Did you just create an online store with Shopify? Great! You’ve taken the first step toward building an online business and brand.
With Shopify – you can sell products, services, digital products, and memberships.
Yet – you won’t see much in the way of sales if you don’t know how to market your Shopify store. Creating a store is an outstanding achievement, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. By default, no one will have a way of knowing that your Shopify store exists.
It’s up to you to come up with different marketing strategies. If that sounds intimidating – don’t worry. We’ve prepared the ultimate guide for how to market your Shopify store. Read on to discover the marketing strategies the most successful e-commerce stores use.
Shopify’s Built-in Marketing Tools
While Shopify won’t market your store for you, they provide some fantastic marketing tools. That means you can create robust marketing campaigns from within Shopify.
If you’re brand-new to e-commerce, it’s a good idea to start here. Shopify’s marketing tools will help you establish a foundation to add to later. They will also introduce you to some essential marketing concepts. Here’s a look at the marketing tools you gain access to with Shopify.
Shopify’s Marketing Page
Shopify even has a Marketing page on the admin dashboard. Here, you can create and manage new marketing campaigns. While you’ll need a marketing app to add functionality – you can manage everything here.
Shopify allows you to automate marketing campaigns and activities as well. You can create a marketing campaign – save it as a draft – and automate it to publish later.
That comes in handy if you’re planning on running seasonal promotions. You can set them up now so they’ll automatically trigger when the time comes.
Creating a Marketing Campaign on Shopify
If you want to start a new marketing campaign – here’s what you’ll need to do.
- Log into Shopify and go to your admin page.
- Click on Marketing.
- If you want to automate something, go to Automations > Create Automation.
- To create a new marketing campaign – go to Campaigns > Create Campaign.
- Select the campaign or automation and give it a name.
- Add any necessary details here. You can include notes, descriptions, and more. Not only that, but you get the chance to preview your new automation and campaigns before they go live.
- To save a draft, select Finish Later.
- If you’re ready for the content to go live – select Publish.
As you can see, creating and managing automation and campaigns is effortless. Shopify’s tools are often very straightforward – which is why they’re so beginner-friendly.
Facebook Marketing Through Shopify
Shopify lets you use its Facebook channels to sync up your products on a catalog. What does that mean? It means you can market your store on Facebook directly through Shopify.
You can create Facebook ads and even entire campaigns from your Shopify store. You’ll be able to access everything from the Marketing section on your Shopify admin page.
Yet – it takes a bit of configuring before you can start advertising on Facebook through Shopify. First, you’ll need to set up Shopify’s Facebook channel. Why? You need to grant Shopify access to your Facebook Business Page, Ad account, and Business Manager.
It may connect to your personal Facebook account as well – but that’s only used to access Facebook. None of your personal information or content will show up in Shopify.
Facebook Business Manager is the tool you’ll use to manage your business accounts. If you plan to run ads on Facebook – you’ll need a Business Manager account. That’s where you’ll create and manage your Facebook ads.
Requirements for Facebook Marketing on Shopify
If you don’t have a Facebook Business Manager account – you’ll need to create one now. Make sure that it has dominion over both your business and an account for ads.
Do you have a personal ad account on Facebook? If not – you’ll need to create one of those, too. Once you create an ad account inside Business Manager – you’ll be able to create Facebook ad campaigns.
If you don’t have a Business Manager yet, there’s still time. You’ll be able to set one up when configuring the Facebook channel.
Facebook Page Requirements
Before you can connect your Facebook page to Shopify – you need to meet specific requirements. These include:
- Your Facebook account must have an admin role on your page.
- It needs to be a published Facebook page.
- You must be the admin for your Facebook Business Manager.
In other words, you need to be the admin for both the Facebook account and the Business Manager account. As long as that’s the case – you’ll be able to start running Facebook ads through Shopify.
Setting up the Marketing Feature in Shopify’s Facebook Channel
Now that all that configuration is done – you need to know how to create a campaign. Assuming that you’ve followed the steps above – you can now advertise through Facebook. Here are the steps you need to take to start running Facebook ads through Shopify:
- Log into Shopify and go to Marketing.
- Select Create Campaign, and click on Facebook Audience Building Ad.
- Hit Set Up Facebook to install the Facebook channel on Shopify.
- Select Set Up on the Facebook Marketing section underneath the Facebook channel.
