You’ve selected and customized a beautiful template, uploaded gorgeous product photos, developed compelling product descriptions, and set up your checkout process. You’ve created the best possible experience for your new customers, now what?
Now, it’s time to create a powerful Shopify marketing strategy that will bring qualified traffic and sales for your business.
I’ve personally been through this process three times with my own eCommerce business and we’ve done this countless times at Stryde. We know that there are six core components that contribute to a successful marketing strategy for your Shopify store. Let’s go over each as well as some smaller, less critical components that can produce results for your Shopify store.
Knowing Your Target Audience
To get the most out of your marketing dollars, you’ll want to identify who your target audience is. Identifying your target market means thinking about who would be most interested in purchasing your products, understanding how they think and how they use the internet to solve their problems.
There are five critical things you should know:
- Who is actually buying your products? Male or female?
- What information do they need to make them feel comfortable purchasing your products?
- How does this product fit into their lives?
- What does a typical day look like for this person?
- What are the common interests across your target audience?
Once you know these things, you will have a better idea of how to target them, engage with them, and start moving them through the funnel toward conversion.
Educating Through Content Marketing
Content marketing will be your way to ensure you are always creating and publishing content that speaks directly to your target market. You should spend ample time doing research and developing a content calendar that outlines all your content for the month, quarter, or even year. The content calendar will keep you and your team on track with a focus on highly relevant content that answers questions, educate on your product, and entices your audience to make a purchase.
Not only will your content educate your audience, but it can also be used to improve search engine rankings and traffic or can be used as landing pages for your paid social media advertising, paid search, or email marketing initiatives.
Nurturing Through Email Marketing
Email marketing can be one of the highest converting marketing strategies you deploy for your eCommerce business. It allows you to reach out to people who have visited and engaged your website in the past, who expressed interest in receiving marketing messages from you in the future.
Developing an eCommerce email marketing list allows you to target specific products and offers to potential customers. To get the most success out of email marketing, you’ll want to use segmentation. Segmentation allows you to target specific people on your list and cultivate targeted offers just for that segment or group.
To properly segment an email marketing list, you need to have information about your subscribers. You can use data from your Shopify CRM or other CRM system that integrates with Shopify, form data, purchase history, etc. The more detailed information you have about your subscribers, the more you can segment and create highly targeted messaging that feels more personal to them.
Driving Traffic From The Major Search Engines
There are billions of searches done per day on major search engines. They are what people turn to when they want to learn how to do something, find a local restaurant, get directions, and shop online. Organic search engine traffic is a longer-term marketing strategy, but the benefits significantly outweigh the time it takes to begin seeing results.
Google is the leading search engine that has the largest market share and where most of your traffic will come from when it comes to organic search engine traffic. Traffic from search engines uses search terms that users type into their browser bar or a search bar, and relevant results are displayed. To be included in those search results, you must have content within your website that uses keywords that match or are similar to the search terms that the users typed in.
eCommerce search engine optimization includes buyer-centric keyword research, which identifies the essential keywords that are related to the products that you sell. These keywords are then used in specific areas within your webpage, and content is created to support those keywords to help you improve your rankings in the major search engines.
Searchers who use search engines to find products and services usually find what they are looking for on the first page of the search results. Sites listed on the first page are likely to have higher traffic and sales than say a website that is found on page two or three. Working to get ranked on the first page of Google with a well-designed and optimized site should be a high priority and can significantly increase sales and help eCommerce companies grow.
Acquiring Customers Through Google Keyword & Shopping Ads
With digital ad revenue surpassing the 100 billion mark, Google ads are a great way to put your brand in front of thousands of web users every day. Google offers both paid and organic opportunities to get in front of potential customers.
Paid search ads are another way of getting your products and services in front of potential customers, but you will have to pay for them. When a user types in a search term, Google returns paid ads at the top and bottom of their search results, with the organic sites presented in the middle. Those paid advertisers pay each time a searcher clicks on the ad to visits their website.
When done right, bidding on keywords or placing shopping ads can significantly increase sales at a decent cost per acquisition (CPA). When done poorly, it can quickly become very costly and unprofitable. It is crucial to determine the budget your willing to spend and determine the average cost per click you can pay and remain profitable.
