How to Create an Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

Last updated: 10th Oct 2017

Written by: Dan Chadney

SEO, Marketing & AI Expert

In this article, I’m going to talk about one of the biggest mistakes e-commerce marketers make and show you how to create an e-commerce marketing strategy based on what I’ve learned from years of trial and error.

These are the tactics that have helped us build a profitable online store that is growing at a rate of nearly 40% annually.

</p> <p></p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Biggest Mistakes E-commerce Marketers Make</h3> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Before I get into how this model works I want to talk about what doesn’t work and I want to debunk a myth that I see as being the root cause of most of the biggest mistakes I see e-commerce marketers making: </span></p> <p><i>The biggest mistake is that They think of <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/increase-online-sales-web-marketing" title="6 Tips to Increase Online Sales with Digital Marketing" data-lasso-id="287">online marketing</a> like this:</i></p> <ol> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Someone is going to click on your ad or your social media post or even a search result</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">They’re going to then visit your website to look at your products </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then they are either going to buy – or not buy your products.</span></li> </ol> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is a perfectly reasonable way of thinking about it  – but it is a MYTH.  You must banish this belief and this model from your mind if you’re going to succeed at e-commerce marketing</span></p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How to Create an E-commerce Marketing Strategy</h3> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I want to give you a real-world example of how the buying process actually works based on what we see happening at our site. This is a hypothetical but perfectly realistic sequence that illustrates the steps that a buyer typically goes through.</span></p> <p><strong>Step 1: </strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">Our e-commerce business does advertising on Facebook targeted to reach an audience of people who have never heard of us before. Someone may see a photo and then click on our Facebook ad and which brings them directly to our website</span></p> <p><strong>Step 2: </strong>They look around for a minute and form a quick opinion before moving on to some other site.</p> <p><strong>Step 3: </strong>At that point, we place a cookie in their browser and they’ll start seeing ads for our products all over the web. This is what’s known as <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">retargeting</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. They may not click on the ads the first or even the second time they see them, but eventually, they may return to the site for another look and now there’s a little more trust and familiarity with our products.</span></p> <p><strong>Step 4: </strong>This time, when they see a pop-up that says they might win some products by signing up for our newsletter, it sounds like a low-risk proposition.</p> <p><strong>Step 5: </strong>Becoming a new subscriber is going to trigger an <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/understanding-ai-content-automation-and-machine-learning" title="Understanding AI Content Automation and Machine Learning" data-lasso-id="288">automation sequence that sends a series of onboarding emails to further deepen their understanding</a> of our brand, and one of the emails prompts them to become a Facebook fan of our e-commerce business, which they act on.</p> <p><strong>Step 6: </strong>Now they’re starting to see our Facebook posts, which leads them to read some blog material.</p> <p><strong>Step 7: </strong>They’re also going to receive a newsletter that has an update on new products which prompts them to visit the site again.</p> <p><strong>Step 8: </strong>This time, when they visit the site they’re pretty interested in purchasing something but their not sure of the final cost, so they fill up a cart to check the shipping costs, but they don’t complete the order.</p> <p><strong>Step 9: </strong>This triggers a series of cart abandonment emails and the final email offers them an additional 15% off if they complete the order in 24 hours – which they do!</p> <p><strong>Step 10: </strong>So, we now have a purchase, however, it’s not over yet because once we have a customer who’s made an initial purchase, we have someone who is fully immersed in our brand and is much more likely to make a second purchase and refer us to their friends.</p> <p><strong>Step 11: </strong>Upon making a purchase they are going to receive yet another sequence of emails that prompts them to follow us on Instagram and share a photo of them or their children wearing our products.</p> <p><strong>Step 12: </strong>When they do they receive a 25% discount off their next purchase which they eventually use. They’ve now become a repeat customer and evangelist for our e-commerce business.</p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So, as you can see, the purchasing process is a lot more involved than simply clicking an ad and visiting our site. </span></p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The E-commerce Marketing Funnel</h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So I want to introduce the concept known as the <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/how-to-use-email-marketing-increase-ecommerce-sales" data-type="post" data-id="1218" data-lasso-id="289">email marketing</a> funnel. This is probably a term you’ve heard before and it encompasses the idea that:</span></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Someone typically doesn’t just come to your site for the first time and buy something</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are a number of steps and brand touchpoints on the way to becoming a customer</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are also a ton of tactics for marketing to your audience and encouraging them through the process of making a purchase</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">A <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/affiliate-marketing-funnels" title="How to Master Affiliate Marketing Funnels" data-lasso-id="1086">marketing funnel</a> is a useful model for making sense of this complexity because </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Allows you to plan your activities so that you target each stage of the process</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">The result is a much more effective <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/creating-effective-b2b-email-marketing-campaigns" data-type="post" data-id="3193" data-lasso-id="290">marketing strategy</a> because it’s aligned with the way your audience actually makes a purchase decision</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are 2 perspectives from which to think about the Marketing Funnel: The seller’s perspective and the buyer’s perspective. </span></p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Marketing Funnel: Seller’s Perspective</h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So let’s start with the Seller’s perspective and talk about the stages of a marketing funnel. There are different versions of a marketing funnel that you may encounter with slightly different terminology, but they are all meant to be a metaphor for the fact that a lot more people will consider a making purchase than will eventually buy something. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to use a 3-stage version with the top of the funnel being the attraction stage, where your goal is to bring brand new visitors to your site,  the middle of the funnel is the relationship building stage, where you are trying to build affinity for your brand and products using content and repeat visits, and the bottom of the funnel is the sales stage, where you are aggressively trying to get someone to buy something. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Again, a marketing funnel can help you <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/link-building-strategies" title="Link Building Strategies" data-lasso-id="291">build a much more sophisticated strategy</a> by thinking about the entire decision-making process allowing you to Align your tactics with where the potential customer is in the funnel</span></p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Top-funnel Tactics</span></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So at the top level, tactics may include </span></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Organic search results if you rank for certain keywords or they may be paid search results if you purchase ads for keywords </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">You may use targeted Facebook Ads to entice people to visit your site </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">display ads which also allow you to target certain audiences based on the sites you choose to advertise on.  </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">You can partner with influencers</span> – bloggers or Instagrammers<span style="font-weight: 400;"> who have an audience that is similar to the audience you’re trying to reach. Pay them to recommend your products or provide them with a free product that they will review</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">You may use public relations to reach publishers either online or off who are always looking for new stories and new products to feature</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">You may even use a referral program this would mean getting people who have already purchased your product to refer friends, who are not familiar with your brand to your website for the first time</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These are all tactics you might use to get people to visit your site for the first time. </span></p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mid-funnel Tactics</span></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Let’s move to the middle of the funnel; After attracting someone to your site,  you need to find ways to start building a deeper relationship with them. so you need tactics in place that are going to allow you to continue the communication with that person. one of the best ways, and it’s completely free, would be to capture their email via an opt-in offer.  </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This, in turn, can trigger a series of completely automated emails that provide more information and incentives or point to blog posts, videos and other content that will help build affinity for your brand and products. This is why professional marketers place such an emphasis on having a killer Opt-in offer. It’s just so critical. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Short of getting an email address, you can also use retargeting which places a bit of code in the visitor’s browser and then serves them ads for your product around the web.  This will keep your brand top of mind and hopefully eventually have them come back to your site at which time they might opt into your email list, follow you on a social media channel or even consider a purchase. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Email and retargeting is also a way to entice people to follow you on social media where you can deepen the relationship by sharing blog posts, photos content and product updates.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You might also generate interest with an audience by holding contests and giveaways. We often partner with other brands on contests to help cross-pollinate our audiences, which allows us to promote our products while building our lists.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Once again, all of these mating tactics are designed to simply deepen affinity for your brand and create the desire to make a purchase. </span></p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bottom-funnel Tactics</span></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At the bottom of the funnel, I would again include retargeting again though at this stage I would have the ads link directly to a product page, rather than blog content.  </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As they get closer to a purchase decision many people will even fill up a shopping cart with the products they like and then abandon it.  In fact, well over 65% of carts are abandoned by people who are just aren’t quite ready to pull the trigger on a purchase. So having a strong cart abandonment email sequence is critical. We typically send up to 3 <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/the-email-followup-sequence-that-drives-6-figures-in-sales" title="A killer 4 email follow-up sequence for ecommerce sites" data-lasso-id="1225">emails</a> within a day of someone abandoning a cart. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you’re really advanced, you may even have a loyalty program that will incentivize repeat purchases by allowing people to earn points each time they buy something or when they make referrals that lead to a purchase. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So now you have an understanding of how specific tactics align with each stage of the funnel and a new model for thinking about your approach to <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/online-marketing-vs-offline-marketing" data-type="post" data-id="3199" data-lasso-id="292">marketing</a>. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now I want to add another dimension to further increase your funnel’s effectiveness. </span></p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Marketing Funnel: Customer’s Perspective</h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">By looking at the funnel from the customer’s perspective, it allows you to Align the appropriate content with the questions the potential customer has at each stage</span>.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Top Funnel Tactics: Discovery Phase</span></h3> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At the top of the funnel, when you are attracting new visitors to your site they are encountering your brand for the first time, so they are in the discovery phase. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They really just have some simple questions at this point: who is this brand, and is this something that I like? </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Your job here is to ensure that you clearly communicate your brand position in a few brief words or images and make sure the site or blog looks great and so makes a good first impression. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">People may want to go deeper at this point, but they might not. After all, they’ve just met you and they don’t know anything about you. </span></p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mid Funnel Tactics: Consideration Phase</span></h3> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Once they’ve had that first interaction anyone who returns to your site or some content could be said to be in the consideration phase, so this is where you’re going to provide content that goes a little deeper.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You may want to provide some about your brand story or the inspiration that lead you to found the company</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You may want to provide some social proof that your products are desirable by featuring testimonials or press coverage. our e-commerce business actually has some celebrities like Halle Berry and Jessica Alba using our products to we feature those. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A potential customer may be interested in seeing the products used in different situations and contexts. So maybe you can provide reviews or user-generated photos of people with the products or how-to videos.  </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This will help them better visualize how your product is going to fit into their lifestyle and whether they’ll actually truly be happy with the purchase </span></p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bottom Funnel Tactics: Purchase Phase</span></h3> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At a certain point the customer may decide that they really do want the product but they may still have some questions that are preventing them from proceeding with the purchase like, “Can I afford it” and “Am I really getting the best deal?” </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">By offering a well-timed incentive you can often help them rationalize the purchase. For instance, our e-commerce business’s 3rd cart abandonment email offers 15% off their purchase. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Finally, you should reinforce any warranty or guarantees that you offer. </span></p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Conclusion</h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So now you should have a good idea of how to create an e-commerce marketing strategy and how to align your content with the <a href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/online-marketing-can-grow-your-business" data-type="post" data-id="3217" data-lasso-id="293">marketing tactics</a> you use at each stage of the marketing funnel.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It may seem like a lot of work to build all this out, and I’m not going to lie to you – it is! But you don’t have to do it all at once. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You just have to make sure you have some aspects of each stage covered and then over time, you can layer in new items to increase the effectiveness of your funnel. But the great thing is that once the systems are set up, they are largely automated – so you only have to create them once. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then you’ll receive a customized report outlining the highest-value opportunities based on what you’re currently doing. You can then make a plan on what to implement next. I’ll even provide you with links to some additional resources.</span></p> </div><div class="bde-adjacentposts-2005487-108 bde-adjacentposts"> <a rel="prev" class="ee-adjacentposts-prev " href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/marketing-hacks"> <div class="ee-adjacentposts-icon"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 256 512"><path d="M31.7 239l136-136c9.4-9.4 24.6-9.4 33.9 0l22.6 22.6c9.4 9.4 9.4 24.6 0 33.9L127.9 256l96.4 96.4c9.4 9.4 9.4 24.6 0 33.9L201.7 409c-9.4 9.4-24.6 9.4-33.9 0l-136-136c-9.5-9.4-9.5-24.6-.1-34z"/></svg> </div> <div class="ee-adjacentposts-content"> <span class="ee-adjacentposts-label">Previous Post</span> </div> </a> <a rel="next" class="ee-adjacentposts-next " href="https://indiebrandbuilder.com/mailchimp-vs-klaviyo-an-objective-review-of-2-top-email-marketing-solutions-for-shopify-stores"> <div class="ee-adjacentposts-content"> <span class="ee-adjacentposts-label">Next Post</span> </div> <div class="ee-adjacentposts-icon"> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 256 512"><path d="M224.3 273l-136 136c-9.4 9.4-24.6 9.4-33.9 0l-22.6-22.6c-9.4-9.4-9.4-24.6 0-33.9l96.4-96.4-96.4-96.4c-9.4-9.4-9.4-24.6 0-33.9L54.3 103c9.4-9.4 24.6-9.4 33.9 0l136 136c9.5 9.4 9.5 24.6.1 34z"/></svg> </div> </a> </div> </div></div> </section><section class="bde-section-2005487-139 bde-section"> <div class="section-container"><div class="bde-div-2005487-140 bde-div"> <div class="bde-div-2005487-143 bde-div"> <h4 class="bde-heading-2005487-144 bde-heading"> About the Author </h4><div class="bde-author-2005487-145 bde-author"> <div class="ee-author-avatar"><img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/021123a7a4bc123f84873d42568f3ca5?s=300&d=mm&r=g' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/021123a7a4bc123f84873d42568f3ca5?s=600&d=mm&r=g 2x' class='avatar avatar-300 photo' height='300' width='300' loading='lazy' decoding='async'/></div> <div class="ee-author-description"> <h3 class="ee-author-name">Dan Chadney</h3> <div class="ee-author-bio">Ever felt like your business should be getting more attention online? I felt the same way until I learned how to leverage SEO and digital marketing tactics to scale my e-commerce business to 6 figures per year. My name is Dan Chadney and before starting this blog, I spent 20 years as a web designer, front-end developer and SEO marketing specialist. Check out my online business guides and learn how to make money online!</div> </div> </div> </div> </div></div> </section><section class="bde-section-2005484-168 bde-section"> <div class="section-container"><div class="bde-columns-2005484-169 bde-columns"><div class="bde-column-2005484-170 bde-column"> <h3 class="bde-heading-2005484-171 bde-heading"> Join Indie Brand Builder </h3><div class="bde-text-2005484-172 bde-text"> Learn how to earn more, work less & future-proof your business with up-to-date tech news & actionable advice. </div> </div><div class="bde-column-2005484-173 bde-column"> <div class="bde-code-block-2005484-176 bde-code-block"> <iframe src="https://embeds.beehiiv.com/3b0d2646-a370-4ff3-b61e-c0d69be64ba0?slim=true" data-test-id="beehiiv-embed" width="100%" height="52" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="width:100%; margin: 0; border-radius: 0px !important; background-color: transparent;" title="Newsletter Subscribe">

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