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Last Updated July 22, 2024
A solid ecommerce marketing plan will help shoppers discover your store, buy your products, and advocate for your brand. Here’s how to create and execute a winning ecommerce marketing strategy.
The world of ecommerce marketing isn’t easy to master. You need to make your ecommerce store known to customers who aren’t aware of you, convince them to buy your products, and encourage them to recommend you to their friends.
There’s a lot to take in!
The good news is that a solid ecommerce marketing strategy can make the process easier, faster, and more cost-effective. And even if you’re a small business, you can create an ecommerce marketing plan that gets results.
We’ve created a foolproof structure for developing and implementing an exceptional ecommerce marketing strategy alongside actionable marketing tips from our expert search engine marketing (SEM) specialist, Brian Parchmann.
Plus, keep reading to download your free ecommerce marketing plan checklist.
What is an ecommerce marketing plan?
An ecommerce marketing plan is a complete digital marketing strategy used to increase sales and business growth for businesses that sell products online.
A good ecommerce digital marketing plan will cover aspects including:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) on platforms including Google Ads, paid social (for example, Facebook Ads), and Amazon PPC
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
The aim is to target prospective customers at all stages of the sales funnel, from those researching which brand to buy to those ready to make a purchase there and then.
You also want to nurture loyal customers to encourage them to buy multiple times and recommend your online store to others.
But wouldn’t you do all this for a marketing plan for any business? The goal is slightly different and a little more ambitious with ecommerce.
“With online shopping, the goal is to command an expansive range of search terms that cover all angles of search on the product, like the size, color, model, and benefits,” Parchmann explains.
“But with SaaS, using this same approach would likely cast a wide net that pulls in all kinds of irrelevant searches.”
With ecommerce marketing, you work with a lot more keywords, both branded and non-branded. This makes it difficult to decipher which are most effective for finding new customers without blowing through your marketing budget unless you have a clear steer.
How to craft an effective ecommerce digital marketing plan
Even the most effortless-looking post on a social media platform will have a lot of thought and consideration behind it.
Why? When you run an online site, it’s important to create content that resonates with the needs of your target customers and encourages them to find out more about you.
Parchmann identifies three overarching customer stages that an ecommerce website needs to address, though the exact structure of an ecommerce marketing plan can vary from brand to brand:
“Your ecommerce marketing strategy should touch on all three stages of the conversion funnel: awareness, consideration, and finally, conversion,” he explains.
We’ll expand on these stages shortly, but first, you’ll want to conduct an audit.
1. Audit
An ecommerce audit looks at your current marketing efforts, including what’s working well and where there’s room for improvement. An audit will also review your competitors’ marketing strategies as well as overarching trends in your industry.
At HawkSEM, we always conduct a thorough audit before creating an ecommerce marketing plan with the help of ConversionIQ, our proprietary tech. This helps us determine which marketing channels will deliver the best results. Your ecommerce marketing audit should include:
With the data mined from your audit, you can now flesh out your conversion funnel stages.
Pro tip: Looking for a tool to make the PPC auditing process easier? We’ve rounded up our favorites.
2. Awareness
The awareness stage is when your brand first interacts with your audience. Maybe it’s a furtive glance at a shopping ad or the first time a potential customer sees your web pages in the Google search results.
But how do you unlock this stage?
Rank for branded keywords
A branded keyword is a search term that includes the name of your brand or a unique product that you sell.
You want to rank at the top of all the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your branded keywords. This ensures you capture the attention of potential customers and encourage them to convert once they reach your online store.
Let’s look at Jomashop, a luxury accessories store. Jomashop ranks on top of Google for the branded search term “Jomashop watches,” and also has the top result in Google Ads.
Jomashop is also at the top of Google Shopping ads:
However, the brand isn’t the top source for the videos that appear on the video search engine results pages (SERPs). In fact, the top videos are negative towards Jomashop.
This means Jomashop needs to give its YouTube SEO a little more branded TLC.
