With worldwide retail eCommerce sales reaching $4.9 trillion in 2021 and expected to grow to $7.4 trillion by 2025, there’s an abundance of opportunity for eCommerce retailers today and in the coming years. But success in the eCommerce industry requires a savvy eCommerce marketing campaign to differentiate your business from your competitors and earn an ample share of the market.
From choosing the right products to sell, to getting your business and your eCommerce website set up, to writing convincing product descriptions and taking appealing product photos, there are many things to consider when developing a marketing campaign that increases sales for an eCommerce business. So what are the most important, must-have elements for a successful eCommerce marketing campaign? To help you focus your marketing efforts on what matters most, we reached out to a panel of eCommerce marketing experts and asked them to answer this question:
“What’s the single most important ingredient for a successful eCommerce marketing campaign?”
Meet Our Panel of eCommerce Marketing Experts:
Keep reading to learn what our panel had to say about the most essential ingredients to ensure your eCommerce marketing campaign is a success.
James Angel
James Angel is the Co-Founder of DYL.
“The single most important ingredient in a successful eCommerce marketing campaign is content-based eCommerce marketing aspects. As a professional, I believe that content is king when it comes to website rankings. Content marketing for eCommerce websites is crucial for digital marketers. Your website should be informative and beneficial to potential clients, with titles and pictures that captivate, as well as videos and infographics, which are the most successful marketing tools.
If your eCommerce site has a blog, make sure your posts are not just filler content but useful, which will keep people on your site longer. Also, keep providing relevant information. Your website’s loyal visitors will grow, and so will potential buyers’ trust. This will help your company become a niche authority.”
Kavin Patel
Kavin Patel is the Founder and CEO of Convrrt, a landing page platform trusted by high-growth SaaS companies. With over 17 years of experience helping clients generate leads, Patel is uniquely qualified to help software companies flatten churn and drive higher customer adoption.
“Show off your stuff. As a CEO, I feel that simply because your eCommerce platform is capable of creating an attractive store does not mean you are finished. Keep in mind that your website is a virtual storefront. That is, your homepage is your storefront, complete with creative window displays, mannequins, and salespeople. So make sure your product descriptions and visuals are appealing.
If your products come in several colors, take shots of each one. A single photo with swatches of all available colors will reduce sales. You can’t cut corners with photography. You should also mention measurements, supplies, and consumer comments. Reviews help buyers decide whether or not to buy your product based on its usefulness and quality.”
Andreas Velling
Andreas is the CMO at Fractory, a cloud manufacturing company that connects engineers to production capacity globally through an automated platform.
“Make use of off-the-shelf platforms and software. Almost all eCommerce platforms are now SaaS-based. If you sell to consumers, use a leading SaaS platform to save time and money. There are a large number of them. (Look up SaaS eCommerce platforms or related terms on Google.) Standard templates should be used. At least at first, concentrate on your value-added content rather than on creating new designs or bespoke features. For newsletters and promotions, use Google Analytics and a popular email tool. At all costs, stay away from custom development from the start. It’s a possibility when you get more knowledge.
Start, learn, and grow. You’ll never be able to develop a perfect website. There’s always room for advancement. Get your shop up and running. Begin interacting with your target audience. Every day, keep an eye on your analytics and key performance indicators. The majority of eCommerce firms start small, adding product as it sells and discontinuing inventory as it does not.”
Scott Hasting
Scott Hasting is one of the Founders of Betworthy LLC. He is a former Financial Analyst and a Statistician. Now, he spends most of his time running the company. Whenever he has free time, he makes sure he travels with his family.
“The most important ingredient for a successful eCommerce campaign is the authenticity of what you offer and how you can solve your customers’ problems. Many business owners and marketers alike fail to give importance to this but being authentic and showing what your products can really do will spell the success of your campaign. Sometimes, other businesses will revamp the product too much, post pictures that look better than the real thing and even hire commenters to leave cringey positive feedback. This usually backfires as many customers can easily see beyond this paid advertisement. Hence, it is best to be authentic, show what your products and services can do, and be transparent with everything about your brand. You’ll be surprised as to how successful this campaign can be.”
Jay Bats
Jay Bats is the Co-Founder & Developer at ContentBASE.
“Amplify eCommerce content marketing with a blog. An effective eCommerce marketing plan includes content marketing and blogging. The process of developing high-quality, incredibly valuable content and then disseminating it to a larger audience is known as content marketing, which includes blogging. Podcasts, movies, webinars, infographics, lookbooks, and social media can all be used to promote your content.
