eCommerce Marketing Services Guide

As online shopping grows in popularity, companies need to find a way to make their eCommerce store stand out and appeal to potential buyers. Hiring eCommerce marketing services can help you grow your business online. Here's what you need to know. 

Global eCommerce sales now total over $6.3 trillion thanks to the popularity of online shopping. This growth has made eCommerce — the buying and selling of goods online — a highly competitive industry.

It's also why eCommerce marketing services are so sought-after. They help stores generate more brand awareness and engagement to increase sales.

This in-depth hiring guide explores how to find and hire eCommerce marketing services that can help your brand thrive. You’ll also learn how to evaluate competing options to make the best possible decision for your business.

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What Are eCommerce Marketing Services?

eCommerce marketing services help online brands generate more sales. They do so by increasing brand awareness and web traffic via targeted marketing initiatives on social media, Google search, email, and other platforms.

The average online shopping website converts about 1.6% of its traffic. That’s around one sale per month if you have 100 visitors, or 160 if you have 10,000. eCommerce marketing services help with both parts of this formula. They implement strategies to help you convert a higher percentage of your traffic and increase your total website visitors. 

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5 Benefits of eCommerce Marketing Services

Your store could benefit from an eCommerce marketing partnership in each of the following ways:

1. Expanded reach: Optimized marketing strategies will bring more attention to your products, helping you expand your audience.
2. Cost-effective advertising: eCommerce marketing services can help you get as much value as possible from every ad dollar you spend.
3. Personalized shopping experiences: Your partner can help you design personalized buyer journeys for every buyer persona.
4. Boost conversions: You should notice improved sales with a marketing strategy that conveys value to your target audience more effectively.
5. Faster buying process: A technical eCommerce marketing service can help you improve your site’s performance to reduce bounce rates and speed up checkout times.

You’ll get to direct your marketing team’s efforts based on your goals. This can influence the benefits you receive from the partnership. For example, you can ask the team to focus mostly on expanding reach or boosting conversions, if you prefer, or you can request a more holistic approach.

What Services Do eCommerce Marketing Teams Provide?

eCommerce marketing companies provide a wide variety of services across marketing channels. Here are five popular marketing services you can choose from.

• SEO for eCommerce
• Email Marketing
• PPC Advertising
• Analytics & Reporting 
• Product Feed Management

SEO for eCommerce Service Providers

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of improving your company’s ranking for Google search terms. It involves creating content around keywords and phrases that your customers use when showing an interest in your product or industry. There’s also a technical side to SEO, which can be impacted by website load times, site architecture, and related factors.

eCommerce marketing services can help you create great SEO content and improve your site performance. This can make your store appear in Google search results more frequently, increase traffic, and, ultimately, improve revenue.

Email Marketing 

Research shows email marketing delivers an ROI of about $45 for every $1 spent in the eCommerce sector. It’s a strategy that targets your audience via their email inboxes. The goal is typically getting a potential customer to open an email you send, review its content, and then visit your website as a result.

eCommerce marketing services can help with this, too. These experts can write the emails your business sends, create personalized drip campaigns, and generally help you get more sales from email marketing.

PPC Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising involves paying to advertise your shop in strategic locations online. You can do it through Google, Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and other high-traffic platforms.

A service can help you optimize your PPC advertising strategy. They can ensure the money you spend is allocated as efficiently as possible based on your goals. A team can also review your PPC metrics over time and make changes to ad copy, visuals, and other elements as necessary.

Analytics and Reporting 

Data helps companies make better decisions. An eCommerce marketing service can review your key data streams to see what insights they have to offer. An expert may help you discover new opportunities for growth, brand refinement, or something else.

They can also turn complicated data into more digestible reports. This can help you understand data insights faster so you can take action to improve your business immediately.

Product Feed Management

Finally, you can also count on an eCommerce marketing service to help with product feed management. This means strategically organizing how you share your products online to boost sales.

For example, a feed manager might experiment with different product images to see which performs best. Or they could review your internal analytics to make more informed decisions about when to feature certain types of products (such as showing off your sweaters at the beginning of winter).

You may also sell your products on social platforms in addition to your website. A product feed management service can sync critical details like price and descriptions across all platforms to ensure a consistent experience.

How To Assess eCommerce Marketing Services

It’s important to learn how to evaluate eCommerce marketing services before you hire a team to deliver them. Otherwise, you won’t be able to compare your options objectively.

With that in mind, eCommerce marketing teams typically use the following metrics to assess the effectiveness of their marketing services:

• Conversion rate: This is the percentage of website visitors who take some desired action, such as completing a purchase. It’s worth tracking to see how your conversion rates compare to industry benchmarks.
  
• Customer acquisition cost: This figure is the amount you pay to acquire a single new customer — calculated by dividing all sales and marketing costs by the number of new customers gained in a period.
• Customer lifetime value: This tells you how much your company can expect to earn across the lifetime patronage of the average customer. Improving lifetime value is one way to boost revenue.
  
