The short version
- Work out what you can afford to pay for a new customer before choosing channels. It comes from your margin, average order value and how often customers come back.
- Fix the shop before buying traffic: show delivery costs early, offer guest checkout and make pages quick on a phone.
- Set up the core email flows early. Welcome, abandoned basket, post-purchase and win-back emails earn money every day without extra ad spend.
- Google Shopping and SEO catch people already searching. Paid social puts products in front of people who didn’t know to look.
- Judge the plan on total revenue against total marketing spend, as well as each channel’s own report.
An ecommerce digital marketing strategy is a plan for where your next customers will come from and how much you can afford to pay for each one. Without it, most small online shops end up spread thin: a few Instagram posts, an occasional email, ads switched on in a quiet month and off again when they don’t pay straight away. For a worked example, see our marketing plan for a small clothing business.
For most UK online shops, we’d build it in the order below.
Start with the numbers
Before choosing channels, work out what a customer is worth to you. You need three figures, all available in your ecommerce platform’s reports: average order value, gross margin after product and delivery costs, and how many times a typical customer buys from you in a year.
Example: if your average order is £60 and your margin is 50%, the first order makes £30 of gross profit. If customers buy twice a year on average, a new customer is worth about £60 of gross profit in their first year. Paying £20 in advertising to win one leaves room for profit. Paying £45 probably doesn’t once returns and overheads come off.
That figure is your ceiling for cost per new customer. Shops with good repeat purchase rates can spend more to win a customer, which is why email and retention matter as much as ads.
Fix the shop before buying traffic
Every channel sends people to the same shop, so a weak site makes every channel look worse than it is. The common reasons people leave at the basket are well known: delivery costs that appear late, being forced to create an account, a long checkout, a missing payment option, and doubts about whether the shop is trustworthy.
Product pages need to answer the questions a shop assistant would: what it’s made of, how it fits, how big it is, how it’s used and when it will arrive. Write descriptions for a buyer comparing options, with specific details rather than adjectives. Short product videos showing scale, texture or the product in use help people decide, and the same clips can run in ads and on social media. Our guide to website design for conversions covers the layout side.
The main ecommerce marketing channels
| Channel | Good for | Bear in mind |
|---|---|---|
| Email and SMS | Repeat sales and recovering abandoned baskets | Only reaches people who’ve given you their details |
| Google Shopping and search ads | Buyers searching for a product right now | Needs a clean product feed and margins that can carry the cost per click |
| SEO | Steady traffic from searches for what you sell, without paying per click | Takes months to build |
| Paid social (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest) | Showing products to people who weren’t searching | Results depend heavily on the creative, so it needs fresh images and video |
| Organic social and content | Trust, community and material for your ads | Slow to drive sales on its own |
| Influencers, affiliates and partnerships | Reaching other people’s audiences | Results vary a lot; track each partner with its own code or link |
You don’t need all of them at once. Most small shops do better running three or four channels properly than seven badly.
Lead generation for ecommerce: building your list
Most first-time visitors won’t buy on their first visit. Getting their email address gives you another chance. Give people a reason to sign up, such as:
- a first-order discount or free delivery
- early access to new products or sales
- a quiz that recommends the right product for them
- back-in-stock and price-drop alerts
- a buying guide they’d want to keep
Ask at sensible moments: a pop-up that waits until someone has browsed a little, a sign-up at checkout, and a form in the footer. Under UK rules (PECR), you need consent to send marketing emails to new contacts. Existing customers can receive emails about similar products under the “soft opt-in” if they were given the chance to opt out when they bought and in every email since. The ICO’s guidance sets out the detail.
Email flows that run every day
Automated email flows send the right message when a customer does something, such as signing up, leaving a basket or making a purchase. Once set up, they run without anyone pressing send, which is why they’re often the best value marketing a shop has. Klaviyo, Mailchimp and the email tools built into Shopify and other platforms can all run them. Our guide to automated email sequences goes through each flow in detail.
| Flow | Triggered by | What to send |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome | A new subscriber | The promised offer, your story, best sellers, reviews |
| Abandoned basket | A checkout started but not finished | A reminder with the items left, then answers to common doubts |
| Browse abandonment | A product viewed several times without adding it to the basket | The product, similar items and reviews |
| Post-purchase | An order | Thanks, delivery updates, how to use it, then a review request |
| Cross-sell or replenishment | Time since an order | Products that go with it, or a reminder to reorder |
| Win-back | No order for longer than usual | New products, a reason to come back, then a final check-in |
For abandoned baskets, a common starting point is a first reminder within a few hours and a second a day or so later, with any discount saved for the last email, because customers who learn that waiting earns a discount start waiting. Test the timings against your own results.
