How to Find the Top Ecommerce Marketing Agency + 10 Questions to Ask [2024]

The secret of the world’s biggest brands is that they use top experts for every area of eCommerce marketing. These subject matter experts have been very difficult and expensive to find. The world has changed and now these experts and agencies are available to all businesses, large and small.

Now your brand can work with the world’s top eCommerce marketing agencies on any channel or campaign imaginable. In this guide, we present a step-by-step process of finding these agencies and working with them successfully. Plus, we include a list of some of the top eCommerce agencies that you can work with today.

Let’s dive in.

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What is an eCommerce marketing agency?

A digital eCommerce agency is an external team that partners with your business to solve complex problems and help you achieve your goals. Agencies often achieve this through the strategic use of creative, technology, and marketing services.

An eCommerce marketing agency is an agency that specializes in growing eCommerce brands. It’s uniquely experienced to help brands scale through online store optimization, advertising, omnichannel marketing, content marketing strategies, and advanced cart abandonment strategies.

What are the advantages of using an eCommerce agency?

You’re probably asking yourself:

• Why can’t I just hire an eCommerce freelancer?
• Should I build my own in-house team?
• What would hiring a full-blown eCommerce agency going to do for me that a freelancer couldn't do?
• Do I need an eCommerce agency or a regular digital marketing agency?

Great questions.

Well, eCommerce agencies have the following advantages:

• Experience growing brands in your industry/niche
• Proven SEO/SMM/CRO/Omnichannel strategies
• Knowledge of the best Shopify / Shopify Plus tools for your brand
• Clarity about the exact marketing channels you need for your business
• Technical knowledge & expertise to help troubleshoot systems
• Outside perspective to help you think outside the box
• A wide range of eCommerce marketing services
• Access to the best Shopify experts

That’s all well and good, but how do you pick the right agency?

Here’s how.

Top eCommerce Marketing Agencies to work with

Here are some of the best eCommerce marketing agencies that we regularly match with our clients.

Reason

Reason is a top advertising agency that specializes in scaling eCommerce brands through multi-channel performance marketing. They are experts at advertising on Google, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Snapchat. Their digital strategy is to micro-test to find the best ad creative, message, audience, offer and funnel combinations.

They have managed over $50M in ad spend and have been working with some of our clients for several years. They are a Google partner, Shopify partner, Facebook marketing partner and work closely with Mailchimp and Klaviyo to get you the results you need.

Services include:

• Social media advertising
• PPC / Google advertising
• Native ads
• Amazon ads

Sh1ft

Sh1ft is a Shopify marketing agency based in Montreal headed by the amazing Dorian Reeves. They are an agency that specializes in eCommerce marketing particularly social media management, social ads, web design, content, and inbound marketing.

They are a passionate team of marketers and designers that are fully transparent and have worked with some of the biggest brands around the world.

Services include:

• Social media management
• Advertising
• Design
• Web design
• SEO
• Email marketing
• Branding
• CRO

K6

K6 is an experienced advertising agency that has worked with numerous eCommerce stores like Kenko, Aritmetik, Reyjin, Mozart, Halo, Trylon, and others. They mainly focus on Facebook advertising and they have an entire team of designers and video editors that help each brand tell its story and highlight customer testimonials in an integrated way.

Services include:

• Performance marketing
• Social media advertising
• Video editing
• Social media management
• Google Adwords
• Copywriting

Social Kick

Imagine you want to launch a Facebook campaign for your eCommerce brand because you don’t have all the resources in-house.

You’re going to need a video team, advertising experts, copywriters, and email marketers. And instead of having to hire several different agencies or freelancers, you can just hire one team to take care of everything for you.

Social Kick does it all. They are your marketing team for videos, Facebook ads, Google ads, sales funnels, email marketing services, and much more.

Services include:

• Email marketing
• Social media advertising
• Social media strategy
• Social media management
• Content marketing (video, 2D & 3D animations)
• Product demos
• Shopify store integrations
• Marketing funnel design & custom development

ThreeBeacon

ThreeBeacon is a world-renowned full-service marketing agency that specialized in eCommerce marketing. The team at ThreeBeacon has more than two decades of experience across 40+ industries, from medical supplies to home decor.

What’s really great about them is that they are absolutely focused on your business objectives and KPIs and have full transparency and communication, set the right expectations, and go at it with complete dedication.

Services include:

• Social media management
• Paid advertising
• Content marketing
• SEO
• Email marketing

RocketPage

Conversions come from good landing pages. If you don’t have a high converting page on your site, from the home page all the way through the checkout process, then you are leaving money on the table. RocketPage is a brilliant marketing agency headed by the talented Youssef Bouzaien. They specialize in building landing pages that convert.

