Katarina White July 15, 2021 
Listening to marketing experts sharing the do’s and don’ts of eCommerce marketing based on decades of experience can go a long way towards helping you scale your own eCommerce business. That being said, there’s a lot to unpack in these conversations. Where are the Cliffnotes?!
In the spirit of saving you time, I’ve sussed out 4 tried and tested strategies from four respected eCommerce marketing experts I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with over the past two months.
Here are the key takeaways:
1. Give your FAQs some love
Don’t even have a Frequently Asked Questions section? Well, Kelly Vaughn, Founder of Shopify Plus Development Agency, The Taproom, insists on this being your #1 priority.
If you already have some FAQs, that’s great, but make sure to audit them periodically. “Review the questions you currently have on there and compare them to what your customers are asking via email or support or social media,” Kelly says.
Equally important, be sure to include the question “What if my question wasn’t answered here?” This way, you can smoothly direct people to your support team and minimize pain points.
2. Have a proper funnel structure
Akvile DeFazio, the founder of social media marketing agency, AKvertise, underscores the importance of having a solid funnel in place for your ads. You simply can’t succeed by showing the same messages to someone who has never even heard of your products as to someone who’s already a repeat customer. Akvile comments, “I often tell people, ‘Don’t run a conversion campaign for a prospecting audience; you’re going to pay more and you’re not going to get the results.’”
How Akvile and her team approach this is with an initial strategy session where they map out the goals they want to achieve, who the target audience is, and what variations of copy and creative they need at each stage of the funnel.
After that, it’s tons of testing, iterating, and analysis to see what exactly resonates at what point of the user journey. “Make sure you have tracking enabled–especially by using UTM parameters–because if you don’t have those, you’re going to be advertising in the dark and not be completely certain if things are working or not,” she advises.
3. Run ads on platforms other than Facebook and Google
“Your audience, I can guarantee, visits more websites than just Google or Facebook,” emphasizes Joe Martinez, co-founder of the Paid Media Pros YouTube channel. A lot of these less popular channels, like Snapchat, Pinterest, or Reddit have unique targeting capabilities and niche audiences that you won’t find as easily on Google display or Instagram.
You don’t even have to spend any money on the discovery phase. Joe points out that with Quora, for example, you can just place a tracking pixel on your site and see how many of your customers use the platform before you even invest a dime.
“Get in front of where your target audience actually likes to be, not where you think you should be just based on the overall world population” Joe reiterates.
4. Maintain an ongoing QA and ad monitoring system
Brand safety is the main worry with this tip, but so is wasted ad spend. Jon Kagan, VP of Market Insights at 9rooftops, warns marketers to keep a watchful eye on their retargeting display ads and where they appear. We’ve all probably seen ads like this one from McDonald’s that make us cringe due to poor placement, but things can get much worse depending on how dark the content is.
While this is definitely an issue, a much more common one is wasted ad spend. Are your ads for nutrition products being served up to 5-year-olds? Well, this is exactly what 40% of one of Jon’s clients’ budgets was going towards before he stepped in because no one had been monitoring their Google and Youtube ad campaigns.
Want more tips?
All of these experts were guests on Optily Radio, a bi-weekly podcast that I host. We bring expert marketers together to discuss compelling eCommerce topics and share pragmatic insights that help small and medium-sized businesses accelerate their growth. Click here to listen in on an all-star list of top-notch marketing experts, with more to come.
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