10 ecommerce marketing techniques to use in 2026

Whether you're a newbie in the ecommerce game or a seasoned pro, there's one golden rule: know your customers inside out. What makes them tick? What do they care about? What gets them pumped up, and why? Let's break down how you can build a customer-centric marketing strategy by choosing suitable marketing types and channels. We’ll also walk you through some tips to tailor your marketing plan to your target audience.

1. SEO 

SEO involves practices that make your online store more visible on search engines, such as Google, Amazon, and YouTube. If your goal is to give your target market what they want, they must find you first—and organic search is how most online shoppers do that.

Take a page out of the SEO playbook of Glossier, the beauty brand that started as a blog. They’ve collected brilliant customer insights since their blogging heyday, which has helped them refine their messaging and get to the top of online searches. 

Glossier’s unique product descriptions set them apart from competitors

Here’s how to create a winning SEO strategy like Glossier:

• Keep URLs short and ensure keywords appear at the beginning for better visibility

• Employ user-friendly design and intuitive navigation to reduce bounces

• Collect and analyze user behavior data to uncover UX issues that impact SEO

💡 Pro tip: your website’s speed can make or break your SEO. Use a tool like Contentsquare’s Speed Analysis to learn how quickly your site responds to users in various locations. If there’s room for improvement, you’ll get specific instructions on what to change for faster load speeds.

 Contentsquare’s speed analysis tool in action 

2. PPC or paid search 

Ecommerce brands seldom succeed with only one channel, even if it's organic search. That's why advertising options like pay-per-click (PPC) exist. 

This form of digital advertising is called such because it charges a fee each time a user clicks on your ad. People who click PPC ads usually have a strong intent to purchase.

Grove Collaborative, a seller of natural home essentials, understands their eco-conscious consumers and uses ad copy that speaks to their needs—so their PPC ads perform great. 

Grove Collaborative’s ad creatives are tailored to its niche audience (feed collage courtesy of Panoramata)

Keep these tips in mind if you want to drive sales through PPC like them: 

• Target high-intent keywords, prioritizing relevance over volume

• Craft landing pages that align with your ad's message, are easy to navigate, and have clear CTAs 

• Consider special offers or discounts to grab potential customers' interest

3. Content marketing 

Ecommerce content marketing is a type of inbound marketing for ecommerce businesses. This means drawing visitors to your app or website via free content that intends to inform, educate, or entertain. Blogs, infographics, case studies, video tutorials, podcasts, and webinars are all good examples.

How do you craft content that people who know little or nothing about your brand will read? Shopify’s Head of Content, Kameron Jenkins, said on The Good’s The Ecommerce Insights Show podcast: “Do your keyword research, talk to your customers, [and] you’ll get questions out of that.”

Ecommerce platform Shopify regularly publishes how-to posts to cater to its top-of-the-funnel audience

Additionally, apply these tactics to kickstart your content marketing:

• Create detailed audience personas—know who you're writing for to ensure your content resonates

• Incorporate visual elements like images, GIFs, or infographics to increase engagement

• Consistently gather feedback on your content with surveys or interviews to refine your strategy

📖 Case study: how Hotel Chocolat used Contentsquare to improve its content marketing efforts.

Chocolate retailer Hotel Chocolat has a wonderful blog that drives traffic to its site. However, they noticed its bounce rate was surprisingly high—82 %. Clearly, their content wasn’t giving readers the information they were searching for. The team used Contentsquare’s Journey Analysis tool to pinpoint where blog visitors were leaving, and deduce why. They realized that blog visitors were more likely to convert when they clicked through to a product page after reading an article. Therefore, the team decided to add high-converting product pages as quick links at the bottom of each article. Their bounce rate decreased and sales increased—delicious! 

 The Journey Analysis tool visualizes data on your customer journey: which pages users pass through on their way to becoming customers and where they tend to drop off

4. Email marketing  

Email marketing offers some of the highest ROI of any marketing channel. That’s partly because you can segment subscribers by their user persona, jobs to be done (JTBDs), or stage in the customer journey, then get very targeted with your messaging. 

Rental platform Airbnb is a champion of this strategy. The company’s newsletters range from listings that remind you where you left off on their app to checklists for various cities people in your demographic like to visit. 

Airbnb considers how to drive sales through their ecommerce email marketing campaigns

Follow in Airbnb’s footsteps with these tips:

• Address subscribers by their name and tailor content to their preferences 

• A/B test your email campaigns, experimenting with different subject lines, body texts, and sending times to see what resonates best

• Use email analytics to track metrics like open rates, click-throughs, and conversions, leveraging the data in future campaigns

5. Brand marketing  

When brands become household names, it’s due to consistent brand marketing, usually over many years. The purpose is to help users know what your business stands for, so they can connect with your offer emotionally. It’s visceral—and it works.

These brands need no introduction. Even if we don’t use their products or services, we likely know about Apple’s elegant design, Netflix’s streaming dominance, and Nike’s ‘Just do it’ slogan.

Some companies that have successfully won hearts and minds with brand marketing 

How do you build brand awareness like these giants? Here are a few tips:

• Conduct surveys and interviews to truly grasp your customers' needs, desires, and pain points

• Create an emotionally engaging brand narrative 

• Actively seek and act upon customer feedback, letting your customers know their voice shapes your brand's evolution

6. Behavioral marketing 

Behavioral marketing uses data to segment your customers and tailor your strategies accordingly. This entails creating user profiles that take into account demographics (age, gender, income) psychographics (interests, activities, opinions), and user behavior (new or returning, cart abandoners, frequent visitors), and then using these to make targeted campaigns. 

