Starting your Shopify store is the easy part, the real challenge comes when it’s time to attract people to your site. You need to keep in mind that not all traffic is good traffic — this means focusing your efforts on attracting visitors who find value in your products. That way, you stand a chance of converting them into paying customers.
The most effective way to do this is by creating a comprehensive, multi-approach marketing strategy that attracts your target audience through a diverse variety of promotional channels such as paid advertising, blog content, email marketing, and social media. If you find yourself asking “How do I promote my Shopify store?”, then keep reading as we present some of the most tried and tested marketing strategies for promoting products in the age of eCommerce!
1. Run Pay-per-click Ad Campaigns
If you have the budget, even a small one, you can always rely on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through social media (like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest) or search engines (like Google Ads and Bing Ads) to immediately give your brand more visibility.
Social Media Advertising
With social media ads, you will need to identify your target audience’s demographics, preferences, and interests to ensure you’re serving ads to the right people. For instance, one of the best places to target younger audiences is through Instagram, while career professionals can best be targeted through LinkedIn or Facebook. There are many free resources available across the internet for learning social media advertising best practices, so take time to educate yourself before running your first ad campaign.
Learn More: A Step-by-step Guide to Running Your First Facebook Ads Campaign in Shopify
Search Engine Advertising
Search engine advertising, such as Google Ads, can be effective when you have a large enough monthly budget. Unlike social media, which is built specifically to serve ads to niche audiences by targeting their interests and demographics, search engine ads can also target audiences based on what they type into the search engine and display banner ads within websites.
The learning curve for Google Ads can be daunting, so it’s important to thoroughly educate yourself through free online resources, digital courses, or hiring a PPC consultant. If you don’t take this first step, you will likely run through your first month’s budget in as little as 24 hours. Make sure to take advantage of Google Ads offer for free credit to Shopify users when you sign up through Google channel.
If your budget is restricted, we recommend trying social media ads first because they are typically easier to set up and can be highly targeted. Once you get the hang of running paid ads on social media, you can begin to dip your toes into search engine ads by initially focusing on targeting keywords. When it comes to paid advertising, research, diligence, testing, monitoring, and optimization are the keys to your success.
2. Run YouTube Video Ads
Video streaming makes up over 60 percent of global traffic according to Sandvine, which means that video ads are becoming increasingly important for a well-rounded promotional strategy. Today, video ads can be created at affordable rates without costing too much to run as long as you aren’t targeting highly subscribed channels. In addition to eCommerce, these ads can be used for brand awareness, lead generation, and educational tools.
If you have little-to-no experience with producing video ads, it’s best to outsource production to a reliable freelancer who can ensure that your ads are clear, concise, and have immediate impact without confusing the viewer. You only have a few seconds to impress before your audience skips through to get to the YouTube video, so you need to ensure that you make the most of your money.
3. Increase Focus on Content Marketing
Many eCommerce retailers don’t think that having a blog is useful, and they couldn’t be more wrong. With each blog article, you build one more potential doorway to your products that visitors can find through Google’s search results. Furthermore, people who are interested in your products look for brands that have credibility and authenticity in their industry, and that’s exactly what you can establish through a well-crafted blog. By publishing high-quality, insightful articles, you can deliver value and reveal information that your target audience isn’t able to find anywhere else, including your competitors’ websites.
For a content marketing strategy to be successful, you need to set aside time to research the interests of your target audience, discover what their pain points are, and provide answers to their questions and concerns without trying to always sell them something. To have lasting success with the content you create:
- Be sure to consider whether or not the article will still be useful a year or more down the road.
- Continue to look at traffic performance and sales trends using free tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, as well as paid tools like heatmaps and keyword rank trackers.
- Revisit published content every few months to see if you can make it even better.
Learn More: How to Set Up Google Analytics for Shopify
What you include in your content depends on your target audience. Infographics, charts, and other types of interactive visuals can make your blog more aesthetically pleasing, as can high-quality images and video. Whatever you do, try to make it original and present your expertise within your industry. If required, hire freelance designers and experienced ghost writers to scale your content engine. Don’t forget to promote your articles and opinion pieces through your social media accounts to increase their reach beyond organic traffic.
Content is a Long-term Investment
The main downside to content marketing is that it typically takes three to six months or longer for blog articles to begin to rank well in search engines. It’s important to understand that content building is a long-term investment; you’re planting the seed and must have the patience for it to grow. If after six months you find that the content still isn’t bringing in traffic, then it’s important to troubleshoot possible reasons and make appropriate changes.
One common reason that you may struggle with traffic is if you’re competing with many other sites on the same topic. The first strategy to overcoming this issue is to focus on topics that your audience is interested in but your competitors are not writing about. Paid digital marketing tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush can help you with identifying these opportunities. Another strategy (and a more costly one) is to create even better content then what your competitors provide: better answers, better writing, better images, better videos, etc.
4. Piggyback on the Built-in Trust of Influencers
In every industry, there are a few high-profile individuals whom people trust and love to follow. By identifying influencers and opinion leaders in your industry, you can reach out to them with a strategy and see what they can do for you within your budget. Remember that the amount of followers an influencer has is not as important as how well those followers match your target audience.
It’s important to not just jump on the influencer bandwagon without due diligence. Educate yourself on what makes influencer marketing effective and what the industry rates are before contacting any influencers, and be sure to request that they provide account data or other proof that backs up any claims they might make about their social media accounts.
Also, it’s important to have an itemized contract in writing on what services will be provided as it’s possible for an influencer to renege or provide promotions that are not what was agreed upon during the negotiation period. With that being said, you’re asking the influencer to promote your brand and products to their loyal audience, so keep your demands and requirements within reason. They know what types of promotions make their followers react positively.
5. Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is similar to influencer marketing but on a micro scale. You can incentivize your current customers to refer their friends and family, which should increase new visitor engagement. Typically, the incentive comes in the form of discounts, free product samples, or promotional giveaways that are provided to both the current customer and whomever they refer.
Referral marketing can be quite effective since current customers already know your brand and are most likely to consider only those within their circle who would also be interested in your products. This way you can get high-quality traffic from new customers who may not have considered your brand before, and you build a positive brand image with current customers by rewarding them for sharing your promotion with others.
6. Develop an Email Marketing Strategy
Targeting existing customers in your promotional strategy is usually more cost effective than acquiring new customers. As your business grows, so will your customer email list.
Once you have created a database of a few hundred customers, you can start sending them newsletters, promotional emails, and marketing content to warm them up to the idea of buying from you again. Always ensure that you’re tracking the results of your email campaigns so those who click on your ads and promotions can be retargeted again in the future. This way you will have an entire sales funnel at your disposal to mature a former customer into a loyal returning customer.
Building an Email List from Scratch
Email marketing is not limited to your current customer list. It’s possible to collect email addresses using pop-up discount offers or content like eBooks and newsletters tailored to your audience’s interests or needs. Most visitors are willing to give up an email address if they think that they are getting something of equal value in return.
An important factor that is often overlooked when requesting a visitor’s email is the timing of when they see the pop-up offer. While many eCommerce stores have the pop-up show within seconds of entering the site, your visitors may actually find the unexpected pop-up intrusive to their shopping experience — why would they give you their email address when they don’t even know what your brand offers? It’s important to test how the timing of the pop-up affects performance, so try moving the pop-up to different parts of the sales funnel, such as just before the visitor exits your website without having made a purchase or once the visitor clicks on a category or product page.
7. Partner with Other eCommerce Stores
Not every eCommerce store is your competitor. There are many stores that operate in the same industry as you but sell a complimentary product or service that doesn’t directly compete with what you offer. Identify those stores and reach out to them to see if they are willing to collaborate with you. It’s important that you’re able to ensure that you have a similar target audience so the partnership can be mutually beneficial.
These types of relationships not only give you the opportunity to strike a cross-promotion deal and bring in visitors to your website who would not normally find your brand, but also increase your network within the industry that may result in unexpected opportunities in the future. Since you’re not in direct competition, the partnership adds value in terms of reach and engagement for both stores. You can use social media accounts, website banners, email newsletters, and other promotional channels to cross-promote and make the most of a unique partnership.
Make Your Promotional Strategy Focused
While you may stretch yourself and your budget too thin by trying every promotional method above, you should definitely diversify your marketing strategy as the changing habits of your audience as well as ever-growing competition requires continual innovation.
And no matter what you do, make sure that you’re investing in brand awareness and building a loyal customer base along with running a productive content marketing engine that establishes your credibility in the industry. This way you can lay down a strong foundation that provides your Shopify store with sustainable growth for years to come.
