E-commerce
marketing strategy

An e-commerce marketing strategy starts with margin

An e-commerce marketing strategy for a small online store has one job: to make each order profitable, and then to make more of them. That sounds obvious, but many stores grow revenue while losing money, because ads are judged by return on ad spend alone. A 3x return looks great until you subtract the cost of the product, shipping, payment fees and returns.

So I start with a simple sheet: for each main product or category, what's left after all costs. That number is the ceiling for what you can pay to win an order. It tells us which products deserve advertising, which ones only sell well as add-ons, and which ones shouldn't be promoted at all.

Choosing what to push

Most stores have a handful of products that do most of the work: strong margin, steady demand, good reviews, photos that sell. I call them hero products. The strategy puts the ad budget behind those first and uses them as an entry point, then brings buyers back for the rest of the catalogue through email and remarketing.

The rest of the catalogue still matters for SEO. Well-written category pages can bring free traffic over time, so the plan includes which categories to improve for e-commerce SEO and in what order.

Channels for an online store

For a small store I rarely recommend more than two paid channels at the start. Google Shopping and Meta are the usual pair, with email running from day one because it costs little once it's set up.

The second order

The most profitable customer is the one who comes back without another ad click. The plan includes a few automated email flows: a welcome series, an abandoned cart reminder, a thank-you with a review request, and a reorder reminder timed to how long the product lasts. In Canada these need consent and an unsubscribe link under CASL, so the plan also covers how to collect that consent at checkout properly.

Tracking that matches the bank account

If the store's order count, GA4 and the ad platforms all show different numbers, decisions get made on the wrong one. The strategy checks that purchase events, values and product data flow correctly into GA4, Google Ads and the Meta pixel, and that the cookie consent setup respects Quebec's Law 25 if you sell there. More advanced setups like server-side tracking or the Conversions API are quoted individually.

Selling across Canada

A Canadian online store faces a few specific questions. Shipping across long distances is expensive, so thresholds, regional rates and local pickup need thought. Selling into Quebec means French product pages and checkout, not just a translated homepage; those come from your own team or translator, since my work is in English. And many shoppers compare prices with large US retailers, which is another reason to compete on clarity, speed and service rather than price alone.

Price and what's next

The e-commerce strategy is part of the marketing strategy at $2,400 CAD, final. It works with any store platform. If the current store limits growth, I build stores on a custom CMS from $4,800, without a monthly page-builder subscription. You can see how this plays out in a real business in the Da Diego case study.