Ecommerce Marketing in 2023: 12 Bullet-Proof Strategies & Tips

With the growing number and volume of online sales globally, ecommerce marketing is becoming an increasingly important concept in the business world. If you already have an online store or plan to launch one in 2023, you have to focus your efforts on marketing for ecommerce in order to both acquire and retain customers and outperform the competition.

In this guide on marketing for ecommerce businesses in 2023, we’ll define what ecommerce marketing is as well as outline the best types of it and provide you with specific tips on how to boost your efforts in the marketing department. We’ll also show you how Coretava can help you boost results for your marketing efforts while putting many everyday tasks on autopilot.

Table of Content

• What Is Ecommerce Marketing?
• 6 Best Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce
• 6 Top Tips for Marketing for Ecommerce

What Is Ecommerce Marketing?

Ecommerce marketing is all the efforts and activities that you implement in order to promote your ecommerce marketplace, drive traffic to it, and generate sales.

The ecommerce marketing definition makes it different from digital marketing although many confuse the two concepts and tend to use them interchangeably.

In reality, most marketing for ecommerce is digital as digital marketing is quickly growing - expected to reach $807 billion by 2026, according to DemandSage - and has already surpassed traditional marketing. For comparison, in 2021 digital advertising spending amounted to $436 billion vs. $196 billion for traditional advertising.

However, not all marketing strategies for ecommerce businesses have to be implemented digitally (even if they are in reality). And similarly, not all digital marketing is done for the benefit of promoting online stores; a lot of it still goes for traditional businesses with physical stores.

Nevertheless, in the rest of this article we will focus on strategies and tips on how to do ecommerce marketing digitally for your existing or new business.

6 Best Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce

There are a few different types of digital marketing for ecommerce stores that have proven particularly successful in recent years. While what works for one business varies from what works for another, in most cases the best digital marketing strategy is comprehensive, containing components of several different types instead of focusing on a single type.

Here are the 6 most powerful ecommerce marketing strategies that you should try in 2023 to boost your business and grow your lead generation:

SEO and Content Marketing for Ecommerce Businesses

SEO marketing (search engine optimization) and content marketing is the absolute leader in digital marketing for all types of businesses. The reason is that marketers and business owners consistently report the lowest CAC (customer acquisition cost) and the highest ROI (return on investment) with organic results.

It’s important to understand that just having a well-developed website with an online marketplace is not enough as an SEO strategy. Your ecommerce marketing team has to put deliberate, well-planned, continuous efforts into creating various kinds of high-quality, user-driven content to optimize results.

The most popular types of ecommerce content marketing include:

• SEO-driven product pages First and foremost, when you set up your ecommerce website, you have to capitalize on SEO for ecommerce on your product pages. Although you will have just a few product pages, they should have the highest conversion rate, which means that your efforts to drive qualified traffic to them will more than pay off. Focus on the right keywords and high-value content in addition to technical optimization to rank these pages high on Google and other search engines.
• Blogging: Over the years, blogging has proven to be an extremely cost-effective ecommerce content marketing strategy. In 2023, to beat the Google algorithms, you have to provide long-form content that offers a unique perspective and provides real value to users and potential customers. Keyword stuffing and rewording the same old content no longer works. Moreover, you need to highlight the expertise of your content team writers in their online profiles on your business blog to show why they have the authority to write on these topics.
• Ecommerce video marketing: With 2.6 billion YouTube users (according to Oberlo) and 1.53 billion TikTok users (according to DemandSage) in 2023, it’s easy to understand and appreciate the potential of video marketing for your ecommerce business. Moreover, you can embed videos in your product pages and blog posts to optimize user experience while also increasing the exposure of your videos. Ecommerce videos should be a mix of product tutorials and general educational resources. Importantly, you can repurpose a lot of the content for your blog or Help Center to create videos (or vice versa).
• Podcasting: A lot of ecommerce businesses have been able to attract new customers and build a loyal audience through a podcast. This content marketing strategy is definitely worth testing in 2023 independently or as a hybrid with your video marketing strategy. However, keep in mind that similar to most organic strategies, you will need to give this a couple of months before you are able to see solid results and decide if it works for your business or not.
• Outreach and backlinking: Building backlinks to your website should be an indispensable part of your content strategy for the high potential that it has for SEO. Your digital marketing team needs to focus on the right balance between quality and quantity, making sure to get at least a few high-quality backlinks per month, from relevant publications with good DA (domain authority) and DR (domain ranking).
• PR: PR for an ecommerce website is related to backlinking but it’s worth its own strategy. In this type of digital marketing, the focus should be on getting backlinks - dofollow or nofollow - from very high-authority sources with established reputations in the business community (think Forbes, Entrepreneur, etc.).