Alongside the flows, send regular campaigns: new products, guides, behind-the-scenes stories and seasonal offers. Split your list so people see what’s relevant to them, for example first-time buyers versus repeat customers, or by the category they bought from. Not every email needs a discount. Test one thing at a time, starting with subject lines, and watch clicks and sales rather than opens, which privacy features in email apps have made unreliable.
Catching people who are already searching
People searching for a product are close to buying, so search is usually the next place to spend. Google Shopping ads show your product, price and photo at the top of the results and often suit shops better than text ads. They run from a product feed in Google Merchant Center, which also gets your products into Google’s free listings.
SEO takes longer but keeps paying once pages rank. For a shop, most of the value is in category pages (“men’s waterproof walking boots”) and buying guides. Our guide to SEO for ecommerce websites covers it step by step.
Social media, influencers and partnerships
Paid social is how most shops reach people who didn’t know they wanted the product. It works best with a steady supply of creative: real photos, short videos, customer content and clear offers. Paid social campaigns usually do best when they retarget site visitors and email subscribers as well as reaching new audiences.
Organic social builds trust and gives you material to advertise with. Pick the one or two platforms your customers use, post consistently, and share customer photos and reviews with permission. Our social media marketing page explains how we run this for clients.
Influencers in your niche, with smaller but engaged followings, often suit small shops better than big names. Start with gifting or a small paid post, give each creator their own discount code or link, and only repeat what sells. UK advertising rules require paid posts to be clearly labelled as ads, and the ASA and CMA publish guidance for influencers and brands. The same tracking approach works for affiliate programmes and partnerships with brands that share your customers, such as joint giveaways or bundles.
Content and video
Content gives every other channel something to say. A shop’s best content usually comes straight from customer questions: buying guides, size and fit advice, care instructions, comparisons and how-to videos. Each piece can become a page for SEO, an email, several social posts and an ad.
Stories help too. How a product is made, why you started the business and how customers use what they bought give people a reason to choose you over a cheaper copy. Keep them specific and short.
Measuring what’s working
Set up ecommerce tracking in GA4 and the conversion tracking for each ad platform, and test a purchase to check every one records it. Then look at two levels each month.
The first is the whole business: total revenue divided by total marketing spend, new customers won, and what each new customer cost against the figure you worked out at the start. Ad platforms each count the sales they had a hand in, so their reported totals add up to more than your real sales. Use the overall figures when deciding where the budget goes.
The second is each channel’s own report, which tells you what to change inside it. Add a “How did you hear about us?” question to your checkout or post-purchase email; it picks up word of mouth, podcasts and influencers that tracking misses. Your customers’ answers, reviews and returns notes are also the cheapest market research you’ll get.
Frequently asked questions
What is an ecommerce digital marketing strategy?
It’s a plan for where your online shop’s customers will come from and how much you can spend to win each one. It sets which channels you use (such as SEO, Google Shopping, paid social and email), in what order, with what budget, and how you’ll measure the return.
What is the best marketing strategy for a small online shop?
Start by fixing the shop so it converts, then set up the core email flows and start collecting email addresses. Next, catch people already searching through Google Shopping and SEO. Add paid social once you know your numbers and have good product photos and video. Keep to a few channels and run them properly.
What is the best lead generation for ecommerce?
An email sign-up with a reason to join: a first-order discount, free delivery, early access to launches, a product-finder quiz or back-in-stock alerts. Collect consent properly, then send new subscribers a welcome sequence that introduces the brand and your best sellers.
What email sequences should an online shop have?
At least five automated flows: a welcome series for new subscribers, abandoned basket reminders, post-purchase emails (thank you, delivery, how to use it, a review request), cross-sell or replenishment emails, and a win-back series for customers who haven’t bought in a while.
How do I reduce abandoned baskets?
Show delivery costs before checkout, offer guest checkout, keep the checkout short, offer familiar payment options and make your returns policy easy to find. Then send automated abandoned basket emails to shoppers who started checking out, with a picture of what they left and a link straight back to it.
How much should an online shop spend on marketing?
There’s no single percentage that suits every shop. Work out what you can afford to pay for a new customer from your margin, average order value and how often customers buy again, then set budgets per channel and check the return every month. If you use an agency, its fees come on top of ad spend.
Founder of The Pursuit Agency in Swindon. He has worked in SEO for fifteen-odd years and leads the agency's SEO and Google Ads work for owner-led businesses across the UK.