7 ecommerce advertising strategies to scale your business

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Ecommerce advertising can help your store increase visibility, attract targeted traffic, boost brand awareness, drive sales, and outpace competitors by showcasing products across the digital platforms that your audience uses. 

An obvious example of ecommerce advertising is pay-per-click (PPC), where you bid on search terms somewhere such asGoogle Ads to appear in search results. But did you also know you can list products on Google Shopping for free? 

These are two of many ecommerce advertising strategies you can use to scale your business. Others include social media, email marketing, retargeting campaigns, and partnerships with influencers and affiliates. 

However, to deliver a return on ad spend (ROAS), you need a strategy with careful platform selection, compelling ad creatives, precise audience targeting, and continuous performance monitoring. 

Read on to discover seven of the best advertising strategies for ecommerce with tips for creating campaigns that get results. 

What is ecommerce advertising?

Ecommerce advertising is a marketing channel that amplifies product visibility and drives sales on platforms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. 

You can use ecommerce advertising to strategically place your offerings in search results when shoppers are actively looking for them, or to showcase your brand story through custom store pages. 

This targeted approach seamlessly integrates ads into the online shopping journey, connecting products with interested buyers at crucial decision-making moments.

Ecommerce advertising strategies

Ecommerce advertising encompasses multiple digital marketing strategies tailored for online retail platforms. These are the main ones:

Social media ads

Social media ads put your products where people already shop and scroll. They come in various formats, including:

• Image ads: Simple, static visuals with text
• Video ads: Short clips with captions
• Carousel ads: Multiple images or videos in a single ad
• Story ads: Temporary content appearing in users’ feeds
• Dynamic ads: Interactive content that changes based on user engagement

You should use social media ads to showcase your products to your target audience, driving traffic and sales with visually appealing content. 

For example, Facebook ads thrive with visual content, as this feed and video ad from nutritional brand Huel shows:

All social media platforms that sell ads have targeting options and multiple ad formats to help you engage potential customers. 

However, not all platforms will have your target audience. For instance, Instagram and TikTok work well for fashion or lifestyle brands, while YouTube works best for products that benefit from detailed explanations or tutorials.

Here are a few pointers:

• Use Snapchat and TikTok for short, viral videos and showcase your products with fun filters, music, and challenges
• Sell on Instagram by highlighting how your products fit users’ lifestyles and create reels and hashtags to sell directly from posts and stories
• Share products, reviews, and user-generated content on Facebook to attract views and encourage sales

Google Ads

Google Ads can be an effective strategy for advertising in ecommerce. With pay-per-click advertising, your text, image, or shopping-style ads appear alongside search results for your target product keywords and phrases.

The benefit of social promotions is that searchers have already shown purchase intent by hunting for items you sell. Your ecommerce ads appear when they use relevant keywords, and you only pay when they click.

Here are some best practices for PPC advertising:

• Make your ads clear and concise, and show what you’re selling and why it’s valuable
• Use keywords that match the user’s intent and the landing page content
• Test different ad variations and optimize for performance
• Track your results and adjust your ecommerce ads strategy accordingly

Google Ads and Google Shopping Ads, which include visuals, are some of the best ads for ecommerce. When they deliver on what the searcher wants, they can readily convert them from a click to a customer.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a digital marketing strategy for re-engaging people who have interacted with your brand but have yet to purchase.

It uses cookies to track visitors and show them relevant ads when they browse other websites or social media platforms. Here’s how it works:

• You place a retargeting pixel (a small piece of code) on your website
• When a visitor comes to your site, this pixel places a cookie in their browser
• Your retargeting partner (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook, or a retargeting service) then recognizes this cookie when the user visits other sites in their ad network

Here’s an example of a Google Ads placement created by Amazon and delivered on Glamour Magazine following a visit to the Amazon.com website:

Retargeting encourages shoppers to return to your online store and steers them away from competitors’ sites. It also allows for personalized messaging based on user behavior, potentially increasing conversion rates even further.

To implement effective retargeting:

• Set up tracking pixels on your website
• Create segmented audiences based on user behavior
• Design compelling, personalized ads for each segment
• Use multiple channels like display ads, social media, and search retargeting
• Implement cross-device targeting to reach users across platforms
• Feature dynamic ads showcasing products users have shown interest in
• Continuously test and optimize your campaigns

Omnichannel marketing

To make retargeting even more powerful, you can utilize omnichannel marketing. By integrating multiple channels, you create a cohesive and unified experience for your customers.

This reflects how customers behave when browsing and shopping online: we don’t only use emails, only use Facebook, or only use SMS. We use all of them, perhaps for different things or at different points in the day.

By having an omnichannel marketing approach, you can be present for your customers however they come to you. When they interact with one channel, the others update based on their behavior.

