Increase Your Sales With 27 Key Marketing Tactics

Marketing tactics for an online store can range from straightforward customer acquisition to strategies that generate repeat purchases from an existing customer base.

This post covers marketing tactics and ecommerce tools for both acquisition and retention, along with ideas for implementing each one. Test one tactic per day for the next few weeks, then review the results to identify which tactics increased sales the most.

What are marketing tactics?

Marketing tactics are the specific actions a business takes to carry out their marketing strategy. Running social media ads, sending abandoned cart emails, and publishing blog content are all examples of marketing tactics. The right mix depends on a store’s products, target market, and budget, and works best when tactics support the brand’s broader marketing strategy.

Marketing tactics fall into two broad categories: paid—such as social and search ads—and organic, including content marketing and SEO. Tactics can also target new customer acquisition or repeat purchases from existing customers, depending on the desired outcome.

Marketing strategies vs. tactics

Marketing strategy and marketing tactics play different roles in your brand’s marketing plan. Marketing strategy is a store’s overarching plan to achieve its marketing objectives. 

The strategy accounts for the store’s strengths and weaknesses, its target market, and the competition, and sets out the store’s marketing goals.

A marketing tactic is a specific action taken to carry out a marketing strategy. For example, if a store’s marketing strategy is to increase brand awareness, one tactic is running Instagram ads to reach a wider audience.

Tactics work best when they follow from a strategy. Running marketing tactics without a strategy is like shooting an arrow without aiming: the arrow lands somewhere, just not the intended target.

A store that runs tactics without a strategy risks spending time and resources on activities that don’t support its marketing goals.

The 27 best marketing tactics to increase online sales

US ecommerce sales increased 9.8% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, accounting for 16.9% of total retail sales, according to the US Census Bureau. Capturing a share of that growth calls for a mix of tactics that you can put into action directly, many of them low-cost or free.

The 27 tactics below fall into three categories:

• Digital tactics, which use online channels like social media, email, and search
• Relationship and outreach tactics, which build connections with customers, partners, and other businesses
• Traditional tactics, which use offline channels like print, direct mail, and in-person events

1. Upsell your products

Upselling is the practice of offering a customer a more premium product than the one they were originally considering, by pointing out product differences a customer may not have noticed. 

For example, you might note when one product model uses higher-grade leather or includes a handmade component, then suggest the upgrade at checkout or on the product page.

There are two main considerations when using upselling as a marketing tactic to increase sales:

• Make sure upsells are related to the original product.
• Be sensitive to the customer’s anticipated price range.

The upsell has to fit the customer’s original needs. An anchor price is the first number a customer sees, and it’s the number they compare other prices against. A recommended upgraded product needs to be a clear enough improvement to justify the added cost.

For example, a checkout screen for a computer purchase might highlight performance upgrades (upselling) and additional accessories (cross-selling).

2. Sell where your customers spend time on social media

The global social commerce market was worth an estimated $1.48 trillion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.93 trillion in 2026, according to Grand View Research. Selling where customers already spend time on social media meets them at the point in the customer journey where they’re discovering and evaluating products.

TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, and Facebook Shop are shoppable experiences built into their platforms that shorten the path from product discovery to purchase. TikTok Shop lets a shopper complete a purchase without leaving the app. Instagram Shopping and Facebook Shop encourage shoppers to discover and tag products directly in posts, with checkout completed on the connected Shopify store.

Facebook Shop and Instagram Shopping connect directly to a Shopify store’s product catalog, so store owners don’t need to maintain a separate inventory across channels.

Adding shoppable tags to social posts gives followers a direct path to purchase. King Ice tags products directly in its Instagram posts this way.

Building an engaged social following starts with consistent content and active engagement with followers. Posting behind-the-scenes looks at product development and running contests are two ways to encourage interaction beyond likes and follows. Paid social ads are another option for reaching new customers.

3. Reduce abandoned carts

An abandoned cart is a lost sale opportunity. A visitor adds items but leaves before completing checkout. The average cart abandonment rate is around 70%, according to Baymard Institute, which tracks and averages abandonment data across dozens of studies.

An email recovery campaign is one way to reduce the frequency of abandoned carts. Abandoned cart emails remind a visitor about the items left in their cart. They can include an incentive, such as a discount or free shipping, to encourage customers to complete their purchase, like the example from Rudy’s Barbershop below.

Re-engagement emails work on a similar principle for customers who saved items to a wish list without purchasing. A reminder email prompts the customer to revisit those saved items, particularly if a price drops or an item is back in stock.

Shopify Messaging includes pre-built marketing automation templates that send abandoned-cart and re-engagement emails automatically, so you don’t have to build your campaign from scratch.