You’re probably familiar with the product recommendation feature that skincare brand Neutrogena employs on its site. The brand used customers’ past shopping behavior to suggest new product pairings. 

Neutrogena uses behavioral marketing to recommend products its customers might like 

To put behavioral marketing techniques to work:

• Closely monitor users’ interactions with tools like session replays and heatmaps on your site to understand their likes, dislikes, and motivations 

• Segment your audience into groups based on behavioral data for targeted campaigns 

• Test often to refine campaigns for improved conversion rates and customer engagement

7. Social media marketing  

In the beginning, businesses simply used social media to widen their reach. Today, platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X have added features like ads and shoppable content to help ecommerce companies amplify conversions too.

Jewelry brand, Mejuri uses Instagram to showcase their minimalist pieces. They use luxurious visuals and social proof to amplify awareness of their brand, encouraging users to buy.

Mejuri uses visual storytelling to captivate their target market

Begin your social media marketing journey with these best practices:

• Engage your audience—answer questions or join in on trending topics to foster brand loyalty

• Maximize Stories and Live features for quick promotions, exclusive peeks, and real-time interaction

• Prompt happy customers to share experiences as their stories enhance credibility

💡 Pro tip: if you’re running a live session on a social media platform—say YouTube or Instagram—and someone mentions an issue with your site, use Contentsquare’s Error Analysis tool to investigate quickly. 

You’ll be able to see the scale of the problem, which user segments it affects, and estimate its impact on revenue. You can also dive into session replays that show users interacting with the bug. 

Then, get back to your follower and tell them you’re looking into their tip-off—a surefire way to build brand loyalty. 

Contentsquare’s Error Analysis helps you understand the impact of technical and nontechnical issues

8. Affiliate marketing 

Affiliates are people or entities who promote your products via a referral link, in exchange for a commission on any sales.  

Big or small, affiliate partners are a low-cost way to market your wares. Some well-known affiliate programs are run by bigwigs like Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, and ShareASale.

Beardbrand, which sells men’s grooming products, has gained market share through this strategy.

Beardbrand has rolled out their affiliate program in hopes of boosting sales

Here are some tips to follow suit:

• Collaborate with affiliates whose audience aligns well with your product

• Use tracking tools to understand which affiliates bring the most sales 

• Periodically assess whether affiliates are consistent with your brand's message and goals

9. Influencer marketing  

Similar to affiliate marketing, influencer marketing is when you employ someone with a large social following to promote your products to their audience. 

There are mega-influencers with millions of followers, but there are also micro-influencers with audiences of just a few thousand. Smaller influencers are effective at reaching niche audiences, where mega-influencers tend to appeal to broader ones.

Koala, an Australian mattress and furniture brand, successfully teamed up with micro-influencers to broaden their reach across numerous influencer audiences.

One of the influencers Koala worked with on a campaign (image courtesy of The Right Fit)

Here’s some tips to launch a sustainable influencer marketing strategy:

• Work with smaller-scale influencers—they tend to have more intimate connections with followers

• Prioritize influencers who resonate with your brand's values

• Track metrics like engagement and conversion, so you can assess return on investment (ROI) 

💡 Pro tip: filter session replays by influencer traffic to see how these users engage with your site, products, or services. Which parts of the page do they interact with most? How long do they dwell on specific content?

To delve deeper, create a survey that only appears to users who came to your site via an influencer’s referral link, with user attributes. Ask visitors what they think of the influencer's content to gauge whether their message fits well with your brand.

10. Local marketing 

If your ecommerce business has ties to a regional community, it pays to make this known. Optimize your search presence for local queries and partner with local influencers to capture a segment of consumers who like shopping closer to home. 

Flowers for Dreams uses local personalization tactics to appeal to shoppers in the US Midwest. They’ve created local landing pages, written location-specific blog posts, and donated to local charities. 

Snapshots of Flowers for Dreams’ landing pages for Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Detroit Emulate their tactics with these tips: 

• Craft blog content with a local flavor: stories about local festivals, traditions, or popular landmarks

• Partner with influencers who have a strong foothold in the community 

• Invest in the area by supporting regional charities 

The only ecommerce marketing tip you need: put your customer first

Putting the customer at the heart of your strategy ensures meaningful engagement and tangible returns. How do you prioritize your audience in your marketing plan? By harnessing user experience intelligence. 

So let’s set aside the qualitative vs. quantitative data debate—it’s better to combine both data types to understand customer behavior. Contentsquare’s suite of tools helps you do exactly this, with the product analytics you need to see what’s happening, and the experience analytics to understand the “why” behind it. 

• Track performance: view various quantitative data points—such as page views, bounce rate, and conversion rate—that help you determine whether your ecommerce store pages work as planned. Use Contentsquare Funnels to analyze drop-off. Filter conversion funnels by marketing channel or country, and add your critical charts to a customized dashboard to see your data in a flash. 

Funnel analysis showing user drop-off and conversion rate

• Lower exit rate: use Session Replay to figure out why one product page has a higher exit rate than other similar pages. Identify issues by observing behavioral patterns, such as users zooming frequently on product images and infrequent clicks on the size guide. From there, set up an exit-intent survey using Contentsquare Surveys to hear directly from users about what stopped them from purchasing. Is it poor image quality, do they struggle with the size guide, or is it something else entirely?

Set up an exit-intent survey in seconds with Contentsquare’s AI survey question writer

• Boost conversion: view heatmaps of your checkout page to understand why users abandoned the session. If you find out, for example, that the 'Proceed to payment' button is visible but under-clicked, watch some session replays to understand why. It could be that users struggled with the discount code section, or returned to product pages to verify details or prices.

Filter your heatmaps data to see where customers click, move, scroll on a given pages

FAQs about ecommerce marketing