The digitization of nearly every aspect of product purchase has led to tremendous change over the past decade, affecting all types of businesses.
In 2024 alone, retail ecommerce sales are expected to surpass 6.3 Trillion US dollars worldwide. In tandem with this, many merchants have switched to ecommerce marketing instead of traditional marketing to grow their reach and increase their revenue.
The question that arises now is, ‘What is ecommerce marketing?’ or ‘How can I improve my ecommerce marketing?’
We have composed this blog to answer this question and help you understand how ecommerce marketing can be utilized for successful business growth.
Here’s the sauce: eCommerce marketing starts right at the moment your portal goes live. Every strategic move you make and every social media button you add to your website contributes to monetization and marketing.
Intrigued? Allow us to expand further.
Table of Contents
How to spell eCommerce?
Before we delve deeper into eCommerce Marketing, let us answer an important question: is it ecommerce or e-commerce?
According to Google, most people utilize the term ‘ecommerce.’ And as a marketer, we must focus on what our intended audience prefers to use.
Thus, we shall continue using ecommerce.
What is Ecommerce Marketing?
Simply put, Ecommerce marketing is the universal super set of all digital marketing campaigns.
Ecommerce marketers utilize digital campaigns and strategies to promote an online business. These strategies can drive the target group toward an online shopping website.
A good marketing strategy is etched in the brand’s history forever.
If you are well established on one social platform and mostly sell your products through Facebook or Instagram and are now looking to expand, your growth story will evolve differently from someone who only has the bandwidth to start with a website.
It is necessary to establish a social media presence right from the start of the business to thoroughly establish a formidable brand identity. A good campaigner knows that to see the best results, you must personalize your campaign for the end-user and use a strategy that best suits your brand.
Why is Ecommerce Marketing Important?
Marketing your products to customers at the right time on the right platform is essential. There are plenty of benefits to utilizing ecommerce marketing for your store.
Here are some major business requirements that can be boosted with the right use of eCommerce marketing:
- Brand Recognition
- Instant Feedback For Products
- Customer Base Irrespective of geographical boundaries, regional laws or linguistic differences.
- Increased expansion, reach, and high lead generation.
- Higher revenue
- Brand Loyalty and customer retention
| Want to stay ahead of your competition? Understand how you can leverage AI in your e-commerce business |
Ecommerce Marketing Blueprint
Here’s a simple, effective, and step-by-step guide to help you figure out your journey in the ecommerce marketplace.
Step 1. Be SMART with your goals
Go big or go home.
I’ll let you in on a little secret–in the world of marketing, Going Big too soon will set you up for major disappointments and cause you several setbacks. This is not to say that your dreams need diminishing but to tell you that your goals must be realistic.
As a beginner, realistic goals involve studying your niche or industry, looking at your business’ capacity, and setting objectives wisely. Without analyzing your industry standard or how much time, money, and effort you can invest into marketing will lead to unrealistic goal setting.
To establish clear objectives, you can utilize the SMART tactic.
For seasoned marketers, you can set the benchmark at the mean difference between your current performance and the industry standard. Once you achieve that benchmark, you can raise it and keep going.
Step 2. Pick Out Your Target Audience
The next step in this journey is ensuring you know who you want to market your products/services to. Knowing the ideal customer will help you figure out the type of people who are more likely to buy your product.
If you sell children’s bicycles, for instance, you might think your target audience is children, but no. Your target audience includes the parents who have the purchasing power to buy your bicycles for their children.
Take it a step further, and you will easily realize that adults living around a school are probably more likely to be parents. Using demographic data from search engines like Google, you can also select the time slot when these parents are more likely to click on your ad or use the keywords they are more likely to use.
What we just created is called an ‘ideal buyer persona.’ For the best results, you can create multiple buyer personas.
For beginners, knowing your target audience’s characteristics, demographics, behaviors, linguistic preferences, and purchasing habits can help you determine how you must set up your advertising campaigns.
| ☝️Pro tip: Seasoned marketers can upgrade their buyer personas and engage in dynamic remarketing to ensure continuity. |
Step 3. Know Your Competition
Once you know your potential buyers, you must take the next step and start wondering: Who else is targeting them?
Your competitors can range from the biggest company to a small, single-person-owned business. Set a clear standard for who your competitors are; this can help you keep up with them and ensure you do not fall behind. Keep an eye on your competitors; look at where they invest in marketing.
