We’ve spent the last year talking to a lot of digital marketing experts and ecommerce founders on our Customer Growth Sessions podcast. They’re graciously sharing their experiences to help others grow their ecommerce businesses.
From PPC specialists to email marketing experts, the subject matter experts we’ve interviewed have revealed proven tactics that enhance the performance of their respective marketing channels, diving into everything from lowering customer acquisition costs to boosting customer lifetime value.
But we get it: Not everyone is interested in listening to 30 hours of podcasts.
So today, we’re sharing our best takeaways on customer acquisition for ecommerce.
Read on to discover insights from 25+ ecommerce experts that will improve your customer acquisition efforts, grow your business, and earn new customers.
Ecommerce Product Development and Customer Research
It goes without saying that to develop products your customer wants, you must first identify and understand your customer base. Boost your customer acquisition by thinking about the relationship between product development and customer research.
Nils Koppelmann, Experimentation Consultant at 3tech
When we interviewed Nils Koppelmann for our How to Design + Prioritize CRO Experiments episode, he revealed how even if you don’t have enough data or feedback on your own site, you can use third-party sources to understand the full range of customer experiences.
Nils says that to better understand customer needs and frustrations, look to social media platforms like Reddit and read Amazon product reviews, where people provide unfiltered, honest opinions about products and brands.
Ari Tulla, CEO of ELO Health
In our Building the Next Healthcare Revolution episode, Ari Tulla shared how his personalized smart nutrition brand gathered candid feedback from potential customers and treated his initial customers as a trusted advisory team.
To Ari, building long-term customer relationships is everything. He says it isn’t so much about doing the first $1,000 or $10,000 in sales as it is about finding a “core group of people who can work with you in the beginning to give you feedback.”
Marcy McKenna, Founder of Live Shopping Academy
When we recorded our Better Product Development Through Live Shopping episode, Marcy McKenna revealed how live shopping can help you get to know what your customers want and need.
Marcy says live shopping builds trust with customers because they can ask real-time questions and get to know your business. She adds that with the live chat feature, brands can pivot quickly in response to the level of customer engagement with existing products.
Live shopping also helps you uncover new product opportunities by giving you a platform to ask your most engaged followers for their thoughts on new product ideas.
“Much of my product development I do in conjunction with my live shopping events. I’ll hold a Facebook Live and invite all my favorite VIP customers and say, ‘I need to get your opinion. I’m getting ready to roll out a new luggage collection and I’m deciding between five colors. What do you guys think?’ … They are so excited to be a part of that process and to feel kind of connected to your entrepreneurial journey that ultimately when I launch that luggage collection, they can’t wait.”
Melissa Hollis, Co-founder and CEO of Taylor Street Collective
In our ICPs and Go-to-Market Strategies episode, Melissa Hollis explains how you can acquire more customers by focusing on solving problems for the right people.
Melissa says brands should be “having more conversations about the product, getting lots of different options, and going out and doing the researching and networking” needed. She also suggests interviewing existing customers to better understand how they discovered your product and what their overall experience was like.
Ecommerce Community Building
In our many insightful discussions about community building, one tip kept resurfacing: to build a community, you must be authentic.
Bastian Kröhnert-Ferron, Founder of Mammutmarsch
In our Community-Driven Business Growth episode, Bastian Kröhnert-Ferron discussed how important it is to create authentic relationships and build a community that gives customers a sense of belonging.
Bastian uncovered that referral programs build upon that community connection and give a powerful incentive to your most avid followers to share your offering. He says if you “create a referral system that incentivizes existing members to bring in new people,” you can create a sense of belonging and boost community growth.
Bill Spohn, President and CEO of TruTech Tools
In our Scaling a Business Through Community Education episode, Bill Spohn talks about partnering with like-minded people, especially people who are strong in a particular area of your business where you’re not so strong.
Bill says “find who’s currently engaging on the topics of interest to you and try to form a partnership.” By collaborating with others, you can expand your reach and boost the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Jon Mason, Founder of SwingJuice
When we interviewed Jon Mason for our Pivoting Your Ecommerce Business episode, he discussed how authenticity and personality can help you connect with customers.
Jon says when pivoting your business, like he did when he took SwingJuice from an energy drink to a golf apparel line, using social media to keep in touch with customers becomes even more important.
