E‑Commerce Marketing Strategies & Tips

What is e-commerce marketing?

E-commerce marketing is the process of building awareness around your products and services and turning that awareness into online sales. It covers everything from getting new customers to find you to keeping existing ones coming back. A good strategy does both — it brings people in and works to foster customer loyalty over time.

What's the difference between e-commerce and digital marketing?

Every successful e-commerce business does marketing, usually of various kinds. Digital marketing is an umbrella term for any marketing that happens online. It applies to all kinds of businesses, including B2B, brick-and-mortar, service-based, and more.

E-commerce marketing is more specific. It focuses on using marketing channels, such as social media and strategies like paid ads and search engine optimization (SEO), to drive traffic to an e-commerce website and convert visitors into buyers. Every tactic is tied back to one goal: growing online sales.

The benefits of implementing an e-commerce marketing strategy

A solid e-commerce marketing strategy does more than increase online sales — it builds the foundation for long-term growth. Here are some of the biggest benefits:

• Attracting high-intent customers in a competitive landscape: The goal isn't just more traffic, it's better traffic. A well-executed strategy puts your products in front of people who are already looking for what you sell, which means less wasted spend and more meaningful interactions.
• Boosting conversion rates with a frictionless path to purchase: Getting someone to your site is only half the battle. Good e-commerce marketing removes the obstacles between browsing and buying, so more visitors actually follow through.
• Improving brand visibility across search and social channels: Showing up regularly where your customers spend their time builds recognition. The more familiar people are with your online store's brand, the more likely they are to choose you when they're ready to buy.
• Establishing long-term brand authority and trust: People buy from businesses they trust. A consistent, well-thought-out marketing strategy signals credibility and keeps your brand top of mind long after a potential customer's first visit.

How to create a successful e-commerce marketing plan

There's a lot that goes into a good e-commerce marketing plan. Tools and techniques like search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and content marketing are just part of it, and any one of these by itself could be a full-time job. So, as we will see, sometimes the best email marketing strategy is to outsource to a professional service provider. One of the unique properties of information technology is its ability to heighten the value of outsourcing services.

But to start, we'll lay out the basics for an effective e-commerce marketing plan.

Conducting competitive market research

The most important preliminary step is to understand the market you intend to serve. Markets on the internet can be difficult to define, and sometimes they don't even exist until you start your business. That can make market research challenging.

You need to discover your competition, measure demand, understand related products and services, and figure out how your brand will fit into the picture. Your business model may remain incomplete until this research is completed and vetted, as you want to gear your service to the market and not the other way around.

Defining your ideal customer profile (ICP)

Defining your target audience means discovering who wants what you offer, and who among that group most wants what you offer in the way you offer it.

Consider two different burger restaurants: McDonald's and Burger King. On paper, they are the same. But if you put them on the same street side-by-side, some people will choose one and some will choose the other.

On the internet, everything is "side-by-side." So, what is the difference between a user who wants to shop with you and a shopper who prefers the competition?

Setting measurable KPIs and growth goals

Short-term goals might be compared to driving traffic underneath a "Grand Opening" banner. It's about kicking things off with a bang. Initially, you'll want traffic, conversions, and engagement. But these, in the short-term, are really just a proof of concept that your business has wheels and can sustain itself.

Long-term goals are about building a dedicated audience with brand loyalty that you can nurture, sustain, and grow. Long-term goals include community building, sustained exposure, and brand authority.

Choosing your marketing channels

You don't need to be everywhere — you need to be where your customers are. The right mix of digital marketing channels depends on your audience, your budget, and what you're selling. A B2B company might lean heavily on email and search, while a consumer brand might see stronger returns from social media and influencer partnerships. Start with one or two channels, do them well, and expand from there once you have data to guide the next move.

Setting a budget

A marketing budget doesn't have to be big, but it does need to be realistic. Paid channels like PPC can drive traffic quickly but require ongoing spend, while organic strategies like SEO and content marketing take longer to build but pay off over time. A balanced approach usually includes some mix of both. As a general rule, let performance data guide how you allocate spend — put more behind what's working and pull back on what isn't.

Building a content plan

Content is what fuels most of your marketing channels, so it's worth planning intentionally. Think about what your customers need to know at each stage — someone discovering your brand for the first time needs different content than someone who's already purchased and is deciding whether to come back. Map your content to those stages, prioritize topics that also support your SEO strategy, and build a publishing schedule you can actually stick to.

E-commerce marketing strategies

A successful e-commerce marketing plan isn't built on one tactic –– it's built on several working together. The right combination of marketing strategies depends on your audience, budget, and goals. Here are a few digital marketing channels and strategies you can try for your e-commerce store:

Search engine optimization

SEO involves optimizing your entire site so search engines can find and rank your pages, including your product pages, category pages, and blog content. It's one of the most reliable ways to attract customers because it drives long-term organic traffic without paying for every click. Good SEO takes time to build, but the results compound. The more consistently you invest in it, the more visibility your store earns over time.