- Connect your Facebook account – or create a new one. If you have an existing account, click on Connect and follow the steps. If you don’t have one, click on Create New and follow the prompts.
- Connect your Business Manager account – or hit Create New to make one now.
- Connect your Facebook Ad Account – or select Create New if you don’t have one.
- Connect your Facebook Business Page – or hit Create New to make one now.
- Connect your pixel or create a new one – and select your data sharing level.
- Scroll down to the country where you want to run your ads.
- Agree to Facebook’s terms.
- Click on Finish Setup.
That was a lot of setups – but now everything is complete. You can now create new Facebook ads, campaigns, and posts from your Shopify Marketing page. That’s a convenient way to leverage social media marketing straight from Shopify.
Shopify’s Built-in Content Marketing Features
Beyond advertising through Facebook – Shopify also has content marketing tools. Here are the content marketing channels they provide:
- Pages from your online store.
- Built-in blogs.
- Social media posts.
- Email campaigns.
As you can see – you can engage in robust content marketing through Shopify. For now, let’s focus on blogging to promote your online store.
Shopify’s Blogging Engine
Your Shopify store contains a blogging editor you can use to write blogs promoting your products. Blogging is one of the most effective forms of content marketing. In fact, you’ve probably bought a product after reading a blog without even realizing it.
Why are blogs so effective?
Because you can use them to answer customer questions and solve their pain points, you can also provide recommendations for buying lists, life hacks, and more. The goal is to promote your product while delivering value to the reader.
You want to avoid hard-sell tactics when writing a blog. Instead – it’s more about being as informative and educational as possible.
Let’s consider a brief example. You’re a jogger, and you’re looking for a new pair of running shoes. That’s when you pull out your phone and do a quick search on Google for ‘best running shoes.’
The first result is a blog entitled ‘Your 2022 Buyer’s Guide for Running Shoes.’ You click on it to find a list of the hottest new running shoes. The blog is informative and gives solid reasons why each shoe is one of the best.
Once you’re done reading – you decide to click on the #1 choice and buy a pair for yourself. After all, they are the best running shoes coming out in 2022.
You don’t realize that the #1 spot was the author’s product. All the other shoes are authentic as well, but they knew you’d go for the best.
See why blogs are so effective now? This type of content marketing is all over the place in today’s age – and it works. It’s a win-win for both parties because you gain conversions while the customer learns something new.
Not only that, but blogs are a low-risk, high-reward marketing style. If you can write, it costs virtually nothing to create a blog. If you need some help, there are plenty of freelance writers that you can hire online to create blogs for you.
Blogs are also one of the most effective ways to boost your SEO, but we’ll go into more on that later.
Adding a Blog to Your Shopify Store
Now that you know why blogs are worth the effort – how do you add one to your Shopify store? Well, every Shopify store already comes with a default blog, and it’s called ‘News.’
You can choose to keep this blog or create a new one with a customized name. To create a new blog, you’ll have to start by creating a new blog post.
Here’s what you’ll need to do:
- From the Shopify admin – navigate to Online Store > Blog Posts.
- Select Create Blog Post.
- Under Title – enter a title for the blog post.
- Under the Content field, write out the content of your blog post.
- Select Organization – and then hit Blog from the drop-down menu. Next, select Create New Blog.
- Here is where you can customize the title of your blog. Under Blog Title, name the blog (not the post, but the blog itself).
- Select Save to save your changes.
You now have a brand-new blog for your Shopify store. Now you can start creating valuable posts that will attract new customers and boost your SEO. Yet, there’s one final step before you move on to something else. You’ll need to add your new blog to your main navigation menu.
Adding Your Blog to the Main Navigation Menu
Here’s how to add your blog to your main navigation – as well as how to add any other item to it:
- Go to Online Store > Navigation.
- Once on the Navigation page – click the menu title that you want to edit. In this case, it’s the main navigation menu.
- Select Add New Menu Item.
- Name the menu item – since it’s a blog – use the original name you came up with for it.
- Next is the Link field. Here, you’ll need to enter the URL for your blog page. You can also select a link type – one of which is a blog.
- Select Save to save your changes.
Now your customers will view your blog from the main navigation menu.
If you’d be interested in seeing our Top 15 content marketing tips visit this link here.
SEO Marketing Through Shopify
Another effective marketing technique you can use through the platform is SEO. That stands for search engine optimization. It refers to the fact that most customers use search engines to find new products.
