Now that most businesses operate online, the competition has increased exponentially in many industries.
It’s becoming harder to increase revenue without employing advanced eCommerce marketing strategies. When running paid ads, it’s getting more expensive to acquire new customers, and successful ads require more planning than ever before.
Although an increase in competition doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. It just means you need to work a little harder to get results. The good news is you can start driving more sales by using the following 9 simple and effective eCommerce marketing strategies.
Remarketing, also called retargeting, is a PPC ad strategy that can go deep. This is a strategy that anyone can employ, with any level of experience, but there is no limit to how detailed you can get.
Retargeting is when you run PPC ads that specifically target only users who have previously interacted with your brand, either by visiting your website or clicking on your ads. Since 92% of first-time visitors don’t intend to buy, you can influence them into making a purchase by showing them more ads. This keeps them in your marketing funnel even when you don’t know who they are; you don’t need their email address to nurture them.
The statistics vary between organizations, but generally speaking, a solid remarketing campaign can boost conversions by around 50%. Those are not small potatoes!
When people see your ads more than once, your brand becomes familiar to them and makes them more likely to click, provided the ad is relevant to what they want. This is why market research and selecting your target audience are important.
Google’s Shopping campaigns are the perfect way to reach consumers right when they’re searching for something specific that you happen to offer. When a user searches for a phrase related to your products, your ads will show up at the top of the search results. You can include important information in your ads, like product images, prices, special offers, customer ratings, and anything else designed to persuade users to click.
How it works is pretty simple. First, you create a master list of product data in a spreadsheet that identifies your products and all the pertinent information. This gets uploaded to Google’s Merchant Center, which you’ll connect to your Google Ads account. From there, Google’s algorithm will automatically spin up ads for your products based on user search queries.
Instead of creating one campaign with one Ad Group that gets divided into product groups, consider running separate campaigns tailored to attributes that are important to your market. For instance, you can run a generic campaign, a brand campaign, and a campaign that runs ads based on brand and size queries.
This way, you’ll reach people searching for generic terms (like “men’s hoodies”), brand-specific terms (like “Nike men’s hoodies”), and size-specific searches (like “Nike men’s hoodies XXL”). This type of structure is superior because you get better control over negative keywords, and increasing your bids will yield more targeted impressions and clicks.
If you don’t use this more nuanced ad structure, you’ll have to remove items from your entire feed if you want to exclude them, and some of your products might never be seen. Implementing a content marketing strategy alongside this structure can further improve your ad effectiveness by engaging customers with valuable content that complements your paid advertising efforts.
You’ll have more campaigns to manage, but it’s worth the effort because it will get you more targeted traffic in the long run. If you’re looking for ways to drive a bunch of relevant traffic to your ecommerce store, you need to run Google Shopping ads. These ads not only help you generate sales but also improve your brand’s visibility across search engines and other marketing channels.
One last tip is to use remarketing with your Shopping ads. The average conversion for Google Shopping ads is just under 2%, which doesn’t seem like much. However, these ads work well as the foundation for a powerful retargeting campaign. Leveraging digital marketing techniques like customer retention strategies can increase your repeat conversions and long-term revenue.
Did you know that Amazon’s brand ads convert an average of three times higher than Google Shopping Ads? Running ads on Amazon is crucial for your online store. The sponsored brand ads, in particular, will promote up to three products at a time and get displayed in search results across the site.
Since they show up when users are looking for something specific, it makes sense that they’d see a high conversion rate. Additionally, incorporating user-generated content such as reviews and testimonials can boost credibility and engagement, further improving your ecommerce sales.
Are you against using pop-up ads to avoid annoying users? This is common among marketers, but it’s based on a myth. Pop-ups have a reputation for being off-putting to web users, but that’s not actually deserved.
In spite of this reputation, there are plenty of effective pop-up ad strategies that are proven to generate higher conversion rates, whether it’s sales or email list signups. Pop-ups can be an excellent content marketing tool when used correctly, as they capture leads and encourage immediate action.
You can use pop-ups with your marketing efforts as long as they adhere to Google’s guidelines. If you place a pop-up ad on a landing page, it needs to directly represent the offer in your ad, or else people will bounce. It’s risky, but when combined with search engine optimization and social media campaigns, it can yield big conversions when done right.
If you’re not cross-selling and upselling, you’re leaving money on the table. Both of these strategies are proven methods to increase conversions.
Upselling is when you aim to increase the value of each purchase. Cross-selling is increasing the number of items on the sales ticket. For example, if you run a custom t-shirt shop, cross-selling might include offering customers the same designs on a baseball hat, or providing a discount on additional t-shirts. Upselling might involve offering an upgrade to a higher quality, more expensive t-shirt fabric (like organic cotton or hemp).
These marketing methods will boost revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and support your efforts to build long-term relationships with loyal customers. However, the items you cross-sell need to be relevant to the customer’s needs or it won’t work.
One of the best examples of cross-selling can be seen in the marketing for Dollar Shave Club. Before a subscription box is mailed out, customers get an email asking if they would like to add any additional products to their order, like aftershave, wet wipes, or hair care products.
Cross-selling and upselling are convenient because they won’t cost you any additional marketing spend and they can help you acquire more customers affordably. With the right application connected to your shopping cart system, all you need to do is program the offers once and they’ll run on their own.
You may have heard expert digital marketers say that social marketing is only good for building brand awareness and isn’t ideal for sales. Well, that’s not entirely true. It depends on the platform and your market. For example, Instagram has a built-in shopping feature that makes it easy for people to buy from businesses. All you need is a Facebook product catalog, and you can tag your products in your Instagram posts. Now, when your fan base sees your posts promoting your products, they can click on your tags to visit your product pages instead of having to search your website for the awesome products they just saw on Instagram.
Social shopping on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms, reduces the friction users feel when searching for products. Your followers can buy from you seamlessly and easily right from your posts.
You’ve probably visited a website or received an email from a company that was promoting another business. This is called cross-promotion, and it’s one of the most effective eCommerce marketing strategies around.
The basic idea is that you find a company to partner with who will promote your products. Sometimes you’ll land a mutual agreement, but not always. These kinds of deals usually require payment as a percentage of sales brought in by the company promoting your business. For example, if company A promotes your t-shirts and their efforts generate $5,000 for the month, you’ll pay them a percentage of that amount that you agree on ahead of time.
One eCommerce marketing tactic that gets big results is social proof. Your potential customers need to see proof that you are a trustworthy business and that you have great products. Social proof (like reviews and testimonials) goes a long way to impress potential customers and influence them to buy from you.
Your leads are most likely on a budget and they don’t want to risk wasting money on something that doesn’t work or live up to their standards. They’re going to be selective, so you need extra reinforcement to convince them to make a purchase. Reviews and testimonials are exactly that.
Make sure you display product ratings and customer reviews on all of your product pages. At first, it may take you a while to generate a substantial amount of reviews, but after a while, you’ll get them and they will help persuade new customers.
You don’t need to get only positive reviews, either. Having a mix of positive and negative is actually seen as more trustworthy than having a 100% five-star rating. Your products won’t be for everyone, and some reviews under five stars will still be helpful. Knowing what didn’t work for others might help people choose between different items, for example. Even if a review deflects sales from some people, that’s okay, because you can’t please everyone.
Referral marketing is another term for word-of-mouth marketing, and it’s one of the most effective methods you can employ. People take the opinions of others very seriously, and that includes friends, family, and online reviews. According to a BrightLocal survey, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations made by friends. That’s some big trust for opinions posted by strangers.
So, how do you start referral marketing? How do you get people to post reviews and recommend you to their friends? The short answer is to start incentivizing referrals. The simplest way to do this is by offering a cash bonus to anyone who refers a paying customer to you. Give people referral links, and anyone who makes a purchase from a link will generate a cash reward for the link’s owner. This is simple and effective.
If you want a successful marketing campaign, you need the right tools and the expertise to turn leads into sales. We can help you with this. Whether you need high-converting PPC ads, Facebook and Google ad management, a PPC audit, better landing pages, or a full package deal, we have you covered.
We work with Google, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, and LinkedIn ads, plus we offer display ads and retargeting management. We can create, manage, or improve any paid ad campaigns you need.
Contact us today to learn more about our PPC ad management services and get a free proposal for your business.
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If you’re running an e-commerce or retail business, you already know that visibility is everything. The best product in the world won’t sell if no one sees it. That’s where paid ads for ecommerce comes in.
Done right, they drive traffic, conversions, and repeat customers.
Done wrong, they drain your budget and leave you wondering what went wrong.
Whether you’re spending $500 a month or $50,000, your goal is the same: profitability. Not just clicks, and certainly not just impressions. You want to turn ad dollars into real, predictable revenue.
So how do top-performing e-commerce and retail brands make their paid ads work?
What are they doing that you’re not?
This guide breaks it down step-by-step, so you can start running profitable ads with confidence.
Before you launch a single campaign, you need clarity on your audience and goals. Are you trying to boost first-time sales? Increase average order value? Each objective requires a different strategy and metrics for success.
Don’t fall into the trap of launching ads just to “see what happens.” Paid media works best when it’s part of a bigger strategy. So before you log in to Google Ads or Meta Ads Manager, get specific about what success looks like.
If you want to run profitable paid ads, knowing your numbers is the foundation of your entire strategy. Without a clear understanding of your margins, break-even points, and how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer, you’re essentially gambling with your ad budget.
And in e-commerce, that can get expensive fast.
Let’s start with the most critical numbers you need to know:
Your break-even ROAS tells you the minimum return you need on your ad spend to not lose money. It’s calculated by dividing 1 by your gross profit margin.
So if your margin is 50 percent, your break-even ROAS is 2.0. That means for every $1 you spend on ads, you need to make $2 in sales just to break even.
For example, let’s say you’re running Facebook Ads and spending $1,000 on a campaign. If your break-even ROAS is 2.0, you need to generate at least $2,000 in revenue to avoid losing money. Anything above that is profit. Anything below that eats into your cash.
Once you know your numbers, you can reverse-engineer your ad strategy instead of throwing money into the void and hoping for results. For instance, if your AOV is low (say $25), you might struggle to profit from ads unless you have a very low COGS or high conversion rates. In that case, you might want to:
On the other hand, if your AOV is $150 and your margins are strong, you have more room to compete in ad auctions, bid more aggressively, and test multiple audiences and creatives without instantly wiping out your profit.
A lot of beginner advertisers focus entirely on immediate return from ads. That’s understandable – but short-sighted. If you’re breaking even or slightly losing on the first sale, that might still be a smart move if you’re building long-term customer relationships.
That’s where Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) comes in. If you know that your average customer places three orders a year, each worth $60, then their LTV is $180. If you spend $40 to acquire that customer with your first ad, but earn $140 more over the next 12 months, that ad was extremely profitable in the long run.
Top e-commerce brands build their paid strategies around LTV-to-CAC ratio – how much they earn over time compared to what they paid to acquire the customer.
A healthy ratio is usually 3:1 or higher. So if you’re spending $50 to acquire a customer, you want to earn at least $150 from that customer over time.
Once you understand your numbers, you can plan your ad spend with precision. You’ll know exactly:
Let’s say you want to make $5,000 in profit this month, and your product has a 50 percent gross margin. That means you need $10,000 in sales. If your target ROAS is 2.5, you can spend up to $4,000 in ad spend to hit that goal. With those numbers in hand, you now have a roadmap for campaign budgeting, not just a shot in the dark.
Every ad platform has strengths. But if you try to use them all at once, you’ll burn through your budget without learning much. Instead, pick one or two that align best with your business model and customer behavior.
