eCommerce Marketing

Strategy to Maximize ROI

Learn actionable strategies and tips to generate
more revenue for your online business. In this guide,
we’re sharing our tried-and-true best practices for
creating an eCommerce marketing strategy.
 Table of Contents

eCommerce Marketing Strategy 5

eCommerce Marketing Components 7

Creating a Strategy 9

Strategies to Implement 13

eCommerce Marketing Success Story 18

Conclusion 29
Intro to eCommerce Marketing

The Evolution of eCommerce Marketing

Since the first internet sale in 1994, eCommerce

has radically evolved. With the help of social media,
information accessibility and digital marketing, online
shopping has forever changed the retail landscape.

As we reflect on recent adaptations in the industry, a

few key insights stand out:

• 35% of online shoppers say their smartphones

are primary shopping tools
• Revenue from mobile alone topped $600 million
in 2018

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• Voice-assisted devices like Amazon Echo
and Google Home are being utilized to make
purchases
• By 2020, experts predict more than half of all
product searches will be done by voice or by
image
• Online purchases aren’t only happening on
eCommerce websites; they’re happening on
Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and
many other platforms

See a pattern here? eCommerce is becoming

more accessible, faster and taking place over a
wider variety of platforms and devices at all hours
of the day.

More and more brands are starting to fully

embrace the different forms of technology driving
this eCommerce expansion. Specifically, they are
embracing the power their customer data has to
deliver personalized marketing and experiences.

Translating for Real Life

The bottom line for most online sellers is that a solid

eCommerce marketing strategy is the one approach
that enables them to scale engagement with
prospective, current and past customers.

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Goals for eCommerce marketing typically include:

• Increasing Visitors
• Increasing Conversion Rate
• Increasing Average Order Value
• Increasing Lifetime Value

Groove Commerce is a full-service eCommerce

marketing agency that designs, builds and grows
strategic eCommerce websites. Our goal is to help
brands drive revenue and convert visitors into repeat
customers.

Throughout our 12+ years in business, we’ve picked

up several eCommerce marketing tips that can
significantly impact ROI and website conversion.
We’ve compiled our thoughts in the following guide.
We hope you find it to be a valuable resource in
creating an eCommerce marketing strategy.

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 1
What Makes a Great
eCommerce Strategy?

What is eCommerce Marketing?

Let’s start with an exact definition of eCommerce

Marketing:

“eCommerce marketing is the act of driving

awareness and action toward a business that
sells its product or service electronically. eCommerce
marketers can use social media, digital content,
search engines, and email campaigns to attract
visitors and facilitate purchases online.”
(HubSpot.com)

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So what does this mean for you?

As an online retailer, you have access to a variety

of digital marketing tools and channels that help
drive traffic (and conversions) to your eCommerce
website. The trick is qualifying that traffic and
nurturing it with an inbound methodology.

Translating for the Real World

In this section, we will cover a variety of channels,

tools and tactics that can be used to create an
overall eCommerce marketing strategy. At the end
of the day, you’ll need to set goals based on your
business benchmarks and utilize the tools that work
best for you.

We cannot stress enough how important it is to not

just “put all your eggs in one basket.” When creating
a successful eCommerce marketing strategy, you
should use a variety of techniques to maximize your
digital presence.

Let’s take a look at some common marketing

channels and how you can use them to drive traffic
to your online store.

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Knowing How to Create Content That
Resonates

The internet loves content. However, despite the

influx of videos, blogs and articles, many retailers
wonder if they really need these content elements to
sell their products online. The short answer is yes.

Relevant and consistently published content can

help improve your website’s ranking in search engine
results pages (SERPs) and answer questions related
to your industry.

Knowing How to Be Discovered

Make sure that your product pages are optimized

for long-tail keywords that include the name of your
specific products.

For example, if you sell golf shoes, a Google search

for “spiked golf shoes” is more likely to rank your
page if you’ve included that term in the headings
and image alt text.

If your page titles, headers and image alt text all

focus on the right keywords, search engine
crawlers will know to return your eCommerce
store for the right queries and show your store in
their search results.

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Knowing to Leverage One of the Most
Powerful Digital Marketing Tools

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital

marketing. However, it’s one of the classics for a
good reason – it’s often the highest-converting
channel for many eCommerce businesses.

eCommerce email marketing is often automated,

meaning you can set up specific drip campaigns and
workflows. These elements are often segmented by
interest or a particular stage in the buyer’s journey.

You can even (and should) use email to engage with

customers post-purchase or would-be customers
who never pulled the trigger (the abandoned
shopping cart, which we’ll get into later).

