Strategy and Media planning for eCommerce stores
No business owner wants to say "Well, we're like everybody else." That's why there isn't a solid eCommerce business that looks like another eCommerce business.
You can all be on Shopify and use Stripe for checkout to sell sneakers, dresses, or sports nutrition, and still every business would be different.
That's why there are no real blueprints and no real templates on how to promote and scale an eCom store.
But there are guidelines and principles that are easy to implement and maintain to drive increase MRR and ARR without getting too many grey hairs.
Strategy
Before even touching the basics it's vital to figure our the communications strategy for the brand. No easier way than to answer the following five questions that formulate your strategy:
- Who are you as a brand, what's your positioning, and what problem do you have right now?
- Who are your customers and what problem do they face?
- What's a deep sociological/psychological/economic insights into the truth of their problem do you know that will help your customers overcome the problem they have?
- What needs to change in the customers to overcome the problem and why you're the only brand that can help them?
- What action do you want them to take and what benefit will it bring to the brand?
For example, a sustainable clothing store might find the following strategy useful:
- We are a sustainable, locally-made, minimalist clothing brand in the age of SHEIN and TEMU, who wants to grow its market share in Europe.
- Our customers our eco-conscious and adhere to buy-it-for-life philosophy but there is too much noise from fast fashion to discover sustainable brands.
- They choose what they were not as a consumerist shopping experience but a political and social statement that claims that "we want a brighter future, stronger communities, and reliable things - not islands of cheap plastic waste"
- We need the audience to accept that a better, brighter future is possible! We will communicate that by making small choices today - supporting locally made clothes, created within the community, that will serve you for the next 10 years - they can be on the right side of history without giving up style or comfort.
- We want them to become a part of community and buy from our store to increase the brand share of voice and market share.
The five sentences above have the keys and map to the technical requirements of an eCommerce campaign, its messaging, customer touchpoints, media channel mix, KPIs and everything else required to scale the store.
Customer Journey Mapping
Creating a solid omnichannel strategy is exactly like putting together a puzzle, where each marketing channel plays a vital role. This approach helps brands connect effortlessly with their audience, providing a seamless experience across various touchpoints. How we do it at based.:
- Identify the key touchpoints: Consider where your customers most often engage with your brand, whether online, on-domain, on Instagram, or in-person.
- Map the customer journey: Visualize how a customer moves from initial contact to a completed purchase or brand loyalty.
- Enhance each experience: Make every touchpoint engaging and informative, ensuring that customers don't just see a product but feel connected to your brand's story.
Imagine a boutique clothing store utilizing Meta, Google Shopping, and Amazon ads, with an engaging Instagram page, and a welcoming physical space to craft a memorable shopping experience. Customers who begin their journey online should find it easy to continue it in a physical store, with consistent messaging and service standards at every step.
eCommerce Media Mix
There are staples of eCommerce media that are unavoidable and more exotic options to reach your audience. Yet the principle remains the same - depending on the goal and the message your can do maxmaxxing and minmaxxing with your media.
Minmaxxing - squeezing the most results with the smallest possible investment of budget and effort. That's social, search, and etc.
Maxmaxxing - huge investment for huge impact. There are messages (product launches, BFCM, holidays, events) and products (cars, phones, insurance, banking) that warrant the big splash to simply communicate to the audience "This is so important we spared no money to get this message to you."
Meta Ads
ASC (Advantage+ Sales campaigns) are the lifeblood of eCommerce and drive revenue quick and easy - great account structure, trained pixel to warm up and recognize events, moderate daily budgets, and well-tested high-converting eCommerce Facebook Ads creatives are the receipt for high ROI campaigns. Meta is a 100% minmaxxing channel.
