Since the period we started developing eCommerce tools, and even much earlier, we connected with the best eCommerce and Dropshipping experts that we’re working with every day.
These experts are some of the best individuals in their industries, and not only they are globally recognized, but they also made incredible results and impact in the eCommerce industry.
In this guide, we asked some of our top eCommerce experts to reveal their marketing secrets.
Let’s see what they say about it.
1. Karl Lillrud
Karl Lillrud is a worldwide well-renowned eCommerce expert that has been helping both huge e-commerce companies and small startup businesses. Karl is listed as one of the world’s top 40 e-commerce experts and on the list of the world’s top 30 e-commerce influencers.
Currently, Karl is supporting a 10-year-old entrepreneur in her passion-driven venture. Wilhelmina, Karl’s daughter, just launched L´Coule, her very own sunglasses brand. The line of sunglasses is designed and produced by Wilhelmina by hand, and she targets the fashion-loving women of the age of 20-55 with her timeless designs.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
Perhaps a bit boring but the most important thing that business can’t live without today and in the future is… Collecting data!
It’s always useful to collect data as you will have the opportunity to almost travel back in time and see how customers behaved and experienced your site.
What worked and what did not, what you now could do to solve those pain points, and learn from the things that worked best.
Then consider how you can reuse those tactics in other ways throughout your site.
On the same topic, you must have noticed how you are almost followed by some stores in other sites online.
How their brands and the products you looked at pop up more or less everywhere.
Collecting retargeting data is super easy today using tools like Facebook and Instagram Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, TikTok Pixel, Twitter Pixel, and Pinterest tag.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
The not so obvious but yet so important practices are to split test as much as possible.
Don’t assume that you know what is best, don’t assume that articles know what’s best, and don’t expect that even a survey with your customers will tell you the truth as what people say is not always what they do.
Split test everything, and if you can’t split test everything starts with something, and you will get inspired by the result that you see.
Don’t trust my word for it, trust your own data!
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
The next big thing might not be so big compared to what we saw last year and the growth factor that we have experienced as a result of the pandemic.
What we will see in 2022 and 2023 is that the eCommerce companies now get a chance to catch their breath and to build long-term engagement with their customers.
As they will soon realize that the pandemic has an end date and so has their growth spike if they don’t treat it with care by supporting and nourishing their customers as they get access to retail and social life again.
2. Deepak Shukla
Deepak is the founder and CEO of Pearl Lemon – a London-based SEO agency that serves clients all over the world! Deepak founded Pearl Lemon in 2014 and bootstrapped to a £275k company in less than 24 months! He has been featured in TEDx, NBC, The Huffington Post, ABC, Inc, and more!
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
The three most essential tools to our business are WhatsApp, You Can Book Me, and A Text!
These tools help us improve communication with our clients.
Instead of typing lengthy emails, we use the WhatsApp voice note feature to communicate quick updates with our team and clients.
Similarly, You Can Book Me is a useful app for scheduling appointments with prospective and existing clients. This app is very user-friendly.
It makes appointment scheduling easy, and it sends automated meeting reminders straight to our inboxes.
Finally, A Text is also indispensable to us. This tool is an automated template that saves us time.
It helps us to communicate through widely used abbreviations by replacing them and expanding them.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
For Pearl Lemon, adding a “Book A Call” button on our websites encourages clients to reach out to us.
You Can Book Me is integrated on our websites to create ease of access to team calendars and scheduling details.
In my opinion, any CTA like this can encourage prospects to find out more about us and ultimately keep the bounce rates down.
It makes us more accessible to them, and it only takes a few seconds for them to book calls with our team.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
With the recent worldwide stress about sustainability, eCommerce has been reimagined as ReCommerce.
This is where more and more stores (both with an offline and online presence) can open up a marketplace of their pre-loved items.
This has already been done in the luxury market and could be worth emulating.
It provides an opportunity for businesses not only to promote and adopt more sustainable practices but to also make them profitable!
3. Adam Lewis
Adam is a digital marketer focused on helping brands grow their direct-to-consumer business online. Prior to Founding Foghorn Labs, Adam worked at Google from 2003-2010 on a variety of teams from Media Sales to International Product Marketing, giving Adam a unique perspective on how to help companies leverage the web to grow their business.
A few of the clients Adam worked with at Google include the New York Times, CNN, Zappos, Williams Sonoma, Adobe, Salesforce.com, and Apple.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
Like so many marketing teams, we rely on a mix of project management tools to share information, ensure deadlines are met, centralize assets, and optimize internal resources.
