Ecommerce Marketing

Ecommerce isn't an island. What good is a beautiful, fast-loading, user-friendly shopping experience if there are no customers to enjoy it? That's where ecommerce marketing comes in. The goal of ecommerce marketing is to grow brand awareness, increase traffic to your digital shop front, generate leads and ultimately boost sales and revenue.

To make this happen, commerce and marketing teams work together to create personalised shopping experiences, like landing pages, digital ads, tailored email messages and shoppable content on social media. Here’s an in-depth look at key strategies and ecommerce tools that will help you to build ecommerce marketing moments that convert.

• What is ecommerce marketing?
• What are the different types of ecommerce marketing?
• Ecommerce marketing strategies to increase awareness, conversions and loyalty
• Ecommerce marketing trends
• How to get started with ecommerce marketing
• The right tools for ecommerce marketing
• Ecommerce marketing examples and success stories
• Ecommerce marketing FAQs

Ecommerce marketing involves how a business engages and communicates with potential customers wherever they might shop or interact with a brand, from an ecommerce website to social media platforms and retail apps. Most brands use a combination of strategies to achieve their ecommerce marketing goals, including content marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, paid advertising and more.

Effective ecommerce marketing requires a deep understanding of your target audience, their preferences and their buying behaviour. To stay competitive, it's crucial to continuously optimise marketing campaigns based on data and analytics, ensuring that your efforts yield the best possible results.

Customers spend a lot of time online. Throughout the course of a single day, consumers spend hours scrolling social feeds, checking their email inboxes, inquiring on search engines and perusing websites. In fact, our research shows that consumers typically engage with companies across eight different digital channels and business buyers use ten.

As a result, companies use different types of ecommerce marketing across a range of channels to catch the eye of potential customers and spark interest in products. Here are the main types of marketing brands rely on.

This involves optimising your website so it appears in search engine results pages (SERPs). Most customers start their product hunts online by entering a few keywords or a question into a search bar. For example, if you’re looking for a dress to wear to your friend’s wedding, you might type, “wedding guest dresses for summer”. The pages and products you see after you hit Enter are the result of search engine optimisation. Ecommerce SEO includes tasks ranging from keyword research, creating unique and informative product descriptions and ensuring fast page load times.

To attract and retain shoppers, you need to create relevant, valuable and consistent content. You can think of content marketing as the voice and personality of your brand. To determine the best content to create for your specific audience and industry, consider all the questions your shoppers might have as they first learn about your market, brand and products. For example, if you sell kitchen appliances, you can start a blog filled with recipes that incorporate different uses of your products. The goal of ecommerce content marketing is to establish your brand as a thought leader and to provide potential customers with valuable information about the use, benefits and context of your products.

Where can companies find billions of shoppers — any day, any time? On social platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. That’s why brands are investing big bucks in social media marketing. Tactics include everything from sponsored ads to influencer marketing and retargeting. Building a presence on social media and communicating with customers on platforms where they’re most comfortable is a great way to boost awareness and build loyalty.

There are a few reasons ecommerce businesses love email marketing. First, companies can track emails and collect first-party data and gain insights into customer behaviour and preferences through analysis of email engagements. Second, consumers tend to keep email addresses for a long time, which means that it’s a great way to communicate with shoppers for years. And last, email marketing is becoming easier than ever with automated tools. Email marketing allows businesses to send tailored messages to personal inboxes at critical moments of the customer journey, such as when a shopper abandons their basket or when their on-site behaviour shows high propensity to buy.

Paid advertising, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, refers to a model where businesses pay a fee each time a potential customer clicks an ad. It's a way for businesses to buy visits to their website rather than earning visits organically. There are many tactics that fall under the paid advertising umbrella, including search engine advertising (like Google Ads), social media advertising (like Facebook Ads), display advertising and more.

No matter what industry you’re in or who your audience is, ecommerce marketing goals are the same for every business: Increase brand awareness, drive conversions and foster customer loyalty. Here are 10 key ecommerce strategies you can use to achieve them.

