When it comes to eCommerce marketing, there are various ways to put your online business in front of audiences. Not all Shopify stores sit with the same tactics. However, they indeed fall under one digital marketing umbrella that covers social media, email marketing, SEO, and ads.
Managing to entice customers in these arenas is how to promote Shopify store effectively in 2023. Learn how to achieve it with this blog!
| đź’ˇ Recommended reading: |
Why Should You Promote Your Shopify Store?
Of course, it’s to gain more sales and build a brand. You might have understood this strong urge to market your online business.
Yet, we’d love to remind you about the importance of doing it seriously, which means you HAVE TO find out how to promote Shopify store strategically and consistently.
Here’s why:
- Customers don’t always naturally come to find you. Even if they do, are you fancy enough to have them buy from you?
- You can be unique, but you’re not alone. Hundreds of competitors are ready to eat all parts of the cake.
- The digital world is ever-changing at an intensely fast pace. People can be excited about one figure, but that’s also quickly swept away by new ones the next day.
- Online presence includes dealing with algorithms to survive and be seen. If you don’t know how to use them, you’ll get unprioritized by the platform.
- Customers are humans anyway, and it’s natural for them to compare things often. As you promote your business, you’ll have the chance to put a step ahead of your competition.
- You want to prosper in the long run. Proper promotions can bring you re-purchases and passionate advocates for free.
- Introducing yourself to the public is the only way to inform people about your identity. If you overlook marketing your store, you will never reach customers as a genuine brand.
- Online marketing is beyond knocking on each door just to get sales and then leave. With outbound and inbound marketing, you’ll learn to pull massive customers at once and turn them into loyal shoppers.
In the following section, we’ll give you a guide on how to promote the Shopify store!
4 Tried-and-True Ways On How to Promote Shopify Store
Below are four digital tools to put yourself in front of online audiences. Each comes with different strategies and tactics to help you succeed.
Let’s dig into them!
1. How to promote Shopify store using social media
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube have millions of worldwide users, providing a massive resource of audiences to reach.
Here are some fundamental steps on how to promote Shopify store using social media channels:
Before starting a campaign
Analyze the demographics of your potential customers to see which platform they might be active on most. Then, create your brand profiles on those socials to show up and approach them.
For example, a beauty brand for teenagers should consider being present on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. These platforms have the best networks for the brand’s target audience—Gen Z.
Once you’ve opened accounts and profiles on essential socials, it’s time to publish fascinating content. But you’ll need a strategic plan.
To build a content plan for social media, you should first figure out your content pillars. Content pillars are a set of topics you create posts around. They help navigate your content ideas and sort them into each category so you can easily follow and measure content performance.
For instance, a fashion brand can consider content pillars such as product education, brand storytelling, inspiration, behind-the-scenes, and customer stories.
âť“ Before crafting your content, answer these questions:
By answering the questions above, you can make your content relevant to the target audience. And hopefully, you’re sharp enough to look at their hidden insights to hook them more quickly. |
Next, to promote your Shopify store in the most comprehensive ways, here are four social media tactics to boost engagement and sales:
- Original posts
- User-generated content (UGC)
- Short videos
- Influencer marketing
1.1. Original content
If you want to build brand awareness, generate leads, drive traffic to your website, and connect with your audience, then original content is a must.
An example for publishing original posts from Gymshark – a successful brand on Shopify
Here are some of the best practices for promoting Shopify store with original content:
When you post original content, you create a library of valuable information your target audience can access. This helps establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Those considering you a trustworthy brand would want to engage and purchase from you.
You can then collect contact information from these leads to follow up with them. Plus, use social media links to drive traffic to your website. This can help you increase sales and grow your Shopify business.
Remember to post new content regularly so your audience knows what to expect. Use visuals, humor, and other techniques (polls, puzzles, live streaming) to keep your audience engaged. Plus, respond to comments and questions from your audience—everyone loves to be heard and seen on social media these days.
| 💡 If you’re looking for some inspiration, check out the Top 15 Social Media Content Ideas You Should Know! |
1.2. User-generated content (UGC)
People are skeptical—that’s when UGC jumps in!
UGC is created by real people who have used your products. So, it’s seen as more authentic and trustworthy than traditional marketing materials.
When people share their experiences on their social media channels, it creates an impactful word-of-mouth effect. At such a personal level, people are much more likely to get hooked and interested in your brand.
Here are some of the best practices for promoting Shopify store with UGC:
To get UGC, ask your customers to share their photos and videos of your products. You can do this by adding a call to action to your social media posts or by running a contest or giveaway. Then, be selective on every piece of UGC!
When you share it, whether on an ordinary post, story, or short video, give credit to the original creator. This will show your appreciation for their contribution and encourage them to share more UGC in the future.
1.3. Short videos
Short videos are super trending now! People have been scrolling through clips with lengths of just seconds since TikTok went viral. Today, you have Reels with Facebook and Instagram; meanwhile, with YouTube, you have YouTube Shorts.