When putting together the content marketing plan for your ecommerce business, you should make sure it’s comprehensive and well-coordinated. What you do on one channel should supplement what you do on the rest of channels.

Moreover, for everything on your website - both product pages and blog posts, consider adding relevant, customized pop ups. Businesses report a conversion rate between 3% and 60%, showing the importance of executing this strategy right. Core Marketing can help you customize and personalize your website pop ups to boost conversion with little to no effort.

Ecommerce Social Media Marketing

Another type of digital marketing for ecommerce that is closely related to SEO and content is social media. This includes both organic and paid social media strategies.

Oberlo expects the number of social media users to reach 4.89 billion in 2023, more than doubling the number of 2017. This means that virtually every single one of your target customers is on social media, in one way or another (with very little exceptions).

However, social media marketing comes with many misconceptions. Most importantly, (1) just posting anything a couple of times a day is not the right approach and (2) not all social media platforms are necessarily good for your business.

Before you get into it, you should do some research on your industry and competitors and plan out a social media marketing strategy for your ecommerce business.

Depending on your target audience, their geographical location, and online habits, you need to figure out what days of the week and times of the day are best for posting on social media. For example, if you are a predominantly B2B ecommerce business, it makes sense to schedule post Monday-Friday, 9 AM-5 PM. If, on the other hand, you run a B2C store, it’s probably best to post on social media in the evening and on the weekends when your target customers are most likely to be online.

Similarly, you should focus your efforts on 2-3 social media channels with the highest potential instead of spreading too thin.

As the largest social media website with 2.93 billion active monthly users (according to Hootsuite), Facebook is probably worth the effort, especially for B2C businesses. Not only can it bring your company and products a level of exposure that no other channel can, but it also allows for a wide variety of content formats to be shared on it.

Instagram is another channel that can bring good results for ecommerce stores, particularly those selling products and not services. As the most visual social media website, it gives you the opportunity to really showcase and highlight your product, making it specifically ideal for fashion, beauty, home, and travel products.

Meanwhile, B2B businesses should not underestimate the power of LinkedIn. Being the most professional social media network, LinkedIn provides ecommerce businesses with an important opportunity to not only grab the attention of potential customers but also build professional relationships and even partnerships with other related brands within the industry.

When setting up a social media plan, it’s a smart idea to synchronize it with your content marketing strategy. There are many different ways in which you can share your content on social media to boost exposure and repurpose it to minimize new content creation resources.

Email Marketing for Ecommerce

Email is one of the most traditional types of ecommerce digital marketing which remains valid in 2023. DemandSage reports a $36 return for every $1 spent on email marketing. This is quite not bad if you think about it.

However, similar to all other strategies, email marketing is constantly evolving, and digital marketers need to continue updating and upgrading their plan and approach to remain competitive.

For instance, one of the hottest trends in email ecommerce marketing is personalization. Simply adding your lead’s name and location does no longer suffice to attract their attention and convert them into a customer.

To make your email marketing campaigns effective for customer acquisition and retention, you have to work on many different aspects of personalization. Every single email you sent out needs to read as if it was specifically written for the individual or enterprise it’s going to. It needs to sound as if you spent a considerable amount of time thinking about their specific needs before offering a solution.

The good news is that email marketers do not need to lose their sanity over countless hours of strategizing and devising their weekly workload of emails. Tools like Core Marketing, a part of the Coretava suite of products for ecommerce businesses, help you send highly personalized emails with zero effort.

SMS Marketing for Ecommerce

SMS marketing is yet another must-try strategy in 2023. Even though it might not be the first choice that comes to your mind as a digital marketer or an ecommerce business owner, you should give it some thought. Keep in mind that 82% of people say that they open every single SMS they receive and 70% of customers say that SMS is a good way for businesses to attract their attention. 82% open rate is something unachievable in email marketing, no matter how great and interesting your subjects are.

Again, with SMS marketing you have to choose the right time to send, write the best concise content (especially the first few words), and still personalize the experience. In a way, sending SMSs to your customers might be more challenging than sending them emails because you have only 160 characters to grab their attention and prompt them to do something.

Luckily, the Core Marketing tool helps you optimize and automate your SMS marketing strategy with minimal effort.