Not all product pages are created equal. Optimised pages are the ones that get traffic and conversions. Make sure your product descriptions include relevant keywords, pay attention to meta titles and descriptions and create descriptive, user-friendly URLs. To ensure fast page load times, avoid using large, uncompressed images and keep redirects to a minimum. Search engine algorithms emphasise these features, so it’s critical to get them right if you want to show up on results pages.

Along with organic ecommerce marketing, businesses should also consider paid advertising on search engines and social media platforms. This is what’s known as search engine monetisation or pay-per-click advertising. This type of marketing helps you to extend your customer base and channel visitors to your online store through buying paid media space on different platforms. You can tailor the content and images in your ads to distinct demographics and customer interests to guarantee the highest relevance and return on your investment.

Not all customers are motivated by the same deals. Some might prefer exclusive, loyalty-related discounts like a percentage off every fifth purchase. Others might be more inclined to buy if they’re nudged with an incentive like a free delivery threshold. Capture and analyse behavioural data from your ecommerce platform to learn what motivates your shoppers, then split them into segments and personalise discounts and offerings based on their unique interests and preferences.

Customers want to feel seen and heard. In fact, 65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences. One of the best ways to signal that you understand your customers is to send them the right messages at the right time. This includes everything from product recommendations to retargeting messages and SMS outreach. Did a customer leave items in their basket? Send a follow-up email offering a discount on selected products. Did a customer spend an hour on your site browsing a specific product category? Target them with tailored ads suggesting a few key best-sellers.

Successful marketing for ecommerce on social platforms should take into account the conversational nature of social media. It’s more than just a way to market and sell your products — it’s a way to communicate, build relationships and understand your customers. Share product updates, exclusive content and user-generated material to foster a sense of community and direct traffic to your online store. But don’t forget to engage with shoppers — respond to comments and direct messages and join in the conversation to keep your brand’s presence relevant and useful on social.

Younger generations want to engage with businesses in a way that feels familiar and personal. More and more, this means messaging apps. In fact, WhatsApp is now one of the most popular ways customers engage with companies. On top of marketing to customers through messaging apps, many companies are also investing in embedded commerce capabilities. This allows businesses to collect payment directly within the apps, without the need to send customers elsewhere to a basket or payment portal. This means companies can now market, engage and transact with customers all through direct messages.

Positive feedback from current customers is a great way to establish trust and credibility with future customers. Have you got loyal fans who rave about your products on social? Have you seen 5-star reviews that tell a compelling story? Turn this valuable user generated content into ads, social posts and email content.

A quick way to generate excitement around your brand? Host a contest and offer valuable prizes. This increases loyalty and a sense of community with your customers while also promoting your products. For example, many companies host social media giveaways; rules often include following, reposting and tagging the brand in an organic post. This extends your ecommerce marketing reach and with a strategic approach, your giveaway can be an intersection with user generated content.

They’re called “influencers” for a reason — they have a lot of sway with very captive audiences. No matter what industry you’re in, you can likely partner with influencers to promote your products. Influencer partnerships can help you to create buzz and community, often with shoppers that wouldn’t hear about your brand otherwise. It also adds authenticity to your ecommerce marketing efforts; many shoppers view influencers as trusted advisors.

Businesses with the most successful ecommerce marketing strategies are the ones that try new things, test and iterate.

Customer expectations change along with technology. In fact, 73% expect better personalisation as technology advances. As time goes on on, businesses will need to evolve and find new ways to surprise and delight customers — and that includes their ecommerce marketing efforts. Here are a few trends that have emerged over the past few years.

Creating personalised advertisements, messages, images and video takes time. But with generative AI, creative teams and marketers can get it done in an instant. The top two ways marketing teams use AI in ecommerce is to write content and personalise messaging. The result: Content tailored to specific, highly targeted audiences — at scale. Even better? Marketers predict that generative AI will save them five hours of work per week, which amounts to over a month every year.

It’s hard to understate the importance of user-generated content when it comes to ecommerce marketing. Product reviews, fan videos and other content created by happy customers and influencers are a great way to promote products. They give your marketing efforts authority and authenticity and most customers now rely on this type of content to make purchasing decisions. One study found that nearly 70% of online shoppers typically read between one and six customer reviews before making a purchase.

