Why Do You Need A Strategy For Your Ecommerce Brand

Every ecommerce business, whether a fresh Shopify store or an established WooCommerce or Magento platform, needs a powerful marketing strategy. Without one, you're essentially navigating blind, hoping for the best.

Many people confuse marketing strategy with marketing tactics. They'll list endless methods to reach customers and mistakenly call them strategies. But tactics without a clear strategy are like having all the ingredients for a meal but no recipe, you'll end up frustrated with the results, or worse, with no results at all.

This article will clarify what a marketing strategy truly is, how to build an effective one for your ecommerce brand, and how goals, KPIs, and tactics all fit into the bigger picture.

What Exactly Is an Ecommerce Marketing Strategy?

Let's start with the basics: What is a marketing strategy, and why is it crucial for your ecommerce brand?

A strategy is your overarching plan for how you'll win the game you're playing. It's the grand design that can often be summarized in a concise sentence or two.

Imagine you're selling car tires online. Your strategy could be: "Sell the best premium tires for supercars to customers in the USA with next-day shipping."

Think about Domino's Pizza's brilliant strategy, which also served as their promise: "Your pizza in under 30 minutes, or it's free." Notice they didn't promise the best-tasting pizza or the widest range of toppings. Their win was all about speed.

For your ecommerce brand, the marketing strategy needs a bit more detail about reaching potential customers and boosting brand awareness, but it remains the overarching plan.

For our tire shop, their ecommerce marketing strategy could be: "Communicate we sell the best premium tires with next-day delivery (the offer) to high-income individuals aged 40 to 75 in mainland USA (target client) who own supercars by using a range of owned, paid, and earned media (channels/tactics)."

This single sentence defines the target audience, the problem being solved, and the general approach to reach them. It doesn't delve into specific tactics, KPIs, or goals, but it clearly outlines how the business plans to succeed.

Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics vs. Campaigns: Understanding the Difference

Many people incorrectly refer to tactics as strategies due to a lack of clarity. Hopefully, you now have a better grasp of what a marketing strategy is. So, how do tactics fit in?

If strategy is the overarching plan, tactics are the specific action steps you'll take to achieve your goal of converting your target audience into customers. You might try various tactics, but your core strategy remains constant.

Using our car tire shop example, they could experiment with traditional marketing like print ads or radio, social media (such as TikTok videos or Instagram Reels), pay-per-click (PPC), email marketing, and more. All of these are tactics designed to help them reach their ideal customer and sell more tires.

These tactics can then be organized into campaigns. Campaigns usually have a specific duration and measurable outcomes. They operate within the framework of your strategy but won't redefine it if a particular tactic doesn't perform as expected.

Organizing tactics into defined marketing campaigns allows you to work within a set budget and timeframe, optimizing your efforts. Campaigns also have a clear end date, enabling you to analyze overall performance and cost. You're committed for a certain period, and at its conclusion, you can decide whether to extend the campaign or try a different marketing approach.

This clarifies the distinction: marketing strategy (the plan), tactic (the action steps), and campaigns (defined, time-bound events).

Devising an Effective Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

A successful ecommerce marketing strategy incorporates your offer, your target audience, where they are, and the channels you'll use to connect with them. Let's explore each in more detail.

Your Offer

This is the product or service you're selling – whether it's car tires, jewelry, home interior products, or cigars. Your offer should be communicated clearly and specifically.

For instance, instead of saying: "We sell Jewelry."

Say: "We sell high-end custom Jewelry priced between $1,000 and $50,000."

Who Are You Trying to Reach?

Be precise about your target customer. The clearer you are, the easier it becomes to choose the right tactics and direct your marketing efforts effectively.

Going back to our jewelry example, avoid: "Women aged 18 to 65."

Instead, define your target as: "Women aged 40 to 65 that earn $125,000 per year and work in management or C-Level jobs."

Where Are They?

Knowing your target client's location makes it much easier to reach them. For our jewelry shop, they might only sell products within Mainland USA or exclusively in Europe. Again, be specific.

What Channels Will You Use?

You can discuss channels without immediately diving into tactics. Will your focus be on paid, owned, or earned media?

• Paid media involves running advertisements.

• Owned media are channels you control (your blog, website, social media profiles, email list).

• Earned media refers to content created by a third party (reviews, awards, user-generated content).

Our jewelry brand might focus on paid and owned media, letting earned media naturally develop from excellent products and customer service. Alternatively, they might, like Zappos, invest heavily in earned media.

There are no right or wrong marketing channels to invest in, but you should aim to maximize your impact across the ones that yield the best results. It's easy to slip into a discussion about tactics here, but remember to keep the focus on the strategic channel choice!

How Does Marketing Budget Factor Into Strategy?

A robust strategy considers your budget, but your ecommerce marketing budget truly comes into play when developing specific tactics and campaigns.

You'll need to ensure you have the financial resources and time to test different tactics long enough to make informed decisions. For example, you might need at least six months to gauge if your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is working or needs adjustment. Conversely, testing social media ads or retargeting might only require two months and $500.

While you can include a general budget and timeframe in your ecommerce marketing strategy, it's generally best to detail these elements within your tactical plan.

Building the Ideal Marketing Strategy for Ecommerce Brands

With this roadmap, you can now begin crafting a marketing strategy for your ecommerce brand. Your strategy will be unique to your business, and that's perfectly fine.

Remember, your ecommerce marketing strategy should define how you intend to win the game you've chosen to play. Even two similar ecommerce brands will have different strengths, weaknesses, and preferred ways to compete.

As your ecommerce business grows and markets evolve, your marketing strategy will naturally adapt. This is normal. However, your ecommerce marketing strategy should generally be a long-term plan. If it's constantly changing, you either have a significant underlying issue, or you're mistaking tactics for strategy!

Ultimately, everything circles back to your strategy, as this is the plan that defines your "why." And that's precisely why a strategy-first approach is so crucial for ecommerce marketing success.