The easiest way to find out who your competitors are is to go through your most relevant keywords. You can also see who your indirect competitors are by looking at which companies address and resolve the same pain points as you do but with slightly different products.
Additionally, you can also check who is advertising for similar products or bidding for similar keywords on Google itself. Lastly, check in different business directories who is in the same industry as you are.
| ☝️Protip: If you are a local seller, you can check Google Maps to find similar businesses around your area. |
You can utilize tools like Semrush’s Competitor Research tool to find out who your competitors are doing.
Are they trying different platforms? What are the keywords that they use?
Knowing your competitors will help you strategize and execute your goals and determine your position in the industry.
Step 4. Choose The Right Marketing Strategy
You can begin marketing your products and services now that you have all the goals set, the audience picked, and the competitors analyzed. It is time to pick the right marketing strategy for your store. Analyze and know which marketing strategy will work best for you.
But before you begin, determine the allocated budget, the multiple channels you will use, and how long you want to maintain a strategy. We advise you to speak to marketing experts in forums and communities to get the best tips for your industry/niche.
It’s also important to be honest about your offerings. Keep that in mind while curating an ecommerce marketing strategy. For example, if you are selling supplements online then gimmick marketing is not allowed for such niches.
While picking your strategy, keep the conversion funnel in mind. Try different tactics for different funnel stages to keep all (potential) customers engaged.
| Pricing your products right is also important in e-commerce marketing. But, how can you make sure your pricing is aligned as per the market, customer demand, and competitors? Enter dynamic pricing strategy. This strategy helps you adjust prices based on factors like demand, market conditions, stock availability, and more. Explore dynamic pricing strategies for your store. |
Multi-Channel E-commerce Marketing
Today’s e-commerce customers don’t follow a linear buying journey. They discover products on social media, compare prices on marketplaces, and complete purchases through shopping ads or brand websites. Because of this shift, e-commerce marketing can no longer rely only on a website and social media presence.
To stay competitive, sellers must adopt a multi-channel e-commerce marketing strategy.
Below are the three most important components of modern multi-channel e-commerce marketing.
1. Multi-Marketplace Selling
Marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy are no longer optional; they are core e-commerce marketing channels.
Customers often start their product search directly on these platforms, which means your brand visibility depends on how well your products are listed, priced, and optimized across multiple marketplaces.
Key benefits of multi-marketplace selling include:
- Access to high-intent shoppers ready to buy.
- Built-in trust and faster purchase decisions.
- Additional traffic sources beyond your own website.
However, marketing across marketplaces requires consistent product data, accurate pricing, and optimized listings. If your product titles, images, or attributes vary across platforms, it can hurt both visibility and conversions. This is why centralized product feed management becomes critical in multi-channel e-commerce marketing.
2. Social Commerce
Platforms like TikTok Shops, Instagram Shopping, and Facebook Shops allow customers to discover, evaluate, and purchase products without leaving the app. Short-form video, creator content, and in-app checkout have shortened the buying journey dramatically.
In a multi-channel e-commerce marketing strategy, social commerce helps brands:
- Turn organic and influencer content into direct sales.
- Reach new audiences through algorithm-driven discovery.
- Retarget users who have already engaged with products.
To succeed with social commerce, product catalogues must stay updated in real time. Missing product data, incorrect pricing, or broken links can directly impact ad performance and conversions.
3. Product Feeds & Shopping Ads
Product-based advertising has become one of the highest-ROI e-commerce marketing channels, especially through Google Shopping ads (product listing ads) and Performance Max campaigns.
Unlike traditional search ads, shopping ads rely entirely on product feeds, structured data that includes:
- Product titles and descriptions
- Images and pricing
- Availability and attributes
The quality of your product feed directly affects ad visibility, click-through rates, and return on ad spend. This is where feed optimization plays a crucial role in multi-channel e-commerce marketing. A single well-optimized product feed can power:
- Google Shopping ads
- Free product listings on Google
- Social commerce catalogs
- Marketplace integrations
By managing and optimizing product feeds from one central source, e-commerce brands can scale marketing efforts across multiple channels without duplicating work or introducing errors.
Step 5. Automation, Configuration And Tech
Marketing activities require you to be deeply educated, consistently engaged in different activities. Plus, it requires constant analysis of performance of your previous campaigns, and monitoring to grab any improvement opportunity.
Doing this will be tough, and it might be even harder if you run a business singlehandedly. The solution is to start investing in different applications that can help you automate the menial tasks in your store.
