What Is Ecommerce Marketing? 8 Types of Marketing To Lift Your New Online Store Up

Over 270 million U.S. citizens are expected to shop online by the end of 2023, which is around 80% of the country’s entire population. On the other side of the pond – in the United Kingdom – 83% of people shop online. Clearly, we all love spending money online. So, it only makes sense to invest in ecommerce and take advantage of all the different marketing opportunities. But before we jump to that, what is ecommerce marketing exactly?

In short, ecommerce marketing is a strategy for promoting a brand and its products or services online. The ultimate goal of a successful marketing strategy is to drive traffic to the ecommerce site, convert visitors into paying customers and foster customer loyalty. How can we achieve that? Let’s discuss.

Why is ecommerce marketing important for small businesses?

The biggest brands in the world – for example, Apple, Microsoft or Nike – are known for their creative approaches to ecommerce marketing. Of course, these brands have seemingly limitless marketing budgets to back up ideas that draw attention globally. 

For small businesses – especially businesses that are only starting – investing in marketing is a significant challenge. However, without marketing, many small businesses are doomed to be lost in oblivion. Why? To be successful online, you must show off what you can offer. 

Perhaps selling online is not even worth the trouble then? Especially with major online retailers satisfying most shoppers? Well, by 2026, ecommerce sales are projected to amount to 8.1 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. If you are a small ecommerce business selling amazing products or services, why not take a chunk of this pie? 

Top 4 reasons to employ ecommerce marketing

Whether you are planning to sell online or you are already doing it, there are many reasons why employing the right marketing strategies is crucial. Here are the top four.

Reason #1: Build brand awareness

Online shoppers are familiar with such giant ecommerce brands as Nike and Patagonia, but do they recognize your brand and know you also sell fantastic footwear or outdoor apparel? New and small brands are often unrecognizable, especially if they focus on local marketing only. But an effective ecommerce marketing campaign can change that. 

By implementing a carefully crafted ecommerce marketing strategy, you can put yourself on the map, stand out from the crowd of competitors and attract customers who resonate with your values and come back to purchase again and again. 

Reason #2: Generate traffic 

Even though building a brand identity can help foster brand awareness and attract customers, that is not the end of the road. There are many other strategies you can employ to direct your target audience to your online store. Why is that important? The more people visit your ecommerce store, the higher the potential for sales. 

Reason #3: Increase conversions & boost sales

Once you have branding and traffic down, you can focus on increasing conversions and boosting overall sales. After all, the sheer number of website visitors doesn’t necessarily represent the number of paying clients.

Luckily, the right ecommerce marketing strategies can help encourage site visitors to purchase or perform other desired actions and, ultimately, drive online sales.

Reason #4: Foster customer loyalty

Ecommerce marketing doesn’t stop when you make sales. Your marketing efforts must continue so sales are recurring, and one way to do that is by establishing a positive relationship with your customers. 

But why should you invest time in customer retention and keeping loyal customers satisfied? First and foremost, you cannot do business without clients. Second, returning customers are the ideal spokespersons for your brand, as they already love what you sell and can help you spread the word about your amazing brand and products. 

8 types of ecommerce marketing and how to take full advantage of them

While there are many different ecommerce marketing tactics, it usually does not make sense to apply one or two of them. To succeed, it’s best to combine different strategies to maximize the success of your ecommerce store. Here are eight of the best digital marketing practices that can help increase brand awareness, conversions and sales. 

Social media marketing

There are 5.19 billion internet users worldwide, of which 4.88 billion use social media. In a world of 8 billion people, that represents more than 60% of the world’s population. So, setting up a solid social media marketing plan is crucial. 

While prioritizing the most popular social media platforms is the smart thing to do, you also need to think about your audience here. Where are you most likely to find your customers? TikTok? Instagram? Maybe Facebook? Find this out before you set up your business account. 

Of course, creating an account is not enough. You also need to post consistently. Moreover, your posts must be relevant, intriguing and appropriate for the chosen platform. For example, LinkedIn requires a more professional tone, while Instagram has a more relaxed vibe. While you can post all kinds of content on Facebook, you are more likely to succeed on TikTok if you address trends. 

Influencer marketing

Within the social media realm, you can find influencers – people who have gained a large following because of their social media posts and engagements. You can collaborate with influencers to promote your products to your target audiences. 

So, do your customers follow specific influencers? If they do, employ them to produce content marketing on your behalf. For example, if you are a beauty brand, work with social media influencers whose social media channels are focused on beauty trends and beauty how-tos.

