If you’re looking to take your online presence to the next level, you need to employ some of the best eCommerce marketing strategies. By understanding the key principles behind each strategy, you can craft a plan that is tailored specifically to your business. There are a number of different eCommerce marketing strategies that you can use, depending on the type of business you run and the specific needs of your customers. 

You can consider using different marketing channels, including search engine optimization, social media marketing, and email marketing. Additionally, you can target specific markets with your advertising, and measure your success through customer surveys and feedback.

17+ Best Ecommerce Marketing Strategies

1. Lure your customers with impactful content marketing

Content is vital for bringing traffic to your online store, whether blog posts, social ads, podcasts, videos, or product descriptions. Therefore to get started with content marketing, you need a cohesive strategy that outlines your primary goals, priorities, and other important details. 

For many online brands, a blog is a great way to start. It delivers a platform to post/publish articles, guides, product reviews, or other kinds of content that spread the word about your products more naturally. 

Make sure your content is user-generated (e.g., adding customers’ social media posts to your site) or co-branded (e.g., cooperating with another brand to enhance your brand reputation, visibility, and backlinks). Your ultimate goal should be building more authentic customer connections and improving visibility online. 

2. Prioritize search engine optimization (SEO) 

SEO is the way of enhancing your store’s rankings on Google and other search engines to draw more organic traffic. Ecommerce SEO is unique in that it focuses explicitly on bringing product pages, category pages, and other transaction-oriented pages to rank along with any supplementary content, such as a blog. 

When done well, SEO is a highly cost-effective way to entice visitors who are vigorously looking to purchase what you’re selling. The best eCommerce platforms present built-in SEO tools to make optimization easier. 

3. Build an email marketing list 

Email marketing is still alive and booming like never before. An email has the potential to bring outcomes even when traffic is slow, or you want to capitalize on seasonal trends. The first step is to create a subscriber base by adding an email signup form to your online store. 

Boost a newsletter with special discounts, product announcements, recommendations, and other exciting content. With an explicit eCommerce email marketing strategy, you can lower abandoned carts, improve conversions, and keep your brand top of mind. 

4. Invest in live chat

Many of your consumers, particularly younger ones, want quick answers to questions but don’t like to make a phone call or send an email. They only make phone calls if required. 

Therefore, offering a live chat option on your eCommerce site can be one of your most effective eCommerce marketing strategies. It lets you deliver instant customer service to those who don’t like to wait for an email response but don’t want to get on the phone and be put on hold.

Live chat is one more way of offering your customers a great experience from the beginning itself.

5. Re-engage customers with retargeting/remarketing

Retargeting or remarketing (usually used interchangeably) provides an avenue to re-engage with people who’ve visited your website once. It’s fairly cheap and is easy to set up.

For instance, Facebook retargeting needs you to add a pixel to your site, and it helps to populate a list of contacts. 

You can then re-engage with a Facebook ad that lures attention to your brand or showcases a product that customers may have been interested in before. Retargeted ads receive a much higher response than standard ads regarding clicks and sales. 

Some advertisers say a 128% increase in conversion rate from retargeted ads, with customers being 10x more likely to click on retargeted ads than traditional ads. 

6. Feature user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content is a potent form of social proof. It shows people utilizing and appreciating your products out there. People may not always trust what you tell about your products, but they’ll undoubtedly trust what actual consumers say. 

Some simple ways to encourage UGC content include:

• Ask current customers to take pictures of themselves utilizing your products and tag your business.
• Make a #hashtag around your products and facilitate customers to use it when talking about them.
• Repost positive comments made by consumers that might otherwise not get seen.
• Run a competition for UGC following a specific theme.

But you have to be smart about how you feature UGC. 

7. Generate word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing

Few things cause more buzz than word-of-mouth marketing. WOM is considered the most trusted form of promotion by 86% of consumers. And those who purchase from you through WOM spend 200% more than the average customer. To implement WoMM, First, create an ideal user experience, especially the digital customer experience (DCX). It includes selling great products and grows to the shopping experience, the ultimate order fulfilment, and the post-sale experience. Customers will tell their friends and family when you offer an amazing experience.

Once this fundamental pillar is in place, you can start thinking of other innovative ways to generate WOM, such as:

• Launching a referral program that rewards your brand ambassadors
• Emphasizing customer reviews on your website
• Build an online community
• Developing unique content that helps you stand out in your industry 

8. Include a keyword-driven FAQ section on your website

While considering eCommerce marketing strategies, many marketers overlook the importance of a keyword-driven FAQ. An FAQ area on your website lets you quickly answer questions and overcome potential customers’ complaints. Think of common keywords and questions people might search for while creating FAQs. Discuss with your customer support team to find the common questions being asked.

Making your FAQ section around relevant keywords opens up new SEO traffic opportunities. Moreover, you make it easy for people to find answers with a quick search, reducing shopping friction.

9. Implement Google Shopping Ads

Google Shopping Ads let you showcase your products on organic search results and Google’s reserved Shopping results page. As with standard search ads, advertisers are charged a per-click amount whenever someone clicks on the ad.

Google causes massive product searches, with almost half (48%) of consumers starting their product searches on search engines. It, therefore, stands to reason that letting your products be listed on Google is a no-brainer.

Google even presents a Buy on Google feature, which makes it effortless for your consumers to complete a transaction directly from the search engine. It streamlines the process of setting up a Google Merchant account.