Different apps can help you with tasks related to your chosen platform. Automating certain processes, such as sending out emails after purchase or utilizing data feed synchronization software to sync product data across different platforms, can simplify marketing and allow you to focus on more essential parts of your business.
AI & Automation in E-commerce Marketing
As e-commerce competition increases across channels, manual marketing efforts are no longer enough. Brands that scale efficiently rely on AI-powered tools and marketing automation to personalize experiences, optimize ad performance, and engage customers at the right moment.
Here’s how AI in e-commerce is transforming marketing.
1. AI-Powered Personalization & Creative Generation
Today’s customers expect personalized shopping experiences. AI helps e-commerce brands deliver this personalization at scale by analyzing user behavior, purchase history, and engagement patterns.
AI-driven personalization can be applied to:
- Product recommendations based on browsing behavior
- Personalized landing pages and on-site messaging
- Dynamic ad copy and product titles
- AI-generated product descriptions and marketing creatives.
For e-commerce marketing, this means more relevant ads, higher engagement, and improved conversion rates—without manually creating variations for every audience segment.
When combined with high-quality product data, AI can also generate optimized titles, descriptions, and creatives that align with platform requirements across shopping ads and social commerce channels.
2. Automated Ad Creative Testing & Optimization
Testing ad creatives manually across platforms is time-consuming and often inconsistent. Automation allows e-commerce marketers to continuously test and optimize creatives based on performance data.
With automated ad testing, brands can:
- Run multiple versions of product images, headlines, and descriptions
- Automatically pause low-performing creatives
- Scale winning ad variations faster
- Optimize ads based on real-time performance metrics like CTR and ROAS
This approach is effective for product-based advertising, where small changes in titles, images, or pricing can significantly impact results. By automating creative testing, e-commerce brands can improve ad efficiency while reducing wasted ad spend.
3. Email & SMS Automation Workflows
Email and SMS remain two of the highest-ROI e-commerce marketing channels, but only when used strategically. Automation allows brands to send the right message at the right time, without relying on manual campaigns.
Common high-impact e-commerce automation workflows include:
- Abandoned cart reminders
- Browse abandonment follow-ups
- Post-purchase upsell and cross-sell messages
- Back-in-stock and price-drop alerts
- Customer re-engagement sequences
These workflows are triggered by user behavior, ensuring communication feels timely and relevant rather than generic.
When combined with personalized product data, automated email and SMS campaigns can significantly improve customer retention and lifetime value.
Step 6. Monitoring and Optimizing your campaigns.
As you slowly navigate through the ecommerce marketing landscape, you must keep track of how well you are performing. Analyze different scenarios and check whether your targets are being achieved.
It is incredibly important to measure the results of your marketing efforts to ensure that none of them are in vain. Keep track of your campaigns with different measurement metrics and analyze how you can improve them.
Optimizing your campaigns is as important as optimizing your product data. What might work for you now might not generate the same results five years down the line. Measuring the success of your campaigns will also help you stay motivated and identify areas for improvement.
| ☝️Pro tip: Combine different strategies to leverage the maximum benefit of both. Try testing them on smaller audiences before you navigate to larger groups. Remember, self-learning is the best way to learn. |
Key Terms to Understand Ecommerce Marketing
Certain terms must be understood before improving your marketing campaigns, whether you are a beginner or a marketing expert.
The terms listed below can help you effectively measure, track, and utilize different ecommerce marketing tools and platforms while advertising.
Metrics you can use to measure performance
ROI
Return On Investment, or ROI, in eCommerce marketing, measures the efficiency and returns on investment in advertising or marketing.
Here, marketing cost is the investment you make in any form of marketing (influencer collaborations, advertising, billboards, etc,) and the sales growth is the net income you generate via the same advertising channel.
ROI = (Sales growth- Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost
This will give you a number that shows the percentage by which your sales have gone up.
It’s a rudimentary strategy but a brilliant one- using a simple formula, any business can identify which marketing strategy will give them more bang for their buck.
Using this, you can compare the profitability of an investment made. Additionally, ROI can be utilized to gain perspective on the bigger picture while advertising on different platforms.
KPI
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are milestones or touchstones businesses use to compare their performance relative to a goal. Using KPIs can help you determine whether the strategy you have chosen is working in tandem with the goals you have set.
It is important to know that KPIs will vary between businesses—for some, it might be higher click-through rates, while for others, it might be lower cart abandonment percentages.
Either way, KPIs for eCommerce marketing are crucial for measuring the progress of eCommerce businesses, setting future goals, and quickly responding to setbacks.