Google ads are a great short term and long term marketing strategy for Shopify stores. Paid ads can allow you to get out in front of your potential customers. It can also help to drive sales and leads while you’re waiting for organic search engine rankings and email marketing lists to develop.
Creating Brand Awareness Through Paid Social Media
Social media is the new word of mouth. Social sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram are a way that users get feedback and social proof on products and services before purchasing. Social proof can be a critical part of the purchasing process for many consumers. It can be a powerful tool when you make it a part of your Shopify marketing strategy.
Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram offer ads throughout their platform, allowing brands to create conversations around each of the products that they sell. These ads have the ability to incorporate copy, photos, videos, and create experiences for their users.
Marketing on social sites is considered disruptive marketing. To disrupt means, users were not explicitly looking for your products or services such as with paid and organic search engine marketing. When used correctly, it can be a great way to reach customers on social platforms, create brand awareness and start moving potential customers through the funnel.
Many companies also social media marketing as a way to retarget visitors. Retargeting helps to bring back visitors who previously visited your site, or have abandoned their shopping cart, bringing them back to complete a sale.
Simple Shopify Marketing Tips
One commonly overlooked and simple Shopify marketing tip you can do is to provide the best possible customer service. How your customers feel about interactions with you can mean the difference between repeat customers or losing them to your competitors. You may provide customer service via online chat such as Live Chat, email, or by phone. Customer service is an integral part of your customer’s experience and should be a part of your marketing strategy.
Calls To Action
Ensure that throughout your website, you display clear and concise calls to action. Often a webpage can show 3-4 different calls to action. Multiple calls to action can create confusion for customers. They want to know what the next step is. You need to outline clear next steps for your visitors. Consider mapping out what the calls to action are for the various pages within your website.
How To Get Sales On Shopify
Shopify has created one of the most robust e-commerce platforms available today. Forbe’s claims that Shopify has cracked the code to E-Commerce. But even with all this powerful shopping cart give you, you still have to figure out how to get sales on Shopify.
Building Trust
To achieve success with e-commerce and get sales on your Shopify store, you must build trust with your visitors. Not doing so will cause visitors to leave your site, creating a low conversion rate. There are a few key things that a visitor looks for when determining if they feel comfortable shopping with you.
Refund Policy
New customers who have never shopped with you, can’t see or touch the product. If they’re interested in ordering from you, they’ll want to know what to do if they are not happy with the product. Having a refund policy helps users understand the process of receiving their money back should they not be satisfied with their purchase.
Shipping Policy
Anyone who considers shopping at your store will need to understand your shipping policies. Some users prefer to review this information before entering the shopping cart. Consider placing the shipping policy in the footer navigation. Making your shipping policies available outside the shipping cart allows users to find it quickly and before reaching the checkout.
About Us Page
The about us page allows you to share more about yourself and your business. It helps visitors connect with you and the brand. Visitors want to know what inspired you to start your business; they want to know “the why.” Often brands use this page to connect with the heart and mind of their visitors. Creating a compelling About Us page gives you the chance to share why your customer would want to do business with you.
Contact Us Page
The contact us page helps visitors understand how they can reach out to you both before the sale or after they’ve received their product. Potential purchasers have specific questions they are looking to have answered, often before making a purchase. Those questions include:
- Where are you located?
- Do you have physical locations?
- What is their address?
- What are your hours of operation?
- Do you have customer support?
- What communication channels do you offer?
- What’s your phone number?
- What’s your email?
Answering questions potential customers may have on your contact us page can help ease anxieties. Providing detailed contact information makes visitors more comfortable in doing business with you now or in the future.
Developing a comprehensive yet robust Shopify marketing strategy can help you yield short and long-term success. The key to success is offering a great customer experience, and creating a marketing mix drives new and returning visitors and gets you the highest return on your investment.
Are you looking for a Shopify marketing agency? Stryde has helped hundreds of businesses on Shopify to generate traffic and sales.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Greg Shuey
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
