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8 Ways to Develop Ecommerce Marketing Strategies

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Ecommerce is a $450 billion industry, but you already know it’s booming. That’s why you’re here—so you can find your golden opportunity. So, let’s not waste any time talking about the obvious because that’s what 99% of everyone on the internet does. 

Instead, let’s introduce you to eight of the best strategies in ecommerce marketing and how to use them. Learn them well and turn your online store into a runaway train of revenue. You may be well aware of some of these, but chances are you’ll find some new ideas while you read through. If it’s on this list, then it’s worth your attention. Now let’s jump into it. 

1. Email Marketing

Email marketing is still the king of ecommerce strategies because of the return on investment. When you have a direct line of contact with your customers, you can take your ecommerce revenue to new heights through direct appeals and direct delivery of offers. 

Setting up effective marketing campaigns used to be difficult. Today, however, good tools offer a lot of help. There has been a lot of experience and research accumulated in the email marketing world. Because of that, there are now so many resources for building email sequences that convert and campaigns that bring in new shoppers. Plus, segmentation and analysis of your email subscribers is a standard-issue offering from email marketing platforms. 

Screenshot of email marketing software showing email sequencing and analysis features.

For the most part, though, you’ll still have to write the content within these emails yourself. There’s a tried-and-true approach to this. The subject line is always the best place to start when trying to craft an email that converts. Few recipients even get past that point if you don’t write a compelling subject line.

Next, you can focus on the structure of your message. Where should key points of information, imagery, and other elements be placed for the best effect? After that is when you focus on the actual content of your email. Take your time to craft perfect email copy that will entice, engage, and convert. 

Quality email marketing services make this a lot easier to accomplish. Create beautiful emails using templates and get an effective campaign humming along in no time, plus get guidance on what makes an effective email in terms of content, structure, and subject line.

2. Social Media

Since your customers are probably spending time on social media, it’s a good idea to leverage the power of the platform for your marketing efforts. 

You can target millions of users with your marketing on popular platforms like TikTok or take a more surgical approach and find Facebook or Instagram users that are already interested in the product category you inhabit or brand keywords you use. You want to meet potential customers on the platforms they regularly use. 

And this is a key way to build trust with new and existing customers. Online shoppers rarely buy anything without reading reviews and online chatter about a brand. They want to feel a connection and trust a company they’re buying from. Good social content, combined with engaging followers and staying in the wider conversation, is how to build up that goodwill.

It’s not just about reaching people, either. Learn tons about your audience, study your competition, and use retargeting for customers who clicked on your social ads but didn’t buy. And that’s just the basics of ecommerce marketing on social media.

3. Influencer Marketing

Want to go a step further with social media marketing? Try to team up with influencers in your niche. 

This is a fantastic way to reach new customers because of the following these influencers have and the instant, widespread positivity about your brand they can build with a single post. 

There are tools out there for finding relevant influencers on social media and the web. CreatorIQ, for example, features an easy search function that spotlights popular social users by relevant keywords or interests.

Screenshot of CreatorIQ tool with example search results of relevant influencers on social media and the web.

And don’t think you need to find and convince a celebrity for this. That’s a rookie mistake. Microinfluencers’ followers can often be more loyal and receptive to recommendations. With their clout in your industry and your products combined, a microinfluencer can provide you with a new spin on how to market to your target audience, which you may not be able to achieve yourself.

4. Content Marketing

The old saw “content is king” still plays today. Want a more organic and way less expensive strategy for marketing your web store? Content is the way to go.

If you don’t want to spend money on ads and go this organic route, then you have to know a few things. First, it takes a lot longer to build your following or customer base this way. It takes time, perseverance, and patience, plus a healthy dose of delayed gratification. You can and will build a much more loyal following this way, though. 

The second thing is to play the SEO long game. We’ll talk more about this in the next ecommerce marketing strategy. For now, realize this is a strategy that is much more than just creating content. You’ll need to craft it the right way, so it gets seen and shows up high in search results, plus supplement it with the right elements to make it effective.