ROAS
Return on Ad spend is quite similar to ROI in measuring investment returns.
In this case, ROAS specifically refers to paid ad campaigns.
Marketers must consider additional costs depending upon the chosen platform when paying for your ads to show up to relevant users.
If a company generates $10 for every $2 spent, their ROAS is $8. The ratio to calculate this is:
Revenue generated from ads / Cost of ads
Consequently, one can use ROAS to effectively compare the success of different campaigns. If campaign A generates half the ROAS of campaign B but at half the price, while ads on campaign B cost more, campaign A is considered cost-effective.
Branding
The power of brands in eCommerce marketing is quite obvious—they provide the face to your business’s name.
Branding involves the logo, colors, tagline, copy approach, and even tone of voice of your business and, therefore, of its marketing campaigns. Brand images help people understand what businesses offer and aim to create a mental image associated with your business.
| 💡To create a memorable brand image, divulge how your brand was formed, what you aim to achieve, how well you connect with customers, etc. Connecting with your customers on an emotional level will not only make your brand seem more personal, but it will also personify you, i.e., your brand will go from being a website on their screen to a human being. |
Types of Ecommerce Marketing
Product Listing and Optimization
When you advertise your product, you provide your customers with information about the product, such as the title, description, price, etc. The product offering is referred to as a product listing. You list your products on websites and platforms to increase your e-commerce store’s sales and generate revenue.
Optimizing your product listings means curating them for better sales. Product listings can be optimized based on the ad format or the platform you’re showcasing your product on. The use of the right keywords, high-quality images and videos, and other factors that make up a product listing can be improved for better performance.
Google even offers product listing ads to showcase your products across their display network.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are bridges between customers and your product listings. They guide your target customers to you and allow you to increase your reach far beyond your physical boundaries.
As an online retailer, your customers trust you to buy products without physical contact. Search engines verify every attribute you provide to your customers to ensure that this trust is maintained and integrity is not compromised.
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
Search engine optimization for products can ensure you rank at the top of the search page for relevant queries. For SEO, you must optimize your product data, website, and brand’s online presence. This includes using the right keywords, providing additional data, optimizing your website, improving the UI/UX, assessing the feedback given by previous customers, and other similar tasks.
You must also assess the technical side of SEO, i.e., the page-load speed (the amount of time taken for your page to load), and mobile friendliness, and ensure that you regularly conduct content audits to keep your website clutter-free.
| 💡Use the ideal buyer persona to better understand what your customers are searching for and where. |
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a form of advertising used by several marketers to increase their visibility and generate website traffic. In PPC ad campaigns, advertisers pay a small price each time a customer clicks on their ad.
These campaigns are commonly employed on search engines such as Google. On Google, advertisers can bid upon certain keywords, and the highest bidder’s ads will be displayed at the top of a search results page (SERP) for the keyword chosen. If your ad is displayed at the top, it will increase the chances of a user clicking on it and visiting your website.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a form of paid advertising. Advertisers collaborate with third-party icons to meet their marketing goals. This normally includes a celebrity or a famous personality endorsing the product or service with a ‘coupon code’. Products sold under this coupon code will generate a small fee for the promoter.
This incentivizes the promoter to endorse your products and allows you to increase your brand recognition and awareness.
Affiliate marketing allows influencers to engage in what is essentially a “pay-for-performance,” i.e. they are paid each time a purchase is made. This would also motivate individuals to get creative with their advertising tactics.
It is commonly used for products targeted towards youth on social media platforms.
| 💡Don’t confuse affiliate marketing with influencer marketing. While the payment models might look the same (i.e., they work on commission for each product sold), they have significant differences. Affiliate marketers work long-term and are not paid for increased traffic or brand awareness. They are only paid for the commission made. In contrast, influencers are often paid a promotional fee (to create content surrounding the product), a flat rate, and a commission (usually a bit on the higher end). |
Content Marketing
Content marketing revolves around creating content directly or indirectly related to your brand or the product/service you are providing. Creating relatable content such as videos, blogs, articles, podcasts, listicles, etc., can foster interest in your products.
Content marketing will help you establish yourself as a thought leader by providing valuable insights into your niche. It can help you clearly communicate the company values and establish your brand as the expert.
Developing an effective content strategy can help you generate more leads for your business. Providing consistent and quality content will lead to increased customer loyalty.
Using content marketing, you can also effectively guide audiences through the conversion funnel by providing content pieces that address the pain points of each stage.
