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Ecommerce marketing has evolved from a simple add-on to the cornerstone of retail success. With global online sales continuing to surge, mastering the right ecommerce marketing strategies can mean the difference between thriving and merely surviving. This comprehensive guide reveals 8 advanced tactics that leading ecommerce brands use to dominate their markets and achieve sustainable growth.
The landscape of ecommerce has dramatically evolved over the past decade. Previously a nice add-on to support a brick and mortar business, ecommerce has evolved into the backbone of modern retail no matter the industry. This fact is undeniable, and with global ecommerce sales continuing their upward trajectory, the landscape has become increasingly competitive. Long story short, you need to implement ecommerce marketing strategies.
Ecommerce success requires a strategic, multi-faceted approach that combines proven methodologies with innovative techniques tailored to your specific audience and industry.
Whether you're launching a new online store or looking to scale an existing ecommerce business, understanding and implementing effective ecommerce marketing strategies is crucial for driving traffic, converting visitors into customers, and building long-term brand loyalty.
This comprehensive guide will walk you through some of the advanced, yet essential, ecommerce marketing strategies that leading ecommerce brands are using to dominate their markets and ensure sustainable growth.
Ecommerce marketing is a term that encompasses all of the promotional activities and strategies used to drive traffic to an online store, convert visitors into paying customers, and retain those customers to encourage repeat purchases. Unlike traditional retail marketing, ecommerce marketing operates in a purely digital environment, where customer touchpoints are primarily virtual. This is to say that ecommerce marketing requires an entirely different set of tools, techniques, and measurable metrics in order for a brand to succeed.
Whilst an ecommerce brand can utilise traditional marketing strategies such as billboards and brand activations in real life, these do not fall into the typical sphere of "ecommerce marketing" and therefore, we won't be discussing them here.
At its core, ecommerce marketing is about creating a seamless customer journey - from initial awareness to advocacy after a purchase is made. This involves understanding your target audience's online behaviour, identifying the most effective channels to reach them, and building compelling content and messaging, to resonate with their needs and pain points. Marketing cannot achieve all of this on its own, for example your branding, product design, and product quality are as tied to the customer journey as ever before. But assuming those aspects of your business are working effectively, ecommerce marketing is going to be the primary driver to keep the customer journey running smoothly and effectively.
Plus, the online nature of ecommerce provides a series of unique advantages to brands of all sizes, including detailed analytics, precise targeting, and the ability to test and optimise campaigns in real-time.
Effective ecommerce marketing requires a larger focus than simply driving traffic to your website. It involves creating a streamlined experience that smoothly guides customers through the purchasing process and building trust and credibility along the way. Whether it's a social media campaign, an email sent to your mailing list, or search engine optimisations - the goal is always to create multiple touchpoints that cohesively work together to maximise the number of conversions made and the number of times a customer shops with you.
The digital marketing ecosystem offers a ton of different channels to learn and optimise your brand for. As a brand, it's key to understand the different ecommerce marketing channels and the strategies you can implement for each. By optimising for multiple channels, you cast a wide net that allows you to maximise your reach - tapping into the different ways that customers like to shop online.
Each channel serves a specific purpose in your larger customer acquisition and retention strategy, and the most successful ecommerce businesses typically employ a combination of different channels working together to create a more holistic experience.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) forms the foundation of sustainable ecommerce growth. Ecommerce SEO encompasses a series of different strategies that puts your website higher up on the Google search results that matter to your business. The primary goal for SEO is to get your website more visitors, and therefore more opportunities to make a sale.
For ecommerce, SEO strategies involve optimising the content on your website, keyword strategies, and the technical SEO optimisations that you’d implement for any other website. The beauty of SEO lies in its long-term benefits. Whilst nothing is technically free in ecommerce marketing - SEO requires no additional spend in order to deliver results for your business. Plus, once you achieve strong organic rankings, you can continue receiving qualified traffic without ongoing advertising costs.
Social media platforms offer individuals the opportunity to develop a following and go viral. The same is true for ecommerce brands. Social media channels provide ecommerce brands with powerful channels to build communities, showcase products, and engage directly with customers for no additional costs.
Organic social media marketing involves creating and sharing engaging content that builds brand awareness, and encourages customers to check out more of what you have to offer.
There are a number of different platforms for ecommerce brands to make the most of - each with its own characteristics and audience demographics. The most commonly used social media platforms for ecommerce brands are Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook depending on the audience demographic.
Each platform requires a wholly tailored approach in order for its potential to be maximised. But, no matter the platform, the key is to maintain consistent, authentic communication that actually adds value to your followers' feeds.
Performance marketing (sometimes referred to as pay-per-click advertising) gives ecommerce businesses immediate visibility by placing tailored advertisements in front of potential customers.
