6 Performance Marketing Strategies to Boost Ecommerce Sales
Your path to scalable growth.
If you’re looking for proven ways to boost your ecommerce business, you might be considering performance marketing.
But which strategies will be the most effective for your website?
When you work in a crowded niche, it can be tough to increase brand awareness, so let’s look at essential elements that help prompt more product orders.
What Is Performance Marketing for Ecommerce?
Performance marketing provides you with data on the channels you use, like email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), strategic content creation, pay-per-click advertising, social media, and influencer outreach to promote your ecommerce company, generate sales, and increase brand loyalty.
“Using email marketing, content marketing, and SEO as part of an overall performance marketing strategy for your ecommerce business is a longer-term investment, but it’s also a strategy that can continue to pay dividends for years as you keep refreshing and adding targeted content.”
Jon Nastor
Managing Partner, DCP
Performance Marketing For ECOMMERCE
6 Strategies For Boosting Ecommerce Sales
It’s the perfect strategy for ecommerce businesses because it’s:
Measurable
Set goals and track your progress by measuring metrics like email opt-ins, downloads, click-through rates, views, and conversions.
Inbound
Potential customers find and connect with you online when they search for products your ecommerce business offers.
Targeted
You speak directly to your prospects and existing customers’ needs, helping to optimize brand loyalty (using data to keep improving the lifetime value for customers).
Affordable
Whether you want to promote your business locally or internationally, performance ecommerce marketing gives you cost-effective options. Even small companies can compete with much larger players without spending a lot of money on traditional advertising. Instead, you can follow the data and use it to double down on your most cost-effective, highest ROI channels.
How to Grow Your Ecommerce Business with Performance Marketing
You can use a wide range of marketing strategies to promote your business, but our clients have seen the most success with the following six approaches.
These marketing methods work individually, but can also work in tandem to create an effective marketing strategy for an ecommerce business.
1. Use Email Marketing to Drive 30% of Your Revenue
Ecommerce companies — you should expect ~30% of revenue from email marketing.
If email marketing accounts for +35% of revenue, then the top of your funnel is broken.
If it produces under 25% of your revenue, your email funnels are broken.
For the latter, check the list below to see what you’ve implemented, and what you need to get onto the calendar for creation.
Here are 7 email sequences to scale your ecommerce sales.
1. Ascension Series (upsells)
(2-5 emails)
Take your customer’s journey to new heights with an ascension series. Seamlessly guide your customers towards higher-value products or complementary offerings, driving revenue growth and enhancing customer satisfaction.
2. Abandoned Cart
(1-3 emails)
When visitors start filling out their shopping cart on your site but leave without completing the purchase, your emails step in. Re-engage these prospects, remind them of their interest, address any concerns, and entice them to return and complete their purchase.
3. Post-Purchase Follow-Up
(2-5 emails)
Say thanks, provide order details, and encourage further engagement with personalized recommendations and exclusive discounts to enhance the customer’s post-purchase experience.
4. Replenishment Series
(1-2 emails)
Timely reminders to repurchase consumable products or items with a limited lifespan, ensuring convenience and customer loyalty.
5. Customer Winback
(3-4 emails)
Re-engage inactive customers with personalized offers and reminders, reigniting their interest and encouraging them to purchase again.
6. Product Education Series
(3-10+ emails)
Provide valuable insights, usage guides, and tips related to customers’ purchases, strengthening the customer’s knowledge and loyalty to your brand.
7. Loyalty Program
(1-3 emails)
Inform customers about the benefits of your loyalty program, exclusive offers, and rewards available to program members to foster engagement, repeat purchases, and long-term customer relationships.
Email marketing enhances all other forms of marketing — from SEO to paid ads to social media and hosting webinars.
Not all email marketers are great at ecommerce, but all great ecommerce companies are great at email. If you only have time to implement one of the strategies on this page, choose email.
2. Optimize Your Ecommerce Site for Search Engines
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your ecommerce site to increase its visibility in search engines.
We know SEO works because we’ve been using search-friendly content to sell online education services, software, site hosting, and other products since 2006.
SEO requires several steps, but it’s not as complicated as some might lead you to believe.
When we work with clients, we put our efforts into three key elements.
1. Website
(Technical SEO)
This includes site speed, technical SEO, and optimizing your site structure for visitors and search engines.
2. Content
(On-page SEO)
Include targeted articles, keyword-rich website pages, meta descriptions, title tags, header tags, images, and internal links on your website.
3. Backlinks
(Off-page SEO)
Backlinks, also known as “incoming” or “inbound” links, are links from one website to another.
