- Video ad campaigns should be entirely customized to the audience and the stage of the buyer journey being targeted.
- High-quality data is crucial to effective ad performance and good ROI.
- Running initial A/B tests on your ads can give you powerful insights into scaling your ecommerce spending.
Ecommerce continues to grow exponentially. However, if the crowded marketplace makes you want to try unconventional marketing techniques to put your brand on the map, reconsider.
With ecommerce, you’re better off with tried-and-tested methods that have worked for millions before you. Video advertising is probably your best bet to scale your ecommerce business to new audiences and markets.
Customers have a growing desire to see more video content from ecommerce brands and are far more likely to make a purchase if they find that video compelling.
Here’s all you need to know about scaling your ecommerce brand with video ads.
1. Outline Objectives
Step one is to have a plan. What are your goals? Which audiences are you targeting? If your ecommerce business is a scale-up and you’re looking to sell to audiences throughout the buyer journey, you’ll need a full-funnel video advertising strategy.
- Top-of-the-Funnel: You’re aiming to introduce your brand to entirely new audiences. Think brand and introductory videos.
- Middle-of-the-Funnel: Consumers are now considering your brand. Your videos should promote your product’s USPs and comparative benefits.
- Bottom-of-the-Funnel: Your customers are on the cusp of a purchase. Consider adding an incentive or showcasing positive feedback from other buyers.
- Post-Purchase: Once you’ve netted a buyer, you’ll want to retain them. Videos that help upsell or cross-sell new products are a good idea.
2. Customize to the Platform
A big part of garnering views and engagement is ensuring your video ads are native to each platform. You’ll want to scale the video ad strategy for your ecommerce business to all platforms that are relevant for you.
YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all have dedicated audiences, and while there is overlap, viewer behavior isn’t necessarily the same across networks.
Other places you can run video ads include Connected TV (CTV) platforms. These lend the prestige of traditional TV, but allow the targeting and performance of digital marketing.
3. Explore Different Video Types
There are a number of different video ad types you might choose to help in scaling your ecommerce business. Here are some basic options for you:
- Brand Videos: These introduce your brand to new audiences, giving a little background and showcasing some of your products.
- Product Spotlight Videos: These are used to introduce a new product to the market. You’ll want to highlight your product’s USPs and perhaps introduce comparisons with the rest of the market.
- Product Demos: To demonstrate how your product works. These are a useful addition to your product’s ecommerce page.
- Testimonial Videos: To showcase positive feedback from other buyers and provide independent validation.
4. Budgeting
Budgeting strategy for your video ads is crucial to effectively scaling your ecommerce business.
- Production: Producing a single video ad can cost you anywhere from $1,000-$5,000 or above, depending on the type of ad. You’ll want at least 3-5 variants or types of videos, and that multiplies your production budget.
One way to reduce your spend is to use AI video production. AI generators, such as Veo 3.1, Sora 2, and DeepSeek, can help speed up the production process and, in some cases, even create publish-ready video ads for your campaign.
- Ad Placement: This tends to depend entirely on your goals and your overall budget availability. A good rule of thumb is to spend maybe 15-20% initially on your ad variants. Monitor performance for each of the variants and back your winners.
If you’re an ecommerce business with $2M+ revenue, you’ll want to spend at least $5,000-$15,000 on your video advertising campaign to scale online reach.
5. Track Performance
Make sure you’re effectively tracking performance for your video ads. Your most important tracking tools include the platforms where you’re running your ads. Google Ads, Meta, and TikTok all have comprehensive analytics tools that give you access to a range of metrics to gauge performance.
Google Analytics is essential to helping you track the customer journey on your website. Ensure you have ad pixels and UTMs embedded in your site code to enable all these tools to gather and report the data you need.
6. Run Matrix Tests
Trials runs are crucial to helping you scale the video advertising strategy for your ecommerce business. Use A/B testing to see which aspects of your messaging your audience responds to better.
Over the course of the campaign, you may also choose to test out different ad types, such as brand-led videos, user-generated content, and more. Document your learnings to create a winning formula. Then rinse and repeat.
7. Look for Growth Hacks
If you’re an ecommerce business, it’s a good idea to look for ways you can scale growth throughout your video advertising campaign.
- High-quality Datasets: Good data is the crux of any digital ad campaign. Look for ways you can improve your access to quality data. At Chamber Media, for instance, our proprietary AI tool — The Brain — deploys learnings from tens of thousands of the best-performing Shopify ads to recommend high-performing content options.
In the absence of any proprietary datasets, you could consider exploring the plethora of behavioral analytics tools on offer that give you deeper insights into customer behavior on your website.
Supplement this with your own primary research (via audience surveys and focus groups, for example) to better identify customer pain points and motivations.
- Recycle Video Assets: Your videos are good for more than just running ads. You can repurpose them as on-site videos to improve engagement and SEO for your website. Consider recycling some of your ad stills as static posts on your social platforms to reinforce messaging.
8. Beware of Pitfalls
Try to avoid common pitfalls as you scale video advertising for your ecommerce business.
- Incoherent Messaging: Too many messages or messages inappropriate to the stage of the buyer journey you’re targeting can mean wasted ad spends.
- Trusting Instinct Over Data: Employ good analytics to capture performance metrics and then follow the data to make improvements. Trusting the numbers of your gut feel will allow you to eventually hit a winning strategy.
- Front-Loading Your Ad Spend: If you’re just starting out with video advertising for a new ecommerce product or business, it’s a good idea to gradually scale your spend. Run some variant testing to see which messages and ads work better, and then prioritize spending on those.
- Not Optimizing for Mobile: The majority of your audience will look for you on mobile devices. Ensure your ads, landing pages, and all on-site pages are adapted to that medium.
Cut Out the Guesswork. Partner With Proven Growth Experts
Scaling your ecommerce business with video advertising can be nuanced and sometimes frustrating. Consider partnering with Chamber Media. We’ve run over 300,000 video ads and generated over $1BN in revenue for our clients. We work with unique AI-powered insights to boost ad performance all throughout. Reach out to us today for help in growing your ecommerce brand.