If you optimize the content on your store to reflect customer habits – you’ll show up higher in the results.
Search engines like Google have algorithms that they use to rank search results.
As you can probably attest to – most people only click on the first few results on a search engine. As a result, there’s a tremendous amount of competition for those coveted top spots. That’s where SEO as a marketing tactic comes into play. By using SEO strategies – you’re increasing the chances of a higher ranking.
A higher ranking guarantees increased traffic and sales (if you have a proper funnel). Many factors determine how high you rank on Google and other search engines. These include but are not limited to:
- How many links lead to your website from other websites (link building)
- The perceived authority of your website (content quality, link quality, etc.)
- Content that is informative, relevant, and contains popular keywords.
As you can see, the algorithms go over a lot when ranking websites. Those are only a few of the factors they look at when crawling and indexing your store.
SEO Strategies to Use
So how can you boost your SEO? You can implement a few best practices to improve your SEO and rise through the rankings. Here’s a glimpse at some of the most effective.
Keyword Research
A keyword refers to the words users type in search engines. An example would be ‘best skateboards’ as a keyword for skateboard shops. Google’s goal is to find the most relevant page online that matches that keyword.
Knowing that – you can optimize your content to reflect targeted keywords. There are many tools you can use online to discover keywords related to your niche.
It would help if you also used tools to show how much competition there is for a keyword. Try another one if there’s a boatload of competitors for a particular keyword. Ideally, you want to find a keyword with a low amount of competition. That will increase the chances of you ranking for it.
Link Building
Another essential SEO technique is link building. It refers to how many links lead to your website online. Google will view your site as more authoritative if you have a healthy backlink profile.
Bear in mind; not all links are created equally. Certain links have higher domain authority than others. Here’s a tip; only shoot for links that have trustworthy TLDs (top-level domains). It would be best to look for .org, .gov, and .edu in particular.
How do you score those links? One way would be to sponsor a scholarship from a university related to your field. You can then reach out to them for a link. Universities are seen as trustworthy by Google, so their links will mean a lot.
Rub Elbows with Influencers
Another way to promote your store is to reach out to influencers on social media. They shouldn’t be random – but instead influencers related to your niche. An example will be reaching out to a jogging influencer if you sell running shoes.
You’ll need an attractive incentive for them to promote your product. Try to get creative with how you can compensate them for their services. You can give them free products, pay them a fixed fee, or offer commissions for every sale they get.
You don’t need an influencer with a massive following to make an impact, either. Even a smaller influencer with 50,000 followers can work wonders for your store. Whenever you’re browsing social media in your spare time – keep an eye out for potential influencers you can reach out to for a marketing deal.
Email Marketing with Privy
If you’re a Shopify merchant that wants to take full advantage of email marketing, you need Privy. It’s an email marketing app that you can find in the Shopify App Store. So far, more than 18,000 merchants have praised its features with 5-star ratings. It’s an incredible tool that makes creating and maintaining email campaigns a breeze.
Its essential features for Shopify users include:
- Cart abandonment email campaigns
- Automated customer win-back emails
- Tons of email list building tools
- Website pop-ups that are easy to customize
- Text message marketing for growing e-commerce stores
- Cross-sell pop-ups
- Tons of professionally designed templates to use
- Integrates seamlessly with your Shopify store
- Free Shipping bar to encourage customers to spend more
These are only a few of the helpful features Privy will bring to your Shopify store. There’s also a free plan that anyone can use. For up to 100 contacts, you get unlimited pop-ups and flyouts. You also get add-to-cart and free shipping bar displays. So at no cost to you, Privy allows you to harness the full power of email marketing. To start creating your email campaign visit Privy at this link.
Final Takeaways: How to Market Your Shopify Store (The Ultimate Guide)
By now – you should have a better idea of how to get started marketing your new store. Shopify provides you with some powerful marketing tools that you can use to promote your store. You can write blogs, advertise through Facebook, send emails, and boost your SEO. Shopify also provides analytics that you can use to actively measure the success of your efforts. If you don’t see an increase in traffic or sales from a particular method after a while – try something else.
Remember, marketing isn’t something that has an end. It’s an ongoing and constantly evolving effort that requires a lot of monitoring. Yet – your marketing is one of the most significant deciding factors of the success of your store.
For more great content to help you develop your Shopify strategies, check out the rest of the merchant posts on the site. If you want to see a list of our top recommended Shopify apps visit this link here.
