E-commerce marketing

Start with Business Model Canvas

Carefully analyze and get to know your business before launching the first activities supporting the marketing of your online store. Completing a business model template will allow you to better prepare for upcoming activities and advertising campaigns – define target groups, identify key products and revenue streams, or find a unique value proposition that sets you apart from competitors. With this information in hand, you can better develop your brand's communication strategy and boost sales with promotional endeavors.

Online store marketing vs. marketing persona

Understanding and creating marketing personas increases the efficiency of marketing campaigns. It's good to know and understand the person you want to sell something to. Learn about their habits, emotions, pains or experiences. Find out why they should come to you instead of someone else to solve their problems or meet their needs.

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Customer journey map in an online store

The next step in preparing for the launch of online store marketing is to develop a customer journey map – digital path of the customer journey from the first touchpoint to the conversion and sale completion. Find out where the customers who buy from you are coming from. Verify the strengths and weaknesses of your store's interface and the messages that are displayed during the transaction.

Competitive analysis in e-commerce

Check out what others in your industry are doing before you jump in. For a simple, basic competitive analysis, you can use:

• Facebook/Meta Ad Library to research the Facebook ad concepts of your rivals,
• SimilarWeb, SEMrush or Senuto, which you can use to find out how powerful your competitors' online stores are in terms of their most popular subpages and products, SEO, and SERPs.

E-commerce marketing – goals and KPIs

You've already filled in the canvases? Great, it's a good time to set goals for your marketing efforts. You already know at what point you start promoting your online store. The next step is to decide where you want to go with successful marketing for your online store. Using key performance indicators, be as specific as possible about your goals, such as:

• higher sales,
• the launch of a new product or product category and a certain number of items sold,
• increasing average cart value,
• more traffic to the website, etc.

Social media marketing for e-commerce

No online store can survive without embracing social media. Facebook and Instagram alone are often not enough to reach a specific target audience. Today, Reels and TikTok are leading the way in social commerce. Many products and services will rely heavily on less obvious social media like Pinterest, Twitch, and Twitter. Once you have carefully analyzed your persona, it will be easier to match the right communication channels and create the right key visuals for social media.

Content marketing for e-commerce

A business blog that provides value to potential customers and contributes to search engine optimization. Lead magnets – e-books, webinars, tutorials or checklists – that can help you grow your mailing list and bolster your sales efforts. These and many other solutions from the content marketing pool will undoubtedly help your online store rank higher in Google and generate more revenue. 

E-mail marketing

Marketing of an online store must use mailings. Delivered to actual or prospective customers. Both promotional emails advertising upcoming sales, discounts, and targeted campaigns, and emails containing more substantial content.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing campaigns have the potential to quickly generate a large sales peak. A well-known creator conveys their authority to the brand and makes customers more likely to trust your brand. Customized discount codes, UTM's and relevant reports in Google Analytics will allow you to get accurate analytics. You can easily see which influencer has generated the most turnover with their community.

E-commerce SEO

Organic traffic from Google, Bing and other browsers is a very important part of attracting new audiences and building a community of regular customers. The higher your store appears in the SERPs for specific phrases and product queries, the easier it is to reach potential buyers. Investing in SEO for your online store is a long-term strategy that will more than pay for itself over the years.

Performance marketing for e-commerce

Paid online advertising is an easily scalable source of conversions, where the results achieved are directly proportional to the budget invested. In a nutshell: you pay more – you sell more.

YouTube Ads

Product video ads, displayed before YouTube videos, can be very persuasive and noticeably increase e-commerce sales.

Google Ads

Well-optimized Google ads in multiple formats, including search ads, GDN or product ads, integrated with Google Merchandise Center, are a great way to attract customers and boost sales.

Facebook Ads

Marketing on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram has become standard practice for online retailers across all sectors.

Custom advertising channels for e-commerce

Pinterest Ads, Twitter Ads, Twitch Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Spotify Ads and much more – advertising on the Internet is not just about Google and Facebook.

Remarketing

Even if someone doesn't complete the purchase, you may use remarketing ads following them around the Internet. Who knows? Maybe the next touchpoint and the next reminder will make you finally get that sale.

Online store optimization and A/B testing

SEO, social media and paid ads will not translate into sales if your online store is not well optimized. It's possible to lose potential customers at any point in the sales process due to an error, omission, poor interface, or inadequate explanation of the next steps. Keeping A/B testing in mind is helpful here.

High quality photos, descriptions and product videos

In all of these platforms, you will need quality images, video and product copy. Both still and moving pictures can be as persuasive as well-written text. Prepare materials that you can use in your online store, advertisements, and organic social media posts by organizing a professional photo shoot, hiring a skilled video team, and experienced copywriters.

Marketplace – multichannel sales

Building a good account history as well as establishing a presence and growing sales on the largest marketplaces like Allegro eBay, Kaufland.de, or Amazon, can be very beneficial to the success of your online store. Especially if you are the manufacturer or exclusive distributor of a product. If you're just getting started with your online store, a marketplace can be a great place to gain some popularity and establish your brand. Ratings and reviews of your work left there can be an argument "for" or "against" making a purchase.

Marketing automation

The more you can automate, the better. There are a lot of little things that need to be done over and over again when promoting an online store, but you can set them up once and enjoy the benefits for months or even years. Email marketing, getting positive reviews from buyers, running social media, communicating through chatbots and much more – all of this can be automated.

Online store marketing vs. analytics

There's no point in starting any marketing efforts if you don't have your web analytics arranged as you won't be able to measure which activities are actually profitable and in what perspective, and which ones are simply consuming your budget. Google Analytics, SEO tools and also reports from advertising systems, synchronized in Google Data Studio or Whatagraph, are the first steps toward increasing awareness and knowledge of where your marketing money is going.

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How much does it cost to promote an online store?

What budget do you need to kickstart your online store? $1,000? $10,000? Or maybe $100,000 per month? Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Spending too little on advertising your online store can have the same negative financial effects as spending too much on advertising that is misallocated. It's important to find the sweet spot and pick from the list above the activities in which it makes the most sense to invest and increase the budget over time for the next online marketing efforts.

E-commerce marketing – summary

The above text proves that the marketing of an online store is a very broad topic that requires the involvement of many specialists in various fields. Each of these sections could easily be a starting point for a longer article, or even an entire book or workshop. However, it is difficult to imagine an online store that does not address at least one of the aforementioned e-commerce marketing aspects. They all have a significant effect on the visibility and sales of your e-business. So... get to work!

PS We will be happy to help you with any of these tasks. Want to try out HI experts for your online store or some of our marketing activities and campaigns? Feel free to contact us.