One important thing to consider when collaborating with influencers is that it’s not always about the social media accounts with millions of followers that work. An influencer with a smaller but more engaged and loyal following can offer a more effective collaboration. 

Email marketing

How many emails do you get every day? Are you annoyed? Even if you are, email marketing is still one of the most effective forms of marketing. In fact, it is estimated that every $1 spent on email marketing brings home a return on investment of $36. 

It works because more than 4 billion people use email every day. Of course, crafting random email campaigns won’t do. A carefully planned email has the right message, addresses the right concerns, solves the right problems and captures attention with the right subject line. Even the time you send an ecommerce marketing email matters! 

One of the best ecommerce marketing tips anyone can give you is to research different types of emails and plan them according to your customer journey. Here are a few types to consider:

• Welcome emails
• Newsletters
• Nurturing emails 
• Transaction emails
• Promotional emails
• Re-engagement emails

SMS marketing

Short message service (SMS) marketing is a type of ecommerce marketing strategy where you send out text messages to your clients and potential customers. The goal is to offer a direct line of communication and send relevant messages and updates. 

Close to 7 billion people use mobile devices, and so it is one of the marketing channels worth exploring. That said, you must collect phone numbers responsibly and ensure your customer data is secure. Also, you must inform recipients about what kind of messages they will receive and also provide an option to stop messages whenever they please.

If done right, SMS marketing can help you connect with loyal or new customers and enable them to learn about sales or access your online shop with a tap on a link in the text message.

Content marketing

Content marketing strategy focuses on creating unique, engaging and informative content for the brand. 

With the help of professionally-crafted content, a brand can introduce itself, share knowledge and advice, as well as communicate the value of products or services. Content also allows generating buzz for the brand quickly and effectively. Of course, to achieve this, each piece of content must represent the same overarching message and support a unified ecommerce marketing plan. 

When it comes to content marketing tactics that work, make sure you explore all different kinds of content, including:

• Blog posts
• Newsletters
• User-generated content
• Infographics
• E-books
• Datasheets and white papers

Search engine marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a time-tested ecommerce tool for ensuring the brand’s visibility on Google Search and other search engines. Of course, SEO does not exist without keyword research, which is the practice of identifying relevant target keywords and using them to ensure searchability on the internet. 

Needless to say, SEO is not just about keywords. Search engine marketing also addresses the use of links, the optimization of blogs (e.g., meta tags, alt descriptions or title optimization) and other elements that can bring the right audience to ecommerce sites and product pages. 

So, how do you optimize your site and ensure it is both discoverable and ranks high in search engine results pages? Check out these SEO tips for small businesses and discover how to ensure visibility on search engines.

PPC marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing employs paid advertising to ensure your online store ranks high in search engines with the help of text or visual ads, such as Google Shopping ads.

Using paid ads, ecommerce marketers can bid on keywords that help target the audiences within your market as well as direct them straight to the content you wish to showcase. For example, ads could direct to your products’ landing page or a blog post explaining the value of these products.

PPC campaigns support a paid advertising model that is primarily operated through social platforms and search engines.

Affiliate marketing

One of the other effective types of ecommerce marketing is affiliate marketing, in which an affiliate is employed to promote an ecommerce business or its products and services. Similarly to influencer marketing, affiliates earn a profit or commission for sales generated from their promotional activity. 

To ensure affiliate marketing strategies are successful, it is important that a business works with parties that share the target audience. In most cases, affiliates promote products or services with the help of content, video and social platforms. While the brand pays the affiliate for their input, it does not need to create original content, which saves money. 

How to boost your ecommerce website designed by WAcademy interns

Building an efficient and optimized ecommerce shop is an important step in reaching your ecommerce strategy goals. And once you take full advantage of social media, email, online advertising, content and other types of marketing channels – you can become unstoppable. 

Needless to say, it takes a team to accomplish big goals, and whether you’re on the journey of launching a new online store or you are running a small operation already, we can help your ecommerce business scale. So, how can we help? 

Here at WAcademy, we run a unique web design internship program that empowers both web design enthusiasts and small businesses, including ecommerce businesses. How?

While having a website designed can cost anywhere from $1,000 to tens of thousands of dollars if you work with experienced professionals, interns can do it all for FREE. So, if you join the program, our interns get to work on real-life projects – the ones clients like you provide – and our small business partners have online stores designed without large investments.

A beautiful, functional, mobile-friendly website is important, but even that cannot guarantee immediate success. Therefore, we also offer an array of digital marketing tools – from search engine optimization to professional copywriting to Google and Meta advertising – to help you grow strategically. Need a helping hand? We are ready!