Services include:

• Conversion rate optimization
• Landing page design
• Shopify / WordPress / HTML

A-List Me

A-List Me is an influencer marketing agency that helps bridge the gap between brands and influencers. They have worked with some of the top brands like Hello Fresh, Pepsi, Audible, Kellogg’s, FabFitFun, Walmart, Home Chef, and QVC. The agency was founded in 2016 and has since worked with more than 1,000 brands and thousands of influencers.

Services include:

• Influencer management
• Creative services
• Influencer outreach

Genius

Genius is a marketing agency that focused on the top ways to get qualified traffic to your store - advertising and SEO. Ads will help you in the short term while organic traffic is for the long-term game.

It’s the perfect combination for eCommerce brands that want to scale this year. Genius was started by Aaron Metzger and Chris Overlay and has offices in Dallas and Las Vegas.

Services include:

• Display advertising
• Programmatic
• Search engine marketing
• Search engine optimization
• Social media advertising
• Marketing strategy

Inbox Integrity

Inbox Integrity is an eCommerce email marketing agency. It was founded by Bennett Lafferty who has worked as an email marketer for numerous brands for 8 years before starting his own agency.

Bennett has a super-comprehensive approach to email marketing. He does a thorough audit of each account, looks at existing digital marketing campaigns and flow automation, and creates stunning emails that get brands sales.

Services include:

• Email marketing audits
• Email marketing management
• List management
• Consulting
• Email segmentation and design

Low Gravity Solutions

Low Gravity Solutions is a full-service marketing agency that does pretty much everything. David Sandel co-founded Low Gravity back in 2014 when he saw the difficult time brands were having with the apps and plugins they were using.

He saw brands using a ton of different software that didn’t quite work together so he stepped in to streamline the process.

Out of that passion grew an incredible marketing agency that does it all.

Services include:

• Email marketing
• Marketing operations
• Web design & management
• Graphic design
• Ecommerce automation
• Social media marketing & advertising
• Conversion tracking & analytics
• Search engine optimization
• Affiliate management
• Copywriting

Reach Digital

Reach Digital is an eCommerce marketing agency that was founded by Archit Batlaw, from Austin Texas. He worked for Facebook where he managed $40M+ in annual ad spend. Reach Digital has worked with some really notable brands like Keen, Celestial Seasonings, Supergoop, and OLLY vitamins.

Services include:

• Media strategy and buying
• Creative strategy
• Content marketing
• Conversion rate optimization
• Building a testing methodology
• Social media advertising

Brandignity

Brandignity is an SEO agency that specializes in eCommerce brands. It was founded by the brilliant Maciej Fita in 2010 and it’s based in Naples, Florida. The agency takes little-known DTC brands and puts them on the map, at least on Google’s map.

They help brands rank for the most competitive keywords and show up on the top of the search results. They do both on-page and off-page SEO campaigns, write content and do all the outreach for you. The best part - they can show significant results in less than a month.

Services include:

• Search engine optimization
• Social media management
• Social media advertising
• Web design
• Email marketing
• Blogging and content creation

How to pick the best agency to work with

Don’t just go to the yellow pages and start calling random agencies (does everyone remember what the Yellow Pages are?). We’re dating ourselves. Not every agency is going to be a good fit for your brand so be selective and follow this process to pick the best eCommerce agency to work with.

Determine your business goals

The first step is to determine what your goals are. With eCommerce the approach is pretty simple - you want to get more people to purchase your product - but there are different stages that your business could be in.

For example, you might have an optimized site with a good conversion rate and you want to get more traffic and expand to new marketing channels. Or you might be doing really well with Facebook ads and want to get better at advertising on Pinterest or Google.

Here are a few simple goals you could use as a starting point:

• Increase sales of a particular channel
• Increase your conversion rate (conversion optimization)
• Bring more traffic to the site
• Add more subscribers to your email list
• Launch more channels to communicate with your customers
• Increase the average order value (AOV)
• Decrease ad spend and marketing expenses
• Improve customer retention and reduce churn rate

Narrow down to specific marketing channels

The type of agency that you need will highly depend on the goals that you pick. If you have several goals and really need something broad then working with a general eCommerce agency will be a good idea.

But if you really have something specific you want to improve or optimize then you need to work with an agency that specializes in that specific marketing channel that you’re looking for.

There are several types of agencies you can work with:

• CRO agencies
• SEO agencies
• Advertising agencies
• Web design & optimization agencies
• Social media management agencies
• Content agencies
• Branding agencies

Look for proven experience and case studies

One of the biggest challenges with working with agencies is finding someone with experience in your niche. It’s easy for agencies to brag about their eCommerce clients and put up fancy customer reviews but you need to look beyond that.