Merchants can take Shopify as a great reference for creating engaging short videos
Here are some of the best practices for promoting Shopify store with short videos:
Experts say videos are more engaging than written text. And with short videos, your video content is distributed to those of interest. You can say they work the same way as paid ads, but it’s free and based entirely on algorithms to get delivered.
When using this short video feature, remember that it’s preferably for entertainment and education. That’s why you should tell stories rather than shout out about what you’re selling.
Also, keep your videos short and sweet (no longer than 2 minutes), as short-video watchers have short attention spans and are usually not patient enough to process the first rambling seconds.
1.4. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a higher-graded level of UGC, in which you pay individuals with high influence for promoting your brand or products/services on their own channels.
It’s all about finding social influencers with significant followers that match your target audience, offering them to recommend your products in their content, and re-posting it yourself to create more momentum.
âť— Notes:
- Influencer marketing can be expensive, so setting a budget before you start is vital. You don’t want to overspend on influencers who do not fit your brand well.
- When you are looking at influencers, pay attention to their engagement rate. A high engagement rate means the influencer’s followers are interested in what they say.
- Make sure the influencer is authentic and trustworthy. He or she should be free of scandals and not only promote you for money.
| đź’ˇ For platform-specific marketing practices, consider these articles: |
2. How to promote the Shopify store using email marketing
Email marketing is the most direct way to earn purchases from people already on your potential customer list. 89% of marketers use email as the main route for generating leads and closing deals.
2.1. Collect email addresses
One of the key steps in growing your online business is to collect your customer’s email address during the checkout stage.
Why is this important? Because email marketing is one of the most effective ways to engage and retain your customers, increase your sales, and build your brand loyalty. According to Forbes, email has an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent!
How can you persuade your customers to give you their email address? One of the best methods is to create a squeeze page on your store website. A squeeze page collects people’s contact information in exchange for attractive offerings such as coupons, discounts, free ebooks, etc.
An example for a squeeze page by GQ
For example, with your store selling kitchen gadgets, you have created a landing page for giving away food recipes. To receive the recipes for free, visitors must sign up to your store, through which they give you their names and email addresses.
| đź’ˇ Learn how to edit your Shopify checkout page in this article. |
2.2. Set up email marketing campaigns
When someone signs up for your email list, send them a welcome email introducing your brand and what you offer. This is an excellent opportunity to make a good first impression.
Once you’ve built an impressive list of potential customers, plan to send regular newsletters and sales emails to update them about your business. To increase the open rate, personalize each email to the recipient as much as possible and make punchy headlines.
In fact, there are various ways to promote your Shopify store with email marketing. One of the popular ways is retargeting customers who abandoned their online shopping carts.
| đź’¬ Case study:
Take Argos’ success with its email campaign for instance. Argo is a UK-based online store selling toys and home furnishings. They solved the abandoned cart issue by sending personalized follow-up messages in their inbox to alert customers about their incomplete shopping.
Additionally, such a follow-up email contains up to six alternative items the customer might like—based on what’s left in the abandoned cart. To do this, Argo collected the customer’s browsing data and email engagement in a legal way. |
In a nutshell, email marketing is an effective way to break the ice and remind customers to buy. To bring your brand to their attention, consider these email campaigns:
- Welcome email series
- Product launch email
- Re-engagement email
- Abandoned cart email
- Referral email
- Newsletter
3. How to promote Shopify store using SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a method to push your web rank to the top positions on search engine result pages (SERPs) with organic traffic.
The point is to take your presence right in front of those searching for your products or any solution you can provide.
To perform a good Shopify SEO, technically, you must focus on your web content, page speed, linking structure, and domain authority score.
3.1 Web content
To reach SEO goals with content, you need a selection of SEO keywords to target. These keywords must align with your industry and what you sell. Start picking keywords by answering the question—What are the customer’s problems your business can solve?
If you’re new to SEO, dig into their pain points to create a list of long-tail keywords—which are easy to rank. Use paid tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to find keywords more easily and quickly. You can also use them to analyze your competition to find out what keywords they’re ranking for so you can beat them up.
Once you’ve created a set of critical keywords, craft your content accordingly. Creating a blog page right on your store site is the best way when there are lots of keywords to rank for. Your blog is a space where your web visitors learn more about your products, brand stories, and solutions to their problems.
To optimize your web content for SEO, there are some other techniques to follow besides excellent writing. These techniques include:
- SEO meta description
- Title tag
- Heading structure (H1, H2, H3,..)
- Internal linking
- Keyword distribution
What’s more, according to Google’s Helpful Content, high-ranked pages should be informative, relevant, insightful, and written by experts.
Page URLs are also a key ranking factor in SEO. Before publishing your content, ensure the URL contains the primary keyword and doesn’t have too many characters.