Asana serves as our agency’s central hub and “source of truth” and has become a helpful resource for looking back at completed work to better understand what worked, what didn’t, and why.
We also use Slack for internal knowledge and asset sharing, as well as for chat and video calls with teammates.
Slack video chat is an underrated feature that we’ve been using more and more lately.
Last, but not least, the Google Workplace suite of products (docs, sheets, slides, & drive) is our primary toolset for document collaboration.
Since COVID forced our primarily in-office team to go fully remote, these project management tools have become even more essential to keep everything running smoothly.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Crowdsource your digital ad copy. There’s often a sizable disconnect between brand language (i.e. “marketing speak”) and the language that prospective customers use.
Punchy taglines and buzzwords might be effective on a billboard or the side of a bus, but they often fall flat in the form of search engines and social media marketing copy.
Many brands go to great lengths to try and shape the consumer vernacular, but it’s far quicker and easier to meet potential customers where they are by speaking their language.
See what your customers are saying about your brand in product reviews, forums, and even customer service inquiries.
What language and tone do they use to describe what they love about your product or service?
Use these insights to craft compelling ad copy that resonates with potential customers and entices them to take the next step.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Innovation in the online marketing space has accelerated to an unparalleled pace since March of 2020.
There are several areas where we expect to see dramatic changes over the coming year, including the rise of social media ad platforms other than Facebook & Instagram, the demise of cookie-based tracking, and the rise of event-based website analytics (i.e. GA4).
In addition to these, one critical (albeit less sexy) area that growing DTC brands will need to wrangle is inventory tracking and management.
COVID-related supply chain disruptions have slowed, delayed, or halted the manufacturing and delivery of goods across industries.
Because low inventory negatively impacts conversion rate, cart size, customer satisfaction, and sometimes even return rate, eCommerce businesses must have reporting, analytics, and alerts that help teams adjust their marketing efforts on the fly to focus on what’s in stock at any given time.
4. Victoria Taylor
Victoria Taylor is a Digital and Content Marketing Specialist who helps female entrepreneurs with eCommerce brands to increase sales and master branding with her expertise. You can find her on Instagram sharing her thoughts on the latest on how to grow your online business with marketing.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
The three most important tools I can’t live without for my business would have to be the following:
1. SimilarWeb: I use this tool when doing website and marketing research for my eCommerce clients.
It’s pricey, but the data is solid, relevant, and granular, which helps to create more concise (website) marketing strategies, especially if you want to out-do a competitor.
2. Ahrefs: I use this SEO tool to help find keyword clusters that my eCommerce clients can rank for as they slowly build their online reputations.
This can be in the form of video content, blogs, or trending topics.
3. Klaviyo: Great eCommerce email marketing app. Its easy-to-use, workflows, and integrations allow beginners and experts to overcome a slight learning curve.
Since email marketing is essential for any eCommerce platform, it also provides the capacity to grow without feeling the need to switch platforms in the future.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Before you start creating a marketing strategy, review or rebuild your current client avatar and brand guide.
Never stop evolving or updating this simple but effective piece of data.
Many eCommerce owners end up having a brand identity crisis simply because they start without much consideration about who they are and who they market to in the long run.
Your client avatar and brand have to evolve with the shifts in the industry, customers’ needs, and the current state of affairs.
Going forward without a polished buyer or brand persona can waste resources such as content, time, ad spend.
This is the thorn in most marketing campaigns side.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Brands are going to have relied more on content creators than influencers in 2022.
It’s just a smarter move instead of excusing themselves to create content in hopes it connects with their audience.
Influencer marketing is still on the rise, but during the pandemic, it’s the content creators that brands have been reaching out to because they help to lighten the workload and drive the most impact significantly.
For 2022 and beyond, creating partnerships with micro and macro content creators will have precedence over using influencers to simply show off and try to sell products.
Not only do they create content for everyday people, but they are also everyday people.
They’re far more relatable and trusted when compared to influencers.
5. Jack Nelson
Jack is a UK-based paid media marketer with over five years of experience delivering returns for his clients. He’s delivered successful B2B and B2C campaigns internationally, from VC-backed fintech startups to manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, and professional services. Featured in Mayple’s top Ad experts for 2021.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
1. Documenting your processes will help your business scale, so some kind of knowledge base software such as Notion or Documize is something I’d highly recommend.
2. While it’s not very fancy I don’t know what I’d do without Google Ads Editor. It’s so much more efficient than the native interface.
3. I’ve enjoyed using BuzzSumo to discover insights into the content and creativity that resonates with various target audiences.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
I believe there are still plenty of brands that haven’t picked up on how effective user-generated content can be for paid social marketing, especially for top-of-funnel campaigns.
I’ve been working on a B2C campaign where we’ve let our most influential customers talk about their experience and it’s been flying.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Retaining customers will be more important than ever as customer acquisition costs and ad platforms face a period of uncertainty.
Incentivize loyalty and make the most out of your mailing list to nurture repeat business!
6. Deanna Fernandez
Deanna is an experienced Payments Specialist with a demonstrated strong background working in the financial services industry, currently works for Marqeta. Skilled in Coaching, Business Development, Government, Management, Project Delivery, and Stakeholder Management. Held various positions across the payments and card space in account management, business development, and operational management. Passionate about Fintech and working with, and for, innovative companies who are digital-first but client-centric with a strong inclusion and diversity agenda!
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
Our team!
We regularly share content with our networks as a team – this is not purely a task left to our marketers and salespeople.
We release a lot of joint content with our partners and it’s a great way to keep the wider team engaged with our marketing collateral, but also share insights and co-created content with a wider audience.
HubSpot!
We use HubSpot a great deal here at Marqeta – it’s an excellent tool that really aids our inbound and outbound sales and marketing activities that is both easy to use and have multiple purposes for us.
The third is Demandbase.
We are on a mission to share engaging and thoughtful content with our audience, and having the insights from Demandbase to ensure we are putting out the right content to the right people is something we are purposely focused on doing.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Co-creating content! We love to collaborate with our partners, people we’d love to work with, future partners, thought leaders in finance and payments as well as large financial institutions to produce high quality, relevant, insightful, and engaging content.
We did this for our Lending 3.0 whitepaper, for example.
The whitepaper’s 2nd iteration included commentary from ten lending experts across Fintech, large financial institutions, and beyond.
We also collaborated with a partner to create an event dedicated to the themes we focussed on in the Lending 3.0 whitepaper.
Over 1400 delegates attended that one event, and the theme continues to resonate, with an in-person event planned for next year to continue the discussion about the next generation of lenders and the power of lending 3.0 in the 21st Century.
We have produced blogs in collaboration with many industry experts that are focused on specific verticals, but also on specific countries to get insights into their finance and payments ecosystem.
We have recently focused on video content, and share numerous videos with both partners and industry experts, focussing on digital builders – the coders and techies driving financial innovation.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Augmented reality. It’s not something I know too much about but I am fascinated to see where AR takes us in creating an interactive experience that is much more real-world, without needing to head to the mall!
With eCommerce activity continuing to increase I believe AR will be a fantastic way to engage shoppers and create a more personal, interactive experience and look forward to experiencing this myself!
Also – virtual and tokenized cards will continue to be big!
Many of Marqeta’s partners want to be able to issue cards to customers in real-time, and as soon as a customer’s ID has been verified.
Marqeta enables this now, and we are seeing much interest in this capability across a plethora of use cases, including BNPL, digital banking, corporate expenses, and payroll.
7. Aaron Crewe
Aaron is MD of novi.digital since 2009, founding the company at the age of 22. Further information can be found at aaroncrewe.com.
Novi.digital are a multi-award-winning specialist data-driven and psychology-focused specialist search marketing agency. The agency increases the performance of digital campaigns through the use of data, psychology, automation, machine learning, and AI.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
1. Our self-built proprietary software suite, Captivise. This plethora of automation tools, created through a real-world need for increased accuracy and processing of large datasets allows us to benefit from machine learning and AI to improve the performance of campaigns.
2. Google
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Working backward from the profit margin to calculate the cost-per-visitor. Instead of starting with a budget, we start with a revenue target in mind and reverse-engineer everything from there.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
The realization of companies where you cannot automate the people’s aspect of the business.
Specialist niches are great too, but the issue is that it is too big of a need for many smaller parts of the machine that is e-commerce in order for it to function correctly.
Those that can orchestrate everything easily and succinctly will do well.
8. Ricky Hayes
Ricky Hayes is the Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Debutify – a free Shopify theme, helping dropshippers build high-converting stores in minutes. He is a passionate entrepreneur running multiple businesses, marketing agencies, and mentoring programs.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
An email address, a store domain, and research skills are the tools I would say.
My reason is you need an email address to be able to communicate with your customers on a regular basis, as that is the core of a great eCommerce business.
Without it, you will miss many sales, and many opportunities to improve your business which is so important in a crowded space.
The second is a domain name, this is very important because it is your unique identifier as a business, something you own, you control that no one can take from you.
Part of building a brand, and an area you should never forget as long term it is what people will remember your business as.
Lastly, I define an important tool as research as this is the foundation of all things great, research.
