What is ecommerce marketing? It’s the SEO, PPC, social and email work that turns website visitors into paying customers. You can build the best-looking online store and still sell nothing. Marketing is what closes the gap between having a shop and having customers.
What is ecommerce marketing?
Ecommerce marketing is the set of activities that bring people to your online store and turn them into customers. It includes search visibility, paid ads, social media and email.
Every channel gets judged against the same thing: does it lead to a sale. That’s what separates it from marketing aimed at general brand awareness.
What channels should you use?
Most stores use a mix of channels. Here’s what each one does.
How does SEO help you get found?
SEO gets your product and category pages showing up when someone searches for what you sell. That means optimising titles, descriptions, images on your product pages, writing content that answers what your customers are already searching for as well as targeting relevant keywords.
When does PPC make sense?
PPC puts your products in front of people who are actively searching to buy. You pay per click, but results start showing straight away, which makes it a useful partner to slower SEO work.
What is social commerce?
Social commerce lets people buy directly through Instagram or TikTok, without leaving the app. For visual products, this cuts out several steps between seeing something and buying it.
Why does email still convert?
Email covers cart abandonment reminders and repeat purchase prompts. It also handles order updates, which keep customers informed after they’ve bought. It reaches people who’ve already shown interest in your store, which tends to make it one of the stronger-performing channels for existing customers.
How do you choose the right channels for your store?
You don’t need every channel running from day one. Start with where your customers already spend their time and build from there.
Product type matters here. A visual product suits Instagram and paid social. A more considered purchase, like furniture or equipment, suits SEO and email, where people take longer to decide.
Budget matters too. PPC and paid social need an ongoing spend to keep working. SEO and email cost more in time than in ad spend, so they suit stores with less to spend upfront.
What mistakes should you avoid?
A few patterns come up again and again with stores that struggle to get results.
Spreading budget too thin
Running five channels badly gets you less than running two well. Pick the channels that fit your product and audience, then commit enough budget to see if they work.
Ignoring repeat customers
New customer acquisition gets most of the attention, but repeat customers are cheaper to sell to. Email and loyalty offers keep past buyers coming back without starting from zero on every sale.
Treating email as an afterthought
Email often gets left until last, yet it reaches people who’ve already shown interest in your store. A basic cart abandonment sequence can recover sales you’d otherwise lose.
Not tracking which channel drives sales
Clicks and impressions don’t tell you what’s working. Track sales back to the channel that brought the customer in, so budget goes towards what’s converting.
How much should you spend?
This depends on your margins and product price. It also depends on which channels you use. A store running PPC and paid social needs a consistent monthly budget to keep campaigns live.
SEO and email cost less in ad spend but more in time, either your own or an agency’s. A sensible starting point is one paid channel and one organic channel, then you adjust based on what brings in sales.
How Netzoll can help
At Netzoll, we work with SME online stores across SEO, paid social, PPC and email marketing. We help you work out which channels suit your products and customers, then build a plan around the ones worth running.
Spreading budget across too many channels usually means none of them get the attention they need. Get in touch and we’ll help you find the right mix for your store.