You need to look for actual case studies and past experience of the agency. Look for their previous successes and ask specific questions to see which digital marketing strategies they have employed and what led to their success. Learn about their strengths and which digital channels they have experience in.

Pro tip: look for agencies that have worked with other brands in your niche or industry. So if you’re a pet brand make sure that they have experience in the pet industry and have proven successes that they can show you.

Get a marketing plan before you start

Last but not least, it’s always important to have clarity about the plan of action. What is the agency going to do for you? What are the specific actions they are going to take and the strategies they are going to implement? How often will they communicate and send reports about their progress?

These are super important questions and the more clarity you have before you commit, the better.

We’ve covered the process you need to take to filter through all the noise and find the best agency to work with. And as they say “stick with the winners” but how do you pick the winners?

Here are some winning characteristics that define the top agencies out there.

6 Characteristics that make a great eCommerce agency

1. Experience and knowledge of your business

A lot of resources will tell you that knowledge of your online business or industry is not required but we beg to differ. We think that industry knowledge is a critical component of a good brand-agency fit.

This is especially true in eCommerce where margins and average order values can be so different for each industry or niche. So only work with an agency that has experience and knowledge in your particular industry.

2. They put their customers first

The top eCommerce agencies put their customers first. They don’t even onboard you unless they are 100% sure that they can help you grow. It has to be a match for them and once you start working together then they stay on top of things, communicate with you frequently, and overall put you first.

3. Focus on ROI and revenue

You need to work with an agency that is focused on the bottom line, on profitability, on the return on ad spend, and not on vanity metrics. Fluffy concepts like brand growth are important but at the end of the day, every eCommerce brand needs to get more customers and remain profitable.

The best agencies are focused on the ROI and the revenue metrics and help brands grow in a sustainable and profitable way by having clear milestones and consistent reporting.

4. Clear milestones and progress reports

It’s important to set expectations and know what the milestones are. Every good agency will send you their milestones and will send you weekly/bi-weekly progress reports. They will be able to show lagging and leading indicators - i.e the actions that they are going to take to get the results and how long the whole process will take.

5. A proven track record

A great agency needs to have a proven success record with other brands in your particular niche or industry. A home decor brand we worked with once hired an eCommerce PR agency that had experience in the home decor industry.

They already knew the type of publications and promotions they should run, so it was a perfect fit. Only work with someone that has worked with other brands in your industry or niche and has been successful in the past (think high ROI, high ROAS, high conversions, and long-term growth).

6. Transparency

Another characteristic that separates the heavy hitters from the newbies is transparency. Ask yourself these questions:

• Is your agency eager to share its results?
• Do they put everything on the table?
• Do they talk about their successes as well as failures?
• Does it feel like they are not 100% transparent and forthcoming with you?

It’s super important to work with an agency that is completely transparent, one that goes above and beyond to educate their customer and share all the necessary information.

How to find the world’s top eCommerce Agencies

One of the biggest challenges is finding a good eCommerce marketing agency to work with. It’s usually a hit-or-miss experience. Agencies aren’t always transparent about their past work experience, the tactics or strategies that they employ, and you would definitely not get a comprehensive marketing plan before you sign a contract with them.

All of these are significant barriers to entry for eCommerce business owners that are looking to scale their brands this year. That’s why we created Mayple.

Mayple is an eCommerce marketing platform that connects eCommerce brands with the world’s top, most experienced, vetted eCommerce agencies. We vet each agency ourselves using over 30+ criteria, we look at their success record, and then we match you with the best one for your business needs.

The advantage with Mayple is that we are unbiased, our goal is for your business to grow. So if you signed up to do Facebook advertising but we find out that you don’t have email marketing automation set up yet, we’re not going to try to match you with an advertising expert. Instead, we will recommend a top-notch email marketing agency for you to work with instead.

We don’t try to sell you more digital marketing services as other agencies do, we give you recommendations based on industry best practices that will make more sense to your business.

It’s really simple.

Here’s the whole process:

Step 1. We evaluate your business goals & KPIs

It all starts with you filling out a comprehensive marketing brief. In the brief, we look at your past campaigns, your KPIs, your marketing channels, and your business goals. The more information we get here the better your strategy will be.

Step 2. We match you with top-notch eCommerce agencies

Next, we look through our community of 1,500+ experts and marketing agencies for the best team to execute your project. We select them based on 30+ products, AI algorithms, and a personality match.

