15 Best Practices For Ecommerce Marketing Campaigns

Your customers are online, which means you should be too. 

But how can you make your place in the already crowded digital space to take things off the ground and make a real profit?

With the dawn of technology, when every business is hopping on the internet bandwagon, you need to double down on your efforts to make people listen. 

A well-planned ecommerce marketing campaign can do the trick. But where to start and how to get it right?

In this article, we’ll tackle these questions to make your ecommerce business succeed through an effective marketing campaign.

What is Ecommerce Marketing?

Just building a product isn’t enough to sell it. That’s why marketing comes into the picture to attract, persuade, and engage customers. 

Ecommerce marketing is a $5.5 trillion industry that targets digital platforms to convert prospects and drive sales. A successful ecommerce marketing campaign strategy aims to bring raise brand awareness, turn leads into customers, build a loyal customer base and grow their revenue without having to burn money all the time. 

Clearly, a lot is at stake for the businesses, and the highly competitive environment often brings down many companies to dust. There is no magic spell to success, but some of the best practices for your ecommerce marketing campaigns can help you avoid failure and build a successful ecommerce business. 

15 Tips & Strategies to Boost Your Ecommerce Marketing Campaign

1. Start with the Home Ground

Your website is the first thing a prospect sees as your representation. If you don’t pay enough attention to it, it can quickly turn off the enthusiasm of your visitors.

There are lots of online products and services that can help businesses create a website from scratch within minutes. And amidst the stifling competition, you can’t afford a half-baked attempt. That’s why:

• Design a well-structured website that’s easy to navigate. It’s better to have three short sections with ample information than tons of links confusing the visitors. 
• Create distinct landing pages that serve the purpose with simple and fewer words, have strong call-to-action buttons, and are skimmable.
• Balance the text and images for a better visual appeal.
• Use pop-ups that nudge the visitor to consume more information—for example, a prompt to download the whitepaper or a discount coupon for more conversion.

Source: OptinMonster

• Install live chat to your website to guide the visitor in the right direction or gather more information.

2. Cook Content That Sells

A marketing campaign without valuable content is as good as a car without an engine.

A successful eCommerce marketing campaign uses content aligned with the company’s goals. Unfortunately, writing articles on random topics isn’t going to be helpful. Do the following instead:

• Deep dive into the buyer persona and market demand to provide what’s needed.
• Create original content that is relevant to your target audience. 
• Use SEO keywords to figure out the hot topics of your industry.
• Follow the 80/20 rule– 80% of your content should be informational and 20% promotional. Too much promotional chatter can push the prospects away.
• Optimize your content for voice search as well. 

Don’t limit yourself to a shell. Engage with other industry players to collaborate on a guest post or research.

3. Get Socially Active

Not all of your target audience is on your website. In fact, only a fraction of it really is.

So, to reach your prospects, you’ll have to connect with them where they are. 

• Use social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to engage your audience.
• Social media users appreciate shorter content packed with power. Use infographics, PowerPoint slides, emojis, and images to catch the reader’s attention.
• Be consistent with your work. Plan out the posts and automate using tools like Buffer. 
• Organize giveaways for your online community to earn their time and loyalty. 

Source: Instagram

Source:  Millions

• Leveraging user-generated content (UGC) is another effective strategy to maintain strong customer relationships. You can repost or shout out to your followers who mentioned your brand in their content. 
• Partnering with an influencer is a surefire way to boost your online following. Ensure that the influencer you collaborate with has a common target audience and can add value to your campaign.
• Since social media is run heavily by trends, using GIFs and memes keeps you popular among the audience.

Social media isn’t just about communicating with your audience. You can sell through it. Add a product catalog on Instagram and Facebook to drive sales through these channels too.

4. Set Aside Budget for Pay-per-click Ads

Ads are annoying…only if shown to the wrong audience. 

If a prospect sees your brand name in their decision-making journey, the chances of your successful sales increase.

To hit the mark, you need to drill down the query search pattern of your prospects. You can easily plug in your products if you know where and what customers are looking for.

• Create ad copy that is concise and persuasive enough for the audience to click on it.
• Publish it on popular platforms like Facebook and Google, where you can expect more traffic. 
• Optimize your Google ads with relevant keywords and additional attributes.
• Create Facebook ads with concise copy and relevant images.

Source:  Ikea

Source: Bonobos

5. Slide into Your Subscriber’s Inbox

When it comes to returns on investment, email marketing hits the home run. 

However, you can outperform your competitors with minor tweaks in your current process. Here’s how:

• Needless to say, but always run email campaigns on organic lists instead of bought data. If your subscribers have high intent, it automatically boosts the click rate.
• Replace random weekly emails with drip campaigns. It automates the communication based on user triggers.
• Resend the unopened emails with better email subject lines and preheaders.
• Keep the emails unpredictable and exciting. Balance it with newsletters, product launches, and offers, among other promotional communication.
• Avoid using no-reply addresses as the sender’s email. 
• Create responsive emails for all kinds of email readers.

6. Don’t Write for Everyone

A piece of content written for everyone is not written for anyone.

That’s why it’s highly crucial to personalize your content to target the right audience. 

• Utilize forms to know your audience better. You can add these forms to your website to gather essential information.
• Retargeting is another crucial technique that focuses on bringing back the audience that visited your website but left without expected action. You can retarget through ads, emails, and incentives.
• You can even monitor the user behavior pattern to do meaningful follow-ups. Cart abandonment emails are a common way to remind users of their desired product.

Source: Really Good Emails

• SMS communication is another effective way to connect instantly with your customers. Send these with the proper sender id to ensure authenticity.

7. Streamline the Checkout Process

The more obstacles you’ll put for your customers to check out, the more likely they will abandon the purchase. 