Content marketing

Content marketing works by meeting customers where they are in the research process and giving them the information they need to move forward. Understanding customer behavior is central to this. When you know what questions your audience is asking, you can create content that answers them and builds trust in your brand. Over time, a strong content strategy supports both organic traffic and customer satisfaction by setting accurate customer expectations before they buy.

Social media marketing

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn (primarily for B2B businesses) give you direct access to your audience in a space where they're already engaged. Beyond publishing social media posts, the real opportunity is in building community and encouraging user-generated content (UGC), which consists of reviews, photos, and videos from real customers that add credibility to your brand. UGC in particular is one of the more cost-effective ways to boost online sales, as it functions as word-of-mouth at scale. You can also take advantage of cost-effective social media ads that help you reach more people.

Email marketing

Email is one of the highest-returning channels for customer retention and repeat business. A well-segmented email strategy lets you speak to different parts of your audience based on where they are in the customer journey — from welcome sequences for new subscribers to re-engagement campaigns for lapsed buyers. When done well, email marketing increases customer lifetime value by keeping your brand relevant long after the first purchase.

Pay-per-click and paid advertising

Paid advertising puts your products in front of high-intent shoppers quickly, making PPC a strong option when you need to drive traffic fast or promote a specific offer. The trade-off is that it requires ongoing marketing spend — the traffic stops when the budget does. Keeping an eye on customer acquisition cost is essential here because it's easy for paid ad campaigns to become expensive without the right targeting and optimization in place.

Mobile optimization

A growing share of online shopping happens on smartphones, which means mobile optimization is no longer optional. Slow load times, hard-to-tap buttons, and cluttered layouts are quick ways to lose a sale and damage customer satisfaction. Your product pages in particular need to be clean and easy to navigate on small devices, with a checkout process that doesn't create unnecessary friction.

Affiliate and influencer marketing

Affiliate and influencer marketing both extend your reach by putting your brand in front of audiences you haven't built yourself. Affiliates are paid on performance — typically per sale — which keeps your customer acquisition cost tied directly to results. Influencers tend to focus more on awareness and brand affinity, which can support longer-term e-commerce marketing efforts even if the ROI is harder to measure directly.

Customer loyalty programs

Customer loyalty programs are one of the most effective tools for driving repeat business and increasing customer lifetime value. By rewarding customers for repeat purchases, referrals, or engagement, you give them a concrete reason to keep coming back instead of shopping with a competitor. A well-designed loyalty rewards program also provides valuable data on customer behavior, which can inform everything from product development to marketing spend.

Tips for improving your e-commerce marketing efforts

Unless you're duplicating another company's marketing strategy, then no two e-commerce marketing strategies are alike. As long as your unique value proposition is truly unique, your marketing efforts should be specially tailored to suit your needs and the needs of your audience.

The good news is that tens of millions of successful businesses have contributed to the data we rely on to deliver results. That means implementing a successful plan has been reduced to an exact science.

Identify and segment your audience

Little is more important than knowing who your audience is, but the importance of precision cannot be overstated. That is where audience segmentation comes in. With audience segmentation tools, you can create more personalized marketing campaigns that appeal to your customers’ unique needs.

Track performance

The data is out on buyers, sellers, what works, and what doesn't. However, markets are constantly shifting. That means you need accurate and persistent metrics you can count on, metrics that let you know which way the numbers are going, and the data you need to figure out why.

The best marketing departments actively track performance across a range of categories and persistently update market models to stay one step ahead of the target audience's next buying move.

Personalize the customer experience

Finally, the ultimate in audience targeting is the ability to personalize your brand experience down to the individual consumer. For a successful email marketing campaign, this is absolutely necessary. Once again, failure to do this runs the risk of being marked as spam, even after multiple successful transactions. That's why we take personalization extremely seriously.

Use chatbots and automation

Chatbots and automation can help you further personalize your customer’s experiences with your brand. Adding a chatbot to your website is a way to deliver exceptional customer service, which can build trust.

In addition, automation can deliver a more personalized approach, allowing you to bring customers back to your website. For example, you can use abandoned cart emails to notify customers that they still have items in their cart and can easily checkout by clicking a link to return to your website.

Upsell and cross-sell

Upselling and cross-selling are strategies that can encourage customers to spend more with your business. If you use a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system and track your customers, you likely know which products they’ve recently purchased. You can use this information to market similar and supplementary products to them.

For example, if someone recently purchased a pair of jeans, you might cross-sell a matching top or up-sell them other high-quality jeans that are more expensive. In addition, you can use upselling and cross-selling in your email marketing strategy to entice customers to take more actions on your website, especially if they’ve recently had a good experience with your brand.

Leverage e-commerce marketing tactics to benefit your business

At the end of the day, e-commerce digital marketing services should feel organic to the customer. They should come across as a genuine person-to-person attempt to offer them what they want or need at a competitive price. As simple as that sounds, it is an art and a science that Mailchimp takes very seriously.

Mailchimp helps deliver the best e-commerce marketing services. With our all-in-one marketing platform, you can leverage powerful automations, segment your audience, track analytics, create effective marketing campaigns across multiple channels, and more. Try Mailchimp today to create a powerful e-commerce marketing plan that’s right for your business.