We also look at their proven successes in your industry and their experience in the particular marketing channels and custom strategies that you want to use.

Step 3. The agency conducts a full marketing audit of your business

The agency looks at all the information that you’ve given us and conducts a comprehensive marketing audit of your business. They look at your KPI’s, channels, messaging, creatives, account structure, marketing funnel, customer personas, and user touchpoints.

Step 4. The agency presents a comprehensive marketing plan

The next step is all about transparency. The agency presents its findings and a comprehensive plan and strategy for your business. They present exactly what they think should be done to meet your marketing goals and how they are going to help your business grow.

Step 5. Approval and monitoring

Work only starts once you approve the marketing plan. And that’s where you get to see the real benefit of Mayple’s platform. Mayple’s team monitors every that happens, stays on top of your agency, and makes sure that everything is being done the right way.

We also make sure that your agency follows best practices and we give you recommendations on what else to optimize to grow your online sales even more.

Step 6. Build your marketing team in one place

The biggest advantage of hiring an eCommerce marketing agency through Mayple is that you get access to hundreds of different agencies and experts. You can literally build your own team of expert marketers for every channel within our platform.

11 Questions to ask an eCommerce marketing agency before hiring them

Before you start working with an eCommerce marketing agency you need to ask them a few questions, to make sure that they are the right fit.

1. How often do you communicate with clients?

Consistent communication is super important when you are working with a marketing agency. Marketing campaigns have a lot of moving parts and it’s important for the agency to be available and community promptly if they need a new creative, more product information, or account access from you.

2. How much experience do you have?

How experienced is the agency? Sometimes it’s really hard to know. Look at their references, case studies, and ask them for more information.

Here at Mayple, we vet every single agency based on 50 parameters and get a good look at the data from their previous campaigns to make sure that they are experts in what they do. We don’t let our brands work with noobs.

3. Have you worked with other brands in my niche?

Just because an eCommerce agency is top-notch does not mean that they will be the results that you’re looking for. They must have experience with other eCommerce companies in your industry.

They must know your niche inside out to the point that they can complete your sentences. Look at their client list and ask them specific questions about the results they’ve achieved.

4. Do you have references and case studies?

One of the greatest challenges is verifying the agency’s past work. Calling old references just doesn’t do it these days. When we vet an agency we get access to their past advertising campaigns and actually get a look at their data. So always look under the hood and make sure that the agency did what they said they did.

5. How transparent are you?

Transparency is key in any business but it is absolutely critical in eCommerce marketing. How transparent is your agency? Are they being upfront with you? Do they share the things that didn’t work in their weekly/monthly reports?

6. What is your process like?

What’s the process like? How many people will you be communicating with? What are the different steps in the process and what will be required of you? These are all super important questions to ask. And remember, look for an agency that keeps it simple. Where the process is clear, and you know exactly what to expect.

7. What are your goals and timelines?

Speaking of expectations, it’s important to talk about the goals and timelines of the project. Make sure that you are clear on everything and that there aren’t any false expectations. It’s super important to be on the same page before you hire your agency.

8. What are your credentials?

It’s important that your agency keeps up with today’s ever-changing technology. Find out if they are getting certified in the latest technologies. Find out if they are a Google Premier Partner or a Facebook Pro Partner if you want them to work on those channels. That would be a helpful measure of how professional they are.

If you’re looking for an agency to optimize your store then they should be a Shopify Partner, a Shopify Pro, or a BigCommerce Partner if you are using those platforms.

9. Do you offer any guarantees?

Be wary of any guarantees like “we’ll get you to #1 spot on Google”. But do ask about a possible refund process, or what they are actually guaranteeing to do for you in the course of your relationship.

10. How do you report on results?

Look at the reporting tools that they use and ask about the frequency of their reports. How often will they touch base with you to discuss the results? Will it be once a month? Once a week? A really good digital marketing company will stay on top of their reports and make sure to get you all the right information in a timely manner.

11. What other services do you offer?

This question is crucial because the agency you’re speaking to might have lots of other talents on the team. They might have an expert on search marketing, affiliate marketing, Google Shopping, or any number of eCommerce solutions that you haven’t even considered. So it’s always important to ask.

Recap

Finding the top eCommerce marketing agencies has never been easier. With Mayple you get access to over 1,500+ eCommerce experts and agencies. We match you with an agency that has experience in your industry or niche and can take you to new heights.

We also monitor and work closely with you to make sure that the process is smooth and share our combined experience of growing eCommerce brands.

Don’t settle for mediocracy. Work with the top online marketing agencies for every channel and build your brand the right way. With Mayple, you have a growth mentor on your side.

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