The effectiveness of content marketing and blogging can be attributed to several factors. For starters, they let you target essential keywords that might otherwise be difficult to place on product or category pages. Blogging allows you to develop long-form material that ranks highly in organic search results. Articles with 3,000+ words produce 3X more traffic, 4X more shares, and 3.5X more backlinks than short-form content.
Second, eCommerce content marketing enables you to speak directly to the issues that your clients are facing and provide them solutions. As a result, customer relationships are strengthened and conversion rates are increased. The appropriate content can lead to increased brand loyalty and brand love.”
Ron Evan
Ron Evan is the Digital Marketing Specialist at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency.
“For a successful eCommerce marketing campaign to take place, I’d say be mindful of your back-end integration. If brands want to keep users engaged throughout the research and checkout process, eCommerce websites and online stores need to function with extreme agility and seamless performance. Considering the number of ways consumers can buy products and services, a website that takes too long to load or cannot process their request will be dismissed quickly. Likewise, brands investing in back-end engineering will have a significant competitive advantage in a market where customer expectations are high at all phases of the buying process. Managing all the inventory, credit card transactions, web content, and other back-end systems efficiently will generally improve the eCommerce store’s performance, resulting in a better shopping and customer experience for all visitors.”
Tyler Martin
Tyler Martin is the Founder and Certified Business Coach at ThinkTyler.
“Make your life easier. Because ambitious small business entrepreneurs are almost always working, it’s preferable to keep things as simple as possible. Choose an eCommerce platform, such as SupaDupa, and create a free online shop with shop themes and templates that may make your shop look like a designer boutique without the need to employ a designer.
Having a shop available soon allows you to begin testing your product, reviewing it, and making modifications as needed. It also helps you to have a place to generate traffic – and so increase interest in your items – even if you’re still developing your business plan.”
Scott McKinney
Scott McKinney is the head of marketing at Debt Bombshell.
“Consistency is something that is essential in creating a sense of trust between you and your audience, and social media is a great way to achieve that. This is why having a strong social media presence is a very powerful tool when it comes to making your eCommerce marketing campaign a success. This allows you to communicate with your market in a personal and public way that generates interaction and engagement, develops a larger base of customers and boosts traffic to your website. When you also utilize different social media platforms for different purposes, you create this rich and multi-faceted presence for your company that makes your efforts and abilities take on a sense of diversity. This is a very important aspect that will ultimately help you in catering to your customers’ needs and grow your business over time.”
Robert Kirk
Robert runs an SEO & Link Building company. They work with eCommerce businesses across the world, helping them with their SEO and link building.
“Citations play a crucial role in making your e-commerce business more visible on Google’s SERPs. A citation is an online reference to your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP) and they play a similar role to backlinks in the traditional SEO playground. Citations tell Google’s web crawlers where your business is located as well as provide information about what industry your business operates in.
Citations are one of many key components that help to influence rankings. However, it’s better to view them as important signals that validate to Google the legitimacy of your business. Citations from reputable business directories increase Google’s degree of certainty that the information they have about your business is valid and that you are indeed part of a community.”
Jacob Sherman
Jacob is the Sales Development Executive of New Reach Marketing in Tampa, Florida. They help their clients’ websites grow to millions of monthly visitors through creating epic blog content.
“Affiliate marketing connects an eCommerce company with things to sell and a marketer willing to buy them. Affiliate marketers choose and promote products from a brand catalog that they enjoy, and they get a small cut of the revenues, either per sale, per lead, or each click. Because it’s an inexpensive, quick process for businesses and a work-from-home passive source of income for marketers, it’s a symbiotic relationship.
There are a variety of affiliate marketing options. On their channels, influencers and bloggers frequently evaluate or discuss products, with affiliate links directing viewers or readers to purchase the ones they like. Some marketers keep email lists or send out newsletters with affiliate links to products in their favorite niche that are aimed at their target market.”
Vishesh Raisinghani
Vishesh Raisinghani is the Financial Expert at PiggyBank.
“Prioritize the speed of your website. Site speed, header tags, and interactive media are just some of the things that eCommerce firms will want to pay attention to when it comes to their online presence. As a result, your website’s visibility and click-through rates will grow significantly.