Knowing Not Every Platform is a Good Fit

Growing businesses, established brands, contractors

and freelancers all have pages on today’s most
popular social networks. It helps them connect with
their audiences and post content that their prospects
will find interesting.

Social media makes sense for most eCommerce

websites because they are highly visual platforms by
nature. Your success on social media is dependent

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on your use of high quality imagery and messaging
to drive attention and traffic to your website.

Instagram is by far one of the highest-converting

platforms for eCommerce businesses because it
enables you to post sharp product photography and
expand your product’s reach beyond its purchase
page. Users can view, interact with and share your
product before ever visiting your eCommerce store.

Social media platforms are able to help your

eCommerce business grow with product ads that
can show multiple images or videos of a product,
service or process. This enables viewers to discover
and be inspired by your brand before even visiting
the store.

Examples of this functionality include products tags

in posts, shopping ads in social feeds or “Swipe Up”
calls to action. These social media methods help you
eliminate friction from the buying process and allow
users to engage directly with your products.

We’ll dive more into social media later on, but

at a high level, remember to consider your
business audience and KPIs when considering
social media options.

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Knowing How to Write Content Relevant to
Your Website Visitors

Blogging and content creation can help businesses

increase organic traffic and attract relevant visitors
to their websites. Marketers accomplish these results
by crafting content that targets specific phases of
the buyer’s journey.

To start, we recommend writing top-of-funnel

content to attract a broader audience. As visitors
return to your website and become more engaged,
you can create content that helps move them into
the consideration and decision stages. This process
of tailoring content will help your eCommerce
business cater to specific user needs and nurture
them through the buying process.

Knowing Who Can Advocate For Products

Influencer marketing focuses on brands or

individuals that have followings that aligns with your
target audience.

The term “influencer” is commonly used to denote

Instagram accounts with several thousand followers
or more. However, it could also refer to a celebrity
persona or communities of influence that interest
your target audience.

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Influencers build communities of people that know,
like and trust them. Therefore, it’s easy for them to
garner attention around your online product through
a recommendation or “sponsored post.”

Knowing How to Leverage Video

YouTube offers a massive audience. If you utilize

highly searched keyword terms to determine your
topics and share videos that are related to your
product, you’ll put yourself in a great position to be
discovered.

Tutorial videos, product reviews and “unboxing”

videos are all video formats that show current
customers how to use your product and exactly
what they will be getting if and when they purchase.

Successfully implementing YouTube as a part of

your eCommerce marketing strategy will help to
increase customer satisfaction and build long-term
relationships with website visitors.

Knowing What Your Customers are Asking

If your audience is asking questions related to your

product, you’re the best one to answer them. So,
if you’re hearing the same question over and over,
create an FAQ page on your website and include

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questions that match high volume, long-tail keyword
searches to get more users to your site.

You’ll be building both authority and traffic — two

crucial components of a successful eCommerce
store, in addition to keeping your customers happy
by giving them a resource to answer their product
and brand related questions.

Knowing Where Your Customers Are

Don’t overlook this powerful tactic for eCommerce

businesses. Local marketing allows you to capitalize
on the areas where large numbers of your current
and potential customers are and allows you to offer
specific local incentives to this customer base.

A good approach to local marketing would be to

use tracking cookies on your website to determine
where your prospects are located and then offer
a promotion like discounted (or free) shipping to
potential customers.

So, what makes a great eCommerce marketing

strategy? It’s knowing the combination of these tools
and focusing your efforts on them to drive more
transactions in your store. Pick what works for you
and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

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 2
Components of
eCommerce Strategy

No eCommerce marketing strategy can be deemed

successful without having goals in place for how
to measure. But how do you know what to
measure against?

Your industry, location, business size and a variety

of other influencing factors help determine what
standards you should use as baseline to analyze
how your goals and key performance indicators
(KPI’s) are performing — those standards are called
industry benchmarks.

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Consider goals that can be measured with KPIs like
conversion rate, website visits, click-through rate,
time on site or customer acquisition.

Break Your Strategy Into Achievable Steps

When building out a marketing plan for your online

store, there are multiple paths you can take and it
may be tempting to chase after every single one.
However, that plan will almost assuredly guarantee
you will not be truly effective at any of them.

We strongly recommend that you start with a couple

of strategies that you believe will have the most
return on your investment (ROI) for your budget and
create simplified action items for each.

For example, say you decided you want to focus on a

paid ad strategy that drives users to your store using
Google Search. A few of your action items would be:
set up a Google Ads account, determine your total
budget, research and create an ad group strategy
based on your target keywords, and monitor your
account daily.