Performance marketing is heavily measurable and results-driven, with each platform having its own set of metrics to get your teeth stuck into. This allows for expert performance marketers to endlessly fine tune the targeting and increase the ROI of campaigns. There are several goals with performance marketing, but chief amongst them is getting customers to buy products,
Some of the most commonly used performance marketing channels for ecommerce include…
Meta Ads: Meta ads encompasses advertisements placed on Meta owned platforms, namely Facebook, Instagram, and Threads (although this is much less common). Meta Ads offer sophisticated targeting options and diverse ad formats, from image and video ads to dynamic product catalogues. With more combined active users across than any other platform, precise audience segmentation, and retargeting capabilities, Meta Ads are where any ecommerce business should look first if they need to generate a customer database.
Google Ads: Google's advertising platform captures users at various stages of the buying journey, from awareness to purchase intent. Shopping campaigns, search ads, and display advertising help ecommerce brands to dominate search results and reach customers across Google's vast network.
TikTok Ads: As the world’s fastest-growing social media platform, TikTok ads allow ecommerce brands to tap into a different audience demographic. The platform's algorithm favours personal, creator-led content, which makes it particularly effective for brands looking to target a younger audience.
Despite it being one of the older digital technologies still in circulation today, and the digital marketing platform to have seen the fewest innovations, email remains one of the most effective channels for ecommerce brands looking to amplify their message.
Email marketing provides brands with direct access to customers' inboxes, allowing for personalised communication, product recommendations, and promotional offers. Email marketing excels at nurturing existing leads, recovering abandoned carts, and encouraging repeat purchases through automated sequences. Whether you’re letting customers know about new deals or highlighting best selling products, it gives brands another touchpoint to reach customers who are already knowledgeable about their business.
Partnering with influencers on social media, youtube, and other digital channels allows ecommerce brands to latch on to a creator’s established audience and expose their products to them. Depending on how closely the creator’s audience aligns with the brands, it allows brands to target lookalike audiences to their own.
Influencer marketing can range from macro-influencer partnerships to micro-influencer collaborations, each offering different benefits in terms of reach, engagement, and authenticity.
There are other channels that brands will have at their disposal, but these five are the main ones that ecommerce brands of all sizes should be focusing on.
Beyond the basic implementation of SEO, organic social media, Performance marketing, Email marketing, and influencer marketing, here are 8 advanced ecommerce marketing tactics that you should be implementing in your ecommerce business’s wider marketing strategy.
The jury’s out, and it has been for a long time - Loyalty programs are one of the most effective ecommerce marketing strategies when it comes to boosting customer retention and encouraging repeat purchases.
We all know that the retention of existing customers is significantly more cost-effective than the acquisition of new ones, making an ecommerce loyalty program essential for sustainable growth.
Loyalty programs involve the careful structuring of rewards for repeat purchases, leaving reviews, and other things that are beneficial to your ecommerce store and business as a whole. A well-designed loyalty program will encourage repeat purchases, increase customer lifetime value, and create an emotional connection between the customer and your brand. Whilst the rewards of your loyalty program can squeeze your margins slightly, this is a minor hiccup in the road to stronger bonds with your customers.
Your ecommerce store is as big of a driver in your ecommerce marketing strategy as any of your other ecommerce marketing channels. Once a customer has made it to your store, you can still continue to “market” to them through strategic initiatives - with upselling products being one of the most frequently implemented.
Strategic upselling increases average order value by encouraging customers to purchase higher-value items or additional products that complement their original selection. You may have seen “complete the look” or “customers also bought” sections on other ecommerce sites. Both of which are examples of upsells.
Effective upselling requires a deep understanding of a customer’s needs and presenting relevant suggestions at optimal moments in the shopping journey. It’s also key to look at previous purchases to see what products were frequently bought together, which allows you to create some more relevant upsells and suggestions.
The key to successful upselling is providing genuine value rather than simply pushing more expensive products. Focus on helping customers find solutions that better meet their needs while improving their overall experience with your brand.
In a brick and mortar store, nearly every purchase started gets completed. That’s a far cry from the conversion rates of ecommerce stores, where roughly 70% of all products added to cart are never purchased.
There’s a number of reasons why this happens. Higher-than-expected shipping rates, longer-than-expected delivery times, or simply forgetting to press purchase. Hey, we’re all busy people and sometimes we simply forget to finish a purchase that we started,
This is why abandon cart and abandon browse emails are such an impactful ecommerce marketing strategy. Giving customers a gentle reminder that they were in the middle of a purchase rescues about 1 in every 5 carts. It’s a completely free strategy to generate additional revenue.
Additionally, abandon browse emails target visitors who viewed products but didn't add them to their cart. These are a harder sell, but are effective at reengaging customers whose purchase journey got interrupted - helping to nurture interest and encourage return visits. These campaigns should be personalised based on the specific products viewed and timed to reach customers when they're most likely to engage.
This ecommerce marketing strategy is best explained with an example. Ecommerce brand and cake agency client, Luke 1977, is heavily stocked by other online retailers. As a result when you would search for Luke 1977 on Google, the Google shopping ads that would appear included these other retailers. Believing that this was a problem, Luke 1977 placed an emphasis on bidding for name brand search terms.
