Running an ecommerce store often feels like a race against time. No matter how well your store performs, it can always be better. You're constantly looking for ways to boost revenue, enhance the customer experience, and drive sustainable business growth. One of the best ways to achieve your goals is to implement effective ecommerce marketing strategies. But that can be easier said than done. Could you outsource some of the heavy lifting to a bunch of fresh ecommerce marketing ideas? This blog will share some of the most effective ecommerce marketing ideas to help you boost your sales, engage your customers, and grow your online business.
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What Is Ecommerce Marketing?
Ecommerce marketing is creating brand awareness, increasing sales, and turning online shoppers into loyal customers for your ecommerce site through different marketing practices and channels.
Types of Ecommerce Marketing
To give you a sense of what an ecommerce marketing strategy looks like, here are some common marketing channels and how you'd use them to build an online store:
Social Media Marketing: Leverage Social Platforms to Promote Your Ecommerce Business
Brands, publishers, contractors, and growing businesses all launch pages on today's most popular social networks to:
As an ecommerce marketer, you can do the same thing, but your campaigns might look different, and only some social networks fit your needs. Ecommerce websites are highly visual; you have to show off the product, after all.
So, your success on social media depends on your use of imagery to drive attention and traffic to your product pages. Instagram is an appropriate platform for ecommerce businesses because it enables you to post sharp product photography and expand your product's reach beyond its purchase page.
Content Marketing: Create Valuable Content to Attract and Convert Your Audience
When you hear content marketing, you might think of blogging and video marketing, content meant to improve your website's ranking in search engines and answer questions related to your industry. But if you're selling a product online, do you need articles and videos to generate transactions? You sure do.
Search Engine Marketing: Get Your Products Found on Google
Search engine marketing (SEM) includes:
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Paid advertising
While SEO relies on your knowledge of Google's ranking algorithm to optimize content, SEM can involve:
This allows you to pay for top spots on search engine results pages. On Google, PPC campaigns guarantee that potential buyers will see a link to your page when they enter search terms that match the terms of your campaign. Your payoff should be high because you pay Google each time a person clicks on your result. This is why ecommerce marketers often register with Google AdWords and promote their product pages through PPC campaigns.
The campaign puts the business's product in front of searchers when they click on a paid result, increasing the likelihood that the searcher will purchase before leaving the website.
Email Marketing: Communicate Directly with Interested Leads
Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, and believe it or not, it holds specific value in the world of ecommerce marketing. The best part about email marketing? It can be automated. Automation means you can set up a successful drip campaign to subscribers segmented by interest or stage in the buyer’s journey and let your email campaign do its magic. It’s one less marketing tactic you must worry about on your long list of tasks.
Even so, you must be meticulous about your email list to maintain trust among your leads. When data privacy runs high on an internet user's priority list, not every commercial email is welcome in that user's inbox. Ecommerce marketers need to be careful when and how they add website visitors to their mailing list.
Influencer Marketing: Tap Into Existing Audiences for Ecommerce Promotion
Influencer marketing focuses on people or brands that influence your target market. The term is commonly used to denote Instagram accounts with several thousand followers, but it could also mean a celebrity or community that your target audience follows or belongs to. Influencers build communities of people who know, like, and trust them. It is, therefore, easy for them to garner attention around your online product through a recommendation or “sponsored post.”
Affiliate Marketing: Recruit Others to Help You Sell Your Products
81% of brands employ affiliate marketing, and ecommerce sites are excellent candidates. Affiliates are people or businesses that help sell your product online for a commission. Unlike most social media influencers, affiliates generate product interest via old-fashioned marketing tactics. They often use:
Paid advertising
Content marketing
Other means to drive traffic to your pages on your product
It’s like having a team market for you.
Local Marketing: Don’t Overlook Local Ecommerce Strategies
This is an often overlooked tactic for e-commerce businesses. Still, local marketing allows you to focus on the areas where most of your prospects are (if you have a large population of them in one area) and offer incentives to your potential customer base.
