Shopify Marketing: Why You Need a Strategy and How

Starting an online business using the Shopify e-commerce platform is one of the most popular ventures that several business-minded people engage in. The profitability of online shops has increased especially during the onset of Covid-19 when strict “stay at home” policies were enforced and consumers became more dependent on such businesses.

The number of online shops being created has tripled in 2020 and as the disease’s resurgence increased, consumer’s had no choice but to make even more purchases online rather than being exposed by going back to their usual shopping routine. Stringent government restrictions made online shopping a habit and even as Covid-19 waters down this year 2022, online shops are still seen to stay as a feasible business.

The Benefits of Marketing

Due to the increase in the number of online shops over the past 3 years, making sure that yours stay relevant and maintains a good stream of customers flowing to it is a big challenge. The competition is simply high that making it to the top means being ahead of the others in terms of marketing strategies and sometimes, even advertising expenditure.

That is the sad reality about e-commerce businesses; you simply won’t make it if you don’t give it your best effort. Marketing is one of the most important tools in ensuring that your shop stays relevant and has enough exposure for it to attract customers and ensure that it turns in some profit. The moment you get too slack with marketing is the time you’re digging up your business’s grave.

Whether you’re already running a successful online business or you’re still planning to create one, here are some of the benefits that marketing can offer:

1. It Helps Build Up Online Presence

Choosing to run your business on Shopify means that your main target are people who have presence over the web. They are those who know the way through the Internet and have experience ordering from online shops and other businesses including e-commerce giants like Amazon and Ebay. Reaching to these people means making use of online marketing strategies and creating copies that would appeal to their needs and preferences.

There are several online marketing strategies that are available. Some run ad campaigns on social media while others choose to go for Google ads. Other strategies include affiliate marketing and creating ambassador programs. You can use any one of these methods or even employ a combination of two or more but no matter which technique you choose, it’s accomplishes the crucial goal of building up your business’s online presence.

2. It Attracts New Customers

A well-executed online marketing strategy is one that is able to bring in a good number of customers. But you need to remember that not all people who make it to your website from any one of your ads will make that decision to purchase. That is why being consistent and engaging with them again and again is important.

Bringing in leads should not be the only purpose why you do marketing; it’s creating and securing conversions that matter so be sure to create copies and ads that will not only serve as click baits but those that can turn into a successful sale and add to your business’s overall profit.

3. It Informs Potential Customers About Your Product/Brand

Advertisements and other marketing strategies also aim to inform prospective customers that you actually exist. Your relatives, colleagues, and friends might know that you have built your very own online business and you’re selling a particular product but other people don’t have the slightest idea. No matter how good your product is and how confident you are that it can make a good profit, it still won’t be known by your target customers if you don’t do marketing.

That is why you need to get started by engaging in the most effective type of marketing for the product that you’re going to sell. For instance, if your online shop will sell multi tools for dads, you can start a marketing campaign on social media or TikTok by creating videos that show DIY projects using one of your products. You can even partner with influencers that have a good number of followers in any of these channels and get your contents published by them in exchange of compensation.

Getting your product or brand out there means spreading the word about its existence, informing customers about its use and enticing them with its features and the benefits they would get if they choose to purchase it. Leave the specifications and other information about your product in the product description. That’s the right space where they should be. If you’re going to engage in content marketing then be sure to focus on the benefits and not much about those technical specifications. It’s a benefits game, not a specs game!

4. It Helps Maximize Your Business’s Earning Potential

Shops that do online marketing would definitely earn more than those that don’t. It’s true that operating expense would also increase relative to the income made but you need to understand that the cost of doing marketing can easily be recovered especially if you’ve got some strategies that can turn customers into loyal advocates and ambassadors for your product or brand.

Marketing in itself isn’t just about ads and promotions. That’s the obsolete type of marketing! The modern one already includes strategies and techniques that capitalize on the power of loyal customers to produce authentic endorsements for your brand! Studies have revealed that new customers who have been referred by some of your loyal ones have a larger possibility of making repeat purchases and a large percentage of them can even turn into loyal customers as well.

Imagine having an effective ads campaign that attracts thousands of customers per day and having it coupled with an efficient customer retention strategy that brings in more conversions. That’s double the income right? This is possible but you need to get it right so be sure to do market research, zero in which marketing strategy that fits your product or business and employ an excellent customer retention strategy to maximize your business’s earning potential.

The benefits that marketing can offer for your Shopify business is almost endless but we’ll stop with these 4 top ones here. Now, let’s get to the marketing strategies that you can use if your business is to grow into a very profitable one.

How to Market Your Shopify Store

Shopify continues to be one of the top e-commerce platforms out there and its popularity isn’t showing any sign of waning. E-commerce is projected to keep growing as more and more people get affordable access to the Internet and web-capable devices. That is why keeping your online shop alive and making sure that you’re doing the right marketing strategies is important.