High-quality backlinks will increase your site’s authority and give you a boost in search engine results.
You can use SEO, ecommerce content marketing, and email marketing together to create an evergreen source of leads and customers for your ecommerce business.
Connect with us to find out how we can help you create a customized ecommerce performance marketing strategy that works for your company.
3. Rank Higher and Drive Conversions with Content Marketing
Your ecommerce website can include far more than just product listings. Blogging consistently with valuable, search-optimized content helps your site rank in search engines for your targeted keywords.
Starting with Top of Funnel (ToF) content is the best move for most websites, but the rules are different for ecommerce websites.
“For ecommerce sites, low-volume, Bottom of Funnel (BoF) content is where conversions happen. Content at this part of this funnel is designed to persuade a prospect to buy.”
It typically highlights products more directly (compared to informational content intended solely to inform, entertain, and build trust).
Once you’ve created Bottom of Funnel content like conversion-focused product pages, case studies, reviews, testimonials, and product comparisons, you can move on to other steps in your sales funnel.
But remember: Without SEO, creative content won’t work for your ecommerce site. That’s why we are a content marketing and SEO agency. The world’s greatest BoF content won’t bring more sales if that content isn’t reaching your target audience.
Talk to us about how we can help you create a customized content development strategy for your ecommerce site.
4. Try Paid Advertising: Advantages and Disadvantages
PPC ads take up an increasing amount of real estate above organic search results. Advertisers pay search engines like Google or Bing to run these ads, then pay a fee each time someone clicks on one of the links in the ads. This advertising model is called pay-per-click, or PPC.
Social media companies like LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Facebook also offer PPC advertising.
Pay-per-click ads can be a valuable tool for generating sales for ecommerce, but in many cases, it’s not an affordable long-term solution.
The biggest drawback to this advertising model is that ecommerce sales will stop coming in when you stop paying for ads.
“We recommend starting with paid ads. Hone your offer, dial in your audience, and drive early revenue with paid traffic. Then invest in SEO to scale long term.”
Our most successful clients come to us after 1-2 years of successfully driving sales with paid ads.
Using email marketing, content marketing, and SEO as part of an overall performance marketing strategy for your ecommerce business is a longer-term investment, but it’s also a strategy that can continue to pay dividends for years as you keep refreshing and adding targeted content.
5. Harness the Power of Social Media Marketing
You can use your brand voice on social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram to promote products on your ecommerce site. These platforms attract billions of dedicated users every month.
Find out where your potential customers spend their time on social media. Once you’ve chosen a platform or two, you can use strategies like:
- Posting links to your content to drive traffic to your website
- Offering a lead magnet to build your email list
- Publishing customer stories or testimonials
- Hosting live Q&A sessions
- Promoting events
Then consider how marketing on social media might tie in with your existing content marketing strategy and how you can use social platforms in complementary ways.
For example, if you want to make a personal connection with your audience, you could share a piece of content like a blog post — or if you want to increase engagement, you could hold a live Q&A session.
Your overall performance marketing goals will inform your social media platform choices.
Successful social media marketing requires consistent hands-on effort, so plan to monitor, publish, and engage on your chosen platforms regularly.
Interested? Let’s talk.
If you’re ready to experience the power of strategic content marketing and a flood of targeted organic traffic, take the next step to see if we’re a good fit.
6. Ride the Wave of Influencer Marketing
This is a variation on paid advertising. Instead of paying Google or Facebook, you pay a content creator who shares your target audience.
This can be an effective strategy. Influencers have built a lot of trust with their audiences, so recommendations will act as social proof for your brand.
Through partnerships with influencers, your ecommerce company can co-create content that builds awareness and increases sales.
There are several ways to identify influencers:
- Join an influencer marketing platform
- Work through an agency
- Find them organically
Reach out to influencers you think might be a good fit, then work with them to establish rates and develop a posting schedule and format.
You can integrate your influencer campaigns with other aspects of your marketing strategy, including internal content creation or events.
Whole Foods worked with social media chef Christian Petroni to promote their Valentine’s Day meal offerings. Simple, yet effective.
To track the success of your campaigns, track metrics like impressions, comments, likes, shares, follower growth, brand mentions, form completions, newsletter subscriptions, and sales.
We Can Help You with Performance Marketing for Ecommerce
Performance marketing is critical for any successful ecommerce business.
In this article, we’ve explored several methods for attracting leads and converting them to buyers using smart, online marketing strategies.
Take the next step to find out how our team of content marketing and SEO experts can create a customized content strategy for your ecommerce company that brings in a consistent stream of prospects and customers.