Affiliate and Influencer Marketing for Ecommerce Stores

Other two types of digital marketing for ecommerce that can be combined into a single strategy and that have a strong potential in 2023 are affiliate marketing and influencer marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy that incentivizes affiliates (also frequently referred to as publishers) to promote your brand, product, or service in a way that drives traffic and sales to your website. In return, you pay them an affiliate communication which can be set up as a percentage of the total revenue they generate for you or a fixed amount per traffic or number of sales. Affiliates can be both general and niche persons or companies with authority within the industry.

Influencer marketing, meanwhile, is similar to affiliate marketing but focuses on partnering with influencers, or individuals who have a strong reputation and a large follower base. The specific goal of this strategy can be either raising brand awareness or driving traffic/sales directly, but the ultimate objective is to generate more customers.

Both affiliate and influencer marketing for ecommerce businesses can happen on a variety of platforms like their websites, YouTube channels, social media profiles, online courses, etc. If you work on your affiliate marketing strategy, it can easily contribute 20% (or even more) of your total revenue. Moreover, it is cost-effective as you pay affiliates only based on the results that they drive, while it can be implemented with relatively little work on behalf of your digital marketing team.

Ecommerce Paid Marketing

While there is somewhat of a difference between digital marketing and digital advertising, paid marketing is often categorized as an online marketing strategy. The main advantage of this approach is that it can produce results very quickly, so it can give your ecommerce website an initial push in traffic and sales, when you are just getting started. On the flip side, advertising costs significantly more than organic efforts.

Yet, if implemented correctly, Google ads and social media ads can be used as a supplementary strategy to boost your SEO strategy.

6 Tips for Marketing for Ecommerce

Now that we’ve covered the top ecommerce marketing strategies for 2023, there are tips and tricks that you can apply across them to improve results.

Let’s take a look at the 6 most effective tips for marketing for ecommerce this year:

Tip #1: Use Personalization

77% of customers have selected, paid more, or recommended a brand that offers a personalized experience or service. This number alone is enough to convince even the most skeptical ecommerce business owner of the need to take advantage of personalization, starting from marketing and continuing through the customer journey.

Personalization can be applied in the content that users access, the pop ups they see, and the emails and SMSs they receive to enhance both customer acquisition and customer retention.

Check out how Core Marketing and Core Personalization tools can help you offer the most relevant experience to your customers.

Tip #2: Build a Loyalty Program

To boost the results of your ecommerce marketing efforts, it’s a smart move to launch a loyalty program. By giving exclusive benefits to your repeat customers, you can easily create loyalty and increase the retention of customers that you get through marketing.

Check out how Core Loyalty can help you establish and support a loyalty program in no time.

Tip #3: Gamify the User Experience

According to Storyly, gamification has driven a 700% growth in customer acquisition. This means that you are missing out on a major source of revenue if you leave gamification out of the digital marketing strategy for your ecommerce website.

Tip #4: Focus on Local Marketing

If your ecommerce platform targets a few different global regions, countries, and/or states, you need to use not only local SEO but also other local marketing strategies. Local marketing refers not only to using various languages but also diverse practices as user preferences change from location to location. What you do in the US might not be as effective in LatAm, for example, to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

Tip #5: Provide Impeccable UI and UX on Your Website

When designing your ecommerce website, it’s crucial to put a lot of effort into optimizing the UX (user experience) and UI (user interface). With the tough competition in the ecommerce business industry, you cannot afford to frustrate your users and waste their time if you are hoping to retain their attention and convert them into customers. The customer journey should be effortless and smooth, leading from informing, through convincing, all the way to checkout.

One way to provide the best user experience is through well-timed, customized pop ups where you prompt users to do what makes most sense for them as well as your business at each point in time.

Check out how Core Marketing can help you launch tailored pop ups on your ecommerce platform.

Tip #6: Think Mobile First

TechJury reports that 61% of traffic is mobile and that 58% of multi-device purchases close on a mobile device. This means that you should not simply make your ecommerce website mobile-friendly, but you should actively go mobile-first. The share of mobile traffic and sales is going to increase in 2023 and beyond, so you have to put it at the core of your ecommerce marketing efforts.

Getting Started

In 2023, it is not a matter of whether you should use ecommerce marketing but a matter of how to set it up in the most effective way. Launching a mix of the 6 top ecommerce marketing strategies outlined above should give you the boost that your business needs. The good news is that there are plenty of tools that can help you automate and optimize the ROI of your digital marketing plan. Coretava products help you capitalize on the benefits of personalization, customization, automation, and loyalty to grow your ecommerce marketplace like never before.

Demo a demo of Coretava to check it out yourself.