Provide a frictionless journey to check out for a better customer experience. Here are a few things you can do to ensure a smooth checkout process: 

• Allow customers to purchase without signing up if possible. 
• Ask for the only necessary information to keep the check-out form short.
• Provide free shipping if you can. Otherwise, show the cost bifurcation clearly to avoid confusion.
• Give some discount to first-time buyers to increase the possibility of sales.
• Allow users to apply coupons with minimum terms and conditions. 

8. Go Beyond Words

If your ecommerce marketing campaign is just written content, you are significantly limiting your audience outreach.

Customers consume content based on their preferences. You can’t rely on just blogs to attract all audiences. Let’s see what you should actually focus on: 

• Produce content in all formats to appeal to a broader audience. The most popular are podcasts and videos.
• Publish videos on widely used platforms like Youtube and Instagram. Keep these short and exciting.
• Repurpose your content to avoid running out of topics. For example- bring a guest to talk about a topic you published in a blog earlier.
• You can also increase brand awareness by answering questions on public platforms like Quora and Reddit.
• Tailor-made quizzes are highly useful in gathering super-targeted information. You can send these through emails or publish them on your website.

Source:  Really Good Emails

9. Catch Customer Testimonial & Reviews

No matter how much you spend on positive brand building, prospects will search you online before making their buying decision.

It’s when what your customers say about you matters the most. So, make sure that you:

• Proactively collect customer testimonials and reviews through a short feedback form templates.
• Use those on your website to build trust, especially the checkout page.
• Display customer name, location, and image to authenticate your reviews.

Source: SendX

• Monitor what people are writing about you on social platforms. Reply to all reviews, especially the negative ones. It shows that you are dedicated to making things right and value each customer of yours.
• Reuse the positive reviews in case studies and website home pages to assure the audience of their buying intent.

10. Welcome Customer Communication

Ecommerce marketing campaigns aim to get readers’ responses. But, if a customer sees a convincing email and tries to reach you, can they do that easily?

Keeping all communication channels open gets you honest customer questions and opinions. It reduces the sales cycle and helps you improve the services.

• Add clear CTAs in the emails that redirect to the corresponding landing page. 
• Check the website and emails for any broken links.
• Provide a Contact Us page detailing the various communication channels on the website. 
• If you have a form asking for queries, keep it short for quick submissions.
• Combine popular mediums like chat, emails, and calls for a cohesive relationship.
• Check the social media channels so that you don’t miss out on the messages or posts there.

11. Power Up Your Product Page

Your product page is the soul of your website. No matter how good your products and services are, it’s futile if that value doesn’t reflect through the screen.

Fortunately, there are a few hacks to amp up your product page and boost conversions.

• Use a sleek layout to display the products with images and a short description.
• Include price with each product to allow customers to make an informed decision.
• Mention reviews with respective products to assure customers of the quality.
• Research your competitors and other good websites for inspiration on listing products.

Source:  Net-a-Porter

Here are more details to dive deeper into an ideal ecommerce product page.

12. Don’t Box Up the Funnel

It’s a good practice to have an updated funnel, but it shouldn’t be set in stone. 

A customer might go radio silent after adding products to a cart, and another might be ready to buy right after exploring the product page.

In such a scenario, you’ll have to send relevant communication at the right time. Otherwise, you might just miss the opportunity. Here’s how you should proceed:

• Use email service providers that allow you to set user triggers and automate email campaigns. 
• Not all prospects at the bottom of the funnel will have the same concerns. Reach out to them to understand their apprehension and provide a reasonable solution.
• If a customer is concerned about the shipping charges, offer a one-time discount, or, if a customer is unsure about a product, send out details and reviews to make up their mind.

13. Optimize it for Mobile

Not every user opens your email or checks your website on the desktop.

What about on-the-go users? You must keep them in your mind and ensure the following things accordingly:

• Design responsive emails so mobile device users can also enjoy the same service experience.
• Optimize your website and emails to make them load faster. Prospects are impatient and won’t wait for images to load slowly.
• Experiment with virtual and augmented reality to engage users more. 

14. Invest in Building Customer Loyalty

It’s obvious that good products play a huge role in building customer loyalty, but you can amplify it with the proper messaging.

Well-planned marketing communication is crucial for turning the customers into ardent promoters. Here’s what you should keep in mind:

• Engage loyal customers with offers and rewards.
• Plan emails for each stage of the buyer’s journey. For example– if a customer bought your product a month ago, send a replenishment email to stay on top of their mind.
• If a customer has an out-of-stock product on their wishlist, send them a notification when it’s restocked.

Source:   Really Good Emails

15. Keep an Eye Out for Metrics

And finally, if you don’t measure the performance with key metrics, you are running a race with a blindfold.

To improve your ecommerce marketing strategy, it’s crucial to weigh your efforts against standard indicators. We suggest you do the following ardently:

• Use open rate, click-through rate, and bounce rate to monitor the success of your email campaigns.
• Keep cleaning your list of inactive, unresponsive, and invalid email addresses.
• Develop a separate drip campaign for customers who clicked on the call-to-action button but might not have finished the final step.
• Observe the revenue generated through PPC ads and accordingly decide the next steps.

Accurate data points will give you an honest picture of where you are lacking and what can work in your favor.

Go Ahead…

There isn’t a quick hack to a perfect ecommerce marketing campaign. It’s dynamic and demands you to be on your feet. 

Stay updated with your customer’s demands and aim to solve their problems. And while you are doing that, don’t forget to test and then test some more.

The only thing that can assure success in this cut-throat competition is constant experimentation and evaluation. Empower yourself with the right marketing tools and services. The right weapons in your arsenal can reduce your efforts by half, and you give a head start. 

Play around with the suggested tips and keep a hawk’s eye on your customer behavior and feedback to excel.