This is intentionally oversimplified because you

don’t want to get lost in chasing the next “great
eCommerce strategy” without executing on one
thoroughly and allowing it to work for you.

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Nurture Your Customers

Marketing doesn’t stop when you have made a

sale. Once a potential customer transitions into an
active customer - you should focus on engaging and
nurturing them.

By turning customers into brand loyalists, you’ll

have customers you can use for testimonials and
case studies, you’ll receive glowing reviews about
your product, and you’ll have the power of word-of-
mouth marketing behind.

You can also segment these customers into long

term email campaigns with target goals for repeat
and new product purchases.

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 3
Creating a Strategy

One of the most important things a company can

do when developing their eCommerce marketing
strategy is to research their customers to get a better
understanding of who they are, how they think and
how they behave online.

The first step is to create your ideal buyer profile

and then buyer modalities (which is a more specific
method for segmenting buyers).

We like to look at the recency, frequency, and

monetary value across a customer base to create
these buyer profiles and modalities. That means
answering:

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• How new are the buyers?
• How often do they buy?
• How much are they spending?

You’ll begin to understand who your ideal buyer is by

analyzing these data points and building a baseline
set of metrics. Your ideal buyer profile might also
include other customer data such as:

• Gender
• Age Group
• Geographical Location
• Income
• Education
• Job type

Buyer modalities are based off of research into who

your customers are as a person and what solution
your product or service solves for them.

Effective modalities consider and define individual

human behaviors and go beyond profile data to
extrapolate actual customer intent. A few sample
questions around intent might include:

• How do you use the product?

• What problem is this product solving?
• What are your goals for using the product?

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Two users with identical demographic data can be
motivated and influenced in totally different ways
through their interaction with your product. As a
result, savvy eCommerce marketers will need to
persuade them differently.

Different people have different motivations for

buying; they purchase different products types in
different ways, and for different reasons. For this
reason, we like to group our buyers into four buyer
types: fast buyers, slow buyers, logic-based buyers,
and emotional buyers.

Within those groups you have competitive buyers,

spontaneous buyers, methodical buyers, and
humanistic buyers. You want to make sure you’re
catering different campaigns to reach each
different modality, since as we stated above,
they purchase different products in different
ways for different reasons.

There’s no one-size fits all approach, but a good

strategy addresses different buyer modality during
each phase of the sales funnel. A good
strategy uses these modalities to create content
that customers can relate to, on the digital
platforms they use.

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Speaking of platforms, at this point in creating your
strategy, it is time for planning for implementation:

• Planning & scheduling content/offers

• Identifying and implementing automated
workflows.

No need to over complicate here - planning and

implementing is simply creating a marketing
calendar that outlines the supporting materials and/
or the content you’ll be producing, the platforms
and channels you’ll use to disseminate and promote
them and your timeline for doing it.

With this plan, you should be able to map out

80-90% of your store’s campaigns and editorial
schedule for the next 12 months.

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 4
12 eCommerce
Marketing Strategies

Now that we have gone in depth into what makes

a great eCommerce marketing strategy, let’s look at
the elements that go into the strategies we’ve just
described.

Note that none of them are mutually exclusive; they

should be used in tandem to help position your
business in a way that allows new customers to find
you and existing customers to be delighted with you.

Here are 12 eCommerce marketing tactics to drive

conversions and sales.

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1. SEO

Make yourself discoverable to crawlers. Sure, you’ve

heard about the importance of SEO before, but
now more than ever, a good SEO plan is essential.
It is far more important than just making sure your
homepage and about page are optimized.

Your product pages often get overlooked: make sure

that meta descriptions and tags are optimized, there
is no duplicate copy, and the page loads quickly on
desktop and mobile. Having SEO optimized product
pages will not only make your customers happy, but
search crawlers too.

2. Email

We mentioned it earlier, but we’ll say it again,

email is a very powerful tool for eCommerce store
owners, especially email automation through the
use of a CRM.

Send announcements of specials and discounts,

incentivize subscribers and use smart lists
to segment your contact list so you can send
customized content at a specific stage of the their
buyer journey.

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3. Inbound Marketing

A truly successful inbound marketing for eCommerce

strategy consists of a variety of smaller content
initiatives that on their own may not be anything
remarkable, but when combined can create
something powerful and moving.

These tactics work because customers are often

drawn to brands because of the quality of their
content. Customers want to see products that
enable them to picture themselves using a product.

A good way to approach inbound marketing is to

look at your content through the lens of a sales
flywheel that attracts, converts, closes and delights.
To move customers through this funnel at a quicker
pace, you’ll need to develop “micro-campaigns” (a
series of small, ongoing activities that are part of a
larger strategy).