Although not a physical tool, it is a tool in my eyes as it is so important you research your product, your niche, your customer, your shipping times, the list goes on.
Without research in your arsenal, you will find quickly that your other tools will not work well at all.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
I find not following the typical trends in dropshipping being choosing from winning product videos or jumping to a new product research method.
I have found the best way is good old-fashioned research in a specific niche being either baby, fashion, jewelry, cosmetics, or pets.
As we know those are the best niches, really try and look into Facebook groups, Instagram pages, Reddit forums and look into the customer, what they are talking about, what gets them excited and soon you will see they have a lot of common problems and interests that lead you to products you can sell that are not sold elsewhere.
This means you find unsaturated markets and opportunities to take advantage of as the first in the running I have found usually wins. It also helps you build your brand around it, as you need to focus on that.
This marketing approach has allowed me to find many products that are not saturated, hard to find, but our customers love them and become the catalyst to building the brand.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Building a brand is 100% the next step. What does that mean though?
Well, dropshipping still have long shipping times for one, so that will continue to be addressed, quality products and less of a focus on Facebook ads as your only source of sales and more of a focus on returning customers as it is not sustainable otherwise.
I have said this for years and we will see it in years as eCommerce space gets more crowded, people will need to diversify their streams of income to maintain profitability otherwise people won’t be able to build a sustainable income.
It will continue with this trend too as more regulation comes into effect from governments protecting consumers from the dropshipping model as it is so popular right now.
Always put your customers first, then you have nothing to be worried about.
9. Derric Haynie
Derric Haynie is the host of “The Future of Ecommerce” podcast and Chief eCommerce Technologist at Ecommercetech.io – Where Ecommerce stores go to research, discover, and buy the right tools to grow their store. Half of his day is spent reviewing tech tools, and the other half is talking with merchants to help them discover which solutions are right for them. When he’s not doing that, you can find him speaking, networking, or grabbing a drink at any of your favorite eCommerce events.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
It’s got to start with CRM – the central place for managing all of your contacts and sending emails and SMS to them in order to stay in contact and build a relationship.
Related to that is the helpdesk, the central place for handling customer service issues, responding and engaging with customers, and keeping them happy.
And the third has to be your loyalty program.
When this is used properly, it deepens the relationship and increases lifetime value (LTV).
Put them together and you’ve got a cohesive strategy for acquiring and retaining customers.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Price testing.
Yes, pricing is part of the original 4 P’s of marketing (Product, Price, Placement, Promotion).
Between changing the price on your products to really understand the supply/demand components of them, and testing discounts to see what percentage off leads to the best conversion rate (or best profit per conversion, if you want to optimize for profit), you’ve got a lot that can be learned by testing your pricing.
One thing especially neglected is how changing pricing of product A may affect purchases of the complementary product B.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Thanks to fast-advancing AI tech, we’re moving from an information era into a recommendation era.
What this means is that our tools aren’t just giving us data, but telling us what to do with that data.
The next big thing will be AI helping us to not make mistakes in our business, to not miss opportunities that we previously missed.
The power of AI for Ecommerce is now being democratized down to smaller and smaller stores.
Personalization tools now start at $10/month.
Solutions that used to be custom-built, such as AR/VR tools, are now available to any merchant that wants them.
Ecommerce teams will be forced to use tools that take advantage of big data and machine learning in order to improve their store.
10. Miles Anthony Smith
Miles Anthony Smith is the founder of Why Stuff Sucks, a keynote speaker, author, and digital marketing leader who helps organizations generate and nurture qualified leads with advanced SEO/inbound/content marketing strategies.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
SEMRush, Ahrefs, & Google Workspace (Docs/Sheets/Forms/Slides).
I run my entire SEO/content marketing consulting practice with even more tools than these 3, but they are the top ones that I must have to deliver results for clients.
SEO is such a huge opportunity to engage with new audiences by utilizing content to get them familiar with your brand, sign up for an ebook, and get them on an email nurture series.
Huge opportunity for eCommerce companies!
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Methodical, consistent, deliberate focus on executing strategies and tactics over the long term.
Outsized results almost always accrue to people who invest in the best strategies and stick with them, not jumping around all the time with “shiny object syndrome”.
You do have to pivot from time to time, but if you slow down to do the strategy piece well, you won’t have to adjust the direction as often.
It really is about playing the long game…the idea that you’re just one idea away from “going viral” is a myth.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Digital transformation’s acceleration induced by COVID is touching nearly every industry so physical stores are shifting to eCommerce and others that were already there are beefing up their marketing.
Bottom line is that competition will only get stiffer, and we have to get much better with our strategy if we are to compete and succeed.
11. Alek Stanić
When I started my first dropshipping store, I knew exactly 0 people who understood the concept. Now, after 6 years, I have a team of 10 which runs multiple stores that have the greatest revenue in the whole country. I’m the owner of the biggest Dropshipping group in Balkan (27k people) and the creator of the most sold Balkan E-commerce course as well. Lastly, I own a product research service winner-picker.com that recently went Worldwide.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
When it comes to tools, we use many and test new ones daily.
If I had to pick 3 tools that brought us the best results, I would say SMSbump – since SMS marketing is so underrated.
The next one would be Klaviyo for email marketing.
And the last, but definitely not least, is Asana.
When it comes to organizing tasks, there is no better tool.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
We started translating some of our winners to other languages and targeted less saturated markets.
It lowered the CPM and increased the conversion rate at the same time.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
I think that more serious Ecom stores should go for a brand asap.
General and non-branded stores will last as long as ads, and with Facebook, you never really know how long it will take before something happens.
At the same time, a brand can last for years and decades, even without paid marketing.
12. Ian Rhodes
Ian Rhodes is the Founder of Ecommerce Growth Co. His expertise is in equipping ambitious brands for their next stage of eCommerce growth. Sharing 20+ years of eCommerce learnings through my Ecommerce Growth Lessons
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
Harness your customer’s voice.
Throughout your customer’s journey, you can gather qualitative insight to help deliver all customers a better shopping experience.
From the search queries they use to discover you (Google Analytics data), to the reasons they shop (post-purchase survey) and the success they have now established since purchasing your product (customer reviews).
Asking the right questions along the journey will shape the way you present your products and how you better motivate people to purchase.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Get technology components working together.
Ensure a flow of data and insights between your email platform, your shopping platform, and the tools you use to better segment your customers and deliver them more relevant communications.
Don’t use technology in isolation.
Get data flowing.
13. Filip Mateković
Filip Matekovic is Head of marketing at Hunch, creative automation, and media buying platform that helps companies combine performance and brand on paid social. He has 10 years of experience in all three sides: corporate client (fortune top 100 company), performance advertising agency lead (award-winning agency), and SaaS ad-tech startup.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
Google Analytics as one single place of truth for all data, Hunch for dynamic creative and media buying on Facebook and Instagram, and Hubspot CRM as my ecosystem for managing and connecting marketing, sales, and service teams.
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Create a system, document it. Build process from it. And you are ready to scale.
You can be marketing octopus only if you have clear processes.
That brought me enormous results in the last 12 months.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
The next big thing is happening.
Personalization even in post-iOS 14.5 era. It’s doable, focus on 1st party data and personalize your messaging based on that.
14. Harry Coleman
Harry Coleman, also known as Ecom Beast, is an expert in eCommerce. He generated over 8-figures in revenue and spent over $5 million profitable with Facebook ads. He’s running his own branded stores, and also teaches others how they can do the same via his course Ecom Beast 2.0.
This course has helped 100’s students successfully start their eCommerce store from scratch, identify products to sell, help them brand the store, and also profitably run Facebook ads to get sales.
1. What are the 3 most important tools that your business can’t live without?
1. Slack
2. Shopify
3. Adspy
2. What’s the not-so-obvious marketing practice that brings you significant results?
Something that a lot of new dropshippers neglect is email and SMS marketing.
You can easily set up the basic flows: Abandoned Cart, Welcome flow, and post-purchase and see an increase in your sales.
For this, we use Klayvio which is a must-have if you’re using Shopify.
I was late to the game with SMS marketing which is a mistake I regret.
We currently are able to get 1000%+ ROI on SMS marketing using the abandoned flows with SMS bump.
I would highly recommend you implement both of these into your business.
3. What’s the next big thing of Ecommerce in 2022?
Due to the current iOS 14 changes to Facebook advertising, I think this year it will be important to focus on an omnichannel approach to marketing.
A lot of people rely heavily on Facebook to acquire customers, it’s still one of the best platforms out there, but costs are increasingly rising so it’s important that you start to drive traffic from other sources.
Personally, I have been testing Tik Tok Ads and have been seeing some good results so far.
To sum up
The eCommerce world is changing rapidly in these ‘modern times’ and only businesses that are adapting fast are going to survive in 2022.
It’s up to you to use these great experts’ advice and implement it for your business to get a real benefit from this roundup.
We hope you enjoyed these expert insights and we hope they gave you some better understanding and ideas about eCommerce marketing strategies that you’re going to implement right away.