4. Capture more email subscribers

Retail, ecommerce, and consumer goods companies see the highest email marketing return of any industry. That’s $45 for every $1 spent, according to Litmus’s 2025 State of Email report. Across all industries, 35% of marketing leaders reported a $10 to $36 return per dollar spent, and 30% reported $36 to $50.

Email is also a key marketing tactic because it gives store owners space to say things that don’t fit into a social media post, without a character limit or an algorithm deciding who sees it.

Shopify Forms lets your brand build pop-up and inline sign-up forms to grow an email list. Shopify Messaging turns those subscribers into email marketing campaigns and automations, including welcome series and abandoned-cart follow-ups.

To get started with email marketing, actively promote a newsletter, blog, and any other email capture efforts to build a subscriber list. 

Huckberry makes signing up for its email list the central focus of its homepage.

Marketing emails sent to US recipients must follow the CAN-SPAM Act, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. Every commercial email needs to identify itself as an ad, include a valid physical mailing address, and give recipients a way to opt out of future emails, with opt-out requests honored within 10 business days.

5. Improve your email campaigns

Capturing email addresses is only the first step. Regular marketing emails keep the channel active as a source for repeat sales. Here are some ideas for popular marketing email campaigns:

• Send a welcome email as soon as a customer makes a purchase.
• Provide exclusive promo codes and free gifts.
• Send regular newsletters with new discount offers, product tips, and company news.
• Share relevant content to help customers get the most out of their recently purchased items.
• Run a buy one, get one (BOGO) campaign around the holidays to promote self-gifting.
• Thank the store’s highest-value customers with a personal note about their business.
• Ask for feedback from a visitor who didn’t complete a purchase, and use it to improve the site.

Uncommon Goods sent subscribers a last-minute Father’s Day email with the subject line “The Gift that Will Save Father’s Day,” aimed at shoppers who hadn’t picked a gift yet.

6. Make it easy for your customers to get what they want

A store’s design affects whether visitors can find what they’re looking for. Common design issues include a missing value proposition, hard-to-read fonts, and confusing navigation.

A few additional design factors to consider include: whether products are segmented into clear categories, rather than grouped into a single crowded page.The balance between text and visuals on a page is also an important part of the customer experience.

The Shopify Theme Store offers additional themes to consider if a current theme isn’t converting well.

DODOcase segments its products into clear categories by device type and case material.

7. Engage store visitors with live chat

Live chat is one marketing tactic for engaging customers. Live chat tools can target your website’s visitors based on the page they’re on, how long they’ve been on the site, or whether they arrived through an email newsletter. Live chat also lets a store owner have a direct conversation with a customer while the user is deciding whether to buy.

Shopify Inbox is Shopify’s built-in live chat tool. It lets your business respond to customer messages from desktop or mobile. You can also see order details during a conversation, and set up automated replies for common questions.

Luxy Hair uses live chat to answer customer questions and share order status updates, without routing those requests through email support.

8. Start a content marketing program

Blogging is a great way to connect with your customers while targeting keywords for search engines. Featuring your blog prominently on your brand’s online store can put it front and center for visitors.

But content marketing includes more than just blogging. Here are some other options:

• Start a podcast to share expertise or build community.
• Guest post on other websites and blogs to build awareness and generate backlinks.
• Create long-form content and guides to help customers use your products.
• Host a webinar or live product demo for prospective customers.

9. Embrace personalization

Retail brands that use personalization have increased incremental revenue by $1 billion over the past three years, according to BCG. Leaders in personalization grow revenue 10 percentage points faster annually than companies that don’t personalize, according to the same study. 

Tapping into behavioral data can help your brand serve customers a more relevant experience based on their past actions and preferences.

Location is one potential input for personalization. A customer in southern California, for example, and a customer in Maine are likely searching for different products in October, based on their local climate.

Alloy Apparel shows a “what’s popular” carousel of products on their site, personalized with items trending near the visitor’s location.

10. Leverage user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is a marketing tactic that generates social proof for your business. Product reviews are one form of UGC.

Trust in online reviews has held steady at 49%, according to BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey. Consumers place nearly as much weight on strangers’ opinions as they do on recommendations from people they know.

Photos of customers using a product are another form of UGC. Allbirds, a store that sells sustainable shoes and clothing, features customer photos throughout its product pages.

11. Think local

Online retailers, not just brick-and-mortar stores, can build a local component into their marketing tactics.

Here are a few ways to define “local” for an online store:

• Identify areas with a large concentration of customers, and run a promotion targeted to that location.
• Review which products customers buy, along with other spending patterns, to time a promotion around local events or seasons.
• Offer free, discounted, or expedited shipping to customers near a warehouse.
• Run a door-to-door sales strategy, selling products directly at customers’ homes or workplaces.