Thanks to the proliferation of TikTok, streaming services and other video-forward platforms, consumers have come to expect video content everywhere. Static images can’t provide the full effect of a garment, beauty product or other items — and video can help bridge the gap. In fact, 62% of consumers favour video to learn about new products.

The success of your marketing initiatives will depend on how well you understand your customers. The better you know your audience, the better the outcomes of your communications with them will be. And that all comes down to one thing: data.

Data is what makes all of your ecommerce marketing initiatives effective. Ecommerce marketers should have access to the following data and use it to create content calendars, product pages, email campaigns and targeted digital ads.

This data will come from your ecommerce platform and includes information like the number of times a customer has purchased products from your website or other sales channels and details about their purchase timeline, amount spent and preferred payment methods.

This data can help you segment customers based on loyalty levels and total lifetime value. For example, you can group together customers that have made a purchase every month for the past year and market to them accordingly with exclusive loyalty offers and discounts.

This is information about how customers interact with your different sales channels. It follows every click, scroll and swipe. Examples of behavioural data includes things like page views, video views, downloads, site navigation, purchase history, time spent on different pages, newsletter subscriptions and more.

Businesses often use behavioural data to gain insights about customer preferences and motivations. When you have details about your customers’ shopping habits, it’s easier to tailor your ecommerce marketing efforts and create experiences that will resonate.

This is the kind of data that helps marketers home in on the right audiences. It gives businesses a better idea of who is interested in their products and includes information like age, gender, income, geography, occupation and more.

Regardless of which strategies you decide to use to promote and market your products, the efficiency and effectiveness of your methods will depend on the tools you use. These tools will help you stay ahead of the competition and create the right content and shopping experiences for your customers.

Your ecommerce platform is what powers your shop front, payment solutions, order management and more. When your commerce platform is connected to the marketing apps you use to promote your products, the entire customer journey benefits. Commerce teams have access to marketing data and vice versa, which means they can build webpages, UI and shopping experiences that actually resonate with customers. When marketing teams have access to commerce data, they can easily see product trends and leverage behavioural and transactional data to create the right campaigns and messaging.

Commerce teams have been using AI for years to automate product recommendations, send tailored messages to different customer segments and more. But generative AI changes the game. Now, generative page designers can create new webpages in seconds. A designer can simply prompt an AI-powered copilot with a task, such as “Build a landing page that highlights best-selling products in our outerwear category.” And viola! A new page for your outerwear campaign is up and running.

Other AI tools for ecommerce and digital marketing include generative product descriptions, AI shopping assistants and generative commerce insights to build more intelligent campaigns and promotions. Commerce teams using generative tools are already seeing major improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. In fact, commerce professionals using AI say that it saves them 6.4 hours per week, on average.

Improving data use and management is a top priority for commerce leaders this year. That’s likely because they know that clean, accessible data is key to effective personalisation and the first step to truly impactful AI. This is where customer data platforms (CDPs) can help.

CDPs gather insights from various systems and touchpoints where data resides (such as business applications, web engagement and back office systems and data lakes or warehouses) and craft them into a single, centralised view that encompasses both customer and business intelligence. This makes it possible to easily view comprehensive performance metrics, understand the underlying reasons for trends and power personalisation workflows. At a time when 65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences, unified and actionable data has never been more important.

You probably want to see how all the data, tools, strategies and tactics come together to help create a full-fledged customer journey. Take a look at some successful examples of ecommerce marketing.

With a distinct brand identity and mission to bring sustainable fashion to everyone, Reformation has honed the ecommerce marketing skills to acquire, convert and build loyalty with millions of customers. And Reformation knows its audience: Values driven shoppers who want to help save the planet and look good doing it.

Funko has the world’s largest selection of pop culture licences. Want a glow in the dark Harry Potter pin? They have ‘em. Want Mickey and Minnie figurines? They have those, too. Are you into anime, sports or comics and superheroes? Funko has something for you.

As you can imagine, a collectibles company that sells to fans and gift givers of all ages with wide interests has a lot of work to do when it comes to ecommerce marketing. Customer segments need a lot of fine-tuning. To address these nuances, the brand partners with a range of influencers on different social platforms, sends targeted and uniquely tailored messages to prospects, loyal customers and gift-givers and creates campaigns for pop culture moments happening in real-time.