6 Tips to Build the Perfect Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

I hate to break it to you, but you won’t be able to run your store for a long time without an effective ecommerce marketing strategy.

There’s more to the picture after setting up an ecommerce store. You need to work on different elements like SEO, usability, and marketing. And while the first two are more straightforward, you’ll need some creativity to tackle the third aspect.

Six ways to nail your ecommerce marketing strategy

📚 Table of Contents:

• Content marketing
• Instagram marketing
• Loyalty programs
• Referral / affiliate partners / businesses
• Email
• Facebook ads

1. Content marketing

Content marketing was first coined in 1996 and, after 24 years, it still manages to be one of the most excellent ecommerce marketing strategies.

Even in 2020, more than 60% of marketers highlight it as the most critical strategy. The reason behind this is a huge ROI (return on investment).

Simply put, it’s an inbound marketing technique designed to improve targeted traffic on your ecommerce store via different platforms – search engines, video discovery platforms, and social media. The best way to promote your store using content marketing is by creating a blog.

Now there’s a long road to create a blog content strategy successfully, but to cut it short, you need to find keywords in your niche and use them to create unique content that provides value to your shoppers. One great example of this is ProFlowers:

ProFlowers published a post featuring a list of 150+ unique flowers. Currently, this store has over 2 million organic traffic per month.

All you need to do is analyze your keywords and create killer content that boosts your audience base.

2. Instagram marketing

With Facebook and Twitter becoming saturated with paid advertisements, everyone is moving towards millennials’ favorite platform – Instagram. The best part is, you can use it to connect with your audience on a personal level. When creating an Instagram marketing strategy, your main goal should be to promote your ecommerce products without being too salesy. Here are a few ways to market your ecommerce products using Instagram:

• Publish Instagram ads
• Post visually appealing content
• Connect with influencers
• Build a niche-specific community
• Improve user engagement using quizzes and giveaways

For example, we publish exciting comics to engage with our readers. You can check them out here.

3. Loyalty programs

Creating a loyalty program is one of the best ways to retain a customer in an ecommerce marketing strategy. According to Thanx, loyal customers spend 67% more than new customers at your store.

How does a loyalty program work? The store provides a reward (in the form of gifts, vouchers, discounts, or redeemable points) to its customers for making a certain number of purchases. My favorite example of a brand using a loyalty-based ecommerce marketing strategy is Starbucks.

Starbucks offers two points for every dollar spent. After collecting 25 points, you are rewarded with an espresso shot. At 400 points, you get a coffee bag from the Starbucks team.

Similarly, Maggie Louise Confections offers certain perks like birthday gifts, priority shipping, points-based purchases, and more. The main goal is to appreciate users for choosing your ecommerce brand over the competitors.

4. Referral / affiliate partners / businesses

Since this piece is on building an ecommerce marketing strategy, we cannot possibly forget affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a performance-based type of marketing where a website offers a reward for any referral made by partner businesses.

The best part about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to invest a lot of time or run expensive campaigns. You can simply sign up on an affiliate platform like ShareASale or CJ Affiliate.

But if you already have a few customers on your ecommerce store, you can confidently shift to a more sophisticated marketing technique – referral marketing.

This is a word-of-mouth-based marketing technique where an existing customer is rewarded with a discount or voucher for recommending your brand to their friends or family. My favorite example of this marketing strategy is Airbnb.

Airbnb offers a cash reward in your Airbnb account to use on your next trip.

Alternatively, if you have a huge marketing budget, you can use social proof marketing to persuade your buyers. These are recommendations made by friends, family, industry experts, or someone famous. Social proof can be used in testimonials, commercials, reviews, and so forth. Some leading brands, including Wix, use this technique. See their Super Bowl commercial featuring Jason Statham.

5. Email

If you have a personal Gmail account, you probably know what email marketing is. Once a company has enough subscribers, they can just start sending emails to improve sales.

However, you’ll want to be careful about how you use email as your ecommerce marketing strategy, as it’s a bit tricky. Today, almost everyone who has ever subscribed to a company has their email stuffed with unwanted messages.

So, you need to stand out, and for that, you need two things:

1. A unique and personalized email template.
2. An email marketing tool for customization.

Once you have these two, you are good to go. Just don’t forget to follow up. That being said, don’t overdo it or you will be marked as ‘spam’.

6. Facebook Ads

Facebook is a saturated marketplace, but it holds more than 2.45 billion active users per month (data). If you want to improve your CTR and reduce the cost per click when promoting on Facebook, you need to make your Facebook ad copy persuasive. And for that to happen, you need to follow the popular Robert Cialdini’s persuasion principles. Two of them which I use are reciprocity and scarcity.

Now scarcity marketing is pretty common, it’s about creating the urge by using scarcity as the primary factor. For instance, last X pieces left, 50% discount for one hour, etc.

You can use reciprocity in either the content or the CTA of your Facebook ad. Reciprocity is when you provide free stuff or a discount for visiting a page, i.e., “visit this page and get a free ebook.” You can even use it on blogs like AdEspresso:

Alternatively, you can use cliffhangers in your Facebook ad description. They are used to maintain suspense. See this ad for instance:

This AI-based company used the cliffhanger to keep the audience curious, and improving the CTR.

Next, when designing an ad, be sure to make it appealing and exciting. Follow the 20% rule stating that the ad should not contain more than 20% text.

And since we are talking about ecommerce stores, it’s better to use a carousel layout.

Another thing is when targeting your audience, use features like re-targeting and interest-based targeting to get the best results.

Which is the best ecommerce marketing strategy for your store?

• Content marketing – Use long-form content pieces along with high-volume keywords.
• Instagram marketing – Build a community and use influencers to spread brand awareness.
• Loyalty marketing – Thank your customers for choosing your store over the competitors.
• Referral/Affiliate marketing – Reward business partners and customers for promoting your store.
• Email marketing – Once you have subscribers, create personalized emails for better conversions.
• Facebook Ads – Use Facebook Ads to sell products on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.

Are you still in the planning stages for your store? If so, you might want to check out our collection of the best ecommerce platforms to help you get started. You can also learn how much an ecommerce store costs.

Or, if your store is already live, we have some other guides that can help you sell more products:

• How to optimize your single product page
• Design mistakes that will hurt your ecommerce store

Do you have any questions about implementing the best ecommerce marketing strategy for your store? Ask us in the comments!