By improving the page speed score in our paid Ads account, we can get Google to rank sites higher for relevant keywords. Most strikingly, we uncovered Google research indicating a 90% rise in bounce rate when load speed climbs from 1 to 5 seconds.
Because Google Images is the second-largest search engine in terms of volume, I highly advocate picture optimization for eCommerce. Alt text optimization is critical if you want your product photographs to appear in image searches linked to your products. There is a direct link to the product page from the photographs.”
Deborrah Ashley
Deborrah Ashley is the founder and CEO of a marketing consulting firm that specializes in LinkedIn strategy and brand positioning.
“For many, the answer to that question is content. And while that’s true, it’s not the whole truth. In the world of eCommerce marketing, the real answer is content AND traffic. You won’t be able to engage with your audience or build a community around your brand if people don’t know about you. And you won’t be able to efficiently convert traffic into sales if you don’t have content that offers something valuable immediately upon arrival. How does this happen? You get a community of content, with top-notch traffic. You get a membership site that offers something free on the homepage and then leads to a funnel of highly effective content. You get customers who aren’t just interested in your products – they’re obsessed with your business and your brand.”
Jeff Mains
Jeff Mains is a 5x Entrepreneur and CEO of Champion Leadership Group LLC.
“When you open your own web presence, you can reach clients worldwide, rather than simply the ones you can meet and promote to in your immediate vicinity. However, running a successful eCommerce company entails much more than just launching a website and waiting for the money to start rolling in. Here are the two most important ingredients for a successful eCommerce marketing campaign:
Discover your competitive edge in the market. It is critical to distinguish yourself from the competition in an ocean of online eCommerce businesses. Do you have the ability to give them expert knowledge in your field? Do you accept refunds or exchanges with no questions asked? Does your company provide prompt customer care, even after hours or on weekends and holidays? These types of fundamental distinctions in expertise and services provide you with a competitive advantage in your area, enabling you to compete even when other online boutiques are offering similar things at similar price points as you are. Find out what yours is, refine it, and market it.
Don’t neglect local marketing. Despite the fact that eCommerce websites are often accessible to consumers all over the globe, it is sometimes necessary to sell to particular local audiences. This is particularly true if your website provides items or services that have a strong local appeal, such as food obtained from local suppliers. Additionally, local marketing makes sense for eCommerce suppliers that simultaneously operate brick and mortar businesses inside certain geographic areas.
The most significant disadvantage of local marketing is that it restricts your prospective audience’s size. However, since conversion rates among this generation are expected to be far greater than among the general population, the effort is worthwhile.”
Chris M. Walker
Chris M. Walker is the CEO of Superstar SEO.
“A successful eCommerce marketing campaign should put heavy emphasis on social media. Social media is a very powerful platform that allows you to communicate with your market publicly. These platforms are designed to feed content based on individual users’ preferences, interests, and activities, so chances are your ads and content will likely be seen by the people who need to see it. Posts on social media can be used to generate initial engagement and interaction with users that can boost your website traffic and get added to your pool of potential customers. It’s also easier to target specific groups of users on social media because they tend to aggregate in common interest groups that you can leverage to your advantage.”
Ucha Vekua
Ucha Vekua is the Content Marketing Specialist at Printify.
“Typically, younger eCommerce brands are constantly putting ads on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The advertising trends have changed over the years, and it goes together with technological advancements.
That’s why it is important to know your audience and understand where they spend their time to plan your campaigns accordingly. This strategy will help you reach more people in your audience and drive more sales.”
Benjamin Poirrier
Ben is a French citizen working in HCMC | Vietnam since 2007. This 15-year online expert founded Prodima, a full-service digital marketing agency, in 2020. With the purpose of educating the market, Ben is always up to sharing valuable insights.
“To be successful, eCommerce marketing campaigns needed a blended mix of crucial ingredients. If I had to name only one, I would pick a clear business objective. Why? Because everything starts from there. The campaign target impacts the target audience, marketing channels, campaign creatives, and even the media budget.
I have seen too many eCommerce marketing campaigns fail because the purpose was not properly set up in the first place. It’s not enough to say I want online sales when it comes to defining a strategy. This target is not clear and will lead you to nowhere.
First, are you sure it is the right time to go for eCommerce online conversions? If you are just entering the market, there are high chances that you will need to build some brand awareness before actually selling your products online.
Then, online sales targets mean nothing if they are not Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Yes, I am talking about S.M.A.R.T. targets here. Turn the ‘I want online sales’ into ‘I want to sell 100 of my product ABC on the landing page XYZ within the next 3 months,’ and you will be good to go.
