6 killer ideas for ecommerce marketing in 2023

With so many options on how to promote your ecommerce business, deciding where to begin can feel like a paralysing decision.

Marketing strategies can encompass everything from UGC to CRO to CRM… The sheer number of acronyms is overwhelming, and that’s before you’ve begun to identify how you will measure whether your campaign is successful, in a world where reporting and ad metrics are increasingly more complex.

If you’re looking for some quick and easy ideas on how to develop a killer ecommerce marketing strategy in 2023, we’ve got you covered.

1 | Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Simply put, CRO means squeezing the most from both organic and paid traffic at every stage of your customers’ journey to increase ecommerce sales.

CRO involves A/B testing different elements such as design, colour, copy, offers and buying psychology across your website such as product pages, homepage, checkout, thank you page and emails.

The ultimate goal is to increase the percentage of users taking a desired action – usually to checkout, or increase average order value (AOV).

One great way that may help with lifting your conversions is optimising your “above the fold” sections (the parts that sit above the scrolling line of a page) with reviews from previous customers, to reinforce the concept of herd behaviour.

Away does a great job on their homepage of letting visitors know that their best sellers are in stock.

2 | Augmented reality

If you thought AR was for gamers alone, the numbers tell a different story. 48% of respondents in this study by McKinsey were interested in exploring virtual shopping experiences in the next five years.

Augmented reality is a multi-sensory experience that combines the real world with computer-generated content.

This enhances your customers’ experience because it creates the illusion of walking into a physical store and picking what you want, touching it and feeling as if it’s real. Although AR is still in its early stages, Shopify has an AR shopping app that you can start using right away to create an immersive shopping experience for your customers.

3 | Omnichannel communities

Your customers don’t just want to buy products.

They also crave being part of a community.

It’s a survival need to want to be part of something larger than yourself so why not tap into that primal need by creating a brand community.

One advantage that brand communities give is your customers feel more connected to you.

In turn, this enhances customer loyalty and encourages word-of-mouth marketing which influences your revenue growth.

Both Instagram and Whatsapp have rolled out a new feature that allows you to create online communities.

Sprout Social goes deep into details here.

Offline communities are also key to building brand awareness. Herdify can help brands to harvest that community influence to drive more sales.

4 | Mobile searches and SEO

Mobile searches are increasingly the easiest and preferred way for consumers to shop online.

Tools that you can use to check how your site looks on mobile include mobiletest.me and Google mobile test tool.

Along with mobile optimisation, include SEO for better organic reach.

When focusing on SEO, there are various basic requirements such as:

Keyword research
Customer awareness
Creating content
ON and OFF page optimisation
Link building

Neil Patel explains how to get started with ecommerce SEO here.

5 | Social Commerce

One trend that’s on the rise is social commerce, which enables customers to find your products on social platforms such as Facebook, order and checkout just like on a website. The platforms act as virtual storefronts.

Some of the benefits of social commerce are:

You can get real-time data on what your customers like and interact with.
Customer shopping experience is seamless because there are no unnecessary steps. For example, checkout is on the platform.
You can collect social proof that you can use to feature on both your website and social pages.
A huge number of potential customers are hanging out on social platforms.

6 | Recommerce

The whole idea of selling used items (as long as they are in a good condition) isn’t new at all, but it’s recently hit the mainstream. Established brands like Stella McCartney, Levi’s, Lululemon and Patagonia have a re-commerce programme, and others have been founded around the premise of sustainable fashion.

Examples of how recommerce businesses can work: