What is a Marketing Strategy? Explained in Simple Words

an illustration of a rubik's cube with different icons on its edges related to ecommerce

What is a Marketing Strategy? Explained in Simple Words

10 min read

Marketing is arguably one of the most important facets of any ecommerce shop鈥檚 success. With a solid marketing strategy in place, a business can boost brand awareness, build customer loyalty, and drive sales online.

The strategy a business uses to engage and connect with its target audience is foundational to its success. You may be thinking, what is a marketing strategy, and how can an ecommerce business create one from scratch?

We鈥檙e here to help! This post will discuss the details of a marketing strategy and how to create one using your company鈥檚 unique goals and values. Then, we鈥檒l break down how ecommerce shops can leverage their marketing strategy to build a compelling brand online.

Defining Your Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is the approach and guide for how a business promotes its products, services, and offerings to its target audience.

An effective marketing strategy should encompass the primary ways a company engages with its audience, communicates its values, and how it drives sales.

When creating a marketing strategy, a business should clearly identify:

Who the target audience is
How to position itself as a brand
The company鈥檚 values and mission
What the goals of the company are

A marketing strategy is often used synonymously with a marketing plan. This term refers to the nitty gritty details and individual processes, steps, and tactics that a business will leverage to achieve the goals listed in its marketing strategy.

So, how does an ecommerce business go about creating a marketing strategy? Let鈥檚 dive in.

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Here are the steps to follow to create a marketing strategy that drives growth and success.

1. Define Your Goals

The goals for your marketing strategy should align with your company鈥檚 overall goals, whether that鈥檚 driving sales, establishing your brand online, or growing your customer base.

Many companies find success in defining goals by using the SMART framework, which includes the following:

Specific: Be concise and clear with the goals you鈥檝e defined within your strategy. This could be things like “Grow our social presence on Instagram, X, and Facebook” or “Build our email list through a targeted lead generation campaign.”
Measurable: Determine which metrics and criteria you鈥檒l use to measure success. This could be the number of email addresses you gather on a web form, social growth of 200%, or total conversions on your website.
Actionable: Map out the actionable steps that are necessary to take to achieve your goals. This includes the tools and platforms you鈥檒l use to track performance and success.
Relevant: Consider the overarching goals of the company as you map out the goals within the marketing strategy to ensure the two are aligned.
Time-bound: Create clear deadlines which will help the team stay focused on their tasks and fuel urgency.

2. Know Your Audience

Perform thorough market research to understand who your is, where they exist online, and their current pain points.

A marketing strategy involves the target audience in nearly every way, so be sure you understand your audience and the market as a whole. This will allow you to fill in the gaps and provide a solution.

3. Create Brand Messaging

Once you understand your goals and your target audience, it鈥檚 time to craft brand messaging that accurately conveys your mission, values, and what your business is all about. If done right, it will set your business apart from the competition and attract your target audience.

Consider the tone of voice and the language you use to convey the message. Is your brand formal and professional, or casual and funny?

Using appropriate language as you carve out your messaging will ensure the tone of voice aligns with the overall feel of your brand.

4. Identify Marketing Channels

List all the marketing channels where your brand exists and any new ones you鈥檇 like to explore. These include your website, social media platforms, newsletters, third-party channels, paid ads, partnerships, and more.

These channels are where you鈥檒l set your strategy in motion — how you鈥檒l interact with your audience, promote your products or services, distribute content, and build an authentic brand.

5. Establish Your Budget

Knowing the budget for your marketing strategy is critical — it allows you to properly allocate funds to different tools you鈥檒l need to succeed, outsource support as needed, and run ad campaigns.

If you鈥檙e just getting started with a smaller budget, focus your funds on a few tasks to start and scale up as you generate success.

6. Monitor and Evaluate Performance

Measuring what you market is another critical step in any marketing strategy. It helps you understand what tactics are working and what needs to be reworked.

The best tools to help monitor and evaluate campaign performance include Google Analytics for your website, Google Search Console for organic traffic performance, and Google Ads for paid ad campaigns.

What is an Ecommerce Marketing Strategy?

An ecommerce strategy is designed specifically to drive traffic to an online store.

Promotional tactics used in an ecommerce marketing strategy will convert traffic into customers and foster long-term customer loyalty.

The Best Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for Your Business

There are so many strategies and approaches an ecommerce business can use to promote its products, drive traffic, and boost sales on its website.

Here are some of the most compelling ideas your business can try.

Collaborate with influencers for brand awareness
Sell on marketplaces like Amazon or eBay
Utilize AI chatbots to engage with customers after hours
Leverage user-generated content to promote products authentically
Build a customer loyalty program to reduce churn
Create professional videos to showcase your products
Craft compelling, informative content to distribute through your blog or social media
Launch email campaigns offering discounts, deals, and promotions for subscribers

FAQ: Creating Marketing Strategies

Get all your questions about building a marketing strategy answered here.

What are the 4 types of marketing strategies?

The four core types of marketing strategies include the following:

Market penetration: This strategy involves placing an emphasis on increasing market share in your industry through tactics like competitive pricing, adjusting product quality to align with your audience鈥檚 expectations, and improving distribution to meet the demand of customers.
Market development: Expanding into new markets (new locations or demographics) or drilling down on certain niches to grow a company.
Product development: Creating new products or modifying an existing offering to better meet the market鈥檚 needs and become more competitive.
Diversification: Entering new markets and/ or creating new products to target new audiences, or offering existing customers something entirely different.

Which marketing strategy is most effective?

In our considered view, the most successful marketing strategy is one that remains fluid, eschewing reliance on any singular tactic. A blend of social media, email marketing, and pay-per-click advertisements may yield the greatest returns for your business.

In the ecommerce setting, many brands experience a high ROI when partnering with influencers to raise awareness about their products and generate more site traffic. Others leverage SMS marketing throughout the buyer journey, which has a staggering .

Whatever you decide on, SEO is a critical component of any marketing strategy to rank higher in organic search results on sites like Google and Bing.

Why is a marketing strategy important?

Simply put, an effective marketing strategy will help a business reach its target audience. Without a strategy in place, your business will operate by trial and error, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

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About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.