Jason Sealand, Founder and CEO of Mad Viking Beard
In our chat with Jason Sealand for our Building a Community-Driven Business episode, we learned how he turned a beard-growing competition into a charity event that built an entire community of loyal customers.
Jason says that along with developing unique marketing strategies, building community requires you to be authentic with customers and provide excellent customer support at every turn.
Greg Rollett, Head of Brand Growth at Grommet
In our Acquiring Your First $1,000 in Ecommerce Sales episode, Greg Rollett talked about building your community in public and regularly releasing content to create real connections with your audience.
Greg says when you use great, authentic storytelling to share why you created your brand and what you’re doing behind the scenes, your message will resonate and make people more likely to engage.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising for Ecommerce
From Google Ads to TikTok and other PPC channels, you can create effective, targeted ad campaigns for as low as $40-$50 per day. But to get the most bang for your advertising buck, you have to track your metrics.
Jim Hammerel, CEO of Xtropy
In our Google Ads Performance Max Campaigns episode, Jim Hammerel explained how AI-driven PMax is great for ecommerce brands who have a product feed, a customer list, and a daily ad spend of at least $40.
Jim explains how PMax crushes it by “taking the list of your existing customers and going out and finding more people that look just like that.” He adds that before dipping your toe into PMax, you’ll need to invest some money into creating 10-to-40-second video snippets, otherwise Google will generate video assets for you.
Recommendations will vary for each business, but Jim recommends treating the first 1-2 months of working with PMax as a learning expense. Google needs some time to learn about your customers and messaging before you can expect to be profitable from a PMax campaign.
Dan Wood, Founder of Break Digital
When we sat down with Dan Wood for our Google Ads Mastery: Transform Your Campaigns episode, he stressed the importance of measuring results across different channels and not giving up on Google Ads too soon.
Dan says most accounts have their conversion tracking set up improperly and that “to get results and optimize for them, we have to be able to measure them properly. It’s not just a marketing report thing, we’re actually feeding data into the algorithms so that they can work better.”
One of Dan’s favorite opportunities to maximize performance is thinking strategically about location targeting (geotargeting) to reach your target audience. For example, if your business only ships in the United States, confirm you aren’t spending money for your ads to show up in Greece.
Businesses on a strict budget should prioritize putting ad dollars into the least-expensive shipping locations to lower customer acquisition costs (CAC). For instance, if your warehouse is based in Los Angeles, focus on maxing out ads in California, Nevada, and Washington state before targeting customers in Vermont. Shipping across the country will be far more expensive than shipping one state over.
David Casey, Founding Partner of Vix Media
Our friend David Casey shared sharp insights into PPC advertising in our From Algorithms to Ad Budgets episode. He says that the algorithm-based TikTok platform is designed to put your content on the feeds of people you want to see it.
David explains how with TikTok ads, “the big benefit now is that you don’t need to work as hard building a following. You just need to work on your content, put it out there, and you’ll be surprised.”
David also shares some of his insights on TikTok Creative Challenges — a powerful tool for businesses spending $2,000+/month on TikTok Ads.
With TikTok Creative Challenges, businesses can share information about their products and the types of influencers they’re searching for. TikTok will help those businesses find the right influencers.
Nils Nordström, Founder and Senior Marketing Consultant at Flax Digital
During the engaging conversation we had with Nils Nordström for our Meta Ads episode, Nils explained the importance of prioritizing Meta Ads, as Facebook and Instagram are still the major players.
Nils stresses the importance of getting the foundations right and tracking conversion rates for everything from how someone landed on your page to the add-to-cart moment to the final purchase event.
A few of Nils’ key takeaways:
- Use broader audience targeting at the beginning and allow Meta’s algorithm to find customers for you.
- Regularly experiment with different ad formats. Nils believes that 85% of your ad optimization focus should be focused on ad copy and formatting tests.
- Be patient. Nils recommends dedicating a 3-month period to testing different campaign structures, finding audience fit, and tweaking ad copy before expecting to see positive results.
Ecommerce Influencer Marketing Insights
The influencer marketing market topped $24 billion in 2024, and it continues to grow year after year. But to make it a success you have to know which type of influencers to work with and how to leverage those relationships.
