Paid eCommerce Marketing Strategies That Get Results

Samuel Edwards
|
April 24, 2024

The eCommerce industry is constantly growing, evolving, and providing businesses with phenomenal opportunities to profit.

To take advantage of this ever-expanding sector, businesses need to develop powerful marketing strategies that reach the right audience at the right time.

It can make your online store more visible and capture the attention of potential customers who are actively looking for products and services- like yours in major search engines, social media platforms, and other digital channels.

In this blog, we will discuss paid eCommerce marketing strategies such as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Advertising, Display Advertising, and more.

We'll also provide some examples from different companies so you can see which ones are succeeding in an increasingly crowded market filled with competitors eager to snatch away a piece of your pie before it even cools off!

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a type of internet marketing that involves using paid advertisements to rank highly in search engine results. 

It includes optimizing landing pages as well as improving visibility and relevance through other methods such as pay-per-click (PPC), keyword research, and targeted ad placement.

Benefits of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

  • Driving targeted traffic to your website
  • Increasing brand recognition and visibility
  • Strengthening customer relationships
  • Staying competitive in a saturated market
  • Saving time and money on advertising costs
  • Improving ROI.

Key Components of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

  • Keyword research and analysis
  • Creating ad copies
  • Setting up campaigns in search engines like Google Ads
  • Optimizing landing pages
  • Testing ads regularly

Examples of Effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Campaigns

Google Ads, which uses targeted advertising placed at the top of SERP results, and Yahoo marketing which focuses on contextual ads. 

Other SEM strategies such as Bing & MSN have also become increasingly popular due to their low-cost options and ability to target specific demographics with paid search.

Social Media Advertising

Top Social Media Advertising Platforms

Social Media Advertising is a type of paid digital marketing that places ads on different social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube , Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.It helps businesses reach their target market through sponsored posts, carousel adverts and video adverts to spark interactions with potential customers by sharing relevant content in an engaging way.

Benefits of Social Media Advertising

  • Increasing brand awareness
  • Building customer relationships and trust
  • Reinforcing product features and values to the right audience
  • Targeting potential customers through demographics such as age, location, and interests
  • It can also help launch new products and services by reaching many more people than traditional advertising methods.

Key Components of Social Media Advertising

  • Setting up campaigns on different social media platforms
  • Creating ad copy that resonates with your target market
  • Optimizing content for maximum effectiveness
  • Developing visuals such as images or videos to draw in potential
  • Customers' attention

Examples of Social Media Advertising Campaigns

Examples of successful Social Media Advertising campaigns range from Nestlé's Oat Bites product launch to Burger King's #ScaryGoodCostaRica hashtag campaign. 

Each one created content that was relevant and engaging to the target market, helping them increase brand recognition, visibility, and loyalty with customers.

Display Advertising

Example of Display Advertising

Display advertising is a type of marketing strategy that involves placing ads on different websites in display format. This includes everything from banners and videos to interactive media ads, so businesses can get their message across to consumers through visuals or sound.

Benefits of Display Advertising

  • Increased brand recognition and visibility
  • Wider reach for your target audience
  • Improved segmentation for targeting specific people with personalized messages,
  • Ability to measure success through reports.

Key Components of Display Advertising

  • Creating images
  • Text and videos for ads
  • Deciding on formats such as classic banners or interactive media like rich media
  • Choosing the target audience through segmentation techniques
  • Setting budget parameters.

Examples of Display Advertising Campaigns

Examples of display advertising campaigns include using retargeting to serve ads to warm leads , Native Ads which blend into the website and targeted banners placed on high traffic sites related to your product or service.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of online marketing where influencers, which are individuals with high-level reach and engagement, promote brands' products or services to their large audience base. It incorporates content creation and shares through multiple digital channels such as blog posts, social media platforms, video campaigns, and more.

Benefits of Influencer Marketing

  • Greater brand exposure and awareness
  • Increased organic traffic to websites
  • Improved customer trust and engagement with target audiences
  • More effective campaigns than other online methods
  • Higher conversions.

Key Components of Influencer Marketing

  • Selecting the right influencers
  • Creating engaging content that resonates with their audience
  • Optimizing your campaigns using data-driven analytics.
  • Budgeting,
  • Setting goals
  • Keeping track of performance metrics.

Examples of Influencer Marketing Campaigns

  • Sponsored posts
  • Product reviews
  • Collaborations with bloggers or celebrities
  • Holding contests.

These are integrated into platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other popular websites in order to increase brand reach and engagement.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a type of e-commerce marketing that enables brands to increase their customer base by partnering with other businesses (affiliates) and incentivizing them to promote the brand's products or services. In exchange, affiliates receive a commission for each sale generated from their referrals; this is mostly a popular strategy now considering its many benefits.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

  • Increased brand awareness
  • Access to a larger customer base
  • Measurable ROI
  • Cost-effectiveness
  • Fast and easy setup process
  • Minimal maintenance compared with other marketing tactics.

