Ecommerce Marketing: How to Win (and Keep) Customers

Online sales channels are loud, busy places. You’re not just competing with other brands for the attention of potential customers; you’re competing with all the other content users find online. That’s why you need a robust, thoughtful ecommerce marketing strategy to get your products in front of the right customers at the right time, to turn browsers into buyers and build relationships that last.

Ecommerce has fundamentally reshaped how businesses operate and how consumers shop. With over half of all shopping journeys now starting on digital channels, a scattered approach to advertising simply won't cut it. Your brand needs to be visible, engaging, and personal — and you need to be present wherever your customers are.

This guide will break down the strategies, channels, and tools you need to succeed.

Ecommerce marketing is the process of promoting and selling products online using digital strategies to attract customers and increase sales. It involves using tools like social media ads, email campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), and website personalization to guide shoppers — from discovery to purchase. The primary goal is to enhance online visibility, convert visitors into buyers, and retain customers.

Today, at least 53% of customers begin their shopping journeys on digital channels. Determining how you show up on these channels and what messages you tell on them is a key part of a successful ecommerce strategy. Here are the top benefits of ecommerce marketing:

• Global reach: Access customers worldwide without geographical limitations. This grows your market beyond local boundaries.
• Cost-effective: Lower marketing costs compared to traditional advertising, with better marketing return on investment (ROI) and budget control.
• Targeted advertising: Reach your target audiences based on demographics, interests, behavior, and purchase history for higher conversion rates.
• 24/7 sales potential: Your marketing works around the clock, generating leads and sales even while you sleep.
• Real-time analytics: Track campaign performance instantly and make data-driven decisions to optimize results.
• Customer retention: Build long-term relationships through email marketing, loyalty programs, and retargeting campaigns.

An average marketer engages customers across 10 different channels. So, think of it as creating nearly as many types of marketing to catch the attention of your audience. Here are the main types of marketing brands rely on.

SEO involves optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine (SERP) results when potential customers search for products or services. Your SEO strategy should encompass keyword research, product descriptions, and optimizing page speed. Make sure your site structure helps both search engines and customers find what they need quickly and easily. Why? Because most online shopping journeys begin with a simple search query — for instance, someone planning a wedding outfit might search "summer wedding guest dresses." Your landing pages and products that appear at the top should match what searchers are looking for.

Pro tip: Use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automatically generate keyword-optimized product descriptions at scale and analyze competitor SEO strategies to identify new ranking opportunities. Neolait uses Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s AI capabilities to create 1,300+ SEO-optimized product descriptions.

Content marketing is your opportunity to build meaningful connections with customers. Instead of constantly pushing sales messages, successful ecommerce brands create content that educates, inspires, and solves problems for their target audience. Think strategically about your customers' journey — what questions do they have before, during, and after making a purchase?

For instance, a kitchen appliance retailer might create cooking tutorials, meal planning guides, and seasonal recipe collections that naturally showcase their products in action. This approach positions your brand as a trusted resource rather than just another seller.

Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Snapchat are modern-day marketplaces. Billions of potential customers spend their daily time browsing, discovering, and shopping. Use these platforms through a mix of organic content, targeted advertising, influencer partnerships, and direct customer engagement to meet shoppers where they already are.

Authentic relationships and showcasing products in creative, engaging ways can increase brand awareness and generate traffic to your online store. For example, look at how YETI focuses on a lifestyle, not just the product. They create compelling stories and visuals of adventurers using their gear in extreme environments, making followers feel like they’re a part of an exclusive, rugged community.

Pro tip: Use AI tools for social media monitoring and automatically track brand mentions, analyze customer sentiment, and identify trending conversations relevant to your products.

Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools in ecommerce because it combines personalization, longevity, and measurable results. It provides a direct, long-term communication channel with customers that you can own and control. Unified email marketing platforms use automation and customer data to deliver highly targeted messages at crucial moments — like welcoming new subscribers, recovering abandoned carts, or re-engaging inactive customers.

This precise targeting, combined with analytics on open rates, clicks, and conversions, makes email marketing both cost-effective and valuable for building lasting customer relationships and a strong sales pipeline.

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based strategy where you pay a commission to external partners (affiliates) for driving sales or qualified leads. It helps ecommerce brands by expanding their reach to new, relevant audiences at a low risk since they primarily pay only for successful conversions. Affiliate marketing boosts customer trust, and that’s why at least 16% of ecommerce purchases are influenced by affiliate marketing.