Some ecommerce advertising examples with an omnichannel marketing strategy include:

• Sequence messages based on customer behaviors. If they purchase after an abandoned cart SMS, send a post-purchase email next rather than repeating the same promo.
• Retarget recent site visitors through ads on Facebook, Instagram feeds, or stories. Use these opportunities to remind them of their cart contents.
• Use video ads to showcase the benefits and features of your products. Direct customers to a landing page where they can learn more or buy.
• Leverage multiple advertising techniques tailored for each channel. Segment customers for coordinated and maximum impact.

Not only does the omnichannel approach give you more touchpoints with the customer, but it also doesn’t feel like advertising at all. Even the staunchest anti-ad customers won’t mind an ad if it’s perfectly relevant to them, and omnichannel marketing helps achieve that relevancy.

Content marketing

Content marketing has developed a fearsome reputation over the years, and for good reason. It can bring people to your site, answer their questions, build trust, and lead them to become email subscribers or paying customers — not bad for a single tactic!

“Content” is an umbrella term including written, audio, and video materials via blogs, product pages, podcasts, YouTube videos, social media stories, and so on.

Some tips that can come in handy when marketing content include:

• Tailor blog content to goals — informational posts to attract subscribers, promotional to drive sales
• Optimize product pages with relevant keywords, alt text, and meta descriptions for discovery
• Guest post on industry websites for exposure and credibility-boosting backlinks
• Use podcasts and video email marketing to boost engagement and brand recall
• Repurpose tutorials and brand stories into engaging video and podcast formats
• Post how-tos, demos, reviews, and teasers on YouTube and share them across social media

Quality, consistency, and an understanding of each platform’s audience will drive results.

Influencer and affiliate marketing

For the same reasons that we’re likely to trust the recommendations of our friends and family, word-of-mouth is a potent form of marketing. 

Unlike traditional celebrity endorsements, influencer marketing allows you to target a specific niche of potential customers.

Let’s say you run an ecommerce business that sells clothing. You can partner with influencers and celebrities with fashion-oriented audiences and showcase your items on their social media platforms.

For example, Nike uses musicians and music producers to promote some of its latest sneakers. The ad below on Instagram collaborates with Skrillex:

Some practical influencer marketing tips include:

• Gift products for influencers to feature in relevant social content. These include unboxing, wearing outfits, and product reviews.
• Sponsor influencer posts and stories. Have nano or macro influencers create dedicated feeds promoting your items.
• Invite influencers to attend or host brand-related events. Or to photoshoot gifts for user-generated social content.
• Encourage influencer promo codes for followers. These can drive purchases from their highly engaged audiences.
• Compensate through free products and affiliate sales commissions. Consider paying per post/story based on follower count and typical engagement.
• Sponsor contests or giveaways. Require participants to follow your and the influencer’s accounts and tag their friends.

Affiliate marketing is another avenue for raising awareness and making sales through somebody else’s audience. Affiliates earn a commission for each customer they refer who then buys a product, incentivizing them to generate more sales and, ultimately, their income.

Creating an affiliate program for your ecommerce store can be beneficial. You get other people actively working to acquire new customers and drive sales — and of course, once they become buyers, they enter your sales funnel.

Here, you can use omnichannel and retargeting techniques to maintain contact with them.

Ecommerce advertising best practices

Follow these best practices to build a winning ecommerce advertising strategy:

• Research thoroughly to identify the platforms where your target audience is most active. Analyze demographic data, user behavior, and engagement metrics across social media and advertising platforms.
• Harness social media ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Visual content and precise demographic targeting make these channels ideal for showcasing your products to potential customers.
• Utilize Google Ads to capture high-intent buyers. When users search for products you offer, your store can appear at the top of search results, increasing visibility and click-through rates.
• Build an email subscriber list to use abandonment triggers. Retargeting these customers can significantly improve your conversion rates. In 2023, cart abandonment emails had a 2.56% conversion rate:

Watch this video to find out more about cart abandonment workflows:

• Implement retargeting strategies to re-engage interested visitors. Placing a pixel on your site lets you serve ads to potential customers across various platforms, reminding them of products they’ve viewed.
• Create an omnichannel marketing approach for a seamless customer experience. Ensure consistency across all touchpoints, from social media and email to your website and mobile app.
• Develop a robust content marketing strategy to differentiate your brand. Valuable blog posts, videos, and infographics addressing customer needs can drive organic traffic and build trust in your ecommerce store.
• Leverage affiliate and influencer partnerships to expand your reach. Collaborate with bloggers, YouTubers, or Instagram personalities whose audiences align with your target market to introduce your products to new potential customers.

Key takeaways

Growing your online store with ecommerce campaigns enables you to acquire new customers, increase the number of completed purchases in your store, and keep in touch with those customers to drive revenue even further.

Various strategies can be incorporated into an ecommerce advertising strategy, and omnichannel marketing puts the customer at the heart of the campaign by utilizing multiple touchpoints to update them.

Getting started with omnichannel couldn’t be any easier. In fact, you can use a single tool to follow up with customers via email, SMS, and social media and get started with pre-built workflows.