12 Ideas for Marketing an Ecommerce Business

Social media marketing

7. Prioritize videos on social channels

Nearly everything in marketing has a visual element to it, because many users prefer watching content over everything else. This includes social media channels that once held only text and static images. Think of TikTok's power or Instagram's Stories and Reels. Prioritize short, engaging pieces of video content relevant to your brand's offerings.

If you're already creating video content as part of your marketing, you can potentially repurpose some of it on your social media channels in a shortened, attention-grabbing format.

Get tips for building your social media presence

8. Tap social media influencers for a campaign

Many buyers today look to specific influencers to help guide their purchases. Find and work with influencers who have either purchased your products before or orbit the category of your products and might be interested in a sample or to be part of a campaign.

9. Encourage user generated content (UGC)

Why not let your customers participate in your marketing? On social media, users love to share their purchases and how it has improved their lives or mood. Consider running a campaign exclusively built on the content that users make tagging your brand.

For example, if an apparel company with clothes for all body types and sizes wants to emphasize this message, repost content from real buyers and how they style your products.

PPC advertising

10. Run a PPC campaign

Create ads and messaging that will appear at the top of search engine results for keywords relevant to your products. Ensure your PPC ads are customized by certain buyer demographics and interests to get the best leads possible.

11. Retarget customers

A key way to reach customers for conversion is to engage with the ones who've already seen what you're offering. Retarget customers who have clicked on your brand's social media profile or website. If a customer has become more familiar with your brand, they are more likely to make a purchase.

12. Consider your product pages

Often, PPC campaigns have everything to do with the ad in question-from text to visual, everything is crucial to get a buyer to click. But what about when they do click and it leads to a thin product page? Ensure the pages your display ads are linked to are engaging, user-friendly, and capture a customer's attention.

Keep in mind that PPC ads on search engines aren't a replacement for organic SEO ranking. Organic SEO requires a time investment to optimize your site and see results, but is much less expensive-often free-than paid ads.

Get the guide to ecommerce SEO

Now that you've got a wealth of ideas to work with on your ecommerce marketing efforts, let's run through some general strategy and best practices that will help you make the most out of your plans.

Define your marketing goals

Every business has different priorities at different times. Understanding what you want to get out of your marketing efforts will help you better tailor what those efforts look like.

Begin by establishing your goals and create benchmark key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure against to understand your success. Then, choose the platform or platforms that will best help you tackle those goals.

If you're a new business, working on awareness may be best for your efforts, and tapping an existing influencer or thought leader's audience may help broaden your reach. Have low conversions? Consider providing useful content to your audience so they can see exactly what they'll get out of your products.

Prioritize authenticity

Today's buyer is not just buying a product. They are often buying a story or making an investment in a brand, and that's usually because there's an alignment in values or a belief in the narrative or people behind it. A great way to make an impression in a busy ecommerce space is to lead with authenticity in your marketing efforts.

Tell a founder's story on your website. Post a behind-the-scenes video of a product's life from idea to a customer's hands. Curate your link in bio to the essentials of your business' story. Whatever feels authentic to you and your brand's story, run with it.

Cross-sell and upsell products where you can

As your business grows, you'll find that some products naturally complement each other or are often bought together. This presents an opportunity to cross-sell or upsell products or services wherever possible. This is a tactic to increase your sales, where you either promote a product with a complementary one (cross-selling) or promote an upgraded version of a product (upselling).

Not every channel or tactic will be the best way to cross-sell and upsell your offerings, but it's common to use in email marketing or even in the content you post. With that same soap and bath products example, one message could talk about the benefits of a specific ingredient in one product while mentioning all of the other products featuring it as well-a cross-sell. The same message could link to a bundle of those products to make it easy for readers to make a purchase if they want-an upsell.

Learn strategies for upselling products

Monitor results and adjust your strategy

It's important and useful to collect data on your marketing efforts. Over time, those results can tell you what channels or types of messaging were a success or where you might need to pivot for better results.

Once you've set your benchmark numbers and understand your goals, set a regular reminder to check how well paid ads are doing, what the traffic to your website is week-over-week, what the click-through-rate (CTR) is on emails, or if there are any trends in video engagement and drop-off.

If the numbers aren't exactly where you want them to be, don't fret. They tell you a valuable story about what you might need to do next and how to pivot accordingly. Don't forget to make note of your successes either. These can help you identify where to lean in on or repeat a strategy.

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