Key Components of Affiliate Marketing

  • Recruiting relevant affiliates
  • Creating ideal affiliate partnerships and payment systems
  • Monitoring performance to ensure affiliates meet brand expectations
  • Optimizing campaigns for better results

Examples of Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

Examples of successful affiliate marketing campaigns include Amazon's program, where the brand engages millions of affiliates around the world to help promote its products. Other companies such as REI and Blue Apron have also seen great success with their affiliate programs by providing incentives to customers for referring friends or followers to purchase their goods and services.

Email Marketing

Why Use Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves sending promotional emails to potential and current customers. It allows businesses to build relationships, deliver value, promote their products, keep customers informed, and drive sales.

Benefits of Email Marketing

  • Increasing brand recognition and visibility
  • Maintaining customer relationships
  • Boosting sales
  • Promoting loyalty programs and discounts
  • Providing timely content to customers

Key Components of Email Marketing

  • Segmentation
  • Personalization
  • A/B testing
  • Optimizing emails for mobile devices
  • Monitoring analytics to determine effectiveness.

This will enable businesses to craft messages that resonate with the customers and deliver value at every step of their journey.

Examples of Email Marketing Campaigns

  • Developing welcome emails
  • Creating customer surveys
  • Sending promotional emails
  • Thank you messages.

Companies can also use automation to trigger certain events based on customers' activities for a more personalized experience.

Retargeting

What is Retargeting

Retargeting is a type of online advertising whose main purpose is to re-engage customers who have previously interacted with a business or its marketing campaigns. It uses tracking codes placed on websites and segments users through cookies in order to show ads only to relevant audiences.

Benefits of Retargeting

  • Reconnecting with previous visitors
  • Bringing them back to the website by providing relevant ads
  • Increasing visibility and brand recognition
  • Driving targeted traffic

Ultimately leading to improved customer relationships through personalized experiences.

Key Components of Retargeting

  • Creating segments to target customers based on their interactions analyzing tracking data
  • Optimizing messages for better performance

Examples of Retargeting Campaigns

  • Targeting customers based on the products or services they've viewed or purchased
  • Sending ads to users who abandoned their shopping cart
  • Serving ads to those who have shown interest in the company's blog posts.

Each campaign provides a unique opportunity for businesses to reengage with their audiences by addressing specific interests.

Video Advertising

Video Advertising

Video Advertising is an effective way to reach potential customers. It involves creating compelling visual pieces, often using multimedia platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo, that send a powerful verbal and non-verbal message about the advertised product or service. It furthers brand recognition and increases engagement among your target audience for increased ROI.

Benefits of Video Advertising

  • Increased visibility for your ads,
  • Better recall value
  • Emotionally engaging customers
  • Driving higher conversion rates.

It also allows marketers to track viewer behaviour like how long they watched which provides valuable insight into optimization efforts.

Key Components of Video Advertising

  • Creating visually aesthetic content
  • Optimizing for platforms like YouTube and Vimeo

Examples of video advertising campaigns

  • Using branded influencers and/or video testimonials to show the customers your ads
  • Launching paid search campaigns such as Google Ads or retargeting campaigns via YouTube or Vimeo.
  • Interactive Pre-Rolls or TrueView advertisements provided by YouTube.

How to Choose the Right Strategy

Choosing the right Paid e-commerce Marketing Strategy for your business can be a daunting task. It is important to understand what goals you are trying to achieve, who your target audience is, and how they use various digital channels before settling on one strategy or another.

You should carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy as well as their associated costs and labor-intensive elements to choose one that best fits your needs. 

Knowing these will give you insight in devising strategies tailored towards specific customer segments thus optimizing results within budgeted efforts.

Author

Samuel Edwards

Chief Marketing Officer

Throughout his extensive 10+ year journey as a digital marketer, Sam has left an indelible mark on both small businesses and Fortune 500 enterprises alike. His portfolio boasts collaborations with esteemed entities such as NASDAQ OMX, eBay, Duncan Hines, Drew Barrymore, Price Benowitz LLP, a prominent law firm based in Washington, DC, and the esteemed human rights organization Amnesty International. In his role as a technical SEO and digital marketing strategist, Sam takes the helm of all paid and organic operations teams, steering client SEO services, link building initiatives, and white label digital marketing partnerships to unparalleled success. An esteemed thought leader in the industry, Sam is a recurring speaker at the esteemed Search Marketing Expo conference series and has graced the TEDx stage with his insights. Today, he channels his expertise into direct collaboration with high-end clients spanning diverse verticals, where he meticulously crafts strategies to optimize on and off-site SEO ROI through the seamless integration of content marketing and link building.