4. Social Media

If you do it right, social media (especially Instagram)

can be a HUGE driver for eCommerce sales and
conversions. As the platforms have matured, they’ve
essentially become another digital storefront for your
products and can lead viewers directly to pre-loaded
shopping carts.

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The best eCommerce social media strategies include
posting at least three times a day, engaging with
followers (follow-backs, liking photos, comments and
responses), and personalizing the buying experience.

Here are a couple tips to help maximize your ROI on

social media:

• Post the highest quality content that you can

• Respond to comments and DMs
• Utilize shopping posts - lead viewers directly to
your product pages
• Run a giveaway
• Streamline the buying experience

5. Influencers and Testimonials

People trust their peers and can relate to them,

which is why people are heavily influenced by
reviews, testimonials and influencers.

You can use customer testimonials to tell the world

how great your products are. You can leverage
influencer personalities on social media to endorse
your products and help you gain exposure to new
audiences. Their testimonial about your products will
have a large impact on their followers.

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6. Paid Search Advertising

Google Ads, Google Shopping and Bing Ads

Nine times out of ten your competitors are utilizing

some form of paid search ads. That’s because paid
search ads target customers when they are closest
to conversion.

Paid search campaigns allow you to bid for top ad

placements on search engine result pages (SERPs)
like Google or Bing. This gives businesses the
opportunity to be first seen by customers looking for
their type of product or service.

7. Retargeting

You have already gotten a potential customer to visit

your website. Now what? Make them remember why
they went there in the first place (politely of course)
with retargeting ads and emails.

We’ve all seen the ads, you look at a pair of shoes on

Zappos.com and then all of the sudden you see the
same pair of shoes in a banner ad on a website you
visit next, then on Facebook and then on Instagram.

What the heck is happening here? You’re being

followed by a retargeting campaign.

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The good news is, you can do the same for your
store. Many platforms can enable retargeting
campaigns (think Facebook, Google Ads or
HubSpot). The success of retargeting campaigns
begins with the strategic placement of cookies
(pieces of code) on specific pages on your website.
Retargeting ad units use that information to
track those visitors to other websites with ads
showing product(s).

It’s also best practice to have a ‘burn cookie’ and

checkout pages so that you can be sure to exclude
current customers from seeing an ad for a product
they’ve already purchased.

8. Landing Pages

This is a must, must, must! When using digital paid

ads it is 100% best practice to send visitors to a
tailored landing page that provides more information
on the ad that they clicked.

People get lost when your ads navigate to your

entire site, so be sure your landing page is clean and
concise with a clear CTA that ties back to the ad that
they discovered you on.

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9. Post-Purchase Email Follow-Up

If a customer has purchased a product from your

website — and has opted to receive emails from you
— send them a follow-up email a few days after the
product is delivered to keep conversation going.

Post-purchase follow-up helps you gauge a

customer’s future interest in your product line and
offerings and shows that you care about them
beyond a one-time sale.

Be sure to ask them to write a review of your product

and/or fill out a survey so you can continually
improve the customer experience.

10. Abandoned-Cart Notifications

Shopping carts are constantly abandoned for any

number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean that
customer you have missed a possible conversion.
The right kind of email campaign can make the
difference between a lost customer and sale.

When a potential customer fails to complete a

transaction while they’re in your shopping cart or
checkout process, send them emails to remind and
entice them to come back, or to simply help answer
any questions they may have.

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11. Optimized Cart and Checkout

We can’t tell you how many times we have come

across a less-than-ideal shopping cart and checkout
experience with a business owner wondering why
their website isn’t making sales.

A poor checkout experience is one of the quickest

ways to lose a would-be sale. Be sure to make
things as easy as possible for shoppers:

• Show shipping costs - offer free shipping

• Offer ‘Guest Checkout’
• Don’t create ssurprises in the checkout process
(high tax etc.)
• Make sure everything loads quickly and is
optimized for mobile
• Auto enroll people in your email list when they
make purchases
• Offer multiple payment gateways like PayPal and
all major credit cards
• Have as few barriers as possible

12. Product Reviews

We spoke about how beneficial product reviews can

be, but let’s look at this tactic a little closer.
Reviews provide credibility to your products as
well as allow people to voice their concerns. Good

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reviews allow you to capitalize on user generated
content (UGC) and bad reviews may lead you to
re-evaluate a product or buying experiences.

Another reason to allow reviews of your products is

that Google loves seeing reviews - integrations with
Yotpo and other review platforms now show reviews
now in SERPs.

Take your review strategy one step further and use a

Facebook Business Page to allow your customers to
share their products praises.

