Business Marketing: Types, Strategies & Examples

Developing a high-quality product is only one aspect of managing an ecommerce business. Once your product is ready for market, you must quickly figure out how to actually sell it.

That’s where business marketing comes in. Marketing is about more than promoting products; it’s about building relationships. With an effective business marketing strategy, you’ll find opportunities to cultivate an ongoing emotional connection between your brand and your target audience. 

This guide covers the basics and best practices of business marketing. Discover what marketing in business is all about, learn tips from marketing strategy experts, and get inspired by examples from fellow ecommerce businesses in the trenches.

What is business marketing?

Business marketing is the series of tactics a company uses to build awareness of its brand and grow its audience. 

Five elements of business marketing are: 

1. Researching and understanding your target audience

2. Educating your target audience about your brand and what you sell

3. Offering value that gets them interested in your products or services

4. Using a variety of tactics that influence them to make a purchase

5. Nurturing ongoing relationships to strengthen your customer base

Paid vs. organic business marketing

The more you learn about marketing, the more you’ll hear the words “paid” and “organic.” These terms refer to channels or tactics your business uses to market to your audience. 

Paid marketing is another term for paid advertising. With paid marketing channels, you pay an advertising platform to reach a specific audience. Facebook Ads is a paid marketing channel that helps you target your ideal customers. 

Organic marketing lets you communicate with your audience without paying for access. In an organic marketing strategy, potential customers discover your brand not through targeted ads but through channels such as search engines and social media algorithms. Blogging and search engine optimization (SEO) are both examples of organic marketing. 

Marketing, sales, and the buyer’s journey

Both business marketing and sales teams aim to persuade consumers to purchase their company’s products or services. However, to reach that goal, their paths diverge. 

To understand where this split happens, it’s important to grasp the buyer’s journey, the three-stage process that customers go through. Here are the three stages of the buyer’s journey and how business marketing and sales teams typically engage with each stage: 

Awareness

At this stage, the customer has a problem (often referred to as a “pain point” in marketing) that they’re not yet sure how to define or solve. 

From a business perspective, the awareness stage is home base for marketing teams. That’s because marketers take a long-term approach to selling. They work to build awareness, trust, and ongoing relationships with potential customers through informative blog posts, videos that outline pain points, and more.

Consideration

At this stage, the customer understands the problem and is searching for potential solutions.

At the consideration stage, responsibility for nurturing customer relationships shifts from marketing to sales. As marketers attract potential customers (also known as leads), they bring in the sales team. At the same time, they continue to market to those potential leads through content geared toward the consideration stage (such as case studies and comparisons). 

Decision

At this stage, the customer has narrowed down solutions to their problem and is now looking to purchase a specific product or service to resolve it. Sales teams tend to lead the decision stage because it’s ultimately their job to convert leads into customers. In other words: They make the sale.

How does business marketing work? 

The business marketing process typically works like this: 

1. Set realistic goals and develop a marketing strategy to boost brand awareness, attract leads, and drive sales. Try goal-setting frameworks like objectives and key results (OKR) or SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound).

2. Execute on that business marketing strategy and track your progress. This means launching marketing campaigns and testing new marketing channels.

3. Analyze the results of your marketing efforts and draw insights from patterns in customer behavior and sales data to adjust your efforts accordingly. 

To execute your marketing strategy, you’ll need resources like a marketing budget, time, and talent. You can consult with agencies, freelancers, or even hire full-time staff to develop, execute, and analyze your marketing efforts. 

The 4 Ps of Marketing

During the business marketing process, marketers should keep in mind the fundamentals of marketing, otherwise known as the four Ps of marketing: 

1. Product. What is the product you’re selling? What’s its target market, and why do they need this product? Who are your competitors? 

2. Price. How much are customers willing to pay for your product? What other factors should you consider when setting your prices? What about discounts? 

3. Place. Where do you want people to find your product? Online or at a brick-and-mortar? What technology and logistics do you need to consider? 

4. Promotion. How do you communicate your product’s value to your target audience? What are your business marketing and sales strategies? 

Popular types of business marketing

• Business-to-consumer marketing
• Business-to-business marketing
• Field marketing
• Experiential marketing
• Service marketing
• Account-based marketing
• Small business marketing
• Content marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Affiliate marketing

Before developing your business marketing strategy, it’s wise to review the types of marketing you can use. 

As you consider the following options, keep in mind:

• Not every type of marketing is right for your industry or specific business. Don’t let yourself be distracted or intimidated by all the different ways to market a business—home in on what will work best for you.