Always start with a clear campaign objective if you want to be successful with your eCommerce marketing strategy.”
Sam Cohen
Sam Cohen is the Founder of Gold Tree Consulting, a growth marketing agency based in Austin, Texas.
“In a sea of multiple eCommerce platforms, the single most important ingredient for success is infusing personalization into your products. Get to know your customers by gathering data according to their shopping behavior or habits. By doing this, you’ll see an increase in customers returning to your website to shop more.
Personalization allows suggesting products based on the customer’s preferences and shopping history. Humanizing your products and website builds a trustworthy persona. People search for a unique shopping experience surrounding their likes and dislikes. Personalization helps improve customer satisfaction and engagement and is the easiest way to gain loyalty.”
Aléxia Natis
Alexia is a journalist with experience in digital marketing.
“Our big success in eCommerce was when we decided to use SMS integration to better communicate with customers. We have learned that SMS importance has increased a lot in the last few years. So communicating with your customer is a key factor. Nowadays, it’s very important to automate SMS to connect with customers during the purchase process, so you can send messages like payment confirmation, delivery confirmation, and more. Also, it’s important to use SMS for things like sending a satisfaction survey after each sale.”
Vasilii Gamov
Vasilii Gamov is the CMO of RichAds.
“Know the characteristics of effective content. I always say that great blogs, tweets, and Facebook advertising are just the tip of the iceberg for content. There’s a lot you can do with it to be creative and to do so, you’ll need to keep up with technology and the latest means of reaching out to your audience.
Your ability to tell a story is what makes for genuinely effective outreach and engagement. Hence, your plan should revolve around a high-quality and value-added advertising campaign.
What exactly do I mean when I say this? Create your primary ads and service offerings first, then produce content with CTAs that encourage users to buy. However, make sure it’s relatable, relevant, and helpful to your target audience.
It would help if you also had a good idea of how your content performs in SEO and analytics. Everything you put out into the world becomes data; therefore, keeping track of it properly is critical. This also entails being aware of the user’s experience.”
Andreyana Kulina
Andreyana Kulina is a Marketing Specialist at Brosix.
“The most important ingredient for a successful eCommerce marketing campaign is finding niche influencers who can promote your business. This is one of the easiest ways to begin to build brand awareness, which is absolutely essential in the beginning. Unless potential customers are aware that your business exists, you can’t expect much success. Leveraging influencers that people trust and look to for new products and trends is one of the best ways to popularize your business and build awareness. But do have in mind that there are a lot of fake influencers out there who won’t bring you any value, so exercise a degree of caution and don’t jump at the first possibility.”
Elisa Bender
Elisa Bender is the Co-founder of RevenueGeeks.
“Retargeting campaigns are vital for successful eCommerce marketing. Targeting the customers who have already visited your website is important. These customers are more likely to make a purchase later. This technique would track the customers who have shown an interest in your website and show them your company’s ads when they are browsing on the internet.
For your retargeting campaign to be effective, you’ll have to make sure that your ads are specific. The user should only be displayed the information they are interested in when they click on your ad. If they are shown an ad for football shoes and are redirected to the homepage of a sports brand, they won’t be thrilled. They would have to be directed towards the football shoes they were shown in the ad.
Third-party tracking cookies can be used to retarget your customers. Search terms can also be used to track their browsing footprints.”
Derek Morgen
Derek Morgen is the Co-Founder of Growthster, a lead-gen marketing agency for eCommerce businesses and digital marketer for Agilis, an eCommerce solution for the chemical industry.
“The key to a successful eCommerce marketing campaign is personalization and consistency through various channels. By creating unique customer experiences, you can increase engagement and conversions. You should connect your messaging, design, merchandising, content, and social media channels together in a relevant way for each customer based on their interests or needs.
You can do this by analyzing and tagging them with a specific identifier and then triggering content based on attributes such as age, gender, location, behavior, and recent purchases. You can also use tools like Facebook and Instagram ads to target them by their interests.
It’s important to then target them consistently through these various channels. By sending email marketing messages to those who would be interested and nurturing them with relevant content, you can use retargeting ads to present social media ads and Google display ads on the newsfeeds and websites of those who visit your website. Being a recurring presence with their interests in mind will help you convert those you target in your marketing campaigns.”