Google Shopping Ads
When you’re an eCommerce business, you have many avenues for selling your products online. But Google Shopping Ads? That’s a non-negotiable. To successfully reach your ideal shoppers and convert them into customers, you need data-informed, human-optimized Google Shopping campaigns. In Google Shopping, it’s common for 20% of product categories to drive 80% of revenue. But, since Google's algorithm is not familiar with you or your business, pure automation can miss out on big opportunities and point ad spend to underperforming areas. Hands-on management and deep understanding of the platform always lead to increases in sales and Revenue. Google Shopping ads require some effort and love in maintenance and optimization, but it's still a minmaxxing channel.
Amazon Ads
There’s no overstating the grasp that the Amazon marketplace has on the eCommerce industry. If you want to reach new shoppers and raise your brand awareness, you need to be advertising on this platform — and ASAP. Amazon is the leading online retailer in the U.S. and Europe, capturing a substantial 37% of the market. And, with almost 310 million active users worldwide, advertising on this platform opens your brand up to a whole new audience — many of which shop solely on Amazon for all their needs. Amazon DSP has been expanding and developing agressively and with the collosal, mind-bongling amounts of customer-data that they have, their platform offers unprecedented results. Amazon Ads are definitely a minmaxxing channel for everything to be squeezed out of it with minimal possible investment.
Display Ads
Display ads are great for building brand awareness and retaining customers. Customized, dynamic ad strategies used with engaging creatives on Google's GDN ecosystem or on the open internet will push your customers through every stage of the buying journey toward conversion success at the minimal cost for a maximum impact. Display ads are the king of minmaxxing channels as you almost always rely on your own 1st party data for your campaigns.
YouTube Ads
Despite all the claims from the AI startups, Google is still the No1 Search engine in the world and advertising there is a given. But, if you want your store brand to really grow, you also need to invest in the second most popular: YouTube. It's a more exotic channel for eCommerce since YouTube advertising can drive sales, its main advantage is in growing brand awareness. Your business should be steadily driving conversions elsewhere (especially Google Ads) before investing in this marketing channel - treat YouTube as the TV channel of 2025. Youtube ads are a more luxurious, maxmaxxing channel where the message - the sentiment, the emotional impact, and long lasting memory of it, all warrant the investment.
CTV
Talking about TV! As the streaming numbers goes up, people spending more and more time watching Tubi and Hulu, Disney and Netflix, it's the big league decision to expand your communications to TVs. Programmatic buying and direct deals open the way for brand of almost all sizes to explore CTV as a maxmaxxing channel. This is the place where you show the audience "The message here is so important that we didn't even check how much it cost to buy the 15s spot."
DOOH
Digital-Out-of-Home opens the doors to outdoor advertising at an affordable cost and unprecedented scale - from raising awareness to driving actual real foot traffic to the physical stores. It's more of maxmaxxing channel as it requires a lot of planning and management to run, but the long-tail impact and the prestige of real-world physical advertising provide immense ROI.
eCommerce Marketing Agencies
In the year of our lord 2025, an eCommerce marketing agency plays a pivotal role in helping a Shopify store thrive and meet the revenue goals. Agencies like based.marketing are not just about running ads or posting on social media. They’re about crafting comprehensive digital strategies that drive results, complementing and reinforcing a brand with unorthodox thinking and precise execution. CRO consultants can help when you've matured and are now looking to maximize the margins and squeeze every last drop from every possible angle.
Our team works across several marketing channels — providing eCommerce SEO services, full-service PPC management, and much more — to launch the best media mix that maximizes growth for your brand.
What separates based. from the rest of the eCommerce marketing agency pack, is that there are no junior marketers learning on the job by spending your budgets. Just a dedicated 1:1 agency partner with decades of experience solely focused on scaling your brand through strategic execution.
Conclusions
To promote, grow, and scale an eCommerce brand through media you'll need a strategy that has five straightforward elements and informs every single decision and tactic on how to achieve your goals, you'll need a media plan that addresses a suitable media channel mix, depending on the message, goals, and budget, and you'll need a partner or a team that can guide you through this journey towards higher ROI and revenue growth.
Reach out to based. below - we love a great eCommerce journey.
