How to Promote and Market your Shopify Store

We’re lucky enough to live in a digital era where the Internet plays an important part in our lives, and starting an online business doesn’t seem like an impossible task to do. The Internet and modern technologies have transformed almost everything from working, studying, researching, and marketing to online shopping. For some customers, purchasing goods and services online has become a part of their lives, while others prefer shopping inside a physical store.

This new era provides a lot of opportunities for small business owners to grow and perhaps even eventually sell an online business. Of course, creating a Shopify store or migrating your existing store to Shopify is one side of the coin. The other side is promoting and marketing it to increase your sales. In order for customers to start spending money on your products and services, they need to get to know you. Choosing the right marketing strategy is very important, and it can have a direct impact on the success of your business. These days entrepreneurs can attract more customers now than ever before and have full control over their shopping experience so it’s crucial to know how to promote your online store.

In this article, we’ll focus on how to effectively promote and market your Shopify store in 2022. Before we get down to business, let’s find out what E-commerce marketing is all about.

What is E-commerce marketing?

It all starts with understanding the definition of E-commerce marketing. According to Shopify, E-commerce marketing is the practice of using promotional tactics to drive traffic to your online store, converting that traffic into paying customers and retaining those customers post-purchase.

Why E-commerce Marketing is so Important?

E-commerce marketing helps you:

· Establish brand awareness

· Drive traffic to your website

· Convert website visitors into customers

· Retain your customers and keep them coming back to purchase more of your products

The COVID Pandemic has fast-forwarded the future of online businesses. Consumers have been forced to learn how to purchase all types of things online, as a result of the pandemic.

In the chart below we see that the global-commerce has grown significantly. The pandemic has boosted online sales. It also shows us that the online share of spending will only increase in the future. The E-commerce market will grow even faster.

Now that we enter 2022, E-commerce businesses have to change their marketing strategies to increase sales. The E-commerce market is constantly changing and that’s why Shopify store owners need to act accordingly. The E-commerce marketing strategies that worked in 2021 may not work in 2022.
Fortunately, there’s no shortage of methods for entrepreneurs to promote and grow their online businesses. Understanding the different ways to promote your store online can help you make better business decisions. The E-commerce industry is growing and showing no signs of slowing down. It is a highly competitive market and it’s important to know how to stand out and put your name out there.  If you want to promote and market your Shopify store effectively, you need to use different strategies. Since there are many of them, we’re going to talk about the most important ones you can use.

Let's look at three main strategies you can use to drive traffic to your Shopify Store:

1. Grow Your Social Media Presence

Social Media isn’t just for posting selfies and vacation photos or sharing posts with friends it can also be used for advertising. Social Media Marketing is essential for promoting your E-commerce business. Many online merchants see social media marketing as an effective way of promoting their Shopify store and they aren’t wrong. Social Media brings great opportunities to your Shopify store.

You can use social media marketing to:

· Promote your brand

· Inform your customers about your products and services

· Find out what your customers say about your business

· Build strong relationships with your existing customers and attract new ones

With over 4.62 billion active social media users worldwide, it’s essential for you to increase your social media presence. The active social media users represent half of the world’s population. Just think about it.

Marketing your products and services through social media is worth your time, effort, and money. Before starting a social media marketing campaign, you need to determine what your business goals are and what it is your marketing plan. What do you want to achieve with your marketing campaign? Do you want to reach a wider audience or do you want to generate more traffic for your online store or increase your sales? You don’t want to spend your money on unnecessary advertising.  

You also need to be consistent with your social media marketing campaign. You need to post regularly and at the right time in order to engage buyers and close more deals. It is time-consuming to gain social media followers but you need to put in the work. The results of this long-term strategy won’t make you wait.

These are social media sites you might want to check out:

· Facebook

· Instagram

· YouTube

· TikTok

· Twitter

· LinkedIn

· Pinterest

· Quora

· Reddit

Social media platforms play an important role in online marketing but there are so many of them that they make it hard for Shopify owners to choose what works best for them. You don’t want to waste your time using all social media platforms at once because not every social network suits your business needs but some of them can really help your E-commerce business grow.

What are the world's most popular social networks in 2022?

As you can see the majority of your potential buyers are actively using social media platforms. That’s why it makes sense to promote your products and services on Social Media.

The chart above shows that Facebook is the most popular social network in the world. It has 2.91 billion monthly active users.

If you are not investing in Facebook advertising then you are missing out on the opportunity to access one of the largest audiences in the world.  Of course, most people are not your potential customers and it’s alright. What makes Facebook different from other social media platforms is that it offers advanced targeting options you can use to show your ads to the people you care about, people who share your audience’s interests. Facebook’s focused messaging allows you to target specific demographics such as age, location, and the devices they use. Use 1-2 hashtags on Facebook and make sure that your post is public so everyone can see it. Don’t overuse them. Facebook has a strict policy. For example, an effective hashtag strategy that works on Instagram may not perform well on Facebook. Plus, you can upload videos on Facebook to show off your products and services. Facebook's ad platform is available for businesses of all sizes: big or small.

Even though Facebook is the main place where entrepreneurs upload videos about their products, it’s not the only social video network. Second, on the list of the world’s most popular social networks is YouTube with 2.56 billion monthly active users. It’s the second most popular search engine in the world following Google. The fact that you can reach such a large audience is enough for you to start your marketing campaign on YouTube. What’s more, video advertising is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. It helps people understand your products and services better. Nowadays people are watching more videos than ever before. Video content drives more engagement than other types of content. 85 % of the online audience in the US, India, and Brazil are watching video content online.

It’s safe to say that it’s worth investing in video marketing. For example, Facebook’s scheduling algorithm gives the highest priority to people posting videos. Small businesses, customers, and marketers use videos to learn, promote, buy, and more. According to Wyzowl, 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. A good product video informs and motivates potential customers to make a purchase.  

WhatsApp is the most used massaging app in the world with 2 billion people using it every month. It’s Meta’s second-largest social platform, and the third most popular social media platform in the world. It makes sense to use WhatsApp marketing on this mobile messaging app for advertising because you can communicate with your customers, offer customer service and showcase your products and services.

Instagram has become the fourth most popular social media site in the world with a total of 1.47 billion global users. Instagram allows you to use photos and videos in your ads and follow your favorite people. You can tag products on your photos and let customers shop your brand’s photos. By choosing the right hashtags in your Instagram posts, you can increase your brand awareness and engagement. Plus, you can narrow down your target audience. Instagram’s contributions to the world of digital marketing cannot be underestimated. What makes it different from other social media platforms is that it is a top platform for executing an influencer marketing campaign. Who is an Instagram influencer? An Instagram influencer is a content creator who has built a reputation for his knowledge on a specific topic; someone who posts regularly on Instagram and often has a large following. Instagram influencers put your products and services in front of their audience in exchange for money or free products. Moreover, they create amazing user-generated content for you. Businesses of all shapes and sizes work with influencers to build and increase brand awareness as well as increase engagement and sales. Customers trust influencers and trust is very important for business success.

TikTok is another social media platform that you need to include as a part of your SMM strategy. If you need help in building an SMM strategy you can contact evil-mart. What is TikTok? In simple words, TikTok is a video-sharing app that allows its users to create and share short videos. It has a mix of music, lip sync videos, comedy, and micro-blog content. Both TikTok and YouTube are video-focused social media sites. Like Instagram, you can only create content on mobile phones. Like Instagram, you can start an influencer marketing strategy. Like Facebook and Twitter, you can consume the content by scrolling through the feed of short videos. But what makes TikTok unique is that it combines all these characteristics.

Even though it is a fairly new social media platform, it is still growing. It reached 1 billion monthly active users in 2021.

61 % of TikTok users in US are females so if your target a female audience, take a closer look at TikTok.

According to TikTok, 47 % of users have bought "something seen on TikTok" and 67 % agree that TikTok inspired them to shop even when they weren’t looking to do so.” Given this growth and popularity, make sure you’re investing in TikTok marketing campaign. It’s totally worth it. After using it, you’ll understand why everyone is raving over TikTok.

As you can see each social media platform has different uses and in order to make your social media marketing strategy work, you need to create different content for each social network taking into consideration their unique features. By using these Social Media platforms you can meet your business goals more effectively, connect with your customers better, grow your customer base, analyze your competitors, and increase sales. Social Media is an important element of your marketing strategy for your Shopify store and it is constantly evolving so you need to keep your finger on the pulse.

