Love B2B eCommerce
This guide is part of our Love B2B eCommerce hub - you can find more articles like this one, case studies, and in-depth videos to support your wholesale growth right here! Schedule a personalised, 1:1 consultation with our expert team, and we’ll guide you through every step of your wholesale journey!
When it comes to building a B2B marketing strategy, many businesses launch straight in with a budget, lots of ideas, and a catch-all approach.
They invest in paid ads, send out emails, and create batches of resources - but don’t see meaningful results. That’s often because their marketing activity isn’t actually aligned with how B2B buyers behave.
Rather than choosing channels, it’s important to start off by asking where your prospective and ideal buyers spend time online and what they’re trying to do there. Only then can a marketing strategy truly become successful.
Once you’ve answered that, digital marketing becomes far more focused and effective. At SparkLayer, we work with thousands of B2B manufacturers and wholesalers selling online. The brands seeing the most success are rarely the ones doing the most. They’re the ones using digital marketing deliberately and using messaging that fits the context buyers are in.
What does digital marketing mean within B2B eCommerce?
B2B marketing is essentially how one business sells to another, but digital marketing has changed where and how that happens. Buyers no longer rely on sales conversations alone. They research independently, comparing suppliers online, often making decisions without any human touchpoints.
Digital marketing for B2B eCommerce should support that behaviour. It should help buyers discover new suppliers and understand products and services while building confidence over time. Ultimately, wholesale digital marketing should focus on trust and long-term relationships, which is where the real value of B2B eCommerce sits.
Before choosing the acquisition channels to target, you need to understand buyer behaviour and intent. Some buyers are actively looking for a supplier right now. Others are gathering information for a future decision. Some are existing customers who just need a reminder to reorder. A clear B2B digital marketing strategy for eCommerce recognises these differences and uses channels accordingly.
What marketing channels should I use for my B2B eCommerce site?
Let’s explore six of the key channels to focus on for your B2B eCommerce digital marketing strategy.
1. Google
For many B2B buyers, Google is the starting point.
When someone searches for a product or supplier, they’re often actively looking for options to solve the pain points they’re already aware of. This makes search, typically using Google, one of the most important channels in digital marketing for B2B eCommerce.
Paid search works best when it focuses on clear intent. Keywords around product categories, industries, use cases, or ordering needs tend to perform better than broad, generic terms. Buyers want to know quickly whether you sell what they need, whether ordering is straightforward, and whether you’re a reliable supplier.
2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is often the most useful paid marketing channel for B2B eCommerce, particularly when targeting specific job roles or industries. It’s not typically where buyers go to place orders, but it is where many spend time professionally, which makes it valuable for awareness and consideration.
In a B2B eCommerce marketing strategy, LinkedIn works best when messaging is tailored to job roles. We often see brands invest heavily in LinkedIn before addressing personalised pain points - and that almost always limits ROI.
Procurement teams tend to respond to consistency, pricing clarity, and reliability. Operations-focused buyers care about availability and delivery as well as ease of reordering. Senior stakeholders want reassurance around scalability and long-term fit, making social proof a huge lever.
Because LinkedIn is more about visibility than immediate action, success here should be measured differently. The aim is familiarity and credibility, so that when buyers are ready to act, your brand already feels known.
3. Paid social and retargeting
Other paid social platforms can still play a role, but usually as part of a supporting strategy rather than a primary driver of new customer acquisition. These channels are often better suited to retargeting than cold outreach.
Retargeting is particularly effective in B2B eCommerce because buying journeys are rarely linear. Buyers may visit your site, leave, return weeks later, and then compare again. Seeing consistent messaging during that time helps reinforce trust.
Retargeting ads should focus on reassurance rather than urgency. Messaging that highlights ease of ordering and repeat purchasing options tends to resonate more than discounts or limited-time offers.
4. Email
Email remains one of the most effective tools in any B2B digital marketing strategy for eCommerce. It’s where relationships are built over time and where many first (and repeat) orders are encouraged.
Email works best when it’s closely tied to behaviour. This is why segmentation and personalisation are so important within B2B marketing. You want to target the right role with the right information - and at the right time.
Marketing doesn’t stop once you have a new customer signed up. Onboarding emails help new customers understand how to order. Product-led emails remind buyers of relevant items based on past purchases. Reorder reminders reduce friction for repeat customers.
Rather than thinking of email as a campaign channel, it’s more helpful to see it as infrastructure. Good B2B eCommerce email marketing supports customers quietly and consistently, without getting in the way.
5. Content
Content plays an important role in digital marketing for B2B eCommerce. Our merchants have learnt that it needs to stay focused on practicalities rather than thought leadership content for the sake of content. Buyers are usually looking for answers to questions or want reassurance about the service the supplier is able to offer.
Content that explains product use cases and ordering processes genuinely helps buyers during research. It also supports SEO and paid campaigns by providing useful destinations for traffic, like B2B application landing pages. The most effective content is often the simplest. Clear explanations, examples, and social proof tend to perform best.
6. Your website
For a marketing strategy to drive true customer acquisition, every digital channel should be pointing back to your website. If the on-site experience doesn’t meet expectations, even the best B2B eCommerce marketing strategy will struggle.
Buyers need to find products easily, understand pricing, and feel confident about ordering. Features like saved baskets, clear account pricing, and simple reordering matter far more than visual appeal or dynamic scrolling.
Digital marketing should support this experience by sending the right traffic to the right pages. Driving more visitors to your website only works if those visitors can quickly see why buying from you makes sense. Again, this is why a cohesive experience across all digital channels is essential to building trust.
Building your B2B marketing strategy
A successful B2B digital marketing strategy for eCommerce isn’t about doing everything. It’s about choosing channels based on buyer behaviour and using each one for what it does best.
When digital marketing works in this way, B2B eCommerce marketing becomes a real driver of long-term growth, not just short-term activity.
For more practical guidance on building a B2B eCommerce digital marketing strategy, explore our Love B2B eCommerce hub. If you’d like to see how this approach works in practice, you can also book a demo to talk through your own digital strategy with our team.