The main goal here is to create educational and valuable content about your products and brand. This means showing how your brand solves shoppers’ problems and weighing in with knowledge that truly helps your customers. By positioning your business as the solution, your content strategy will pay off in due time. 

5. SEO

When online business owners hear SEO, most of the time, they’re thinking about getting blogs and articles to show up on the first page of Google. And that’s true. But the rest of your site is also subject to search engine optimization, from your product pages to your site’s visual elements like images and videos.

The name of the game here is keywords. Good SEO strategy helps your products or services show up front and center when millions of people are searching for a solution you provide.

The more keywords you rank for, the higher the probability is that you will show up when people search for things relevant to your product categories or industry. To do that, you must understand your audience well and know what terms they use when searching for things. A good SEO tool can help you accomplish this.

Platforms like Semrush are great at showing you what it takes to rank and break through the noise on keywords that pertain to your brand and what you sell. 

Screenshot of SEMrush keyword search function with an overview of search results.

Remember, while Google is the biggest name here, they’re not the only one to be mindful of. SEO applies to alternative search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo, but also any platform that offers search capability for products. That means Amazon, Etsy, Pinterest, and more can all be targets of the SEO strategy you build.

The other thing to be mindful of is to make sure you have a mobile-optimized website. If you don’t, your SEO strategy will work less than half of the time since most people browse and buy on mobile. 

6. Text Message Campaigns

If you have captured visitors’ or shoppers’ phone information, you can use SMS messages to market or remarket to them. A lot of live chat software platforms also deliver a way to easily send marketing texts to customers and prospects.

You can send coupons, provide more personal customer support, answer purchasing questions, or provide visitors who didn’t purchase a reason to come back to your web store. 

This is a seriously effective marketing tactic because you are front and center inside the most personal and frequently used item they possess: their cell phone. And research done by Marketo shows that the ecommerce industry has the highest success rate for using SMS marketing campaigns, helping you solve cart abandonment, cross-selling, retargeting, and even getting positive customer reviews after a sale. 

7. User-Generated Content (UGC)

If you are a new brand looking to build trust from new prospects, you want to trust that the reviews existing customers have left on the web will help. But leveraging user-generated content is like pouring lighter fluid onto a smoldering campfire. It does so much more for your business’s ability to be accepted by new shoppers than you could do with your own content.  

Look, people may not always listen to you or even believe your reviews. Shoppers have trust issues, and that’s not going to change overnight. But quality content coming from other, real people showing your products and services in action can’t be denied. 

What does that look like? That’s simple. All you have to do is get your existing customers to post to social media, their blogs, or elsewhere with testimonials, photos, or videos of them using your product and loving it. 

One of the ways to make this happen is by running contests or challenges on social media and other online venues. Get real people taking photos and videos of them with your products and select one lucky entrant to get a prize or deal or just recognition from your social profiles. It helps to leverage hashtags here, so you can find all the UGC these people create in response and even repost particularly good ones. 

8. Loyalty and Retention Campaigns

You worked hard to build your ecommerce business, and it’s just as important to work hard to keep the customers you attract. Fostering loyalty and retention is a simple enough concept and often the most effective way to build up your revenue and sales. 

Ask yourself, what can you give away that shows each customer how being loyal to your brand benefits them? This question will get you thinking about opportunities to make retention a big part of your marketing efforts.

You can offer a tiered rewards program with benefits on a point structure. Or you can deliver special deals based on a time frame, like making a certain number of purchases within a month, quarter, or year. Those are pretty typical—even cliche—ways to promote loyalty and retention. Be creative and true to your brand when brainstorming. 


Rockey Simmons is a content marketing strategist and professional direct response copywriter for SaaS B2B and B2C. He keeps readers in mind, helping them find solutions through clearly written analysis of business problems and technology. Rockey is endorsed by the International Association of Professional Writers & Editors as a writer who boosts conversions while still providing clarity and empathy.

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