Ecommerce Marketing Strategy: 8-Step Process from Start to Scale

If you have an e-commerce store, this article will be a useful guide to help you scale and sell more products online.

The strategies shared here are the step by step process that we execute for our e-commerce clients here in Malaysia, which we will explain in detail down below.

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Ecommerce Marketing Strategy That Works

Step by step guide to succeed with e-commerce marketing

1. Create engaging content for video, written words, and graphics

2. Design user-friendly and convincing product page

3. Collection of data on your website

4. Setup 5 retargeting assets

5. Run Facebook and Instagram ads to target multiple audience groups

6. Scale Profitable Ads

7. Repeat purchases from existing customers

8. Know your numbers and scale even quicker – LTV and CAC

1: Create engaging content for video, written words, and graphics

The first step is straightforward, have content assets that are in different formats.

Let’s start with video.

You can create few types of video:

Video demo of your product
Testimonial videos from happy customers
15-seconds IG story video
Video of your brand

Next would be to create graphics that are attractive. Have various forms of graphics like GIFs, infographics, product image, similar product comparison, and images that display benefits of the product.

The third format would be to write an educational blog post to share with the readers how your product can solve a pain point/make their lives easier.

2: Design user-friendly and convincing product page

This is probably the most underrated strategy that most e-commerce stores missed out on.

Think of your product page as an automated sales person that is working 24/7. If the page is not convincing and user friendly, the person viewing will not click to purchase.

Here are some ways to improve product pages:

Have attractive product images that users can swipe
Add product features, benefits, and USP in the description
Video demo and testimonials of product
Add in reviews
Get users feedback

Note: Besides product page, do also ensure your checkout page is clear and not cluttered. Make it easy for potential customers to checkout.

Once you have ensured the pages are ready and user friendly on mobile and desktop, get a focus group of 30-150 people to test the process from viewing the product to checkout.

You can use software like Paperform to capture the feedback.

Get their feedback and assess if there are any points where the checkout process is confusing and not user friendly. Fix this before you start running ads to your product page to avoid wasting money on ads.

3: Collection of Data on your website

If you are a data geek, you will enjoy this part. If you are not, send this step to your developer for them to setup.

A typical e-commerce site has 4 main page category:

Homepage
Product Pages
Checkout Page
Thank you page

We will need to install the Facebook pixel in each of these pages so we can capture the data of the visitors as they navigate through each page. Check this guide from Facebook on creating a Facebook pixel.

Once we have these data, we will be able to retarget your website visitors when they return to Facebook and Instagram.

Note: For e-commerce store with a lot of different products and SKUs, you will need to go 1 step further by uploading your entire product catalogue to Facebook. Setting this up will help you automatically promote products to people who have expressed interest once you begin running the ads. Refer to this guide from Facebook > Dynamic Product Ads

The next step would be to track e-commerce purchases using Google Analytics. Refer to this guide from Google > Setup Ecommerce Tracking

4: Setup 5 Retargeting Assets

Put the data collected in Step 3 for Facebook pixel into good use by creating retargeting audiences.

Retargeting is where you show your ad to people who have previously connected with your brand before, whether it is through visiting your website or engage with your social media pages.

Here are 5 Retargeting Assets you can setup before we start running the ads:

People who have visited the product page
People who have visited cart/checkout page
People who have purchased
People who have engaged with your pages (liked, commented on post)
People who have watched more than 50% of your video

Having retargeting assets will help you follow up with customers and is vital to drive sales as people who first entered your website may not buy immediately. This is where retargeting comes in.

5: Run Facebook and Instagram ads to target multiple audience groups

Ok here comes the fun part!!

Step 1-4 is probably the most tedious as there are many upfront work such as creating videos, creative graphics, optimize product pages, and setup data collection. However, once the foundation is set, this makes step 5 much easier.

We will now use Facebook and Instagram ads platform to increase traffic to your product pages.

For us to know which target market groups work best, we will need to first TEST, TEST, TEST. Skipping this part will make the entire hard work done in Step 1 to 4 gone to waste.

To start testing, create 10-50 audience groups for your ads targeting (depending on your ads budget).

Common factors that you can alter in the ad platform are:

Interest
Age
Gender
Location
Language
Occupation
Behaviour
Existing page audience
Lookalike audience
Broad

It is crucial to have multiple audience groups so we can assess which audience groups are working (scale) and which audience groups are not working (cut them).

Cut out the poor performing audience groups and allocate their budget to the high-performing audience groups and this will give you more sales (Refer to Step 6).

To start running the ads, follow this 2 part process:

Part 1: Running ads to multiple audience groups

Once you have your audience groups ready, use the content you have created earlier in Step 1 and start running FB and IG ads to all the audience groups.

Send them to your product page and the data will be collected for Part 2.

Part 2: Retargeting ads

We will now use the retargeting assets created earlier to run retargeting ads, depending on the scenario and action taken.