12. Optimize your product pages

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of optimizing a website for on-site conversions and increased sales. Practicing CRO helps you identify problem areas on your site, and lets you understand where visitors are dropping off, and why.

CRO combines qualitative and quantitative research to build a complete picture of a site’s conversion performance. Once a business owner has identified challenges and opportunities through that research, the next step is developing hypotheses and running tests to see which approaches generate the most sales. 

Evaluating market demand before expanding a product line can also help you to determine whether an investment is worth the cost. Store owners can research demand through keyword research, geographic data, and social media trends. Pre-selling is another way to test demand: for a store deciding among several unreleased products, creating a product page for each one and listing them as “out of stock” shows which product generates the most back-in-stock notification requests.

In footwear and apparel, certain size or color variants are sometimes temporarily out of stock. KEEN, which sells hiking shoes, lets shoppers sign up to receive an email when a product is back in stock.

13. Optimize for mobile

Optimizing your store for mobile means more than having a responsive design. It means designing a site with mobile visitors in mind from start to finish.

A larger Add to Cart button on mobile product pages lets a visitor tap it without zooming in. Presenting images in a mobile-optimized format can also change how quickly product photos load and how visitors zoom in on them.

Frank Body, a body scrub and skincare product brand, uses sticky call-to-action buttons on their site. When a mobile visitor lands on a product page and scrolls down, the Add to Cart button stays visible at the bottom of the screen, so the visitor doesn’t need to scroll back up to complete the action.

14. Reward your loyal customers

According to Deloitte’s 2025 Consumer Loyalty survey, 72% of members said loyalty programs make them more likely to spend with a preferred brand. Fifty-six percent said they increased their spending because of loyalty programs.

A customer loyalty program is one marketing tactic for rewarding loyal customers and frequent spenders. These programs give customers an incentive to make a purchase, and keep your brand top of mind through automated reminders. A point-based program, for example, uses its own currency that customers redeem for discounts, free shipping, or free gifts.

REI has a customer loyalty program structured as a co-op. Members pay a one-time $30 fee to join, and they receive access to exclusive online and in-store sales and events. They also receive coupon codes and an annual Co-op Member Reward: roughly 10% of their eligible full-price purchases back as store credit.

You can add a loyalty program to your store with a Shopify app like Smile.

15. Run pay-per-click (PPC) ads

Pay-per-click is an online marketing tactic where a store owner pays a fee each time someone clicks one of their ads. 

You can bid on keywords relevant to your business. Google and other search engines then use an algorithm to decide where the ad appears when someone searches for those keywords.

Google’s share of US search ad spending will fall to 48.5% in 2026, the first time in more than 20 years that figure has dropped below half, according to eMarketer. This is due to spending shifts toward Amazon and AI-driven search. For every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, it receives $8 in profit from Google Search and Ads, according to Google’s Economic Impact report. The most popular form of PPC is search engine advertising.

Campaign Autopilot, currently in early access, lets a store owner run and optimize paid and organic campaigns across channels like Meta Ads and Shop Campaigns. This can be done directly from the Shopify admin, using the store’s product catalog to generate ads automatically.

16. Sponsor and attend events

Sponsoring an event or non-profit organization puts your business in front of new potential customers. It can also generate social media mentions that can be tracked as a marketing metric.

There are a few types of sponsorship:

• Financial. Donating money in exchange for agreed-upon perks or publicity. This is the most common form of sponsorship.
• Goods and services. Offering products or services instead of cash, such as donating items for a raffle or as thank you gifts at a non-profit fundraiser.
• Media and promotional. Using marketing resources to promote an event, with your brand showcased in some way, putting the store in front of the event’s audience.

American Express marked its 16th annual Small Business Saturday in November 2025 by expanding its support for small businesses beyond the single shopping day. The company launched a $5 million Shop Small Grants Program with Main Street America, funding 250 grants of $20,000 each for eligible small businesses. American Express also partnered with food critic and content creator Keith Lee to spotlight small business owners through a digital content series.

Event marketing tactics mean creating a themed exhibit, display, or presentation to promote a product, service, cause, or organization. This can happen either online or offline, with the goal of engaging customers directly. A few types of events include:

• An industry conference or convention, featuring speakers and networking opportunities
• Pop-up shops that reach new demographics or geographic areas
• Community events that connect a store with its local neighborhood
• Charity events, such as hosting a 5K or a beach clean-up
• A themed experience, such as a Valentine’s Day celebration

17. Make influencer partnerships

87.49% of marketers expect their influencer marketing budget to increase in 2026, with 72.22% expecting growth of 50% or more, according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2026 Benchmark Report.