Whilst brand term bidding can provide protection against competitors, it often represents inefficient spending since users searching for your brand are likely to visit your site regardless. When Luke 1977 re organised how they were spending their Google Ads budget, they immediately saw more reach and reaped the benefits that came with itl
It’s a quick fix, but one that requires close monitoring for brand term performance closely, as competitive landscape changes may require adjustments to your bidding strategy over time.
Like we mentioned previously, your ecommerce site is as big of a part of your ecommerce marketing strategy as any one of your primary marketing channels, with your site’s speed playing a large role.
Page loading speed directly impacts conversion rates, search engine rankings, and the user experience. Younger consumers have grown up in an age where technology simply works as expected, so they aren’t going to spend a lot of time on an ecommerce site that takes a long time to load. Furthermore, Google prioritises fast loading sites and will favour them from an SEO perspective.
Even small improvements in loading times can result in significant increases in sales and customer satisfaction, so focus on optimising images and minimising bulky integrations. Plus, regular site testing and monitoring ensures your site maintains optimal performance as you add new products, features, and content over time.
As you expand, your business will attract customers from around the world. Whilst this sounds great on paper, it does open up another set of hurdles.
Managing global ecommerce requires removing barriers that prevent international customers from completing purchases, and offering local currency options is one of the biggest benefits you can offer.
Allowing customers to shop in their own currency reduces confusion, eliminates foreign exchange concerns, and creates a more familiar shopping experience for international visitors. This includes displaying prices in local currencies, offering region-appropriate payment methods, and clearly communicating shipping and tax implications.
Shopify apps such as shopify payments make this ecommerce marketing strategy easy
For a third time - your ecommerce site is as big of a part of your ecommerce marketing strategy as any one of your primary marketing channels.
Customer reviews provide social proof that can significantly influence the purchasing decisions of site visitors. With AI becoming more and more commonplace, customers are increasingly questioning any product they see online. Onsite reviews give customers the reassurance that they need to complete their purchase with confidence.
Implement a review system that makes it easy for customers to leave feedback, respond to reviews professionally, and showcase positive reviews prominently throughout your site - it’s all a case of building trust with your future customers, and marketing your products through social proof.
Ecommerce mobile apps provide ecommerce customers with an enhanced user experience and more engagement opportunities. Plus, they act as a direct form of communication for brands through the use of push notifications.
A dedicated mobile app promises your loyal customers an enhanced shopping experience than the use of your ecommerce site. Therefore, they become a powerful marketing strategy to leverage if your brand has said loyal audience.
It’s a big investment, but one that’s sure to bear fruit. So, evaluate whether your customer base and business model justify app development, and make a start if they do.
All these strategies sound great, but how do we successfully implement any of these comprehensive ecommerce marketing strategies or roll out on the ecommerce marketing channels listed.
Primarily, it’s going to require ecommerce expertise, resources, and ongoing optimisation that can be challenging for businesses to manage internally. The complexity of modern digital marketing, combined with rapidly changing platforms, algorithms, and consumer behaviours, makes it difficult for even experienced marketers to stay current with best practices across all channels.
Consider your internal capabilities, available resources, and growth objectives when deciding how to approach strategy implementation. Some businesses succeed with hybrid approaches, managing certain strategies internally whilst outsourcing specialised areas that require deep expertise or significant time investment.
Partnering with a specialised ecommerce agency provides ecommerce brands access to expertise, tools, and resources that would be expensive and time-consuming to develop internally. Ecommerce agencies bring experience working with diverse clients, understanding of industry best practices, and established relationships with platform representatives that can accelerate your results.
When selecting an ecommerce agency, look for proven experience in your industry, transparent reporting practices, alignment with your company culture, and clear communication about expectations and deliverables. The right ecommerce agency partnership should feel like an extension of your internal team, working collaboratively towards shared objectives.
A specialised ecommerce agency can help you prioritise strategies based on your specific business goals, implement comprehensive tracking and analytics systems, optimise campaigns based on performance data, and scale successful initiatives whilst eliminating ineffective approaches. This allows you to focus on core business operations whilst ensuring your marketing efforts are driving maximum return on investment.
The ecommerce landscape rewards businesses that take action quickly whilst maintaining strategic focus on long-term growth. The strategies outlined in this guide provide a comprehensive framework for building a successful ecommerce marketing programme, but success ultimately depends on consistent execution, continuous optimisation, and adaptation to changing market conditions.
Begin by assessing your current marketing efforts, identifying gaps and opportunities, and prioritising strategies that align with your immediate needs and long-term objectives. Remember that effective ecommerce marketing is not about implementing every available strategy, but rather about selecting and executing the right combination of approaches for your business’s specific audience and context.
The key to ecommerce marketing success lies in understanding your customers, delivering value at every touchpoint, and continuously optimising your approach based on performance data and customer feedback.
The time to begin is now - your competitors are already implementing these strategies, and every day you delay is a day of missed opportunity in the rapidly growing ecommerce marketplace.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you - make sure to contact us