Here’s how: Use tracking cookies to determine your prospects' location. Then, offer discounted (or free) shipping to potential customers in the areas where you have warehouses or shipping facilities. The incentive is what you need to gain a new customer.
27 Practical Ecommerce Marketing Ideas Your Company Should Try
1. Expand Your Email List
Email marketing is like a direct communication line with potential customers. It enables you to:
Nurture relationships
Build trust
Drive sales
But how do you get customers to sign up for your email list in the first place? I’ve tried traditional methods, like asking customers to sign up at checkout, and the results were pretty obvious: disappointing.
A Powerful Tool for Capturing Emails
Most customers are likely to have this question in mind. That’s where I think lead generation popups come in. These popups can be customized to match your brand’s look and feel and triggered based on user behavior. You can offer visitors a valuable incentive (discount codes, gifts, exclusive access to new products, etc.) with a popup in exchange for their email address.
This could be:
A discount code
A free gift
Exclusive access to new products
2. Offer Prizes Through Contests
Everyone loves a good contest. And when there’s a prize involved, even more people are likely to participate. Creating prize-based contests helps you capture attention and drives engagement, two of the most invaluable things for eCommerce businesses. The key to a successful contest is to make it relevant to your target audience and offer a prize they’ll want to win.
Offer Prizes Through Contests
Take inspiration from Amazon’s prize-based contests, like “Daily QuizTime” and “Spin & Win,” which encourage participation with exciting prizes. Here’s how you can do it:
Use Popups with Special Offers: Display popups on your website to invite customers to join.
Collect Emails: Ask visitors to enter their email addresses to participate in an email contest.
Promote on social media: Share your contests on Twitter or Instagram to reach a wider audience and boost engagement.
3. Personalize Deals & Discounts
Customers today are bombarded with generic discounts that often go unnoticed. This makes offering personalized deals and discounts one of the best eCommerce marketing ideas. That’s more because customers love it when they find your company cares about their needs and preferences.
It effortlessly does two things in one shot: increase engagement and revive lost sales. It also does one more thing: help you reduce cart abandonment rates. How? The best way is to use targeted popups. Showing the right message to the right folks at an appropriate time goes a long way in bringing better responses. For instance, you can use Picreel to change up my discount offer based on what page my customer is looking at.
I can also offer personalized discounts based on my customers’ browsing history or purchase behavior.
4. Host Product Giveaways
Hosting product giveaways is the red-carpet moment your brand deserves. It creates a buzz that boosts visibility and turns curious onlookers into dedicated customers. Hosting giveaways is one of the top tried-and-tested eCommerce marketing ideas. I know you’ll probably ask next – so how do I do it ‘right’?
Well, popups (time and again) can be one of the best ways to go. You can strategically time them on your website to announce a grand giveaway.
Here are some important tips to keep in mind when hosting a product giveaway:
Choose a desirable prize that aligns with your target audience’s interests.
Communicate the rules and entry requirements to participants.
Promote the giveaway through various channels, including social media, email marketing, and your website.
Set a deadline for entry to create a sense of urgency. Follow up with participants after the giveaway to maintain engagement and promote future offerings.
5. Showcase Social Proof
Social proof is a powerful psychological phenomenon that influences people’s behavior. When we see that others are doing something, we are more likely to do it ourselves. In eCommerce, the reassuring nod from others (existing users/buyers) says, “Yeah, this brand is worth your time and money.”
Take a look at this Semrush example below. It instantly creates a positive impression even for those who have never used online marketing tools. You can show client reviews or case studies on your website—one of the top eCommerce marketing ideas!
So, how do you do it? I find these common ways some of the best to provide social proof:
Using customer testimonials and reviews
Displaying badges and awards
Highlighting customer success stories
Featuring social media posts and mentions
Showing the number of people who have purchased your product
Besides these, you can also use popups to showcase social proof and encourage visitors to take action. For example, you can use Picreel’s exit-intent popups to display customer reviews or testimonials.
6. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Reaching more customers with your e-commerce site SEO services is an excellent way to attract ready-to-buy shoppers to your business. This method will help you boost your website’s ranking in search results and reach your target audience.
Keyword Research: The Foundation of SEO
To get started with SEO, you must choose keywords. Keywords trigger your website to appear in relevant search results. Choose the right keywords if you want relevant leads to find your business. You will find relevant keywords by conducting keyword research. As you conduct research, focus on long-tail keywords. These keywords contain three or more words, like “yellow raincoats for women.” These keywords are specific, so you appear in relevant search results and connect with valuable shoppers, rather than consumers still researching their options.
Long-tail keywords help you connect with high-value shoppers and drive them to your site. There is more to SEO than selecting keywords. You must also improve your site’s performance to help you rank better in the search results. This includes your:
Page speed
Navigation
Other factors contributing to your page’s performance in the search results
If you’re using ecommerce marketing practices, you’ll want to include SEO.
7. Use Pay-per-Click (PPC) to Drive Sales for Your Ecommerce Business
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is valuable to your ecommerce marketing strategy. This strategy allows you to attract shoppers who know what they want but need to find the right place to get it. Sixty-five percent of all high-intent searches result in someone clicking on a PPC ad. These paid advertisements appear at the top of the search results, so they are great for attracting leads ready to convert.
You must choose keywords to get started with PPC for your ecommerce business. Like SEO, you’ll want to choose long-tail keywords because they drive better traffic and keep your cost per click (CPC) low. A low CPC means you can get more clicks for your budget.
Bidding and Quality Score in PPC
Once your keywords are selected, you’ll bid for your ad’s placement. You set your maximum bid, the amount you spend each time someone clicks on your ad. This amount is flexible, and you can change it whenever you want. Your maximum bid and quality score will determine your ad’s placement. If you wish for the best placement, focus on improving your quality score.
Launching Your PPC Campaign
Google cares about putting the best content in front of its audience, so it’s better to have more relevant ad copy with a low bid than poor ad copy with a high bid. Once you set your bid, you can launch your PPC campaign. PPC is one of the best methods for attracting consumers looking to buy products like yours. They will be more likely to convert, which will help your store grow.
The Benefits of PPC for Ecommerce
PPC is also cost-effective, allowing you to control your budget and set the best amount for your campaign. As you generate marketing ideas for your e-commerce company, don’t forget to include PPC on your list. This e-commerce digital marketing idea will help your business grow and reach new heights.
8. Invest in Making Your eCommerce Website Easy for Buyers to Shop On
An important part of your business is your website. It’s your storefront in the ecommerce world. If you want your audience to have a positive experience on your site, invest in making your site visually appealing and easy to use. Users want to be able to browse products on your site and add them to their cart easily. They don’t want to struggle to find what they need or to check out. You must make the purchasing process seamless to maximize your chances of earning conversions.
Your audience doesn’t want to spend 20 minutes (and won’t) trying to figure out how to navigate your site and find the product they need. You must make your website seamless and as easy to use as possible.
User-Friendly Design: The Key to Online Success
The best way to do this is to create a user-friendly design. When you keep your audience in mind as you design your site, you make a site that’s easier for them to use. You create your website so your audience can easily find and buy products. Investing in your website will put your business on the fast track to earning more orders, which will help your e-commerce business grow online.
9. Use Content Marketing to Build Brand Awareness and Shopper Loyalty
Content marketing is one of the most powerful ways to drive traffic to your site. Not only does it help you attract and earn valuable consumers, but it also helps you establish yourself as an authority. To get started with content marketing, you need to pick your topics. You can determine the right topics for your content by conducting keyword and audience research. This will give you many options for writing content your audience wants.
Once you have your topics, you will choose your format. You can create:
Blog posts
Videos
Podcasts
Ebooks
Infographics
It’s up to you to decide how to deliver your content best. Use a variety of formats to keep your content fresh and engaging for your audience. When you create accurate, user-friendly content, you establish yourself as an authority. People will trust that you are an expert in your field. It makes them more likely to choose your business because they can trust you.