• Website traffic: This is the overall number of visitors your website receives in a time period. Improving web traffic will boost revenue even if your conversion rate stays exactly the same.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): ROAS measures earnings for each dollar spent on advertising. It can help you determine if you’re spending your marketing budget effectively.
• Email open and click-through rates: These figures measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. They look at the percentage of marketing email recipients who open and click on a link, respectively.
  

You can ask the eCommerce marketing services you’re considering to provide their historical performance across each of these metrics. This will give you an objective way to see which service is likeliest to have the biggest positive impact on your brand.

What Is an eCommerce Marketing Team?

It’s also worth considering who you need on your eCommerce marketing team. That can vary based on your company’s goals. For example, you may not need a team with a web designer if you only want to focus on social media marketing.

With that in mind, here are some of the most common members of an eCommerce marketing team and what they do:

• eCommerce manager: Leads the team. Focuses on the high-level aspects of creating and implementing new marketing strategies.
  
• Digital marketing specialist: Excels at digital marketing strategy. Can work on all aspects of a campaign.
• Content creator: Makes content like social media posts and blogs designed around specific marketing goals.
• SEO specialist: Leverages their understanding of Google’s SEO algorithm to help businesses rank better for their chosen keywords.
• Data analyst: Combs through data feeds to find insights and generates reports to share them with others.
• Social media manager: Focuses exclusively on the social media elements of your marketing campaign, including posts, strategy, and performance tracking.
• Web designers and developers: Optimizes your storefront for conversions. Can help with technical SEO, site performance, and bounce rates.

It’s also worth considering if all of the roles you need should be fulfilled by a single team. For example, if you already have an internal web designer, you can save money by hiring a team without one.

What To Look For When Hiring an eCommerce Marketing Team

The metrics and roles listed in the previous two sections are starting points for your hiring process. But there are other factors to consider along with them.

For example, it’s often helpful to hire a marketing service with expertise in your industry. These teams tend to start with a better understanding of your target audience and what they care about, which can help you make faster marketing progress.

Case studies can also be helpful. They share the detailed results that an eCommerce marketing team has achieved for a previous client. If you see a case study that’s similar to what you hope to achieve, that can be a hiring signal. Ultimately, your company’s unique goals and preferences will determine its best eCommerce marketing services hiring strategy.

Criteria for Hiring an eCommerce Marketing Provider

Here’s a more succinct look at the most important criteria to consider before making your eCommerce marketing hiring decision:

• Budget: Your marketing budget determines the type of services you can afford. For example, if you have a small budget, you may prioritize hiring a single SEO specialist over a whole team.
• Pricing: Service teams charge for their marketing assistance differently. Some may ask you to pay mostly upfront while others will let you pay monthly. These pricing strategies can impact which service is the best fit for your company.
  
• Location: You want to hire a team that is easy to communicate with. That means choosing one based in a time zone that works for you.
  
• Experience: Both general eCommerce marketing experience and industry-specific experience can make a service more effective at helping you reach your goals.
  
• Support: When you have a problem, you want to be able to resolve it quickly. That means choosing a service with responsive support.
• Comprehensiveness: Finally, it’s easiest to work with a single marketing team, when possible. That’s why it’s also smart to consider if a service can accommodate all of your needs.

Testimonials are also extremely important, as they provide real insights from previous customers. That’s what makes Clutch a great resource for your hiring hunt. We make it easy to analyze eCommerce marketing services based on reviews, price, performance, and more.

10 Questions To Ask When Hiring an eCommerce Marketing Team

Another part of making the best hiring decision is asking the right questions during interviews. Here are 10 that will get you the information you need:

1. Do you have any prior experience in this industry? Can you tell me about a specific project you’ve worked on and how it went?
   
2. When will I start to see results?
   
3. How do you communicate with clients as problems arise?
4. Do you ever outsource components of the projects you work on?
   
5. Do you have any case studies you could share with me?
6. What tools or technologies do you use to help clients?
   
7. What makes your marketing service unique?
   
8. How will you assess the performance of our campaigns?
   
9. How much should I expect to spend on your service based on my goals?
   
10. Do you have any web designers on your staff?

Whatever questions you ask, make sure you pose them to at least a few different teams. You want to compare and contrast responses to see which service is right for your goals. That’s impossible to do if you hire the first service provider you interview.

Search for eCommerce Marketing Services Based on Project Requirements

Given everything you need to research, finding and hiring a great eCommerce marketing service can feel like a daunting task. That’s why we created Clutch. Our platform makes it easy to search through thousands of potential marketing teams based on the factors that matter most to you.

Whether you prefer to search based on location, budget, client ratings, or cost, we’ll help you zero in on the best options for your goals.

eCommerce Marketing Services Can Transform Your Business

eCommerce marketing teams help companies find, attract, and convert new customers. You can use one to improve your conversion rate, optimize your ad spend, or reach any other marketing goal you may have.
However, your outcomes will only be as good as the service provider you choose to hire. That’s why it’s important to work through your options deliberately. You can use this guide as a resource throughout the process, or start your search today with Clutch.

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