Thomas Sleeth
Thomas Sleeth is the founder and editor at Dropshipping Hustle.
“The most essential ingredient in creating a successful marketing campaign is to be relatable. You need to understand how your target audience thinks, how they communicate, their problems, their aspirations, and even their sense of humor. This makes the audience feel as though you are speaking to them directly, and it catches their attention.
Relating to a specific like-minded community of people is one of the most important factors for going viral. If a marketing campaign can solve a problem for the audience, make them laugh, or ideally both in a creative way, it will dramatically increase the chances of the campaign going viral.”
Laura Jimenez
Laura Jimenez is the owner of Ishine365.
“There are two most important ingredients for a successful eCommerce marketing campaign.
1. Offer deals on a regular basis. Most online marketplaces offer promo codes to help entice shoppers. Be sure to do this on weekly basis. From taking advantage of holiday shopping (get 20% off for Father’s Day, 21% off for Halloween, 30% off on Black Friday, etc.) to simply offering great deals for no reason at all, this will help in ensuring you have regular web traffic.
2. Run a launchrock campaign. Launchrock is a popular free service for collecting email addresses of people who want to get early access to the launch of a new app, service, or really anything. The special thing about Launchrock is that it integrates social within the subscription process, which is a very powerful component that can be used to turn a regular promotion into a viral marketing channel to help drive traffic and sales.”
Bernie Schott
Bernie is the Owner and CEO of REECH, a high-performing and eco-friendly yoga products company. They’re dedicated to providing yogis with products that will improve their practice while also improving the planet.
“The most crucial aspect of an eCommerce marketing campaign is the first impression. Consumers are inundated with information and advertisements all throughout the day. A successful campaign will grab the audience’s attention. It’s all about getting them to pause for three seconds to look at your campaign. Once you’ve accomplished that, your ability to convert begins. Whether it’s an image used on a social media campaign or a headline used on an email campaign, the first objective of any campaign is to grab the audience’s attention.”
Daniel Perez Vidal
Daniel Perez Vidal, former investigative journalist and professor of social entrepreneurship at Hult, founded for the Ageless in 2016 after gaining valuable insight on best practices in the health & wellness sector.
“In our experience, nothing beats being in the know about what customers truly need. There’s a big difference between what customers want and what they actually need.
By listening carefully to queries and engaging in one-to-one conversations with them, we get to truly understand where they are coming from and what we can do to assist.
For example, when we are approached by customers looking for natural sleep capsules, we not only point them to the supplement but also ask questions and provide tools that elicit positive lifestyle changes. This strategy has led our marketing campaigns to have above-average engagement and solid five-star reviews. The approach is constructive and beneficial to them and us because we keep learning.”
Allan Borch
Allan Borch is the founder of Dotcom Dollar. He started his own online business and quit his job in 2015 to travel the world. This was achieved through eCommerce sales and affiliate SEO. He started Dotcom Dollar to help aspiring entrepreneurs create a successful online business while avoiding crucial mistakes along the way.
“Every email campaign should be sent to achieve a specific objective or action that you want your reader to complete.
It’s best to try sticking to one strong call-to-action (CTA) per email – buy, read, download, sign up, donate, provide feedback, etc. Using too many CTAs can cause your email to become busy and confusing, leaving recipients without a clear idea of what they should do next.
Simplifying the process that you want readers to complete increases the engagement rate or the odds of success because the experience is much more targeted.”
Nathan Hughes
Nathan Hughes is the Digital Marketing and SEO manager at DiggityMarketing.com.
“Besides the regular stories of SEO optimization, your website’s optimization is the prime ingredient for eCommerce marketing success. To begin with website optimization, I’d advise you to know the principle of the Gruen Effect by heart to help you score big quickly.
The whole scenario of the Gruen Effect is simple: it revolves around the golden quadrilateral: eye-catchy, spottable goods, ease of use, and a happy customer. Make your eCommerce site attractive using infographics and illustrations. Keep your products spottable and your site easy to use with a secure payment gateway. Understand the necessity of white space and bold, italics, and underline lettering. Finally, make voluntary use of FAQs or chatbots that come to the rescue when they need some help. These are some marketing techniques that make a customer happy. And a happy customer translates to a relentless shopper who, in turn, rides your eCommerce venture to success.”
Want to get your eCommerce products in front of a larger audience? Install social media share buttons on your eCommerce site to make it easy for your visitors and customers to share their favorite products with their social media network with a single click.
