly attrac­tive to e‑commerce busi­ness­es because they often tar­get shop­pers who are “ready to buy” and allow for high­ly spe­cif­ic tar­get­ing so that sell­ers can reach their desired demographic.

Most busi­ness­es will have to choose between PPC on Google or Face­book, with both plat­forms offer­ing dif­fer­ent func­tion­al­i­ties to adver­tis­ers. To learn more about the dif­fer­ences between these two, check out our ded­i­cat­ed arti­cle.

If you’ve already inte­grat­ed PPC adver­tis­ing into your e‑commerce strat­e­gy, you can always improve it by get­ting even more tar­get­ed in your cam­paigns. Refin­ing your tar­get­ing meth­ods means your ads will reach the most rel­e­vant and recep­tive audi­ence, lead­ing to high­er click-through rates (CTR) and con­ver­sions. Here’s how you can do so:

• Start by iden­ti­fy­ing any gaps or areas for improve­ment in your cur­rent tar­get­ing set­tings. You might need to recon­sid­er the demo­graph­ics, inter­ests, and behav­iours of your tar­get audi­ence to refine your tar­get­ing parameters.
• Make sure you take advan­tage of any advanced tar­get­ing options on your cho­sen PPC plat­form, such as cus­tom intent audi­ences or looka­like audi­ences, to reach peo­ple who share char­ac­ter­is­tics with your exist­ing cus­tomer base.
• Revis­it your key­word research to iden­ti­fy rel­e­vant and high-intent search terms. Expand­ing your key­word list to include long-tail key­words that align with your prod­ucts or ser­vices can help you reach users who are fur­ther along in the buy­ing process and more like­ly to convert.
• Retar­get­ing cam­paigns can do won­ders to re-engage users who have pre­vi­ous­ly inter­act­ed with your web­site or shown inter­est in your offer­ings. By serv­ing tai­lored ads to these indi­vid­u­als, you can remind them of their ini­tial inter­est and encour­age them to return and com­plete a purchase.
• Refine your tar­get­ing based on the per­for­mance of spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ics, key­words, or audi­ences. And don’t for­get you can always adjust bids and bud­gets to allo­cate resources more effectively.

6. ENCOURAGE CUSTOMER REVIEWS

With 93% of con­sumers say­ing online reviews impact their buy­ing deci­sions, we can safe­ly say that cus­tomer reviews play a vital role in build­ing trust, cred­i­bil­i­ty, and rev­enue for your e‑commerce business.

While pos­i­tive reviews act as social proof and encour­age pur­chas­es, neg­a­tive reviews tell peo­ple to keep clear.

To har­ness the pow­er of pos­i­tive reviews, busi­ness­es need to either:

1. Encour­age cus­tomers to leave feedback.

2. Pro­vide “above and beyond” service.

And since day-to-day most busi­ness­es can’t go above and beyond with every sin­gle cus­tomer (though it should be the aim), it’s rec­om­mend­ed that you ask cus­tomers to leave a review. You can do this by send­ing post-pur­chase emails, pro­vid­ing incen­tives, or fea­tur­ing reviews promi­nent­ly on your website.

Show­cas­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of these reviews will be essen­tial, as well as respond­ing to neg­a­tive feed­back prompt­ly and professionally.

7. REACH EXCELLENCE WITH EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

89% of mar­keters use email as their main lead gen­er­a­tion method. That’s a lot of busi­ness­es using email mar­ket­ing. But how many are using email effectively?

To improve your cur­rent email mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, make sure you’re doing the following:

• Clean­ing your mail­ing list every six months.
• Retar­get­ing unen­gaged leads.
• Seg­ment­ing your mail­ing list.
• Find­ing a bal­ance in com­mu­ni­ca­tion fre­quen­cy – you don’t want to over­whelm or for­get leads!
• Offer­ing per­son­alised rec­om­men­da­tions and discounts.
• Shar­ing non-pro­mo­tion­al con­tent such as edu­ca­tion­al videos or “behind-the-scenes” updates.
• Try­ing out new designs with A/B test­ing to dis­cov­er the most effec­tive themes, lay­outs, and colours.
• Opti­mis­ing your emails for mobile.

Just because your e‑commerce brand is already using email, you can always improve your strat­e­gy. Don’t for­get that your sender’s rep­u­ta­tion can be dam­aged by a low open rate and unen­gaged sub­scribers, as well as spam­my tac­tics like over­ly fre­quent emails.

To read a more exten­sive guide to email mar­ket­ing, check out our ded­i­cat­ed arti­cle.

8. RETARGET YOUR LEADS

It real­ly does cost less to encour­age cus­tomers to return than acquire whole new leads.

While the aver­age CTR for dis­play ads is 0.07%, it’s 0.7% for retar­get­ed ads. That’s a 10x increase on average.

That’s why retar­get­ing should form a key com­po­nent of any e‑commerce mar­ket­ing strategy.

Ads aren’t the only way busi­ness­es can retar­get leads. The log­ic of the sta­tis­tic above applies to a range of retar­get­ing meth­ods because cus­tomers are sim­ply more like­ly to engage with brands they recog­nise and have shopped with before.