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 5
eCommerce Marketing
Success Story

Final Draft is the #1 screenwriting software for

professional screenwriters and filmmakers. It’s used
by 95% of film and television producers and is the
considered to be the industry standard around the
world.

When Final Draft 11 was scheduled to be launch,

Final Draft turned to Groove Commerce to ensure the
launch would meet and and exceed previous
year’s successes.

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The Challenge

Their revenue goals for the launch and campaign

were very aggressive. The campaign would
take place over the Black Friday holiday – the busiest
and most crowded marketing time of year.

In addition to revenue goals, Final Draft was

looking for an interactive and engaging way to
showcase the features of the product. The catch?
The upgrade had three different versions for
three distinct audiences that all needed very
specific content.

Three primary Final Draft 11 versions:

• Final Draft 11 for new customers

• An upgrade to Final Draft 11 for current
customers
• Final Draft for teachers and students

The Approach

Personalization and Automation

The first step was to evaluate Final Draft’s contact

database to establish personas that could be
matched to the appropriate version of Final Draft 11.
We used HubSpot to create smart lists that

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segmented the contacts into three personas based
on their next potential purchase:

• Current customers (v. 10 or earlier)

• Potential net new customers
• Educational customers with an .EDU Email
Address

Content was created for each persona based on

their specific motivations and pain points. Tailored
content was paired with send-conditions to enable
the right content reached the right persona at the
right point in their customer journey.

A/B Testing

A/B testing was a very important part of this

effort - in the weeks leading up to Black Friday, we
aggressively A/B tested marketing correspondence.

Email subject lines were tested until each segment

received a 30% open rate or higher. CTA placements
within each email were tested next. Because each
segment related to different messages and formats,
we were able to tailor future marketing outreach to
better identify with their preferences.

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Workflows

Final Draft wanted to use multiple campaign

touchpoints to reach customers throughout the sales
funnel, but also as an opportunity to connect with
customers in a thoughtful and helpful way.

Workflows were a large part of what made this

tactic so successful. Contacts were enrolled into
specific smart lists based on their stage in the funnel
and persona. Following an initial promotional email,
we set a 4-day delay and evaluated additional
engagement criteria to consider if a contact should
continue through the process.

We used email opens and link clicks to measure

and evaluate purchase intent and evaluate what
marketing assets they were finding to be valuable.

As a result, contacts who met certain criteria

received another email with alternate imagery and
messaging to address specific needs and pull them
through the funnel faster.

Ultimately when contacts purchased a product,

they were removed from the workflow so they would
not continue to receive promotional correspondence.

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This is important to note: customers should be
nurtured after purchase, but not with the same
promotional content. No one enjoys seeing an ad for
a product that they have just purchased.

HubSpot Ads Tool

The last important part of this strategy was the

HubSpot ads tool. This tool enabled us to create
custom audiences and retarget ads based on the
smart lists we created.

Custom audience targeting allowed Final Draft to

reach customers with ads relevant to their needs
and retargeting enabled Final Draft to connect with
users who previously visited their website but did
not make a purchase.

The Results

The Black Friday campaign for Final Draft generated

significant results. A comparison of key metrics from
the Final Draft 10 Cyber Week in 2016 showed:

• 108% increase in revenue

• 69% increase in eCommerce conversion rate
• 151% increase in transactions
• 30% average email open rate
• 3% average email click-through rate

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Final Draft exceeded both the product launch and
Q4 revenue goals.

Business Impact

In 2016 during the product launch of Final Draft

10, Final Draft did not use HubSpot or a marketing
automation tool. Our work helped them fully utilize
the tools at their disposal and streamlined their
process through automation.

Final Draft was also able to accelerate and

automate their marketing outreach to better relate
to customers. They are now positioned to continue
a personalization strategy based on their needs
and solutions and reach their customers with more
relevant content.

Lastly, the revenue growth generated from this

campaign helped them allocate more resources for
growth and set them up for a strong Q1.

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 6
Conclusion

We touched on a lot of strategies, tips, and

techniques in this here. When creating your
marketing plan remember:

1. Goals and KPIs are the foundation of an

eCommerce marketing strategy - know how
to analyze your campaign for more growth
and success
2. Utilize social media and SEO best practices -
allow your store to be discovered
3. It’s all about the customer - make things
easy for them and make them happy about
their purchase
4. Automation is your friend - leverage technology

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 to do the heavy lifting for you
5. Be willing to try new things - successful
eCommerce doesn’t happen overnight. If your
first strategies don’t work, try some more! The
internet is a big place and your customers are out
there waiting to find you.

Need help positioning your eCommerce brand for

success? Reach out to set up a call – we’re here to
help!

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