• Different types of marketing help you reach different goals. For example, content marketing and experiential marketing are better suited to long-term branding, not necessarily to quick sales. 

Business-to-consumer marketing (B2C)

B2C marketing is for companies that sell directly to consumers. A retail business that markets and sells its products through an online or physical store is a B2C business.

Most people are familiar with B2C marketing strategies. You probably get marketing emails in your inbox or receive ads online and on social media every day. B2C marketing campaigns can be targeted, but they often have broad appeal (thousands of people have likely seen the same ad).

Business-to-business marketing (B2B)

B2B marketing is a type of marketing specifically for companies that sell products or services to other companies. CiboWares is an example of a B2B business. CiboWares uses Shopify to sell disposable takeout containers and commercial kitchen storage to restaurants. 

Because B2B companies serve niche audiences, targeting the right people with the right messaging is more important than reaching the most people. For example, it wouldn’t make sense for CiboWares to market bulk orders of disposable containers to individuals since individuals don’t have the same needs as restaurants. 

Field marketing

Field marketing delivers your message directly to the market through in-person customer engagement. If you’ve gone door-to-door in your area with marketing flyers, you’ve participated in field marketing. Field marketing also includes distributing coupons or samples in high-traffic areas and booking a booth at community events or trade shows. 

A trade show can get your foot in the door, as Nancy Twine, the founder of hair care brand Briogeo, explains. “It’s a really good opportunity for anyone who’s starting out in an unknown or unfamiliar industry where perhaps you don’t have a lot of contacts or network to tap into,” Nancy says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. 

Experiential marketing

Like field marketing, experiential marketing takes place in person. Experiential marketing is a strategic approach that creates immersive, memorable experiences. Examples include interactive product demonstrations or pop-up experiences with art and music to engage the senses.

Rather than focusing on immediate transactions, this type of marketing aims to create a memorable emotional connection that consumers will associate with your brand in the long term.

For example, in 2025, athletic apparel brand Gymshark promoted a London event with a unique take on the classic red British postbox. The so-called Pose Box looked like a giant dumbbell, encouraging passersby to take (and share) photos.

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Service marketing

When you sell intangible goods instead of products, you need a different approach. Marketing a service business means emphasizing the entire customer experience and the person-to-person aspects of your business. 

An effective service marketing strategy prioritizes personalizing your brand, delivering high-quality services, nurturing ongoing customer relationships, and leveraging tactics such as customer testimonials and reviews to attract new customers.

Account-based marketing (ABM)

In account-based marketing, sales and marketing collaborate to reach companies or individuals with the highest potential revenue, rather than spreading their efforts equally across leads. With this B2B marketing approach, you can use personalized messaging and multichannel engagement to target high-value accounts, create meaningful interactions, and build relationships.

Small business marketing

With limited resources and budgets, small businesses need a different kind of marketing strategy. Small business marketing typically prioritizes customer relationships over polished marketing campaigns. Small-business marketing is most effective when it leverages authenticity and local engagement to earn customer loyalty. 

Content marketing

Unlike paid advertisements, which promote products or services to drive short-term sales, content marketing shares educational or entertaining content to build an engaged audience of leads and customers over time. Content marketing can take various forms, including videos, blog articles, infographics, and white papers. 

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing happens when companies partner with a recognizable person with a public platform, such as an online creator or celebrity. Influencer marketing can be incredibly effective: in a 2025 Sprout Social survey, 83% of marketers said sponsored influencer content converts better than brand-generated organic content. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be expensive.

Influencer gifting, also known as seeding, can be a cost-effective way to partner with nano- and micro-influencers, especially if you have a product like Starface’s colorful, star-shaped pimple patches, which are easy to ship and instantly recognizable on social media. 

“We seed as many people as possible,” Starface senior executive adviser Kara Brothers says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “Our influencer team specifically finds different corners of the internet, people who have big followings or small followings. From there, we kind of leave it completely up to them on what they do with the product. A lot of them wear it incorporated into their lives, post pictures, and for us, that’s kind of free marketing.” 

Affiliate marketing

Like influencer marketing, affiliate marketing involves partnering with a third party to promote your brand. You can work with an individual, like an influencer or blogger, or another business, like a media company or review site. Affiliates earn commission for every sale made through the promotion, so the cost reflects the impact. 

Jerrid Grimm, head of publisher marketing at impact.com, suggests that brands work with as many partners as possible. “The consumer journey is multifaceted,” he says. “Your potential customer may find out about your product from an influencer they trust, then compare it to other options on their favorite review sites before finally getting a great deal through a cash-back or coupon site and making the purchase. Your affiliate partners work in concert and are truly greater than the sum of their parts.” 

6 steps to create an effective business marketing strategy

1. Set up your business website
2. Establish your sales strategy
3. Get to know your target audience
4. Choose the right marketing channels for your business
5. Execute your marketing plan with quality content
6. Evaluate your strategy and results

Follow these steps to create a successful business marketing strategy: 

1. Set up your business website

If you haven’t already, launch a business website to create a central hub for interested customers. One of the easiest ways to set up a website is to use a no-code website builder like Shopify. 

2. Establish your sales strategy

To create a sales strategy, start by deciding whether you want to focus on inbound marketing (where customers come to you), outbound marketing (where you reach out to customers), or a combination of both. This will shape your messaging and lead generation tactics. 

Keep your business plan nearby as you develop your sales strategy to ensure it aligns with your overall goals. 

3. Get to know your target audience

The primary goal of business marketing is to build a bridge to potential buyers. To send the right message at the right time to the right audience, you need a crystal-clear vision of your target audience and what problem you’re solving for them. 

Learn everything you can about your audience: Explore their pain points, motivations, and goals when making specific purchases. (Remember the buyer’s journey from earlier?) From there, you can build a profile of your ideal customer—also known as a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is a profile you create of the type of person most likely to buy from you (or the person making the purchasing decision in B2B). 

Common buyer persona data points include:

• Demographics, such as age, gender, and location

• How customers make purchasing decisions (e.g., in person or online)

• Their top challenge or concern (pain point) 

• What and who influences them in making decisions

• How much research they do before buying

You can gather this buyer persona data through:

• User interviews

• Marketing analytics

• Customer surveys

• Sales insights

You need this information to make marketing decisions, such as where to allocate your budget and which messaging will resonate with your target audience. If you choose the wrong messaging or advertise to the wrong audience, you risk wasting resources on a campaign with no results. Research carefully, then speak directly to your ideal customer and address their pain points. 

As you gather data points, you might find that you have more than one ideal customer. In that case, it will be helpful to develop buyer personas for each target. Typically, businesses create around one to three buyer personas. Depending on the diversity of your industry or product lines, it may be wise to create more profiles. 

Once assembled, these buyer persona profiles serve as a useful resource for everyone in your business. 

4. Choose the right marketing channels for your business

You don’t need to master every marketing channel out there—that’s a quick road to burnout. Social sales strategist Jasmine Partida recommends that businesses start with just three channels, then reevaluate and scale up. 

Here are a few things you can consider when picking a channel:

1. Visibility. Look for a platform like TikTok, Pinterest, or YouTube where you have the potential to go viral and end up on people’s feeds.

2. Community. Look for a community-based channel to engage potential customers, such as Facebook, Discord, or LinkedIn.

3. Ownership. Identify a channel you can own, such as email marketing or a loyalty program.

“Your audience is on all of these platforms. Pick one to start with where you are the most comfortable,” Jasmine says. “Usually, that will be Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. You’ve likely already started a small community there.”

You also want to consider which channels will deliver the highest return on your time and financial investment. “For ecommerce stores, these are typically social channels with influencer marketing, paid ads, YouTube video sponsorships, and consistent organic content marketing,” says Deb Mecca, fractional CMO and Shopify consultant at Causeway305.

Here are a few channels you should consider adding to your promotion mix: 

Email marketing

Email marketing can be profitable. According to a 2025 survey from email marketing company Litmus, two-thirds of companies report a 10:1 or higher return on investment (ROI).

A successful email campaign includes:

• A quality subject line that attracts email recipients

• Promotions, information, exclusive previews, or other value propositions

• Calls to action (CTAs), which invite your reader to do something like purchase an item or read content on your site

Test out different subject lines, CTAs, or types of emails over time to learn which versions of your split tests yield better results for your marketing goals. The great thing about email marketing is that you largely own the asset. You can’t be forced to increase your ad spend, as you might be on social media platforms.

Social media marketing

No matter who your target customer is, they’re likely on social media. Recent data indicate that the number of global social media users stands at 5.66 billion, representing 68.7% of all internet users. 

Small businesses may want to focus their efforts on a limited number of social media platforms, giving them more bandwidth to prioritize quality over quantity in content creation and customer engagement. 

Some tactics to make social media marketing work for you include:

• Post consistently, and consider using a social media scheduler to post at strategic times to maximize visibility.

• Monitor activity carefully (either manually or with social media tools) and engage with other users on social media platforms.

• Use influencer marketing to promote your product to your target audience.