If achieving conversions and boosting sales has continually been a struggle, here are some marketing strategies that you can try on your Shopify store. They’ve worked great for some of the most successful shops out there so there’s no reason they would fail on yours. Let’s get started with the first one.

Use Apps and Other Shopify Tools

One reason why businesses use Shopify is because of the abundant tools and applications that can run seamlessly in its platform. As a customer management suite, Shopify also offers free courses that can give anyone the right knowledge on how to make their business perform better. Marketing and promotion becomes an easier task when you’ve got support from the provider itself.

But aside from free courses on business development and marketing, Shopify also offers apps that can add some features to your online shop. For instance, you can add a “Sign Up for Our Newsletter” pop up message on your website pages where customers can input their emails so you can start sending them updates and other information in just a few steps. Other apps can even help turning customers into brand or product ambassadors and assist in easy tracking and payment of commissions earned by each ambassador.

Other marketing tools are capable of directing customers to your social media pages where they can choose to join or follow your brand and even post reviews on your shop in case they choose to do so. The possibilities of turning making your shop as efficient as possible in terms of on-page marketing and other methods of promotion and advertising is almost endless!

Use Themes to Maximize Sales and Customer Retention

Shopify offers a host of possibilities in terms of your shop’s overall appearance and even allows customizations to better equip your business for sure conversions! If you’ve been noticing an increase in leads but the overall sales decreased then there might be something wrong with your shop’s layout. Some buttons for checking out may be hidden from mobile devices or it might be unclickable at times. These issues can turn off customers from making a purchase so optimizing your theme for mobile devices and making sure that bugs are fixed is crucial.

Show the buttons that matter most to your customers and display images and other information on particular sections of your product page where they can easily find them then test any changes you made to ensure they are all working well. Shopify even allows theme updating, downloading and even replication so you can easily keep a copy of certain layouts as you perform testing.

Use Content Marketing and SEO

Another efficient method of marketing is by using some high quality videos and photos of your product and having it published on different social media channels or even on YouTube. This is called content marketing and it has become one of the most-used method especially as more and more people spend a large portion of their online activity in social media. TikTok has also grown much in popularity since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and businesses nowadays use the power of this channel along with several popular influencers in it to promote their products.

Explore the use of SEO in marketing and Shopify can help you with this one. Yes! The e-commerce platform actually has a robust SEO feature which can help you gain that much-coveted visibility in search engines such as Google, MSN, and many others. Making your way to the top of the list of your prospective customer’s search result doesn’t just lie on Shopify’s SEO functionality though, you still need to ensure that your product descriptions are properly written with SEO in mind so that it can go head-to-head with top competitors who are making it to the top of the search results.

Run Ad Campaigns on Social Media

Majority of Shopify business owners run ads on social media especially on Facebook. What’s great with this method is that you can set precise audience targets and show a variety of ads to them. You can also run ads according to your preferred budget. Facebook ads have been working great ever since it came to existence but there are those who say that it simply is an expensive strategy to engage in.

That is the reality that most online shop owners have to face and if you’re just starting with the business, you should definitely try something else. Facebook ads have become more effective in retargeting so if you’re goal is to bring in new customers then other methods might work better than this one.

Create Online Communities, Forums, Social Media Pages

Your existing customers especially the ones that have turned loyal to your product or brand will be very happy if you give them a common place where people that share the same passion for your business can gather. Providing customers with an avenue where they can express their overall experience in using your product will benefit not just their fellow customers but your business as well. In fact, your business is going to benefit from it the most as it will be a perfect place where you can find genuine voices that can be very useful for improving your brand.

So don’t just stop when you have already created an online community, forum, or social media page. Be sure to assign or hire someone to watch over the happenings in it and extract anything that can be useful for product development and overall business growth. We now live in what is known as a “Review Economy” where customers’ voices play an essential role in product or brand development and ensure its continuing success within the industry. So definitely invest on creating a friendly space for your customers and make sure you’re making use of every input that they share within such channel.

Your Shopify Store Needs Marketing!

As you can see, building a Shopify store isn’t just about purchasing a monthly plan, choosing a product, installing a theme, making sure that everything is in place, and then you start selling. It requires more than that! With all the Shopify businesses that exist out there with some selling the same product as yours, you will need the power of marketing tools and strategies to make sure that your business makes it to the top.

It must be on top not just in Search Engines but also in sales and conversions. It must stay on top not just for a few days or months but for years and if possible for a lifetime. Marketing plays a crucial role in running an online business so definitely study which one fits the kind of product you’re selling and think of ways and means to innovate.

Continually check on your competitors and see where you can employ some creativity so you can have that edge. So make marketing a top priority and make sure your strategies work by doing an overall audit using existing built-in Shopify features. You can’t waste time and money on the wrong ones so be meticulous and only employ the most effective ones!

‍