Scenario 1: People engaged with your page and watched more than 50% of your video BUT didn’t click to view product page

This means they are not intrigued enough to click and view more information about the product.

You can retarget them with more educational videos, testimonials, and different product designs to send them to the product page.

Note: Do setup exclusion in Scenario 1 to exclude people who have clicked to the product page as we will have different messaging for this group.

Scenario 2: Visitors clicked the ad and viewed product page BUT didn’t add to cart

Let’s get in the mindset of this group.

They have viewed your product, but they are still unsure whether to add to cart and purchase. This could be due to a lack of confidence in the product, unfamiliarity with this new product, or the product price is over their budget.

To counter this, you can run retargeting ads such as customer testimonials video, write copy that address common objections people have in your product, and display product carousel with different use cases and benefits. Send them back to the product page for them to add to cart.

Note: Do setup exclusion in Scenario 2 to exclude people who have added to cart as we will have different messaging for this group.

Scenario 3: Visitors added product to cart (WOOHOOO)

The mindset of this group – They have viewed the product and like it, so they added to cart, but didn’t checkout.

We are so close to the sale!

Give them an easy way to complete the sale by giving a coupon code and send them back to the cart page for them to complete the checkout.

6: Scale Profitable Ads

Once you have run the ads in Step 5 for 30-90 days duration (depending on your industry sales cycle), you will now be able to see the big picture and assess the performance of each audience groups.

For those ad groups without a positive ROI, cut them out and allocate the budget to other ad groups.

Let’s say you have 5 ad groups that are not performing and each of them cost RM200 per month.

You will now have RM1,000 a month (RM200 x 5 ad groups) to allocate.

Here is a general rule of thumb:

Allocate 70% of budget to existing profitable ad groups – e.g RM700

Allocate 30% of budget to test new ad groups – e.g RM300

You also may try 80/20 or 60/40. We should always be testing new ad groups as ad groups that are profitable now may not be always profitable.

7: Repeat Purchases from Existing Customers

Congratulations!

At this point, you should already have a database of customers.

But this is only the beginning, you should be aiming to maximize the customer lifetime value and get them to purchase more of the same product or cross sell a different product.

If your product is good, customers wouldn’t mind coming back to purchase as they have established trust with your brand.

To continue marketing your existing customers, you can use 3 methods:

Method 1: Whatsapp blast

Method 2: Email blast

Method 3: Upload customers phone number and email into Facebook and create a custom audience. You can then run ads to specifically target this group of people.

8: Know Your Numbers and Scale Even Quicker – LTV and CAC

Once you have done Step 1 to 7 for a while, you should know key numbers such as:

What is the lifetime value (LTV) of your customer?
How much does it cost to acquire (CAC) a customer?

Knowing these numbers will allow you to plan out your forecast sales number and scale much quicker.

Other Advanced Ecommerce Marketing Strategy to Consider

Before you run these e-commerce strategies, do run the steps 1 to 8 first.

Once those are done, you can then look into other complementary channels.

1: Mobile App

Having a mobile app makes it easier for the customer to checkout and they tend to buy more due to the ease of purchase.

Mobile apps also tend to load quicker and you can send push notifications to notify customers of a new product and promotion.

2: Influencer Marketing

When starting out, look for micro-influencers on Instagram and Youtube. It’s cheaper and their followers tend to be more engaging.

Instagram influencers will share your products via image and stories, while Youtube influencers can record a longer video of how they would use your product.

3: Giveaway Campaign

Run giveaway campaigns for your product for massive brand awareness.

In order for them to qualify for the giveaway, they would need to give their email and share your product on Facebook/Instagram.

4: Branding on Different Platforms

Besides selling on your own e-commerce stores, you can also leverage brands such as the likes of Lazada, Shopee, eBay, and Amazon.

Sell your products there for additional branding and once you have collected the customers’ details, aim to bring them to your own store.

Note: If you are looking to start your own e-commerce store, we recommend going with Sitegiant.

SiteGiant is Malaysia’s leading e-commerce platform and was established back in 2013 to provide a range of e-commerce services that cater for both small and large companies in Malaysia.

SiteGiant provides a platform that allows you to sell on multiple channels such as own webstore, Facebook, Instagram as well as online marketplaces such as Lazada, Shopee, Lelong, Zalora, eBay, and Amazon.

If you have not already, kick-start your eCommerce journey with SiteGiant:

5: Referral Program

Have referral programs and reward customers who refer their friends to purchase your product.

You can also do a monthly scoreboard to share the top referrers for the month to encourage a healthy referral competition among existing customers.

6: Monthly Subscription

For loyal customers who love your product, have a monthly subscription program.

This will give you predictable cash flow, maximize LTV and keep customers on for longer periods.

Conclusion

And that’s a wrap.

Here’s a quick recap of the step by step guide by Axcel Digital for e-commerce marketing: