Top Shopify Marketing Strategies
After creating a beautiful online store in Shopify, it takes a solid marketing strategy to rank in search results, reach your target customers, and generate brand awareness and sales.
Like building a house, a brick-and-mortar business, or an empire, building a customer base for an eCommerce store takes time. However, once you identify the best Shopify marketing strategies for your niche and stick with them for several months, you should start to see some excellent results.
Shopify Marketing Strategy #1 - SEO & Content Marketing
Search engines are where most online shoppers begin when searching for a product or service. This makes having an effective search engine optimization strategy essential for driving new customers to your store. As online shoppers will usually only click on links that appear on the first search engine results page (SERP), you'll need to rank near the top if you want to be found.
The good news is that Shopify has excellent SEO features already built in. Its on-page optimization options accommodate for all the basic (but necessary) factors. It also automatically generates XML sitemaps, optimizes pages for mobile search, comes equipped with SSL security, and allows you to customize things like meta tags and ALT image attributes. But that will only get you so far.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is all about helping Google crawl and index the pages of your Shopify store so that they can be ranked in SERPs. At a minimum, this involves:
Identifying and fixing broken links
Populating your pages with relevant, keyword-optimized content
Optimizing URLs
Creating keyword-optimized meta-data and alt tags
Adding schema markup (structured data)
Building high-authority inbound links (backlinks)
While you can optimize your eCommerce website yourself, outsourcing your Shopify SEO to a provider with a proven track record is the quickest way to rank in search results. Not only do professional SEO companies have access to powerful (and expensive) keyword and data analysis tools, but they can identify and execute the most effective strategies right away for the best return on investment (ROI).
Content Marketing
Once your site is optimized, you should start producing high-quality, value-added content to educate your potential customers, build brand awareness, and create more opportunities to be found in SERPs. This is usually in the form of a blog. However, videos, how-to guides, and infographics can help you get found as well.
With content marketing, it's important to keep in mind that you're targeting potential customers at the "exploration" stage of the buying cycle. These customers are unlikely to make a purchase right away. However, because there is less competition for exploratory long-tail questions and localized terms compared to shorter, more general terms (for example “what are the benefits of hemp T-shirts?” rather than simply “hemp T-shirt”), this Shopify marketing strategy is one that you can't afford to be without.
Building Backlinks
The third part of an effective SEO strategy involves building backlinks (links on third-party websites) to your eCommerce store. Backlinks show search engines that a given page is valuable and the page is assigned more weight in search rankings. In fact, some industry experts believe that backlinks account for up to 80% of a page's weight in search rankings.
To build backlinks, find popular blogs and news sites that your target customers are likely to read and pitch guest posts with a permitted link back to a relevant page on your site. If possible, create content that's unique and highly valuable—such as a new industry survey—and pitch the content to high-authority websites such as those ending in .gov and .edu.
Shopify Marketing Strategy #2 - Social Media Marketing
Besides search engines, where else do customers look for goods and services? That's right—social media! Social media marketing has two main goals:
Direct potential customers to your eCommerce website.
Connect with your existing customers and build community.
Best Practices for Social Media Marketing
Identify which social media platform(s) your target audience uses the most.
Create and curate high-quality, highly relevant content.
Inject your personality and branding into your posts with humor to brighten your followers' day.
Post daily at the time that your target audience is most likely to be online.
Optimize your content for each platform. For example, Instagram image dimensions are different from Facebook posts.
Take advantage of user-generated content by using your company's handle in every post and rewarding users for tagging your brand.
Respond to messages, comments, and tags quickly and cheerfully. Resolve any issues or complaints in a professional manner.
In addition, make it easy for people to share your content on their own social media profiles. If you click on the “Social Media” section of the Shopify App Store, you can find social-friendly themes including social buttons and share buttons that people can easily click on. This will help you to spread the word more easily and also build backlinks without even trying.
Shopify Marketing Strategy #3 - Use Video Marketing
Video marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for boosting online sales simply because videos are so much easier to digest than text. According to statistics from Business Insights, 244.4 million Americans aged 12 and above watch digital videos, with young adults representing the highest proportion of video viewers.
Explanatory videos are the most common kind of marketing video, followed by presentation videos, sales videos, and video ads. Videos between two and five minutes in length are generally preferred by viewers, although short videos like TikTok may perform well for your marketing strategy as well. In fact, one of the most effective ways to reach your audience today is through Stories (for Instagram) and Shorts (on YouTube).
Shopify Marketing Strategy #4 - Use Podcasts
This marketing strategy is less common, but starting a podcast or appearing as a guest on a podcast in your niche can help you increase brand awareness, which in time, can boost sales. If you decide to start your own podcast, it's important to be aware that it will take time to build a following—several months to several years. Go for short podcasts (two to twenty minutes) released daily or a few times each week to keep your audience engaged.
Appearing as a guest on an existing podcast is a quicker way to become known and doesn't require a long-term commitment. Look for a podcast in your niche that already has a significant following (think thousands of listeners), and contact the host offering to be interviewed as a guest.
Since you're offering to appear as a guest, you'll need to offer something special in the way of experience and/or expertise on air. Make sure to tailor your pitch to the podcast host to increase your chances of landing an appearance.
Shopify Marketing Strategy #5 - Engage Influencers
Influencer marketing is an effective Shopify marketing strategy if you can develop the right partnerships. It usually involves providing product samples to influencers in your niche (or a related niche) and, if they like the products, they promote them directly or indirectly to their followers.
Brands that use influencer marketing find that they triple their investment, so this is a strategy worth considering for boosting your Shopify store sales. Note that you can access some of the top influencer marketing platforms — like Aspire, Afluencer, and GoAffpro — right from the Shopify App Store. These platforms can be integrated seamlessly into your Shopify store.