Amber Caro, Founder of MarketBite
When we sat with Amber Caro to record our How Emerging Brands Can Grow Through Influencer Marketing episode, she explained how macro-influencers and micro-influencers can help market your brand in different ways.
Amber says when creating an influencer program, it’s crucial to set a strategy and be clear about commission and payment structures, usage rights, and which platforms you want them to be active on.
Yash Chavan, CEO and Founder of SARAL
Yash Chavan joined us for our How to Launch an Influencer Marketing Program from Scratch episode and explained how important it is to build long-lasting relationships with influencers and to think of them as trusted advocates.
In addition, Yash says to start cultivating the relationship during the onboarding process. When sending products for influencers to test, make it personal and special by creating a great unboxing experience that makes them want to grab their camera and start documenting their experience.
David Casey, Founding Partner of Vix Media
In our From Algorithms to Ad Budgets episode, David Casey discussed how you can leverage a TikTok Creative Challenge to source user-generated content from micro-influencers.
David says that during Creative Challenges, TikTok incentivizes micro-influencers to make content for you so you don’t have to create it yourself. You can then review that content, request changes to it, and use it in your ads.
Johan Jedåker, Founder of Better Support
When we sat down to record our How to Build [+ Systematize] an Influencer Marketing Campaign episode with Johan Jedåker, we explored the best way to get started with influencer marketing.
Johan says “Start small. Go after smaller influencers ranging from maybe like a thousand up to a few thousand followers and also get some feedback on how they would like to endorse it and just try to take some wisdom from that and see how it goes. Basically, just try it out, get started.”
SMS and Email Marketing for Ecommerce
With SMS and email marketing for ecommerce, it’s important to focus on the fundamentals, acquire first-party data, and keep your strategy and messages simple.
George Kapernaros, Owner of YOCTO Agency
In our Email Segmentation episode, George Kapernaros stressed the importance of email segmentation, automation, and focusing on the fundamentals of your email campaigns first.
George says to start by segmenting your database of customers into two groups: those who have purchased and those who have not. Then, incentivize them in some way, either with a coupon, some education on the product, or information on how to get them to use the product in a way that provides the most value.
Damon Didier, Founder of Win at Ecommerce
When we sat with Damon Didier for our Scaling Your Email Lists episode, he emphasized the value of retention marketing and customer loyalty. It’s as crucial to keep your current customers as it is to acquire new ones.
Damon also says to start small and start collecting emails and first-party data pre-sales. “When you have someone’s email and they give you permission to market to them … you can then send that person’s information to Meta and Google Ads to remarket to them.”
Jimmy Kim, Founder and CEO of Sendlane
During our Email and SMS Marketing for Ecommerce episode with Jimmy Kim, we discussed how the fundamentals of email marketing do not change as you scale, but that the details of implementation should grow with the business.
Jimmy says that email and SMS support bottom-of-the-funnel retention by converting prospects to sales, which then turns those people into repeat customers who buy more.
Real-Time Acquisition Tactics
Audrey Fairbrother, Content Marketing Manager at EQL, on Limited Product Launches
If you don’t think limited product launches are the right avenue for your brand, think again. Any brand with a passionate community can benefit from limited-edition releases.
In our How Ecommerce Brands Can Scale Through Limited Release Product Launches, Audrey Fairbrother explained how limited product launches aren’t only for sneaker brands looking to capitalize on the value of exclusivity.
Audrey says, “Launches are a little bit of a different strategy and they’re really meant to build connection with your fans. So, it’s a bit more of a long-term play, but it’s a great complement to your regular DTC strategy.”
She says that limited-edition product launches can work for any brand that’s “looking to generate a little bit of buzz and a little bit of conversation around their products, get a little bit more attention, and build their fan base.”
Phone Sales for Ecommerce, with Philippe Roireau, Co-founder of Consio
While you might not think of phone sales as the ideal customer acquisition tool for your ecommerce business, phone sales can be instrumental in improving customer retention and getting new sales from existing customers you’ve already acquired.
When we recorded The Missing Layer in Ecommerce Retention: Phone Sales episode, Philippe Roireau explained how phone sales improve customer retention, which matters as much as customer acquisition.