A common mistake businesses often make is treating their social media accounts like a sales page. “We don’t want to be sold to. We want authenticity and connection,” social sales strategist Jasmine explains. “Instead of a sales approach, use social media to connect and build awareness and trust about your product.” 

Lindsey Carter, founder of the athleisure brand SET Active, used her personal Instagram account to connect with followers in the early stages of launching her business. She asked them for their opinions, involving them in the production process. “Now they’re going to buy it because they had a choice in the product I was producing,” Lindsey says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “They chose the darker red over the lighter red. So if they’re choosing the darker red, they’re going to buy the darker red. That philosophy kind of just kept. I started to see how important it was to connect with your community. And your community is your biggest influencer.” 

She also uses her account to share behind-the-scenes images, giving customers a peek into the SET Active world. For example, one post from November 2025 features a mood board, racks of clothes, and photo shoot images. 

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Video and audio content

Content marketing takes many forms, including written, audio, and video. Video and audio marketing, like podcasts, are immersive and engaging ways to connect.

• Videos. From TikTok to YouTube, video marketing has experienced a meteoric rise, which is shaping shopping habits. According to internal YouTube data, viewers watched more than 35 billion hours of shopping-related content on the platform from January 2024 to January 2025. 

• Podcasts. Podcast consumption is up, too. In September 2025, Pew Research reported that 54% of adults said they had listened to a podcast in the past year, up from 49% in 2022. 

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Investing in search engine optimization, or SEO, gives you a better chance of landing your web pages at the top of search engine results pages (SERP), which can, in turn, lead to sales. In a 2024 survey from Emarketer and Impact.com, 44.3% of US consumers said search engines like Google are their primary channels for pre-purchase research.

The elements of optimizing your website include:

• Blog content. Produce a blog that’s attached to your business website. Blog posts can include written content, insights, and multimedia such as images and videos to engage readers. 

• Keyword optimization. Brainstorm which keywords your customers are most likely to use when searching online for products or services like yours, then validate your ideas with keyword research. Make sure those keywords appear throughout your website and blog. Blog SEO can help you gain visibility and improve your brand image. 

• Google Shopping. Online stores can create a Google Merchant account to publish their product catalog to Google Shopping. This ensures their product details and images appear in the Shopping section of Google search, helping customers find those products. 

SMS marketing

When it comes to marketing via search engines and social media, it’s hard to stand out in the crowd; the competition is stiff, and your visibility depends on algorithms. That’s why SMS marketing is so appealing: Your text message prompts a notification on some very valuable real estate—the recipient’s phone screen. A 2024 Klaviyo study found that 72% of consumers made a purchase after receiving a brand text message.

But be cautious about how often you send SMS marketing messages. Too many can be perceived as annoying or intrusive, but the right amount can help you stay on your customers’ radar. SMS marketing is particularly effective when used to offer subscribers a limited-time deal or to announce a new product line. 

5. Execute your marketing plan with quality content

Once you understand your target demographic and have mapped out your overall marketing strategy, it’s time to execute your marketing plan. Before publishing content, test your sales channels to make sure everything is optimized for conversion.

“Make sure that your online store is fully set up with your abandoned cart sequences, with your branding, and with tracking, because otherwise, there’s no point in sending traffic to your website,” advises Jasmine. “The traffic won’t matter if you can’t get it to convert—you will lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in sales.”

Beginning with your three starter channels, publish consistently, test early, and measure often. It’s wise to publish organic content and refine your content before investing in paid channels.

“Start with organic because anything that does well on organic will also do well on ads,” Jasmine shares. Starting with ads might get views, but it doesn’t guarantee that audiences will connect with the content.

Send customers through your marketing funnel

To guide your customers through a journey that ends in a purchase, use a marketing funnel when creating your content. (Remember the buyer’s journey from earlier? It’s entwined with the marketing funnel.) 

At the top of the marketing funnel, you distribute informational content that builds awareness of your brand or product without the intent to drive an immediate sale. From there, you guide potential customers through the middle and bottom points of the funnel with increasingly targeted marketing messaging that highlights the value of your product at each stage, and ultimately aims to make a sale. To shepherd customers along this journey, companies use a variety of marketing channels and content types. 

The common types of content for each part of the marketing funnel include: 

• Awareness (top of the funnel)

• Blog posts

• Videos

• Newsletters

• Consideration (middle of the funnel)

• Case studies

• Demo videos

• How-to articles

• Downloadable worksheets

• Conversion and purchase (bottom of the funnel)

• Buyers’ guides

• Product videos

• Research reports

6. Evaluate your strategy and results

Once you’ve launched your business marketing strategy, continuously monitor and evaluate the results so you can adjust your tactics based on what’s working and what’s not. Use analytics tools to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs). 