Lastly, Google prioritizes fresh content, so ensure you have yours updated and SEO-optimized whenever possible. You should also look at whether search engine bots index your pages. Well-written pages have zero SEO values if Google doesn’t index them.
3.2 Page speed
Google finds websites with poor loading speeds a challenge for users. That’s why you must optimize your web page speed as well. There are many ways to maximize your Shopify site speed. Here are a few tips:
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN):
A CDN is a network of servers that allows people to access your website’s content from the server that is most conveniently located for them. By doing this, you can increase how quickly users worldwide can load your website.
- Minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript:
Minifying your code removes unnecessary whitespace and comments, making your code smaller and faster to load.
- Optimize your images:
There are many practices to optimize your images. One of the easiest ways is by reducing their file size without sacrificing quality. You can do this by using a tool like TinyPNG or ImageOptim.
- Lazy load your images:
Lazy loading images means that they’re not loaded until they are actually visible on the screen. This can help to improve your website’s loading speed for users with slower internet connections.
- Use a caching plugin:
A caching plugin can help to improve your website’s loading speed by storing static content, such as images and JavaScript files, in the user’s browser.
- Use an eCommerce SEO tool:
Several tools can help you test your website’s speed and optimize it automatically. A highly recommended option for this is Swift, a tool that provides your Shopify site’s SEO health checkup and page speed optimization.
What makes Swift a viable choice for your store lies in the app’s comprehensive capabilities to carry out all SEO techniques within a few clicks, including preload, minify files, lazy load, image compression, JS & more!
It also offers features such as in-depth SEO audits in just minutes, submitting your sitemap to Google, AI integration, and bulk image compression without manually importing and exporting.
💡 Consider our top list of 12+ Best Free SEO Apps for Shopify Businesses to Rank Up to find the best fit for your store.
3.3 Linking structure
Internal links help Google understand the structure of your website and how the pages are related to each other. They also help users navigate your website and find information.
A great tip from Ahrefs to build your linking structure
To have a well-developed linking structure, use relevant keywords in your anchor text while linking to important pages. Plus, avoid using too many internal links on a single page. Too many internal links can make your website look spammy and hurt your SEO.
Sometimes, consider linking to other trustworthy websites to make yourself reliable. This is especially essential when you have to back up your content with external evidence such as academic research or case studies.
3.4 Authority score
Your domain authority means a lot in SEO. It shows search engines that the site has a strong credibility and is of expertise in its field. To gain a high domain authority score, you need high-quality backlinks.
Backlinks indicate the linking from other sites to yours; your website URL is put on another site. They’re considered as votes to prove that your site is trustworthy.
You can gain more backlinks by creating high-quality, fresh content that other sites want to link to. Or, write guest posts for other sites to point some backlinks into your home actively.
Bear in mind that backlinks can be a double-edged sword. If a lousy site sends spammy backlinks to your site, Google could think yours is spammy, too. This leads to many consequences, such as non-indexed pages and ranking loss.
| ❗There are no definite limits to the number of internal links. However, we suggest keeping the number of internal links to under 10 for every 2,000-3000 words of content to avoid overstuffing. |
So, that’s how to promote the Shopify store with SEO, which can take months to observe results. Yet, it yields long-term success. At the end of the day, that’s what you must desire as a business owner.
4. How to promote Shopify store using advertising
Unlike SEO, paid ads are more about reaching your target audience in the short term, as long as you set the proper budget for them. And whether it’s Google or a social platform, you can run your ads.
Here are our little tips on how to promote Shopify store with online ads:
- Set clear goals: What do you want to achieve with your paid ads? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or generate leads? Once you know your goals, you can tailor your campaigns accordingly and make it easier to measure the ad performance.
- Target your audience: Who are you trying to reach with your paid ads? Look at your customer’s demographics. Make sure to target your ads to the right people so that you’re not wasting your money.
- Use relevant keywords: When creating your ad campaigns, use relevant keywords your target audience will likely search for. This will help your ads show up when people search for the products or services you offer.
- Create compelling ad copy: Your ad copy should be clear, concise, and persuasive. It should tell people what you’re offering and why they should click on your ad. Remember that knowing your audience’s pain point is key!
- Google Shopping Ads: You can’t miss this ad feature with Google as a Shopify store. When someone searches for a product you sell, your ad may appear at the top of the SERPs, along with the product title, price, and image.
- Track your results: It’s essential to track your results to see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you optimize your campaigns and get the most out of your investment. If the ad has performed well, keep it active so your brand reaches as many people as possible.
Conclusion
Promoting your Shopify store is just like doing the marketing job for any online business today. It’s all about widening your online presence to wherever your target audience is.
For new stores, consider putting your brand name on the social media map first, then create ads to entice visitors quickly. Once you’ve got a substantial customer base already, think about doing more email marketing and SEO.
We hope you love this article on how to promote the Shopify store. If you’re interested in this topic, please check out our OneComerce Blog where we provide helpful guides and news in eCommerce. Thank you!