An influencer partnership means working with a content creator whose following matches your brand’s target audience. You can decide how the partnership is structured: some influencers work as affiliates, driving sales leads in exchange for a commission. Others become the face of a marketing initiative, the way Kendall Jenner became Anua’s first-ever global ambassador in 2026, fronting the skincare brand’s international launch campaign.

Shopify Collabs is Shopify’s built-in tool for finding and managing influencer and affiliate partnerships. It lets business owners discover creators, send product gifts, generate unique affiliate links and discount codes, and automate commission payouts.

Influencer partnerships involving payment, free products, or another material connection to a brand are subject to the FTC’s disclosure requirements. Influencers are required to clearly disclose that connection alongside the endorsement itself, not only in a bio or behind a Read More link.

18. Start TikTok marketing

Over seven million US businesses use TikTok’s platform. TikTok’s recommendation system shows videos based on what a user is likely to enjoy, rather than only from accounts they already follow. This makes it possible for your brand’s content to reach new audiences on the platform, regardless of your follower count.

Duolingo uses its owl mascot to participate in current TikTok trends, keeping the brand visible in users’ feeds.

19. Get customer testimonials

Customer testimonials allow for satisfied customers to vouch for your store’s products or services.

This is a powerful marketing tactic: 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, according to BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey.

Customer reviews can be showcased thoughtfully on your site to boost your brand. Glamping brand Blue Bohemian combines a media mentions bar with a star-rated customer review carousel, so visitors see both third-party recognition and specific product feedback in one place.

Customer testimonials can include a social media shout-out, a short video tour, or a case study showing the data behind why a product is needed.

20. Start livestreaming

Livestreaming is a marketing strategy of broadcasting content on social media to a live audience. Live shopping sees conversion rates between 9% and 30%, compared to 2% to 3% for standard ecommerce, according to eMarketer. US livestream ecommerce sales grew nearly 50% in 2025 to $14.64 billion.

On TikTok, live selling happens through TikTok Shop LIVE. Facebook and Instagram have both discontinued their live shopping features: Facebook in October 2022, and Instagram’s in-stream product tagging in March 2023.

When exploring livestreaming as a marketing tactic, choosing the right host matters. You can partner with influencers or celebrities who bring their own following, or company experts and unknowns who are engaging and knowledgeable. The host should fit the event, and your store’s brand image.

Livestream shopping is the most common use for livestreaming. Livestreaming can also announce product launches and partnerships, or provide tutorials and maintenance tips. Offering discounts or exclusive offers to attendees can encourage viewers to tune in.

21. Run guerrilla marketing campaigns

Guerrilla marketing is low-cost, unconventional marketing tactic designed to generate exposure for a brand or product. It’s usually done offline, which makes it harder to measure directly, though guerrilla marketing that gets shared on social media extends its reach beyond the original audience.

A few types of guerrilla marketing:

• Viral or buzz marketing. Using a social network to encourage word-of-mouth sharing about a brand.
• Stealth marketing. Advertising in a way that isn’t obvious, such as product placement in movies.
• Ambient marketing. Using unusual locations or objects as advertising space, such as a statue or a playground.
• Event ambush marketing. A business drawing attention at another event, such as with a flash mob.
• Street marketing. Posters, flyers, or art displays, such as the leaflets and posters that appear around a new movie’s theatrical release.

The fries brand Ore-Ida used rain-activated paint on a Seattle billboard that revealed its message only when wet, turning the city’s notoriously rainy weather into part of the ad itself.

22. Get press coverage

Consider creating a press release to generate attention for your business. It’s a low-cost tool for startups or small businesses with limited budgets, and it lets you control the story and decide what to highlight. Press releases also put a business in front of publications’ existing readerships.

A press release is most likely to get attention if it’s announcing something new or exciting. Reserve press releases for significant events, such as:

• Launches of new businesses, products, or services
• Hosting events or contests
• New partnerships with charities, community organizations, or celebrities
• Winning an award
• Major business changes, such as rebranding or an executive hire

Energy drink brand Liquid Death’s press release announcing its Sparkling Energy drink line earned coverage from outlets including Food Dive and Athletech News.

23. Start SEO marketing

Twenty-seven percent of marketers say that website, blog, and SEO are the #1 ROI-generating marketing channels, according to HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of using keywords to make your website more visible to potential customers. Improving SEO increases a site’s likelihood of coming in online searches for related products.