If you’re selling visually appealing products like apparel, skincare, or home goods, platforms like Instagram and TikTok can deliver strong returns – especially with the right creative. If you’re focused on high-intent buyers, Google Search and Shopping Ads are goldmines. And if you’re targeting professionals or B2B retail buyers, LinkedIn may offer surprising results.
Test channels strategically. Start with the one that matches where your customers spend their time and scale from there. The best platform for you is the one where your ideal customers are already shopping, scrolling, or searching.
One of the biggest mistakes retailers make is casting too wide a net. You don’t want everyone to see your ad – you want the right people to see it.
On Google, this means targeting high-intent keywords that signal buying behavior. Focus on terms like “buy,” “best,” “free shipping,” or product-specific searches. On Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you’ll want to dial in your custom audiences using demographic data, lookalikes, interests, and behavior.
Don’t forget retargeting. Most people won’t buy the first time they visit your site, but retargeting brings them back when they’re ready. Set up ads that follow people who viewed a product, added to cart, or engaged with your brand but didn’t check out.
The more relevant your targeting, the more efficient your spend and the higher your return.
Creative is the make-or-break factor in most e-commerce ad campaigns. You can have perfect targeting and the right product, but if your ad doesn’t grab attention in the first two seconds, it won’t convert.
Your creative needs to do three things quickly:
Use high-quality product photos or videos. Show your product in action. Highlight a clear benefit or solve a specific problem. Incorporate customer reviews or user-generated content to build trust.
For paid social, test multiple creatives at once – video vs. image, UGC vs. branded, short-form vs. long-form – and let performance data guide your iterations. On search platforms like Google, focus on copy that’s compelling and packed with relevant keywords. Test different headlines and descriptions to see what gets the best click-through rate.
Sending paid traffic to your homepage is a rookie mistake. You want every click to land on a page that’s designed to convert. That means fast load times, mobile optimization, and a clear call-to-action.
If you’re promoting a specific product, send users to that product page and not your full catalog. If you’re offering a bundle or a seasonal deal, create a dedicated landing page with copy, visuals, and layout tailored to that offer.
Remove distractions. Reduce friction. Make it stupid-easy for people to buy. The less effort it takes, the more sales you’ll see. And don’t forget to A/B test. Sometimes a simple tweak to your headline or CTA can double your conversion rate overnight.
Once your ads are live, your job isn’t done. In fact, this is where it really begins. You need to monitor performance regularly, looking at more than just the surface-level metrics.
Click-through rate (CTR) tells you how well your ad is capturing attention. Conversion rate shows how well your landing page is sealing the deal. ROAS tells you how profitable your campaign is. And CPA helps you compare efficiency across different products or audiences.
Watch for early indicators of success – or failure.
Treat your campaigns like living systems. Tweak, test, and improve them continuously.
Once you find a winning combination – an ad, offer, and audience that works – it’s time to scale. Increase your budget gradually while keeping an eye on performance. Scaling too fast can tank your results, so go step by step.
Duplicate high-performing campaigns to test new audiences or creatives. Experiment with upsells, bundles, or time-limited offers to increase AOV. Layer in email or SMS marketing to retarget paid traffic and drive repeat sales.
And just as importantly, don’t be afraid to kill underperforming ads. If something isn’t working after a reasonable test period, cut it. Your budget should be flowing to what works – not what you hope will work.
One of the biggest mistakes in paid advertising is chasing one-off sales without thinking about the bigger picture. Winning e-commerce brands think in terms of customer lifetime value.
If your first sale breaks even, that’s fine. (As long as you have a plan to turn that customer into a repeat buyer. ) You can use post-purchase emails, loyalty programs, and retargeting ads to bring people back.
At the end of the day, when you view paid ads as the beginning of a customer relationship – not the end – you unlock real long-term profitability. And at PPC.co, that’s where we want to help you! We offer industry-leading PPC management services for ecommerce and retail brands who want to stop wasting ad spend and start generating real ROI.
Contact us today to learn more!
