Shopify Marketing & Advertising Guide: Strategies, Tools & Processes for 2022

Marketing your Shopify is easy to learn, but tough to master. There are an incredible number of techniques, tricks, and strategies you can employ to get your website in front of people who are interested in your products or services.

Today, we're going to go beyond organic Shopify marketing strategies and discuss how to take advantage of the tools at your disposal in order to improve visibility and maximize conversions. More specifically, we'll explore some strategies, tools, and processes for marketing and advertising on Shopify.

The purpose of this guide isn't necessarily to overwhelm you with a million different options, but rather give you a solid understanding of the processes involved in marketing and advertising on Shopify.

At Newclick, we'll discuss themes, pop-ups, mailing lists, sales funnels, add to cart notifications, and more!

Shopify Marketing Strategies: Organic vs. Paid Methods of Promotion

When it comes to Shopify marketing strategies, there are two main groups: organic and paid strategies.

• Organic Marketing: Organic marketing refers to marketing, influence, and visibility that accrues naturally as your brand grows and develops. Organic marketing (a.k.a., inbound marketing) is inexpensive to produce and distribute, as it mainly relies on content.
• Paid Marketing: Paid marketing is the use of paid methods to promote and advertise your business. This can include traditional advertising such as TV or radio commercials, as well as online advertising such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

A Few Things All Shopify Marketing Strategies Have In Common

Before diving into some specific strategies, let's take a look at what each tactic has in common!

Each organic strategy that we'll discuss today shares similar objectives, including building brand awareness, increasing website traffic, and optimizing your store for conversions.

• Building Brand Awareness: As the owner of an ecommerce business, you're in charge of making sure that people know about your store. The more people who are talking about you, the better!
• Increasing Website Traffic: If nobody is visiting your site, how can they buy anything? That's why it's so important to get lots of eyes on your products!
• Converting Visitors into Customers: It doesn't matter how much traffic you have if no one actually buys anything. The entire point of building a digital storefront is to make money. Having said that---let's begin!

1) Feature User-Generated Content Strategically

User-generated content is some of the best marketing material around. It's personalized, authentic, and carries more weight than content that you or your employees create. For these reasons, user-generated content should be used strategically to help promote your brand and increase visibility among potential buyers.

There are a few different ways that you can incorporate user-generated content into your Shopify Marketing & Advertising strategy:

• Positive Product Reviews: While product reviews are technically paid for (when done through platforms like Feefo), they're an organic way to get more visibility on Shopify. Positive ratings put you in good standing with search engines like Google, which can potentially lead to more website traffic down the line. They also make potential customers feel more comfortable buying your products since they're backed by previous buyers.
• User-Generated Photos: User-generated photos are an easy way to incorporate user-generated content into your marketing strategy without spending too much money. When you ask customers to take pictures of their purchases and share them on social media, it's like getting free advertising: the only cost is time and effort that you put into asking.

2) Create a Loyalty Program

A loyalty program gives your customers an incentive to buy more from you. This can be anything from a discount on future orders, to free shipping for every fifth order placed. You can use Newclick to save time, energy and resources when creating discount and shipping banners.

Give Rewards For Sharing: Give people something for sharing your products with their friends and family. Whether they're given rewards for bringing in new buyers or store credits for offering coupons that are valid after certain thresholds, rewards are a way of saying "thanks" that has the potential to turn customers into repeat customers!

3) Use Pop-Ups To Speak To Customers

Pop-ups are digital overlays that appear automatically when someone visits your website. When used correctly, they make it super easy for someone to sign up for your email list, subscribe to your blog, follow you on social media, or learn about a promotion.

Here are a few ways that pop-ups can be used in your Shopify Marketing & Advertising strategy:

• Growing Email List: Whether it's through landing pages with exclusive discounts or simply collecting people's contact info, so you can contact them later on, capturing an email list is one of the most important things that you can do as an online retailer. Why? Because once they're on your email list, you've opened one of the most effective lines of communication.
• Growing Social Media Following: If you want to increase the number of followers that you have on social media, consider getting creative with your pop-up marketing strategy!
• New Product Releases: If there's something new coming down the pipeline from your brand, use a pop-up to get the word out there. This is a great way to get people excited about an upcoming launch to ensure that you hit the ground running!

To learn more about how to create and schedule Shopify pop-ups without getting down in code, feel free to sign up for a Newclick trial!

4) Collaborate With Influencers & Bloggers

Influencers are people who have amassed large followings for themselves online. Using their influence, they're able to spread awareness about products they enjoy through social media or blog posts---without requiring compensation or conditions (like free product samples).

5) Offer Free Shipping

This one's pretty straightforward. If you're able to offer free shipping on every order, the chances of people buying from you will go up exponentially (as much as 50% in many cases)!

Also, consider offering free shipping on specific products---like items that are above a certain price-point or ones that were purchased with another (eligible) product. That way, you can protect your profit margins while offering your customers a service they'll love!

6) Build An Email List

Ecommerce email lists are powerful because they allow companies to connect directly with customers who have already shown some interest in what the brand has to offer.

This is HUGE because it means that companies can use an email list to send targeted messages based on what their customers looked at recently---increasing the number of people who might actually engage with them and buy something.

To build an ecommerce list, just add a pop-up form that asks for an email address when shoppers are checking out or submitting product reviews.

You could even go ahead and create discounts just for people who give you their contact information by subscribing to your newsletter! Your efforts will be rewarded when you've cultivated a list of people who are 40X more likely to purchase from you than the average visitor!

7) Start A Blog

Remember when starting a blog was the "next big thing" for online businesses?

Just think about how awesome it would be if people were finding your store as a result of your awesome blog content through search engines such as Google and Bing---leaving you in complete control of your own advertising strategy. In addition to email, SEO ROI can be pretty significant for online stores that manage to leverage the digital channel.

Search engine optimized content marketing is basically just creating awesome pieces of content around things that relate to your industry or niche so that it starts to show up in search results. If you're willing to put in the time to create quality content (or have the means to outsource to a freelancer or agency), you should start to see significant boosts to your traffic and revenue within 6-9 months.

8) Create A Cross-Promotional Product

People love getting discounts, which is why giving away extras (for free or at a steep discount) can be huge.

Here's how this works: Let's say you're selling t-shirts for $20. When a customer adds one t-shirt to their cart, hit them with a pop-up or announcement banner that lets them know they can add a second t-shirt to their cart for free (or for a discount)! To make this work properly, write down what your ideal customer would want to see (e.g., "Buy 1, Get 1 Free") and what action you want to reward (e.g., buying a t-shirt in a style you're trying to phase out).

Once you've landed on those pieces of information, build up a cross-promotional campaign that meets your needs!

Oh, and don't forget to check out Newclick to learn more about the power of pop-ups!

9) Don't Forget To Have Fun With It

If you want to be successful at anything, you need a positive attitude and a willingness to try new things. To market your store properly, you'll need to be able to experiment with different strategies until you find one that works for you.

If this process seems too difficult or overwhelming, remember that all of these strategies require very little time or technical knowledge. If you can build a Shopify store you're more than capable of marketing it!

Alright, well that's all I have for you today folks. If you found this article helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends and leaving a comment down below!