Check out this blog for a few strategies to improve your ecommerce marketing game.
| 💡Take a deep dive into the latest ecommerce marketing trends. Check out this article for better guidance, explanations and examples. |
Retargeting & Personalization
Most e-commerce visitors don’t convert on their first visit. That’s why successful e-commerce marketing strategies focus not just on acquiring traffic but on re-engaging and personalizing experiences for users who have already shown interest.
Retargeting and personalization help e-commerce brands stay relevant throughout the buyer journey by showing customers the right products, at the right time, across the right channels.
1. Dynamic Retargeting With Ads
Dynamic retargeting allows e-commerce brands to show users the exact products they viewed or interacted with, instead of generic ads.
For example:
- A visitor views a product on your website but doesn’t purchase it.
- Later, they see the same product—or similar alternatives—in Google Shopping ads or social media ads.
- The ad dynamically updates pricing, availability, and images based on your product feed.
This approach works because it reinforces intent and reduces friction in the buying process. Dynamic retargeting is most effective when powered by accurate, real-time product data, ensuring ads always reflect current prices, stock availability, and product attributes.
2. Personalized Product Recommendations
Personalization goes beyond retargeting ads; it also improves the on-site shopping experience. Using customer behavior data, e-commerce brands can deliver personalized product recommendations such as:
- “Recently viewed” product sections.
- “You may also like” or “Frequently bought together” suggestions.
- Personalized homepages or category pages based on browsing history.
These recommendations increase average order value and help customers discover relevant products faster.
When product data is consistently optimized, personalization engines can surface the most relevant items across websites, emails, and ads, creating a unified customer experience across all touchpoints.
3. Behavioral Email Triggers
Behavioral email marketing uses customer actions, not schedules, to trigger messages automatically.
High-performing e-commerce behavioral triggers include:
- Abandoned cart emails sent within hours of drop-off.
- Browse abandonment emails featuring viewed products.
- Post-purchase follow-ups with complementary product suggestions.
- Re-engagement emails for inactive customers.
Unlike generic newsletters, behavioral emails are timely and context-aware, which significantly improves open rates and conversions. When these emails pull product information directly from your catalog, they stay accurate and relevant without requiring constant manual updates.
Conclusion
As the digital world continues to grow and evolve, it is essential that online retailers evolve with it. We hope this guide helped you delve deeper into the world of ecommerce and simplified how ecommerce marketing works.
FAQs
What is ecommerce marketing?
Ecommerce marketing involves the strategic use of different ecommerce channels to drive traffic into paying customers, increasing the visibility of your products and services, and retargeting and retaining customers after they have made a purchase.
Why is ecommerce marketing important?
ecommerce marketing is incredibly important for the growth and success of a business. Using ecommerce marketing, merchants can effectively increase the visibility, revenue, customer engagement, customer retention and loyalty as well as boost sales and revenue. The right use of ecommerce marketing will also help create a better brand image and increase customer’s trust in the business.
What are the main components of ecommerce marketing?
The main components of ecommerce marketing include search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content marketing, email marketing, and affiliate marketing. All of these components come together to enhance marketing strategies and increase its effectiveness.
What role does social media play in ecommerce marketing?
Social media platforms play an important role in ecommerce marketing. Using social media, merchants can advertise, sell and leverage other tools to market their products. Additionally, social media allows merchants to form close bonds with customers and gain their trust. Social media can also drive traffic to their store and improve brand awareness.
What are PPC campaigns in ecommerce marketing?
PPC or pay-per-click advertising campaigns involve paying a small fee each time someone clicks on your ad. It is an effective way to lower the cost of advertising and drive targeted traffic to your website. Additionally, PPC campaigns show ads to customers based on their search queries or interests, which can increase the probability of conversions.
How do influencer partnerships enhance ecommerce marketing?
Influencer partnerships can cultivate a sense of trust among audiences. When influencers promote your products or services to their followers, they endorse your products, making them more relatable to different audiences. Additionally, influencers often offer discount codes for a short span to create urgency among their followers.
What is the role of analytics in ecommerce marketing?
Analytics is incredibly useful for measuring the success and effectiveness of your marketing efforts in an ecommerce campaign. Merchants can accurately determine the kind of content and ads their audiences prefer based on different metrics such as conversion rate, KPI, clicks, impressions, etc. It also allows merchants to make informed decisions regarding the next steps in their marketing campaigns.
Analysis can help effectively narrow down the target customers, increase revenue and lower the ad spend.