SEO offers a few benefits for ecommerce stores:

• Improved organic search visibility. Optimizing product pages and publishing blog content can improve a site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), resulting in more website visitors.
• Click-through potential. A higher SERP ranking increases the likelihood that a searcher clicks through to the site.
• Brand visibility over time. Consistently ranking for relevant searches keeps a store visible to people actively looking for related products.

A few tips for optimizing an ecommerce site for SEO:

• Make the site mobile-friendly. A responsive design that displays correctly on all devices supports Google’s mobile-first indexing.
• Optimize product pages. Write clear, concise title tags and meta descriptions with relevant keywords for each page. Product reviews also contribute to organic search rankings.
• Start a blog. Publishing keyword-rich content supports organic search visibility. 
• Implement schema markup. Schema markup is code that helps search engines understand a website’s structure and surface additional information about its products and services.
• Promote social media sharing. Adding social sharing buttons to product pages and blog posts gives visitors a way to share content with their followers.

24. Repurpose content

Repurposing existing content maximizes the content you’ve created, and reduces the work of creating something new each time.

Turning a blog post into a podcast is one example of repurposing content. It reaches listeners who prefer audio over reading on a screen, such as during a commute.

A few more ways to repurpose content:

• Turn internal studies and data into case studies
• Turn blog content into video content
• Use testimonials as social media content
• Update old blog posts with new information
• Use blog content as an online course topic
• Feature guest contributors on previously covered topics

25. Sell on marketplaces

Marketplaces are ecommerce resources that help a brand and its products reach more people. 

An estimated 201 million people in the US use Amazon Prime, according to CIRP’s January 2026 analysis. Marketplaces like Etsy allow a store to market directly to a niche audience.

Using a marketplace to sell your products has both pros and cons.

Pros:

• Access to a marketplace’s existing customer base
• New opportunities for global sales
• The ability to check competitor pricing and adjust accordingly
• Access to new suppliers and partnerships
• An additional commerce channel that extends a store’s reach

Cons:

• Marketplaces like Amazon require a consistent look that may limit brand recognition
• Marketplace fees can stretch a limited business budget
• Marketplace rules and regulations may not align with your business

When choosing a marketplace, research which demographic tends to use it.

26. Get referrals

A referral is a marketing tactic where customers get an incentive to promote a brand or product to their friends and family. In most cases, the customer receives a discount or another benefit for each person they refer who makes a purchase.

Referral marketing differs from affiliate marketing in who takes part. A referral program rewards existing customers for referring people they already know, while an affiliate program pays external partners, such as creators or publishers, based on the sales those partners generate. Referral programs generate new customers through word-of-mouth marketing.

A few things to keep in mind when setting up a referral program:

• Make sure the incentive is enough to motivate customers to take part.
• Keep the program simple and easy to understand.
• Make it easy for customers to share their referral link with others.
• Track referrals and payouts to monitor the program’s performance.

An app like Referral Candy & Affiliate handles the setup, tracking, and payouts for a referral program that rewards existing customers while bringing in new ones.

27. Promote Instagram giveaways

An Instagram giveaway is a promotion run by a brand or individual on Instagram. In a typical giveaway, the host asks followers to perform certain actions to enter, such as liking a photo, following the account, and tagging friends in the comments. A prize is then awarded to a randomly selected winner, or winners, from the eligible entries.

Giveaways are used to grow a brand’s Instagram following, generate leads, boost engagement, or show appreciation for existing followers.

A few things to keep in mind when running an Instagram giveaway:

• Choose a prize the target audience would be interested in.
• Create clear, concise rules that specify how many winners will be chosen and how the winner will be selected.
• Promote the giveaway across as many channels as possible.

A prize can be a product from the ecommerce store or a gift card to a popular retailer. Surveying followers is one way to identify a prize they’d be interested in.

Providing more information in the giveaway rules, rather than less, reduces confusion among entrants. An online giveaway management tool can handle entry tracking and random winner selection.

You can promote your giveaway by sharing it on your brand’s social media accounts, sending an email to subscribers, or running ads on Instagram.

Move forward with your own online store

Marketing tactics work best when they support an overall strategy tied to your business goals. 

Choosing where to start depends on a few factors: your store’s current stage, available budget, and where existing customers already spend time. A business without an existing audience benefits from tactics that build visibility, such as SEO or social selling, before layering in tactics that rely on an existing customer base, such as email or loyalty programs. 

A brand with a more established audience benefits from prioritizing retention tactics, such as personalization or referral programs, alongside newer acquisition channels. Testing one or two tactics at a time makes it easier to track which ones affect sales, rather than launching everything at once. Revisiting the list periodically, as the store grows or a channel’s performance changes, keeps the mix of tactics relevant over time.