While readers may not immediately convert from your content, they will remember your business. When they’re ready to convert, they will choose your ecommerce store over the competition. Add content marketing to your list if you’re looking for great marketing ideas for ecommerce companies. You will:
Drive more traffic to your site
Generate new orders
Help your website rank better in the search results to attract more traffic.
10. Personalize Your Audience’s Experience
Personalization is crucial for success when creating an e-commerce digital marketing plan. Your audience is bombarded with hundreds of products a day, and they don’t want to waste time seeing products irrelevant to their needs or interests. With personalization, you use behavioral data to help you create a unique experience for each person in your audience. You show them products tailored to their interests based on their shopping behaviors. It’s a great way only to deliver products my audience wants to buy.
Personalization: The Key to Effective Online Marketing
Personalization is crucial to your online marketing success. Whether you’re running an ad or sending an email, you must think about how to tailor it to segments of your target audience. Don’t waste your time with generic messages that fit everyone in your audience, as they won’t motivate people to act on your offers. If you’re looking for marketing ideas for ecommerce companies that help you get the most out of your campaign, start with personalization.
Personalization will help you increase engagement and conversions for your ecommerce company.
11. Leverage User-Generated Content on Social Media
As an ecommerce business, the most challenging part of marketing your products is getting people to trust them. People don’t want to waste their money on a product that:
Doesn’t work
Breaks easily
Underdelivers on user expectations
The Power of User-Generated Content
This is where user-generated content can help you build trust in your products. Many people turn to reviews when deciding to purchase a product. 89 percent of millennials trust recommendations from family and friends more than the brand itself. People turn to other people to get a transparent and honest product experience.
User-generated content is an excellent example of this kind of product experience. People who enjoy your products may post about them on your social media. This is a great way to promote your products with an authentic experience.
Leveraging User-Generated Content for Brand Trust
Many big companies, like Target and Walmart, use user-generated content in their Instagram marketing strategies. They use this as an opportunity to show people experience their products. It’s a great way to build trust with their audience.
Investing in user-generated content will allow your business to build trust with your audience. They will see real people using your products and be more enticed to check them out. It’s a great opportunity to create trust and encourage conversions from your audience.
12. Create Urgency With Flash Sales
Flash sales and short-lived promotions offering significant discounts are powerful eCommerce marketing ideas. They create urgency and entice buyers to act quickly. This urgency motivates potential customers to purchase quickly before the sale ends. It taps into the fear of missing out (FOMO) and compels buyers to take immediate action, boosting your sales and revenue.
Creating Urgency with Flash Sales and Popups
eCommerce sites like Amazon push flash sales on different product niches daily. This helps them clear stocks and stay relevant compared to the competition from Walmart, eBay, etc. Picreel’s popups can be your best companion if you want to create urgency with time-limited deals and discounts. You can trigger them at the most appropriate moments for the best results!
13. Upsell & Cross-Sell
Upselling and cross-selling are an art that maximizes customer lifetime value (CLV) and average order value (AOV), but only when done right. I consider them an art because most sales teams and marketers forget the basics—be empathetic towards your customers and don’t be annoying. That’s because today’s customers are intelligent enough to understand when an eCommerce store is tricking them to buy more.
Below is a popular example from Walmart. I was checking out headphones, and this was how Walmart promoted similar products without being intrusive. For e-commerce businesses, using Shopify upsell apps can streamline the process, offering suggestions that feel natural and relevant to the customer’s needs.
Here are some ways you can implement these techniques for your company:
Product recommendations: Utilize product recommendation engines to suggest relevant items based on the customer’s browsing behavior and purchase history.
Popups: Use strategic popups to highlight upsell, cross-sell, or down-sell opportunities during checkout.
Personalized Recommendations: Employ customer data to personalize product recommendations, enhancing their effectiveness.