10. Expand your reach with social media

The eCommerce customer journey increasingly concerns social media touch points. In a 2022 survey of more than 14,000 global shoppers, 65% of respondents stated they use social media for motivation when making a purchase, and 60% said they shop from content posted by brands on social media. 

There are several ways to leave an impression or engage your customers more.

In the same vein, think about how both social commerce and social media marketing can benefit your brand, reach its core consumers, and have them warm up to your brand. Consider launching a social contest, sharing shoppable posts, and hosting live streams. Make sure you consider paid ads as well. 

Most social platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter—have paid advertising options that let you target potential customers via their interests, demographics, and behaviours. Ads can complement your organic strategies, actively bringing new people to your account. 

11. Tap into established audiences with influencer marketing

The right influencers can assist you in increasing consumer trust in your brand. These influencers generally have large and niche followings that appreciate their recommendations and content. They can either share your content or create original content featuring your products (among other collaborations). 

The most important thing to remember is that influencers are innovators in their own right—the most beneficial partnerships are two-way and permit the influencer to have creative freedom over how they familiarize their followers with your brand. 

Developing an influencer marketing strategy can support you in discovering and selecting influencers that go well with your buyer persona and business approach. An influencer can be an existing customer (e.g., a brand evangelist) or another business that sells complementary products and services.

12. Create a loyalty program

Establishing customer loyalty is often considered an underrated way of boosting sales, even though gaining new customers is 5x more costly than retaining existing customers. However, a good loyalty program can get you returning customers. Through a loyalty program, you can reward customers for continually buying from your brand, e.g., you can offer points or credit that can be redeemed for discounts, free shipping, exclusive products, or other perks. 

Loyalty programs can also support you in collecting valuable customer data, including buying habits, interests, and contact information. This data can segment your email list, personalize marketing campaigns, and make better loyalty rewards.

13. Foster loyalty, repeat business, and sales with personalization

Personalization is one of the most compelling eCommerce marketing strategies because it encourages a more seamless and delightful customer experience. 

From offering personal product recommendations to sending targeted emails—there are numerous eCommerce personalization techniques that you can experiment with. 

To create personalization, employ data from past purchases to suggest similar or complementary products to customers.

14. Generate hype with a flash sale

A flash sale is a short-term strategy (usually lasting 24 hours or up to a week) with great discounts on exclusive products or product categories. While the primary purpose of a flash sale is to boost purchases, they also help create a sense of urgency and excitement around your brand, enabling customers to return to your store frequently.

To make it successful, you’ll need to boost it in advance (email marketing is a great option here). You’ll also have to plan post-sale follow-ups, such as abandoned cart reminders or emails featuring similar products.

15. Upsell and cross-sell to increase AOV

Upselling and cross-selling can be proactively prompted to boost repeat business and offload excess inventory. Upselling facilitates customers to purchase a higher-end (and higher-priced) version of the product they’re curious about. In another scenario, you might upsell customers to buy multiple items of the same product (e.g., a five-pack of socks for a discounted per-item price). 

On the other hand, cross-selling uses personalization and past shopping history to offer complementary products. So, if someone’s looking at a five-pack of socks, you might recommend that they purchase a five-pack of underwear to keep their drawers stocked. 

You can implement both upselling and cross-selling via your product pages, cart abandonment reminders, and post-purchase follow-up emails

16. Offer a special discount 

Sales—including discounts, limited-time offers, and rewards—encourage purchases, email signups and fuel customer loyalty. 

A great example is Amazon’s annual Prime Day(s) event, which is based entirely on flash sales, lightning deals, coupons, and special rewards for Prime buyers. Last year, this two-day event caused an estimated $11.2 billion.

You don’t need to be a billion-dollar behemoth like Amazon to build effective sales campaigns. 

17. Experiment with SMS marketing 

SMS marketing lets you get in front of customers on a device that they can’t ignore. There are numerous ways you can use SMS, too, including:

• Follow up on a purchase – Once a user has closed the deal, sending order updates and shipping confirmation via texts can offer next-level service and make it easier for customers to keep track of.
  
  
• Deliver exclusive promotions and sales – SMS marketing boosts quick behaviours. SMS marketing is a fantastic way to create urgency without spamming users for holiday sales, last-minute deals, and even birthday promos.
  
  
• Remind customers of specific actions – SMS marketing (and even push notifications) can be an attractive way to connect with customers in a warm and relevant way. Let them know that their coupon is about to expire, present a personalized daily deal, or remind them that they still have items in their cart.
  
  
• Gather feedback or reviews – Social validation is excellent for creating trust among other consumers. Texts can be a soft and personal way to ask customers to review their purchases or services.

18. Incentivize referrals with affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing guides any partner of your business who markets on your behalf and drives traffic (and sales) to your site in return for a reward or commission.

Affiliate marketing functions best with skilled marketers or partners concentrated on developing regular income from commissions. Ideal affiliates are involved in a related space to the one you work in. Think of working with an affiliate to develop a business partnership where you exchange value for external marketing efforts. 

Because this strategy leverages trust, it may be the most effective marketing technique to break into a new or divergent market. 

Conclusion

The best eCommerce marketing strategies are to partner with an eCommerce store that you know and trust, to create a positive user experience on your website, and to make sure your website is easy to navigate. These strategies will help you increase your traffic and conversions on your website. Use these strategies to start building your successful online store today!

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