Philippe says phone sales “help brands connect with all of their different segments of customers or prospects. So, it can be like your abandoned checkout, your VIP customer that didn’t purchase in a while but still has loyalty points outstanding, or your subscriber that has their subscription payments method expired … you can engage contextually with all of those different customers in order to retain them or convert them through phone calls … it’s the last layer that’s missing in the retention stack.”
Philippe spoke about the opportunity for dunning in ecommerce subscription businesses to boost customer lifetime value (LTV). Say you have a loyal customer who pays $30/month for a recurring subscription to your product but all of a sudden, their credit card expires.
If you have this person’s phone number, give them a phone call letting them know that their credit card expired. Many of these people will add in their updated credit card number and resume their subscription. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce churn.
Other Customer Acquisition Channels and Miscellaneous Insights
We’ve learned so much while recording our Customer Growth Sessions podcasts this past year that we want to share a few more insights from some of our most esteemed guests. Whether you’re a brand new ecommerce business or an established brand, here are some additional things to keep in mind when trying to boost customer acquisition and build your ecommerce brand.
Erin Casey Wolf, Co-Franchisor of Bella Bridesmaids
As a co-franchisor with both an ecommerce platform and brick and mortar locations, Erin Casey Wolf shared some valuable tips in our Scaling a Franchise, Brick and Mortar vs. Ecommerce, and Much More episode.
Erin expresses the value in meeting customers where they are and giving them the option to choose how they want to shop. Offering both online and in-person shopping allows you to meet a wider range of customer preferences and create unique in-person experiences.
Dusty Fields, Mobile Lead at Tonic, and Lauren Linzer, Director of Solutions at Tonic
In our How to Invest in New Technology for Your Ecommerce Business episode, we spoke in depth with Dusty Fields and Lauren Linzer about the importance of investing in technology and building a solid foundation that allows for scalability.
The Tonic team suggests devising a strong go-to-market strategy for how you’ll acquire customers and generate revenue before seeking the capital to invest in the necessary technology.
Ramin Ramhormozi, Managing Partner at SKU Agency
When we interviewed Ramin Ramhormozi for our Starting an Ecommerce Business episode, he reminded us that even though technology has made it easier than ever to get an ecommerce store up and running in a short period of time, you can’t just “set it and forget it.”
Ramin says to assume “build it and they will not come” and that you have to actively market your store and be “all in” to acquire customers, retain customers, and make sales.
Jim Simon, Founder of JiMMYBAR!
In our From Startup to Success: Jim Simon on the Evolution of JiMMYBAR! episode, Jim Simon stressed the importance of raising enough money to build not just a brand, but a profitable business. He says that no matter how much money you think you’ll need, you’ll likely need more.
Jim says you’ve “got to raise money. Don’t build a brand … I think that’s bull****. Build a company that’s profitable.”
Acquiring Customers Through SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is our bread and butter. In our eyes, there’s no better channel ecommerce businesses can invest in for long-term customer acquisition.
We recorded several episodes about SEO for ecommerce in season 1 that we refer to as SEO Shorts.
SEO is complex to navigate. There are thousands of things you can do to rank better on search engines like Google.
The SEO Road Trip discusses the three buckets that every one of those initiatives fall into: Relevancy, Authority, and Crawlability. Give this episode a listen if you’re looking to understand how to impact your site’s rankings from a 10,000 foot view.
Content marketing is the backbone of great SEO. Content marketing can help your business in countless ways. However, if you’re looking to create content for the sake of acquiring customers, there are only three types of content you should be creating.
Customer Acquisition Content discusses those three types of content and how you can use each type to acquire new customers.
Outside of that, here are a few more resources to explore for customer acquisition through SEO:
- The Pareto Principle of SEO
- SEO vs. PPC: Where Should You Invest?
- How to Assess Your SEO Total Addressable Market
- The Ecommerce Content Marketing Strategy that Builds Industry Leaders
We launched the Customer Growth Sessions podcast as a way to share the experiences of industry leaders with ecommerce founders looking to take their business to the next level. We knew our sessions would provide helpful information, but what we didn’t know was that we’d have such a blast doing so.
Our guests have been so candid and so forthcoming about their own experiences that it’s been an even better ride than we’d hoped for.
We invite you to join us on the trip.
Subscribe to Intergrowth’s Customer Growth Sessions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
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