Paid advertising, or pay-per-click (PPC), is a digital marketing model where businesses pay a fee each time someone clicks on their ad, essentially buying website traffic rather than earning it organically. This approach encompasses various channels, including search engine ads (Google Ads), social media advertising (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok), display banners, and video ads across different platforms.

The beauty of PPC lies in how you can target specific audiences, control your budget, and measure results in real-time. That makes it an essential tool for businesses looking for instant traffic and sales. For example, AI tools like Google's Smart Bidding can automatically optimize your ad spend and target the right audiences. It can also adjust bids in real-time based on conversion likelihood and performance data.

Omni-channel marketing unifies all customer touchpoints (website, social media, email, and physical stores) to deliver a single, seamless, and consistent brand experience. This integration helps ecommerce brands by boosting customer loyalty and engagement, leading to increased sales and higher customer lifetime value (CLV).

Imagine winning a bounty for shopping! Customer loyalty programs reward repeat purchases with perks like discounts or exclusive offers, formally encouraging long-term customer relationships. They help ecommerce brands by significantly boosting customer retention and customer lifetime value — all while reducing costly customer acquisition (CAC) efforts.

No matter what industry you’re in or who your audience is, ecommerce marketing goals are the same for every business: Increase brand awareness, conversions, and foster customer loyalty. Here are the top ecommerce strategies for achieving them.

Product page optimization is the difference between a page that converts and one that gets lost in search results. Focus on creating compelling product descriptions with naturally integrated keywords, attention-grabbing meta titles, and descriptions that encourage clicks. Use clean, descriptive URLs that both users and search engines can easily understand.

Technical performance is equally important, so compress images to reduce load times, minimize redirects, and ensure mobile responsiveness. Search engines prioritize fast, user-friendly experiences to rank pages.

Paid advertising amplifies your organic efforts by placing your products directly in front of high-intent customers who are actively searching for what you sell. Through PPC campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, you can instantly expand your reach and get qualified traffic to your store.

Use a unified customer relationship management (CRM) tool, such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, to tailor ad content, visuals, and messaging to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. This way, every dollar spent reaches the customers likely to convert, maximizing your return on ad spend.

54% of customers are loyal to a brand when they get the best value out of them. So, offering discounts and promotions goes a really long way. Successful ecommerce businesses recognize that one-size-fits-all promotions leave money on the table as different customers respond to different incentives. While some shoppers are driven by percentage discounts or loyalty rewards, others are more motivated by free shipping offers, limited-time deals, or buy-one-get-one promotions.

Use your ecommerce analytics to identify purchasing patterns and customer behaviors, then create targeted segments that allow you to deliver personalized offers that resonate with each group's specific motivations. This data-driven approach increases conversion rates and shows shoppers that you understand their preferences and shopping habits.

Customers expect you to understand their unique needs and adapt to their evolving preferences, making ecommerce personalization a business necessity. In fact, 60% of high-performing marketers personalize their efforts — from discovery to post-purchase support. And the key lies in delivering the right message when customers are most receptive to it. This means sending strategic follow-ups, such as cart abandonment emails with targeted incentives, retargeting ads featuring products customers have‌ viewed, or notifications about restocked items they have shown interest in.

When you respond to individual customer behavior with relevant messages, you create personalized experiences that contribute to higher engagement and loyalty.

If you could lend a fun and approachable personality to your business, that’s social media marketing. These platforms thrive on conversation and engagement, so share a mix of product updates, behind-the-scenes (BTS) content, customer stories, and user-generated content (UGC) that spark meaningful interactions and curiosity.

The magic happens in the comments and DMs, where you can connect with customers, answer questions, address concerns, and show the human side of your business. This two-way communication turns casual followers into devoted customers and brand advocates.

Millennials and Gen Z prefer connecting with brands through the same messaging apps they use to chat with friends and family. Platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram DM, and Facebook Messenger have become powerful customer service and marketing channels for conversations with shoppers. The evolution toward embedded commerce takes this further — customers can now browse products, ask questions, and complete entire purchases without ever leaving those apps. This experience feels as easy as texting a friend, turning casual chats into actual sales.