Shopify Marketing Strategy #6 - Affiliate Marketing
Running an affiliate program is another effective way to boost sales. With this Shopify marketing strategy, your affiliates market your products for you and earn a small commission when customers purchase a product through the affiliate's link. This strategy is essentially a win-win: you make more sales, and your affiliates earn money marketing your products.
If you decide to try this marketing strategy, make sure that you know who your affiliates are and review affiliate sales and analytics regularly to make sure an unscrupulous individual isn't taking advantage of affiliate link redirects. Having a fraud prevention program and removing unethical affiliates immediately can help to prevent or minimize losses.
Shopify Marketing Strategy #7 - PPC Ads
An oldy but a goody: Google Ads can help drive traffic to your Shopify store until you rank well enough to rely on organic traffic. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can either be text (at the top of the page) or ads with images in Google Shopping.
To find relevant keywords, use the Google AdWords tool and try each keyword in Google Trends. You can then create campaigns with a pre-specified cap (as little as $5) and continue the ads that bring in the most traffic (and ideally, the highest rate of conversions).
Shopify supports Google Smart Shopping Campaigns. By installing Google in your Shopify store, you can cross-promote products in Google Search, Lens, YouTube, Shopping, and Images simultaneously, thereby maximizing your reach. Just click on your dashboard, select “Sales Channels,” and add Google to get started.
Shopify Marketing Strategy #8 - Email Marketing
Once you've got customers onto your site, email marketing is a great way to connect and keep them coming back. According to a report from DMA, the ROI on email marketing is impressive: companies typically make $42 for every dollar they spend.
An effective email marketing strategy typically involves four kinds of emails:
Customer lifecycle email marketing. When a new customer signs up to your email list, send them an automated welcome email. If you have a special offer for email subscribers—such as a discount on their first order or a free gift—include the code or gift in this initial email.
Transactional emails. These include "thank you for your purchase" emails, invoices, receipts, and shipment confirmation emails. Automate these emails to ensure that customers always have written confirmation of their purchase.
Cart abandonment emails. Data from the Baymard Institute shows that over two-thirds of shopping carts are abandoned, essentially leaving money on the table. However, sending a cart abandonment email as a reminder to a customer to complete their purchase can recuperate almost 25% of abandoned carts.
Promotional emails and newsletters. Boost customer engagement with promotions, offers, and specials relating to products each customer has viewed or purchased in the past. Plugins are available that analyze shopper habits and help you create personalized promotional emails as well as cross-sells and upsells.
Shopify has its own native email marketing client (Shopify Email), but if you’d prefer to use your own third-party email client like Mailchimp or Klaviyo, Shopify supports these as well (just download the respective apps from the Shopify App Store).
Shopify Marketing Strategy #9 - Customer Referrals
When it comes to Shopify marketing strategies, your existing customers are your greatest resource. Data from HubSpot (2018) shows that people trust the opinions of their friends and family when it comes to making a purchase, and you can use this fact to boost your sales.
Some of the easiest ways to leverage your existing customer base include:
Referral program
Testimonials and reviews
Social media "tagging" campaigns on your Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook page
While you want your customers to refer their friends to your online store, remember to reward your loyal customers simply for coming back with a generous loyalty program, birthday offers, and excellent customer service. Existing customers generally spend more than new customers, so investing in customer satisfaction and retention should be your number one priority!
Additional Valuable Tips
Track Your KPIs
Whichever marketing strategy you try, you need to be able to measure how well that strategy is working so that you can increase your investment or try something else. For starters, you will need to add tracking tools to collect data. This will provide a baseline against which future growth can be compared. Then, you will need to choose a few key performance indicators (KPIs) to track. Common KPIs include:
Traffic
Page rank
Conversion rates
Cart abandonment rates
Average ticket size
Customer acquisition cost
Customer lifetime value
Over time, your tracking cookies will show you which channels are bringing people to your Shopify store and, more importantly, which channels are bringing traffic that converts. With that information in hand, you can increase your investment in the digital marketing channels that bring the best conversion rate and stop wasting money on strategies that aren't effective.
Build on Your Strengths
The secret to effective digital marketing is to build on your strengths. In school, you will usually have been told that it’s important to work on your weakest subjects to avoid any failing grades. However, with marketing, it's the exact opposite—boost the products, marketing channels, and campaigns that are already working and drop the ones that aren't. For example:
On social media, boost posts that already have the highest engagement.
In Google Ads, spend more money on your best-performing campaigns.
On your website, write optimized copy for the products and categories that already sell well first.
If a marketing strategy isn't working after two or three months, drop it.
If a particular campaign is causing explosive growth, prepare to go all-out with that campaign (think video ads and billboards!) and ride the wave.
Customer Satisfaction Is King
At the end of the day, these Shopify marketing strategies exist to bring people to your store. It's up to you to keep them coming back! Make your marketing efforts count by looking after your customers:
Ensure a consistently excellent product.
Ship products quickly and carefully (the right product to the right customer at the right address).
Answer customer queries quickly and cheerfully.
Have a clear refund and returns policy.
Issue qualifying refunds promptly.
Correct any mistakes immediately.
Protect customer data with secure encryption and fraud protection.
Continue to produce high-quality content and stay in touch via social media and email marketing (with the customer's permission).
Effective Strategies Are Your Ticket to Growth
Shopify store marketing takes money. It takes time. It takes work. However, the right marketing strategy, executed well, can lead to significantly more sales in the short and long term.
Whichever strategies you use, make sure to establish your baselines and track your KPIs. This information will help you to focus on the strategies that maximize your ROI.
