Marketing for
online stores

Marketing for online stores in a big country

Canada is a wonderful market and a difficult one for e-commerce. Customers are spread across six time zones and thousands of kilometres, shipping costs are high, and many shoppers compare prices with US stores. Marketing for online stores here starts with the basics that ads cannot fix: clear shipping costs, fast pages, honest delivery times and a checkout that works on a phone.

Get those right, and advertising becomes much more efficient. Get them wrong, and you pay for clicks that leave at the shipping step.

Shipping, returns and prices

Shipping is often the deciding factor. Show the cost early, set free shipping thresholds that protect your margin, and be honest about delivery times to remote regions. A clear returns policy reduces hesitation. The Competition Act prohibits drip pricing, so mandatory fees must be included in the advertised price rather than added at checkout.

Products sold in Canada usually need bilingual labelling under federal packaging rules, and Quebec customers expect French on the website. If you sell into Quebec, plan for a French version of product pages and checkout; I build stores in English, so that version would come from your own team or translator. The rules are summarized in the guide to Quebec French websites.

Channels that sell

Google Shopping is often the strongest channel for stores with clear products and prices. It needs a clean product feed in Merchant Center: accurate titles, prices, availability and shipping. Many feed errors come from small mismatches between the site and the feed.

Meta works for discovery: short product videos, real customers with permission, and retargeting for people who viewed products. E-commerce ads on Meta run best with a catalogue connected and purchase events tracked properly, including the Conversions API, which I quote separately. Creative needs refreshing every few weeks; the same ad shown too often stops working long before the budget runs out.

Measuring profit, not just revenue

Return on ad spend can look healthy while you lose money on shipping and price cuts. I report revenue, estimated margin, new versus returning customers and cost per acquisition by channel. Campaigns are split so high-margin products get more budget, and products that cannot support advertising are excluded.

Repeat customers

The second order is where online stores become profitable. A welcome email, an abandoned cart reminder, a thank-you after purchase and a reorder reminder for consumables do a lot of quiet work. Under CASL, every marketing email needs consent and an unsubscribe link; I wrote about it in the article on CASL and email marketing.

The Canadian e-commerce calendar

Black Friday and Cyber Monday now matter in Canada as much as Boxing Day. Back-to-school, Mother's Day and Valentine's Day matter for gifts. Winter brings outdoor and home categories. Plan inventory and campaigns together; running out of stock mid-campaign wastes budget fast.

For physical stores that also sell online, see marketing for retail stores. Fashion and beauty brands have their own pages: marketing for fashion brands and marketing for cosmetics brands. Stores based in Quebec can see digital marketing in Montreal for that market.