You can lever­age the pow­er of retar­get­ing by:

• Using retar­get­ing pix­els to dis­play spe­cif­ic ads to spe­cif­ic visitors.
• Reach­ing out to leads via email who have aban­doned their carts.
• Retar­get pre­vi­ous cus­tomers with ads for com­ple­men­tary or upgrad­ed products.
• Show­ing users per­son­alised ads for new prod­ucts if they haven’t vis­it­ed your site in a cer­tain peri­od of time.
• Seg­ment­ing your audi­ence and show­ing dif­fer­ent groups per­son­alised ads.

Retar­get­ing, also known as remar­ket­ing, is a pow­er­ful strat­e­gy to re-engage poten­tial cus­tomers who have pre­vi­ous­ly shown inter­est in your prod­ucts or vis­it­ed your web­site. By stay­ing top-of-mind through strate­gi­cal­ly placed ads, you increase the chances of con­vert­ing those poten­tial cus­tomers into actu­al buyers.

9. OPTIMISE YOUR WEBSITE

Though the opti­mi­sa­tion of web­sites does­n’t direct­ly fall under the cat­e­go­ry of mar­ket­ing, it is a fun­da­men­tal support.

A well-opti­mised web­site is cru­cial if e‑commerce brands are to deliv­er seam­less and per­son­alised shop­ping expe­ri­ences that return max­i­mum con­ver­sions. Plus, if mar­ket­ing efforts suc­ceed in dri­ving users onto your web­site, but it’s faulty or poor­ly designed, the mon­ey spent on acquir­ing those leads will be wasted.

So, we rec­om­mend all e‑commerce busi­ness­es do the fol­low­ing to opti­mise their websites:

• Make web pages mobile-responsive.
• Improve page load­ing speed.
• Stream­line the check­out process (e.g., allow guest check­out option).
• Sim­pli­fy forms.
• Con­duct reg­u­lar web­site audits to iden­ti­fy faulty links and oth­er bro­ken elements.
• Opti­mise prod­uct pages for user-friend­li­ness and CTAs.
• Assign one sim­ple but strong CTA per web page.
• Cre­ate upselling ele­ments to boost aver­age order value.

To read our top 10 UX tips for e‑commerce web­sites, read our in-depth arti­cle.

10. INVEST IN PERSONALISATION

Per­son­al­is­ing the shop­ping expe­ri­ence can sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and dri­ve con­ver­sions. Utilise data and cus­tomer insights to deliv­er per­son­alised prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions, tai­lored offers, and tar­get­ed mar­ket­ing mes­sages. Imple­ment­ing per­son­al­i­sa­tion tech­niques, such as:

• Dynam­ic web­site con­tent (based on user pref­er­ences and behaviours)
• Cus­tomised email cam­paigns (based on brows­ing and pur­chase history)
• Per­son­alised prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions (via machine learn­ing and cus­tomer data)
• Cus­tomised dis­counts and offers (based on brows­ing and pur­chase history)
• Per­son­alised retar­get­ing ads (see above)

If you’re going to embark on per­son­al­is­ing the shop­ping expe­ri­ences of your web­site vis­i­tors, beware that it can be hin­dered by over­whelm­ing­ly large datasets. So, busi­ness­es should use fil­ters when analysing their data to nar­row it down and gain insights into recent and niche trends that are most valu­able to them.

Don’t for­get to have an open archi­tec­ture across all your mar­ket­ing and e‑commerce tools so that shop­ping expe­ri­ences are tru­ly cohe­sive and per­son­alised across the board. Read our exten­sive guide to per­son­al­i­sa­tion here.

11. IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE

Since e‑commerce shops oper­ate online, busi­ness­es have to work hard­er than local shops to forge per­son­able and emo­tion­al con­nec­tions with their cus­tomers. And since this is a pow­er­ful rea­son why peo­ple return, it’s essen­tial that e‑commerce brands put effort into their rela­tion­ships with customers.

Cus­tomer ser­vice is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in deter­min­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, return­ing cus­tomers, and cus­tomer reviews. There­fore, it’s crit­i­cal that busi­ness­es opti­mise their sup­port ser­vices as a fun­da­men­tal part of their wider strategy.

Above all, cus­tomer queries should be answered prompt­ly and effec­tive­ly. Though chat­bots are grow­ing increas­ing­ly respon­sive, some busi­ness­es decide to keep real cus­tomer ser­vice providers to ensure cus­tomers receive an empa­thet­ic and human expe­ri­ence with some­one who can deal with more com­plex prob­lems and adjust to individuals.

Regard­less of whether you choose to utilise chat­bots, make sure cus­tomers can reach you via mul­ti­ple chan­nels, such as live chat, email, and phone sup­port. Some busi­ness­es even use plat­forms like Twit­ter and Insta­gram for this purpose.

To learn more about how you can opti­mise your cus­tomer ser­vice offer­ing, read our arti­cle here.

Final thoughts

We under­stand that there’s a lot you can do with your e‑commerce site, and this might feel over­whelm­ing. Be sure not to take on too many projects, as it could become expen­sive. Plus, if your team is over­worked, your cam­paigns won’t be cre­at­ed or man­aged opti­mal­ly. Though it’s essen­tial that your strat­e­gy be mul­ti­fac­eted, good things take time.

We rec­om­mend that you take on new projects slow­ly and not before you opti­mise the ones you have in place already. This is the only way e‑commerce busi­ness­es can cre­ate effec­tive mar­ket­ing strategies.

Well, that and work­ing with pur­ple­plan­et! If you need some help plan­ning or exe­cut­ing your strat­e­gy, get in touch with our team – we’d love to help.

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