2. Promote Your Shopify Store with Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a great way to organically drive traffic to your online store. With content marketing, you can make your brand stand out. What is content marketing in simple words? Content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on creating valuable, relevant, engaging, and consistent content to attract and retain visitors and customers. It’s all about information that people can consume. It includes articles, videos, photos, infographics, audio and etc. Content marketing is the foundation of your marketing strategy.

Content marketing and social media are a match made in heaven. The second you write a blog post to attract and engage your potential customers means you have started content marketing. After you hit the publish button, the value of your blog doesn’t stop. That information can be used to drive traffic and engagement on social media. In 2017, 66 % of marketers reported using blogs in their social media content.  Statistics show that companies with blogs produce 67 % more leads every month than those that don’t have one.

How many words should a blog article have? Well, it depends on the blog topic idea but the truth is the length of your article is only important if you write valuable and informative content. The articles with more words do generate more traffic because the search engines reward longer posts. To cover the topic adequately you need at least 1000 words or more. According to Orbitmedia, just 4% of bloggers write long 3000+ words on average in a typical post. Putting in more effort automatically leads to better outcomes.  

There are too many ads online and it is not always the information the companies send us is valuable and relevant. That’s why content marketing is of great importance for your brand. The foundation of content marketing is high-quality content and storytelling. The goal of content marketing is to build trust with your visitors and customers, attract visitors to your site, increase brand awareness, and engagement and maximize sales. Building trust with your customers is crucial for your brand because when people don’t care about brands they usually don’t buy their products. That’s why you need to create relevant content that allows you to speak directly to your customers about the products and services you offer. You can talk about the problems they are facing and deliver good solutions for them. By offering value and meaning, you help people get more educated, and make the right business decisions that will help them achieve their goals. When you give your audience the content they want, they share it with friends and followers, creating a buzz over your product. Marketing isn’t possible without good content. Good content attracts more visitors to your website and you can later convert them into paying customers.

Content marketing and blogging go hand in hand. Adding photos, videos, and charts to your blog article is the best way to make it valuable and interesting. People are visual creatures and visuals are everything. Online articles with images get 94 % more views on average than text-only articles.

SEO, social media marketing, and email marketing are all based on content. Content marketing should be a part of your marketing strategy as it is an important tool for any online store owner that wants to stay competitive and profitable. Content marketing works in tandem with other marketing strategies and it has become the gold standard in digital marketing. We live in the digital era where potential customers are looking for products and services online every day and they need a good product description and content marketing provides the needed information. The content you create helps your "soon to be" customers understand your products better, build strong relationships with them and finally turn them into paying customers, get people talking about your business and increase traffic to your website.

3. Optimize Your Site’s SEO

SEO is an effective marketing strategy. What is SEO? For beginners, SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is the process of optimizing your website in such a way that it will rank higher in organic search results which means that more people will see your site. If done correctly, you can attract more traffic to your Shopify store. More website traffic means more customers and revenue. The power of SEO is undeniable.

Before you get down to SEO marketing business make sure you perform keyword research because keywords are what bring potential customers to your Shopify store. As well as analyze competitors' backlinks for better link-building practices.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding the most popular words and phrases your target audience enters into search engines like Google and Yahoo. The keyword research will improve your SEO.

As you search for winning keywords to target, pay attention to:

· Keyword search volume

· Keyword difficulty

· Search intent

Then you can move on to On-page SEO. On-Page SEO also known as on-site SEO refers to techniques that are used to optimize your site’s content. These techniques include using keywords in your titles, posts, internal links, and URLs. Find the right balance between adding keywords and making your titles and descriptions clear, simple, and understandable. You need to use the right keywords for the right pages. Make sure you use them in singular and plural forms. Keywords range from single words to phrases. With your blog posts, you need to target informational keywords.

Don’t neglect technical aspects of your website because they are important as they affect your search engine rankings, page loading speed, user experience, and mobile and desktop-friendliness. Compress images on your website pages to make your site load faster. You can use TinyJPG. Choose the best format. For example, JPEG files are smaller than PNG files. With the help of PageSpeed Insights, you can measure your website’s speed.

You should also optimize URLs because URL is not just small information about the location of the webpage. It helps search engines like Google deliver relevant results to searchers so your “soon-to-be” customers know exactly what they get if they click the link.

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Implement Off-Page SEO

Different from on-page SEO, off-page SEO, also called, off-site SEO, is an important SEO tactic that helps your site rank higher on search engines. Off-site SEO involves SEO-related activities that affect content outside your website. If you want to create a buzz around your online business, you should go beyond your own website. The main off-site strategies include:

·        Link building: The practice of getting links across the Internet that leads back to your site.

·        Guest posts: Writing posts for another site's blog.

·        Social media: Promoting your online business on various social media platforms

Find and join Shopify forums and communities. They are all a part of off-page SEO strategies. Participate in their discussions, be active, share advices, and ask questions and you will increase your brand awareness. All these activities direct users across the web towards your site. If you want to improve your search engine ranking, you must pay attention to all of them: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.

After choosing the right keywords, combine content marketing and SEO. It’s hard to get more traffic to your website without good-quality content. That’s why you need to provide valuable content that is useful, fresh, and relevant to your target audience. Your content must be able to attract potential customers and you need to update it with blogs, articles, videos, and audio. Check and scan your blog posts for broken or deadlinks and then update them whenever you can. It will improve the user experience. Be consistent. Hard work pays off.

When your content is optimized for search engines, it will make your Shopify store shine like a diamond among other stores. SEO-optimized content boosts your credibility and supports your content marketing. It increases your website’s usability and visibility. It can help you reach a bigger audience. Without SEO people won’t even know about your brand and products.

While the three strategies (SMM, content marketing, SEO) are important for the marketing of your Shopify store, you should also use third-party apps.

Cleverly Market Your Shopify Store with Shopify Apps

There are 7108 apps on the Shopify app store today. With so many Shopify apps, it’s not easy to decide which one will work best for your online store. Here are some of the best marketing platforms and apps for you to check out:

ICart Cart Drawer Upsell

iCart Cart Drawer Cart Upsell is an all-in-one Shopify app to increase your Shopify store’s Average Order Value and sales. iCart lets your customers add more items to their cart from the options given in the cart.

With iCart, you can show upsells, product recommendations, product bundles, offer discounts, and many more. iCart works on both the full cart page and the cart drawer. Yes, you can upsell in both carts and gain the attention of your customers.

It comes with advanced analytics to track the performance of the app. It has a simple drag and drop interface so that you can customize it easily based on your needs.

Key Features:

• iCart is created in such a way that even non-technical people can easily install it and personalize it without any coding.
• Create a beautiful slide cart and full cart page with a drag and drop interface.
• Offer exciting deal with cart urgency to avoid deal in checkout
• Supports multi-currency
• Personalize your cart with ultimate upsells, coupon code box, a countdown timer, changing the text and color of individual fields in the cart
• Create multiple discount tiers and BOGO offers based on cart item, price, product tag, cart sum, cart volume, location, recent views & purchase
• Create non-annoying, in-cart upsell offers like free shipping, BOGO, discount, and more on the cart drawer and cart page
• Recommend products based on items frequently bought together
• Offer product bundles and create up to 3 combo bundles with specific products or recommendations
• Offer special deals like free shipping, percentage, fixed amount deal based on specific conditions you set
• Add option to select free gift wrap and personalized gift message
• Know your customers better using survey widget options
• Birthday Collector, Custom HTML, Image with text
• Offer free shipping with free product & discount
• Give ultimate upsell, cross sell, bundles based on conditions like cart total/volume, product tags, specific item/collection, user location, and recent purchases
• Multiple discount tiers that reward and encourage customers to buy more
• Sticky add to cart for reducing cart abandonment
• Reward your customers with offers/coupon code box to spend more on their purchase
• Countdown timer to show cart urgency
• Progress bars to make people buy more
• Intuitive design with readymade responsive & customizable template
• Rules to create upsell and cross sell more specifically
• Integrates with order delivery date and review apps like Loox, Judge.me, Rivyo, Stamped.io, Ali reviews and Reviews.io
• Help you to reduce cart abandonment churn rate

Growave

With a 4.9 overall rating by 1755 reviewers on Shopify, Growave is the top-rated Shopify App. It’s a multi-tool marketing platform that helps Shopify store owners increase their store’s engagement, conversion rates, and sales. With several amazing features at a really affordable price, Growave is the right fit for your Shopify store.

Growave is the only application on the Shopify App store that has reviews, loyalty and rewards, wishlist, Instagram, social login, and integrations in a single app.

With Growave on your side, you can:

·         Leverage social proof with reviews and UGC

·        Implement loyalty programs to reward your customers who purchase or engage with your brand and launch your own referral program

·         Make your customers come back by sending wishlist emails

·     Display captivating shoppable Instagram galleries and let customers buy your products while they scroll through their Instagram feed

·         Enable one-click easy login to remove barriers when shopping online

·         Easily integrate with other Shopify apps such as PushOwl, Shopify Plus, Omnisend, Klaviyo, Firepush and etc

·         Make better decisions using analytics

Free plan available. 30 day free trial. Basic plan starts at 9$ per month.

Rebrandly

Rebrandly is a fantastic booster for your Shopify links. This easy-to-use custom URL shortener lets you create short links that incorporate a domain name. This will allow you to showcase your brand name and increase brand awareness even if the link is not clicked. Using a trusted brand you can improve the click-through rate up to 39% with no other additional efforts.

Rebrandly helps you:

·        Create short and memorable Branded links (links with your domain name)

·        Track clicks on links

·        Route and retarget your audience

·        Create personalized QR Codes

·        Increase message deliverability

Free plan available.

‍Omnisend

Omnisend is a must-have e-mail marketing platform for a Shopify store. This easy-to-use E-commerce software helps you drive sales through e-mail & SMS marketing. It has 4.7 rating by 4235 reviewers.  

This omnichannel marketing platform helps you engage your customers with user-friendly automation and multiple available channels.

Omnisend offers:

·        Omnichannel automation: add emails, SMS, push notifications, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp

·        Improved targeting with easy segmentation: deliver the right message to the right people at the right time

·        Drag-and-drop editor: you can create professional emails, forms, and automation workflows with ease

Free plan available. 14 day free trial. Standard plan starts at 16$ per month.

Privy

Privy is a great e-mail marketing software and it has 4.6 rating by 24772 reviewers. This extremely user-friendly marketing platform is specifically built for E-commerce.

If you want to increase the number of visitors to your site and grow your email list, then Privy is your top choice.

Privy will help you:

·        Grow your Email list with pop-up forms

·        Reduce your cart abandonment by sending automated emails

·        Increase sales with fully customizable emails

·        Integrate with other Shopify apps such as BigCommerce, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Zapier, HubSpot and etc

Free plan available. 15 day free trial. Starter plans starts at 15$ per month.

On average, a Shopify owner will use around 6 apps to run their business and he uses them separately, and with Growave you will need only one app. With the number of features, the Growave App has, it is easily one of the most effective ways to market your Shopify store and drive sales. Plus, it is less expensive than other marketing platforms and offers most of the same things and some more. What makes them all similar is that they all have live chat support.

If you want to make the most of your SMS marketing strategy you need to use Omnisend because it offers advanced email marketing tools. For cart abandonment and incredibly, user-friendly email campaigns, you might want to look at Privy.

Conclusion

Choosing the right strategies while promoting your Shopify store is time-consuming and at times it can be challenging but you learn as you promote your Shopify store and you can take it one step at a time and use the strategies that we suggested in our article. A website alone is not enough to drive traffic to your Shopify store, improve search engine rankings, and increase sales. Of course, you can’t just come up with just one marketing strategy and expect great results. SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing work in tandem and they complement each other and when they are together, they are explosive. The more engaging and informative content you have, the more people will visit your Shopify store. Moreover, you could improve the functionality of your Shopify store by using third-party apps. All of these apps have the potential for a huge impact on your store’s marketing and growth. Everything that matters takes time so you need to be patient and consistent. With well-thought-out marketing strategies, a functional E-commerce website, and patience, you can achieve great results. Use our tips on how to effectively promote and market your Shopify store in 2022 and stay ahead of your competition.