Customer testimonials and reviews are your most powerful marketing assets because they provide authentic proof that your products deliver on their promises. When customers share reviews, post photos of your products, or recommend you to friends, they're creating credible content that resonates far more than traditional advertising. Use this gold mine of content by featuring reviews in your ads, sharing customer photos on social media, and including testimonials in email campaigns.

Pro tip? Host social media contests that require participants to create content with your products — like photo challenges or unboxing videos — to generate content while expanding your reach through their networks. This strategy turns participants into content creators and brand ambassadors. Plus, it gives you valuable marketing content long after the contest ends.

Influencers and digital creators have built trust with engaged audiences that view them as credible advisors rather than advertisers. That’s what makes their product recommendations highly effective for reaching new customers. Partner with influencers in your niche to gain access to communities who are more likely to trust and act on recommendations. This strategy works across industries because it leverages existing relationships and social proof, often delivering better conversion rates than traditional advertising.

Have key performance indicators (KPIs) and specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) for your ecommerce marketing. KPIs tell you what's‌ working in your marketing instead of just guessing‌ — ‌like whether that email campaign drove sales or if people are just browsing and leaving. The SMART framework keeps you focused on goals you can‌ hit and measure, so you're not wasting time and money on marketing efforts that sound good but don't move the needle.

Conduct timely A/B testing to measure how your content and website are performing — particularly during peak holiday seasons. You’ll get insights into how users are reacting to your products, recommendations, and content in real-time.

The only constant? Adopting emerging trends to meet customer expectations and anticipate future needs. And these key trends will help you with that.

Remember the slog of creating unique ads, images, and videos for every campaign? Generative AI (Gen AI) reduces the struggle, helping you create personalized content instantly and at scale. This is particularly beneficial for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) as they can create content and social media captions. In fact, marketers predict that AI will save them five hours of work per week, which amounts to over a month per year.

UGC has become the backbone of successful ecommerce marketing because it provides the social proof customers look for before making purchase decisions. When customers share reviews, unboxing videos, photos of products in use, or testimonials, they create credible content that carries far more weight than traditional brand messaging. For instance, consider how consumers research online and see reviews before ordering electronic goods or other high-value products.

Video content has become essential for ecommerce as customers now expect to see products in action rather than static photos. Whether it's showing how clothing fits, showing makeup application techniques, or revealing product details that photos can't capture — video helps customers make confident purchasing decisions. This shift toward video-first shopping experiences reduces returns and increases conversions by giving shoppers a realistic preview of what they're buying. That’s why about 62% of consumers prefer watching videos for product discovery.

And now, it’s time to plan your ecommerce marketing strategy. From tools to data — here’s everything you’ll need to get started:

• Transactional data: Purchase history, spending amounts, payment preferences, and buying frequency from your ecommerce platform to segment customers by loyalty and lifetime value.
• Behavioral data: Customer interactions like page views, time spent browsing, clicks, downloads, and site navigation to understand shopping habits and preferences.
• Demographic data: Customer characteristics including age, gender, location, income, and occupation to target the right audiences with relevant messaging.

• Integrated commerce-marketing platform: Connected systems that share data between your storefront and marketing tools, enabling hyperpersonalization. For example, Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud are deeply related. They represent the two sides of the customer engagement coin: selling and communicating.
• AI tools: For creating landing pages, product descriptions, and personalized campaigns. Autonomous AI agents like Agentforce can act as shopping assistants, and handle repetitive queries with ease.
• Customer Data Platform (CDP): Unified system that consolidates data from all business touchpoints into a single view. This enables better personalization and more effective AI-driven marketing strategies.

• Brand identity: Have a clear brand voice, visual guidelines, value propositions, and consistent messaging across all channels to build recognition and trust with customers.
• Analytics and tracking: Google Analytics or a CRM to measure campaign performance and understand customer journey touchpoints.
• Content creation: Count on AI and your creative mojo for graphic design, product photography, video production, and writing for marketing content across all channels.

Ecommerce marketing is not just about running ads on digital channels; it is about building a connected, personalized, and seamless experience for every shopper. Success hinges on creating an intuitive brand experience powered by data. Commerce Cloud can help you‌ analyze shopper behavior across all your channels, so you understand precisely what your customers want.

Even better? As part of the Salesforce platform, Commerce Cloud seamlessly integrates with Marketing Cloud, so you can create full-funnel journeys easily with out-of-the-box tools. From conversation to conversion, Commerce Cloud enables you to personalize shopping and marketing experiences at scale.