Typical KPIs include:

• Visibility metrics. How many impressions your content received and how many people viewed it.

• Engagement metrics. How often people clicked, reacted to, or commented on your content.

• Conversion metrics. How often site visitors made a purchase or completed another desired action.

“There are two prongs here: you should optimize around channels performing well, adding more resources to scale them up at a lower cost,” Shopify consultant Deb advises. “Then, you also want to test new opportunities to expand your reach into other channels.

“Even if you tried something one time and it didn’t go according to plan, that doesn’t mean it won’t work. It could be the wrong approach, the wrong time, the wrong budget, or the wrong creative strategy. If you know a specific channel works industry-wide for your competitors, reevaluate and try again at a different time.”

Although many marketing tactics can quickly drive leads and sales, business marketing is a long-term game. Market consistently, monitor your performance, and adjust your strategy to improve results over time. As you keep practicing and experimenting, you’ll boost valuable brand awareness, build a loyal audience, and learn the best ways to grow your business, sale by sale. 

Examples of business marketing

• Ridge: Leveraging AI for ad creative
• Hero Packaging: Drawing leads in with free samples
• Transformer Table: Growing through influencer marketing
• Intelligent Change: Creating authentic video content

It can be motivating to see different marketing strategies in action. Take inspiration from the marketing approaches of successful ecommerce store owners who have been in your shoes.

Ridge: Leveraging AI for ad creative

Accessories brand Ridge uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to increase the volume of ad creative. The team puts its best ads into an AI tool, which then generates new variations. 

The AI-generated ads may not be as high-quality as those created by the brand’s in-house design team, but CEO Sean Frank says their value lies in the ability to serve personalized ads to a much wider audience. 

“The future of advertising is just shots on goal. You want as many tickets as possible, as many ad variances as possible,” Sean says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “It’s going to be more personalized advertising. What you see and what you like is going to be totally different from what I see and like.” 

Hero Packaging: Drawing leads in with free samples 

Hero Packaging founders Anaita Sakar and Vik Davé noticed a problem in their ecommerce business: Orders were creating far too much plastic waste. This inspired the idea for their next business—a compostable packaging solution for other businesses. 

Bringing Hero Packaging to market required creative thinking. Anaita and Vik spent considerable time testing samples, which revealed that some other brands were misrepresenting their products as compostable. Before Anaita and Vik launched the brand, they used free samples to hook leads.

“Our prelaunch strategy was determining demand before we brought the product out,” Anaita says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “We targeted people on Google. Anyone typing in ‘sustainable packaging,’ we hit them with this landing page, and they would get a free sample. We thought we were going to get about 30 to 40 sign-ups for free samples of eco-friendly packaging. In a week, we got a thousand people.”

Transformer Table: Growing through influencer marketing

Transformer Table is a furniture brand that sells multifunctional, convertible furniture online. When Transformer Table hit the social media jackpot with an organic viral video in 2016, it knew it needed to follow up to capitalize on its gains. It launched an influencer program and sent products to influencers. One Instagram video by Rachel Abdel Reda garnered 4.9 million likes, opening the doors to expand their business in the Middle East. 

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Instead of relying on retail partners to market its products, Transformer Table leveraged its social media success to drive in-store sales.

“We took the influencer program, and we pushed it to Costco, meaning that we found Costco-specific influencers to work with,” co-founder Artem Kuzmichev says on an episode of Shopify Masters. The tactic drove new interest and membership at Costco, strengthening its relationship with the retailer.

Intelligent Change: Creating authentic video content

Serial entrepreneur Mimi Ikonn has founded multiple successful businesses, including Luxy Hair. Her latest Shopify business, Intelligent Change, sells mindfulness and productivity journals. 

Rather than creating marketing content around the journals themselves, Intelligent Change has built a community around mindfulness practices and self-care. Its YouTube channel and blog (branded as a magazine) feature topics ranging from pleasure to spirituality. Intelligent Change also leverages a weekly newsletter and multiple social media channels to reach potential customers on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

Mimi’s content marketing strategy works because the brand emphasizes education and entertainment over selling. As the audience gets reeled in by engaging branded content, the likelihood of them staying to consume more increases, which, over time, influences them to buy the product.

“It’s about being engaging and authentic, but also enjoying what you’re doing, because that resonates with the audience,” Mimi says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “People can feel it, they can read it through the camera.”

By creating authentic, actionable content around topics their audience cares about, Intelligent Change has built a loyal audience—and you can, too.