“Branded keyword SEO isn’t just about generating sales, or ‘offense’,” says Parchmann. “ It’s also about establishing ‘defense’ and controlling the narrative surrounding your brand.”
While brand awareness is vital for all ecommerce businesses, it’s especially important for new ones.
“If you’re already established, I’d prioritize scaling revenue instead,” says Parchmann. “Focus on where your existing customers are and work on increasing average order value and customer lifetime value.”
Tackle your non-branded keywords strategy
Non-branded keywords are ones that don’t reference your brand name or the unique products you sell.
So if you sell dog toys, non-branded keywords you may choose to rank for could include “best dog toys for chewers” or “indestructible dog toys.”
Finding the right non-branded keywords to rank for can be hard. You need to choose the keywords that best represent your products, that your target audience uses, and that have low competition.
There are some great marketing tools that can help you identify the perfect words and phrases to rank for, like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz. Alternatively, an SEM marketing agency specializing in ecommerce can help.
“When identifying the right keywords to use, you want to consider every product you sell,” says Parchmann. “Imagine the specific material, color, and purpose. You also want to think about your product specifications and benefits to make it easier for people to find you.”
If you operate an ecommerce business, expect a lot of keyword competition. It’s essential to regularly review your SEO and PPC marketing campaigns to ensure they continue to bring the right results and a healthy return on investment.
3. Consideration
In the consideration stage, your prospective customer has heard of you and is thinking about buying from your store. It’s now time to show them how you can help and the benefits of buying from you.
- Level up your brand photos
- Build authority with backlinks
- Establish a social media presence on your target market’s top platforms
Level up your brand photos
Online retailers spend big money on product photos—and for a good reason.
Over three-fourths of customers rely on product photos to influence their purchase decisions. Think about it: Do you buy something from Amazon without first scoping out the customer review photos?
Online jewelry retailer Brilliant Earth spares no expense on lighting, high-res photography, and multiple models just for one product:
Notice how it features two different models for the same product? This directly addresses its diverse customer base. The brand wants to ensure potential customers can envision an experience with the product, even if it costs them double.
Build authority with backlinks
Search engines want to publicize the most credible and trusted results. The more backlinks you get from high-quality, relevant websites, the more the search engines see your store as a valued, authoritative source of information.
Every time your brand appears in a quality podcast interview, guest post, industry roundup, news release, or promotional landing page, you build authority in the SERPs.
If you search “best dog toys for small dogs,” Google presents a few blog roundups near the top of the page:
Rover, the first article on this list, mentions GoDog, Chuckit!, and Goughnuts.
How did these brands land at the top of the SERP for that query without posting their own article? They could have done this in two different ways:
- By building a solid and trustworthy reputation, gathering positive reviews, customer loyalty, and perfecting their products to become a niche leader
- By developing a backlinking strategy that prioritizes outreach to industry players like Rover. Perhaps they sent a product discount, offered an affiliate partnership, or proposed a link exchange relationship
Bottom line? You need to be active to get backlinks, through a successful ecommerce marketing strategy, dedicated outreach, and exceptional customer service.
Establish a social media presence on your target market’s top platforms
While it might be tempting to get set up on every social media marketing platform, it’s best to focus your efforts where you know your target audience spends its time. You can do this through competitor research and social media monitoring.
When you’re up and running on social media, there are a few different strategies you can use to get potential shoppers to buy.
- User-generated content (UGC). UGC generates trust in your business and is a low-cost way of creating high-converting content
- Influencer marketing. Influencer marketing introduces new audiences to your online store – you can offer coupons and discount codes to see which influencers bring in the most sales
- Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a brilliant lead generation strategy, as affiliates market your ecommerce store in exchange for a commission
Affiliates may also double up as influencers. For example, surfing influencer Bronson Meydi is an affiliate of Billabong.
It’s important to spend your social media budget wisely. “If there isn’t enough budget to safely support the cost-benefit and there isn’t a clear objective to achieve some avenue of growth, I’d recommend saving your money,” says Parchmann.
