ecommerce marketing examples: 5 great brands to learn from

Creating a marketing strategy can be a challenge, especially if you’ve got no idea where exactly to start.

It can be even more frustrating if you have no idea where to look for inspiration and come up with something that works specifically for your brand.

In this post, we feature five brands that have grown into million dollar companies and what you can learn from each of them.

1 | Casper

Casper is an ecommerce company that sells mattresses and other sleep products online, as well as through retail locations.

In just 4 years after launching, the company went from zero to a networth of 750 million and serves over 1 million customers in 8 countries.

Of course, reaching such a number was a combination of different marketing strategies such as:

Creating a guarantee where they give their customers a free 100 day trial.
Leveraging all positive and negative reviews in one page of their website and even adding tweets from customers.
Making it easy for customers to refer others after buying using order confirmation emails.

2 | Bellroy

This is an Australian brand that started out as a wallet company and later introduced bags, pouches and folios.

As of 2019, the company was valued at a whopping $83million.

Their unique selling position is: helping the world carry with simplicity and ease.

Some of their marketing strategies are:

SEO. Bellroy has 396 backlinks and is currently ranking at number 3 for a the keyword “slim wallet”
Using an interactive slide that shows a product’s benefit instead of just static images.
Upselling to their target customers (business executives) by rewarding fellow corporate members with their thank you gift set.

Learn more Bellroy strategies here.

3 | Mecca

Mecca is an Australian born and bred cosmetics brand that currently operates over 100 stores selling beauty products.

The ecommerce brand was valued at $538.2 million as of 2019.

Up to 15% of the brand’s sales come from online but that’s only local sales as reported by the CEO Jo Horgan.

Here is a snippet of their digital marketing strategy:

Social media marketing. Using Facebook ads that show a product in action showing specific features.
Email marketing. Their emails are designed to constantly remind the customers they have forgotten to make a purchase. They are more follow ups rather than sales emails.
SEO. Mecca gets lots of organic traffic from their keyword “mecca” and partly because the site is well-structured for SEO.

Read more about Mecca’s marketing strategy here.

4 | Coconut Bowls

Building an email list is a must for every ecommerce brand but it takes time, except for one brand that did it way too quickly.

Coconut bowls is an eco-sustainable brand that creates its products from, as you guessed it, coconut shells.

In just 4 weeks, the brand was able to get over 40k emails using a viral giveaway that cost less than $1000.

Here’s how they did it:

Social media marketing. Using Instagram to get leads for their viral giveaway and encouraging their followers to tag along their friends.
Creating a landing page that communicated what’s in for the customer if they invested their time.
Featuring a high value-perceived product that customers would naturally desire to have.
Encouraging user generated content from their followers to get people talking about their brand.

5 | Huckberry

Stories are powerful.

They are as old as the human race but what makes them even more powerful is they connect us to one another, captivate our imagination and improve memorability.

One brand that truly understands the power of storytelling is Huckberry.

Huckberry is a lifestyle brand that sells men’s clothing and apparel.

Founded by Andy Forch and Richard Greiner, Huckberry targets young men who love the outdoors and adventures.

Starting with just $20,000, the brand has grown into a multimillion dollar company using a combination of marketing channels.

Here’s how they do it:

Storytelling. Throughout their marketing channels, Huckberry focuses on telling a story which sells the brand using unique imagery.
Affiliate marketing. When starting out, the founders didn’t have much funding so they partnered with big names such as The Art of Manliness and it boosted their social proof.
SEO & content marketing. Huckberry invests in content and focuses on high-volume branded keywords that are user-intended.
Social media marketing. The brand uses Facebook and Instagram ads in two ways: creating retargeted ads for customers who have previously visited their website and using their most engaging content to drive brand awareness.

Read more about Huckberry marketing strategy here

The takeaways

Creating a successful ecommerce business isn’t a result of just one marketing channel. Whether you try SEO, email or social media marketing, it all works as long as you have a great product and a brand story. Test.Test.Test. Perhaps, email and content will work for you or social media and SEO. You never know until you try it.