Clear Messaging: Communicate the benefits of each recommended product to encourage consideration.
A/B Testing: Continuously test different upsell, cross-sell, and down-sell strategies to identify the most effective approaches for your products and target audience.
14. Invest in Onsite Search Optimization
In the digital shopping world, the agony of not finding what you’re looking for is a real struggle. Customers don’t want to sift through endless pages; they crave efficiency, relevance, and a search function that understands their intent. Onsite search optimization (OSO) drives sales and enhances customer satisfaction.
To optimize your onsite search functionality, I’d suggest you consider the following strategies:
Keyword Research: Identify relevant keywords that align with your target audience’s search terms and product categories.
Content Optimization: Optimize product descriptions, titles, and meta tags with relevant keywords to improve search relevance.
Search Relevance Algorithms: Implement search algorithms that prioritize relevant results, considering product popularity, customer reviews, and pricing.
Search Analytics: Utilize search analytics to track user behavior, identify common search queries, and refine your search strategies.
15. Optimize Your eCommerce Storefront for Mobile
Your business must keep up with this evolution as technology rapidly grows and changes. Now, mobile-friendliness is crucial to your business’s success. More people are shopping for products on their mobile devices, so you must adapt the mobile experience to be positive. Analysts predict that over 53 percent of retail ecommerce sales will be mobile. That means over half of online purchases are on these devices rather than a desktop computer!
The Importance of Mobile Optimization
If your business is to survive, you must adapt your website for mobile purchases. You need to create a mobile experience that makes browsing your site easy for your audience to complete purchases. To do this, think about how people purchase products on mobile devices. Think about how they scroll down pages, click on buttons, and the screen size.
Understanding Mobile User Behavior
These are all important factors because they influence how your audience navigates your site. For example, when people browse on mobile phones, they typically use their thumbs to scroll and click buttons. If your “Add to cart” button is in the top corner, it’s not an ideal space for tapping. It would be better to put the button towards the bottom or middle because it’s easier to reach.
Creating a Mobile-Friendly User Experience
When updating your site for mobile usage, put the user first. Create a website that caters to how people browse on their phones. If you do that, you’ll create a better experience for your audience and encourage more conversions. By optimizing your storefront for mobile, you’ll drive better results for your business. It’s a great marketing idea for ecommerce companies that will help you earn more sales, orders, and revenue for your business.
16. Automate Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing reigns supreme even in a world dominated by social media platforms. According to a study by Litmus, “More than 90% of survey respondents say email marketing is at least somewhat critical to their company's overall success. 41% say it’s very critical.” Nevertheless, manual email marketing can be a hell of a job. It’s like juggling a dozen balls at once – exhausting, time-consuming, and high-risk.
Automating Email Marketing Campaigns with Triggers
You can automate email marketing campaigns by creating triggers to overcome these challenges. For example, you can set up welcome emails for new subscribers, abandoned cart emails for customers who leave items in their cart, and post-purchase emails to encourage repeat purchases.
17. Monitor Competitors
Among all eCommerce marketing ideas, staying ahead of the competition is the real deal. Keeping your eyes on the competition isn’t just a tactical move; it’s a survival skill. Monitoring competitors can also help you identify potential threats to your business, such as:
New entrants
Changes in consumer behavior
It lets you identify opportunities to refine your approach and gain a competitive edge. Let’s have a quick walkaround at some of the best strategies to monitor competitor activity:
Track Their Pricing: Monitor your competitors’ websites and social media platforms to track pricing changes, promotions, and discounts.
Analyze Their Marketing Campaigns: Observe their advertising campaigns, email marketing efforts, and social media engagement to understand their messaging and target audience.
Assess Their Customer Reviews: Read customer reviews on their websites and third-party platforms to gather insights into their strengths and areas for improvement.
Utilize Competitor Monitoring Tools: Employ dedicated competitor monitoring tools that provide comprehensive data and insights into their activities.
18. Utilize Video Marketing for eCommerce Digital Marketing to Show off Your Products
Video marketing is a powerful way to market your products. As we stated, videos are a great way to give your audience insight into your products. It’s one of the best ways to help your audience see before buying. This type of marketing goes far beyond just marketing products. Not only is video great for showing off your products, but you can also use it to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how they’re made. It’s a great way to help your audience understand your products better.
You can also create promotional videos, including behind-the-scenes footage. Video marketing is a great way to market your products to your audience. You can show your product in action and tell your audience why it best fits them.
The Power of Video in the Research and Buying Process
Did you know that 80 percent of users switch between searching online and watching videos when researching products? Video significantly impacts users during the research and buying process, so you must utilize this method to help you reach valuable leads and earn conversions. Video marketing creates a great opportunity for you to educate your audience about your product and promote it to help more people find it.
19. Use Amazon marketplace to reach more customers
As an ecommerce business, you want to reach leads wherever they will buy your products. You want to take advantage of any credible platform you can use to help more people find your products. Amazon is an excellent platform for posting your products and reaching valuable leads. It’s a great platform to help you get leads you can’t get through other mediums. Ninety-two percent of Americans have purchased products from Amazon, while 44 percent buy something from Amazon at least once a month.
Selling on Amazon
Many people use this platform to find the products they need. If you want to reach these leads, create an online store on Amazon and start selling your products. It’s an excellent opportunity to market your products to interested leads.
In addition to selling your products, you can advertise them on Amazon. Amazon allows you to create sponsored posts to reach more people looking for your products. It also helps your products appear at the top of the search results so more people find them.
Amazon SEO
To make the most of your Amazon campaign, you must invest in Amazon SEO. Amazon SEO will help you optimize your product listings to reach more leads searching for your products. It’s a great way to help your ecommerce business earn more conversions. Investing in Amazon marketing will expose more people to your products and help your business grow by earning more conversions.
20. Optimize Your Products for Visual Search Optimization to Earn More Conversions on Your eCommerce Site
As we stated previously, your ecommerce business relies heavily on imagery to engage your audience and get them to purchase products. People often know the type of product they want to buy but don’t know the best way to search for it. By optimizing for visual search, you can help direct leads to your products when they don’t know how to search for them. It’s a great way to earn leads from competitors, too.
The Power of Visual Search
Let’s say you sell insulated water bottles. A lead is out shopping and sees an insulated water bottle they like. Upon looking at the price, it’s too expensive for their budget, but it’s still a product they want. To find a similar product at a cheaper price, the lead takes a photo of the water bottle and searches for it online. So, they conduct a visual search, and, to your luck, they find you carry a similar product for a better price!
Attracting Leads with Visual Search
Now, they decide to purchase from your business instead of the competitor’s. Visual search is integral to your business because it helps people find your products when they don’t know how to search for them. It’s a great way to attract leads to your products and get them to buy from you.
21. Track Real-Time Customer Behavior
One of the essential things physical stores lack over online eCommerce stores is the ability to record consumer behavior… in real time and make instant changes to your marketing. In this data, you will find the materials you need to create the best eCommerce marketing ideas for your online store. It’s a process that starts with experiments and builds gradually.
Once you start observing, tracking, and noting consumer behavior patterns on your website, you can adjust:
What you sell
How you sell it
How you promote it to your customers
This task isn’t always easy, but the reward is worth the work. Features like sorting popular orders, filtering out traffic sources, and segmenting best-value customers in real-time… are just some data that will significantly boost your marketing and advertising efforts. This data can then be effectively used in your eCommerce email marketing campaigns to create customized communication pieces.
22. Creating Targeted Communications
Another compelling eCommerce marketing idea is to create email templates targeted towards data from your online eCommerce store. Once such a famous tactic is targeting website visitors who added an item to a cart (yes! An eCommerce website lets you collect that data), you can send out quick emails to them with a discount to lure them into completing the transaction they forgot about.
The High Rate of Abandoned Carts
According to a study conducted by Baymard Institute, 69.23% of shopping carts are abandoned by customers. Customers abandon shopping carts for several reasons. One is that they are hesitant to complete the purchase. Another is that they were suddenly occupied with something and forgot to complete the transaction.
Recovering Abandoned Carts with Email Marketing
You may still persuade these customers to purchase the products they left in their shopping carts. How can you do that? By sending them an email. We call these abandoned cart emails. Even if they don’t put anything in their cart but merely look at a product, you can remind them. Unlike a physical business, it is possible to do this in real time when your brand is fresh in the user’s mind.
23. Highlight Reviews
We all know how important word of mouth is when we make a purchase, whether at a local store or online. A positive word-of-mouth recommendation triggers ninety-two percent of purchase decisions:
Family members
Friends
Past purchasers
The Power of Customer Reviews
This brings us to one of our most prominent eCommerce marketing ideas. Imagine yourself visiting two stores online for vacuum cleaners. One has a basic design with no reviews next to it, and the other website is bubbling with positive customer reviews. Which one do you think I’ll choose?
Ecommerce gives you the advantage of highlighting customer reviews right at purchase. When the customer decides whether to buy from you or not, this is a great advantage to have by your side.
24. Take Advantage of Check Out Pages
Like any other business owner, you want to know as much about your customers as possible. Nevertheless, retrieving personal information can sometimes be difficult. Only some people will give you much more than a first name or email address. Yet, with online ordering, customers must provide much more information than this and seem happy to do so, unlike in a brick-and-mortar store.
Online checkouts require you to provide information like:
Email addresses
Contact name
Number
Address
That’s a great deal of information about your customers that can be used to re-engage with them. You can also learn more about your customers through business insights like:
Geographical
Demographic
Other forms of data
Tracking Website Traffic with Checkout Page Integration
The below image shows an example of a checkout page where a customer fills in his information to complete the order. Suppose you’re working with a digital marketing company like ours. In that case, we can also place a code behind these checkout pages to learn how the website visit was sourced, whether the customer came from your social ad or your email newsletter.
25. Testing Products That Sell
What more, you ask? Well, there’s one more thing. Testing! Consumer needs change, and so do their search preferences. As a business owner, I must provide my customers with products that solve their changing needs. Doing so can become costly and time-consuming in a brick-and-mortar location. But not in an online store. I can change out my products and introduce new trending products almost instantly.
Even a small change on the page can result in a 25% increase in conversions. Of course, the best eCommerce marketing ideas depend on your:
Business model
Target audience
Budget
Sales funnel
Others
Choosing the Right Marketing Channels for Your Business
Now that we have reviewed some of our eCommerce marketing ideas, it’s time to discuss marketing channels. This checklist will help you determine which marketing channels will bring your business the greatest return on investment.
Assuming you have already set your business plan, created tactical designs, and determined your advertising goals.
26. Make Your Page Mobile-Friendly
People use their phones to make purchases and research purchasing decisions before buying. Being mobile-friendly is crucial to your business’s success. More people are shopping for products on their mobile devices, so you must adapt the mobile experience to be positive.
The Importance of Mobile Optimization
Analysts predict that over 53 percent of retail ecommerce sales will be mobile. That means over half of online purchases will be made on these devices rather than a desktop computer! If your business is to survive, you must adapt your website for mobile purchases. You need to create a mobile experience that makes browsing your site easy for your audience to complete purchases.
To do this, think about how people purchase products on mobile devices. Think about:
The way they scroll down pages
How they click on buttons
Size of the screen
These are all critical factors to consider because they influence how your audience navigates your site.
27. Track Metrics to Improve Your Strategy
The only way to know whether your eCommerce marketing plan is working or if anything could be improved is to track your metrics. A few key performance indicators (KPI) you should focus on include:
Conversion rate (CVR): How many people purchased your website from the total number of visitors. Your eCommerce marketing efforts should allow you to keep a steady CVR and help increase it over time.
Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC): Indicates the average costs of getting a new customer.
Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who follow a link (e-mail, social media post, etc.) to your website.
Bounce Rates: It calculates how many people visited your website but left without taking any action.
Tips and Strategies for Ecommerce Marketing Success
Set Smart Goals to Improve Your Ecommerce Marketing Strategy
Every ecommerce marketing campaign needs a set of defined, measurable goals. These goals give you and your team something specific to work toward and help focus your efforts. They will also point to the metrics you need to measure success.
Setting Realistic and Achievable Goals
Starting from scratch is challenging, so use industry benchmarks as a baseline. If you already have e-commerce marketing goals, take a moment to do a second pass and ensure your goals make sense for your business’s overarching objectives. If you’re hitting your goals consistently, it may be time to set higher ones.
Align Ecommerce Marketing with Business Goals
Your ecommerce business goals should be the driving factor behind anything you do. Are you looking to attract more customers? Hit a certain sales quota? Grow your social media following to a particular size. Based on your industry, the size of your business, and other variables, you can determine benchmarking criteria by which to measure the impact of your marketing.
There’s several resources you can use to gain insight into industry standards. Once you’ve acquired and analyzed these standards, you can see how your business stacks up against the competition—falling behind in a specific category. Adjust your ecommerce strategy accordingly.
Research Your Competitors
Understanding what your competitors are doing in ecommerce marketing can help direct your goals and strategies or push you to be more or less aggressive in certain areas. Begin by auditing competitors to see where they rank in your market. Analyze considerations such as:
What are they charging for similar products?
If their website is easy to use.
If they make a consistent effort to standardize page titles, meta descriptions, and on-page copy.
Which social channels do they leverage the most.
Which influencers do they work with to get their message across?
Which keywords are they targeting with PPC?
See where your competition is flourishing. Then, find out if you can replicate it or if there’s a different tack you can take to scoop up a tangential set of customers.
Clarify Your Target Audience
Even if you’ve created ideal customer profiles in the past, it’s a good idea to revisit and refresh them. Ensure they’re detailed enough for ecommerce marketing tactics and confirm that your customer demographics and psychographics have not changed. To conduct this analysis, you can:
Leverage tools to gather and intelligently analyze customer data.
Look at who else your followers follow on social media.
Use polls and other social media features to engage with followers.
Interview current customers.
Different audience segments will need different e-commerce marketing strategies, so tweak your marketing to fit each segment.
Decide Which Channels Make Sense for Your Business
Some customers may spend most of their time on social media and must check their email. Others will read every blog post you publish but never click on ads. Understanding the channels your audiences use is essential. You’ll get the most significant return by investing in the channels where customers are most likely to engage with your brand. And the best way to determine which channels to focus on is data.
Demographics are a good start, but they’re not necessarily your audience members. Surveys provide better insights, but what people say and what they do are sometimes different. Look at past performance and identify whether content, email, social media, or ads bring in customers and accounts. Depending on your chosen channels, you’ll have to:
Build or rebuild email lists
Find social media influencers.
Shore up content marketing resources.
So, be prepared to hit the ground running. Utilizing a platform to gather insights and manage content on various channels can be extremely helpful in this exercise.
Create a Customer Loyalty Program
Loyalty programs are one way to improve customer retention. Offering discounts, rewards points, giveaways, and customer features as part of your loyalty program makes your customers feel special and deepens their connection to your brand. But before launching a loyalty program, do a pilot to ensure my incentives align with what my customers expect and want.
I should also ask some of my best customers to spread the word, telling their friends, family, and colleagues about my products, leaving online reviews or even participating in case studies to get the flywheel going.
Evolve With Your Customers
Ecommerce marketing is a cyclical process. It does not stop after I acquire a new customer or an existing customer makes a purchase. So I should keep going. Evaluate and revitalize my ecommerce marketing strategies to stay ahead. Every day, innovations, new trends, and new ideas can be leveraged to entice and delight new and existing customers. Always be on the lookout for the next big idea in ecommerce marketing.
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