Even if you have a small social media marketing budget, there are lots of things you can do to build a loyal community. For example, engaging with customers, using the right hashtags to amplify reach, and creating content that tells a story and evokes emotions.
4. Conversion
At this stage, customers are choosing between you and your competitors. They might even have your products in their shopping cart but haven’t committed to completing the checkout process.
How can you persuade them to hit the buy button?
Tip the scales with mindful remarketing and retargeting
Notice any stragglers in your shopping carts? These customers are so close to buying, but for some reason, your marketing tactics haven’t sealed the deal.
Remarketing or retargeting can help reduce cart abandonment rates.
Despite the similar-sounding names, remarketing and retargeting are different online shopping strategies. Remarketing is when you re-engage customers through email campaigns, social media, and SMS. You can also use remarketing to promote your loyalty programs and referral schemes.
Toronto-based juice cleanse delivery service Total Cleanse leverages its email marketing list to remind customers about abandoned carts, with a discount code as an incentive. This can be done using automation.
Retargeting is when you use online ads to target users who have previously interacted with your brand, perhaps by visiting a specific product page. Here’s an example of a Google Display ad from clothing brand Passenger.
Parchmann’s advice? Don’t use remarketing and retargeting as an excuse to drown customers with ads, notifications, and pop-ups.
“Toeing the line between a strong marketing presence and being spammy can be razor thin,” he explains. However, there are a number of measures you can take to avoid falling on the wrong side.
His method of choice? A frequency cap.
Whether on social or display ads on Google, setting a frequency cap will ensure you are not serving ads to the same user more than a certain number of times a day.
Another proactive measure? Feedback questionnaires.
“If someone wants you to take them off your email list, provide a quick form that asks their reason for leaving,” he recommends. “This is extremely valuable data on what went wrong and/or what could be improved.”
It can also help with retention as it shows that you’re listening to what they have to say.
Track performance metrics
Once you’ve implemented your ecommerce marketing plan, it’s essential to track what you’re doing.
This helps you see which marketing channels drive the most conversions and which need tweaking to bring optimal results.
Tracking performance metrics can also help you troubleshoot problems. Let’s say your monthly online sales decrease by 40%. You’re ranking for keywords, and your content has good click-through rates, but people aren’t buying.
Pachmann suggests looking at the following:
- User experience – “Is the checkout process easy? Is there help (like a live chat) clearly available if needed?” You might also offer some FAQs under your product descriptions to ensure your website visitors have all the information they need
- Product accuracy and transparency – “Are shipping and taxes clear before reaching the checkout page? Does the ad the user clicked on accurately reflect the product online?”
- Competitor analysis – “How do we compare to competitors? Consider price, rewards and discounts, checkout processes, customer ratings, the product offered, delivery times and options, and overall user experience”
Download the ecommerce marketing plan template
Our free downloadable guide will remind you what to look out for when developing and implementing your ecommerce marketing plan.
Save it to your desktop or print it out and keep it by your laptop to remind yourself what you need to consider.
The takeaway
Whether you use Shopify, Woocommerce, Magento, or Squarespace, it’s easy to get lost in the metrics, methods, and meticulous details when launching an ecommerce marketing strategy.
Let us leave you with one final tip from Parchmann.
“Always consider the customer experience. We may need to be aggressive with our marketing strategies. However, we always need to keep the human aspect of how we interact with our audience top of mind to set the stage for success.”
Need help putting all your ecommerce marketing goals into a cohesive plan that keeps your target audience at the forefront and delivers high conversion rates and revenue?
We specialize in SEM marketing for ecommerce stores, helping them sell the right products to the right people. Our diverse roster of clients includes online stores in the lifestyle, apparel, and tech niches, meaning we have extensive experience in getting ecommerce brands to the top of the SERPs.
Our team of SEM specialists helped apparel brand 686 boost revenue by an incredible 562% by carrying out website conversion rate optimization and implementing remarketing campaigns.
Are you ready to make your ecommerce business rain with revenue? Book a call with HawkSEM today.
This article has been updated and was originally published in September 2023.