Shopify Marketing: 10 Incredibly Effective Tactics to Boost Sales

Your Shopify store needs customers. Yet, you just can’t seem to acquire them.

You’re looking at your analytics, and your traffic is a mere trickle.

Frustrated, you’re pulling your hair out.

You need to figure this out, but it seems impossible.

At this rate, you are not going to get any sales. And when that happens, it’ll probably get too difficult to sustain your store.

That would be a nightmare.

You can’t let it die.

Fortunately for you, it won’t.

Because in this post, I am going to share with you 10 different Shopify marketing tactics you can try to grow your traffic, and eventually your revenue.

If you keep patient and experiment with them, you will start to see your traffic and sales coming in like clockwork. You might also need Shopify dynamic pricing but that’s another subject for another day.

Cool?

Let’s dive in.

Consider using a competitive pricing strategy

A competitive pricing strategy is one where Shopify retailers decide to fix their online prices based on competition (i.e competitors or market trends) rather than demands or the costs incurred.

Why does this work so well?

It’s because pricing is one of the most important factors when it comes to online shopping. Online shoppers are more than happy to swap stores when they discover other places selling similar products at cheaper prices.

By being able to offer competitive prices, you keep your customer base stable.

How to implement this strategy

To execute competitive pricing well, it’s important to automate it. The reason is simple – matching all the products with competitors and tracking them manually is a huge waste of time. As an entrepreneur, you should be spending your time on higher-value activities like analysis and making decisions.

If you’re looking for a software that can help you automate your competitive pricing strategy, look no further than Prisync. You should also read this piece for a further step-by-step guide on how to do competitive pricing well.

Write SEO-driven content pieces

Why is blogging important?

Blogging is important because of its capability to rank in Google.

Think about it. If you’re a small Shopify store with only a handful of products, it means that you probably only have a couple of pages that can potentially rank in Google.

But, if you blog and create content, you are actually creating more pages, which gives you more “ammunition” to rank in Google – and get that sweet, free, organic search traffic.

Not only that, but you can also use these content pieces to educate your potential customers, teaching them about the problems they’re facing, and educating them on how to use your product to solve those problems.

How to implement this strategy

There are a ton of blogs (for e.g Brian Dean, Hubspot or Moz) dedicated to helping you implement this strategy properly. However, to get you started, I’m going to run you through the basics.

As you may know, investing in SEO for your Shopify store is expensive – and you’ll want every piece of content you create to have a chance of sending you qualified traffic and customers.

The best way to do this is to write about topics that already have search demand. To uncover these topics, you have to do keyword research.

Start by brainstorming for seed keywords. Seed keywords are the foundation of your keyword research strategy and are essentially words or phrases that describe your product or your niche.

If you own a Shopify store that sells yoga pants, then your seed keywords will probably be “yoga”, or “yoga pants”.

Then, plug those seed keywords into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs. What happens is that Ahrefs will generate tons of other, relevant keyword ideas that you can look through, filter and prioritize accordingly.

Once you have a list of important keywords that you feel you should rank for (and will send you qualified traffic that will purchase your products), begin creating content for them!

Pro-Tip: Remember to promote your content after you’ve published your post to get it some eyeballs. This can help you generate extra traffic while acquiring some important backlinks that can help it rank.

Leverage influencer marketing

Who are influencers?

Influencers are people who have amassed a huge audience, usually on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. These people have the uncanny ability to send you huge amounts of traffic and sales, simply because they have recommended your product to their fans.

However, you do not want to wait for it to happen organically. As with any good marketer, deliberately influencing the process is the key to gaining traffic and sales.

It is important that you look for various opportunities to work with influencers relevant to your Shopify store and get them to promote your products to their audience.

How to implement this strategy

There are a few ways you can collaborate with them in order to drive traffic and sales.

• Sponsorship

One of the best (and perhaps easiest) way to work with influencers is sponsorship. In a sponsorship campaign, you can either send the influencer free products or pay them a particular amount to talk about your product in front of their audience.

There is a wide range of things you can play around here, ranging from an Instagram post featuring your product, or a particular YouTube video dedicated to your store.

• Feature them in your advertisement

Another method you can explore is featuring them in your advertisements. Whilst typically used by bigger brands for TV ads, you can also consider using them as models for your Facebook Ads.

One of the bigger benefits of doing it is the halo effect, where physical attractiveness or popularity can imbue “positive traits” onto your product by virtue of you working with these influencers.

• Collaboration

You can also collaborate with influencers to work on products together. There are various ways to approach this – you can get them to design a product for your new line, name a product after them and so on.

A great example of this type of collaboration is the collaboration between Kanye West and Adidas to produce the shoe, Yeezy’s. Adidas’s sales went up by 14% and net income went up by 10% after the collaboration.

Launch a giveaway

Let’s be honest. Who doesn’t love freebies?!

I mean, I do. And so do many others.

Giveaways are a time-tested method to build brand awareness and get people to learn more about your store.

The trick to doing a giveaway well is to only offer products that are covered by your audience – and make it valuable enough for them to want to enter the competition for it.

How to implement this strategy

It is not enough to just run a massive giveaway and wait for it to be successful. To supercharge your giveaway and reach as many people as possible, you have to build a viral loop.

Gamify the process by incentivizing your contestants to share with their friends in order to win additional prizes, or win more “chances” to get the top prize.

Fortunately, you don’t have to code everything yourself.

Simply use an app like KingSumo and everything will be done for you (all you have to do is to choose the prize, and choose they will win it).

Set up a loyalty program

A loyalty program is a strategy where customers are incentivized (through points and rewards) to come back more often and become repeat customers.

According to Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, their loyalty program Starbucks Rewards is their most important business driver, driving short-term profit gains and long-term loyalty to the brand.

There are multiple ways of utilizing a loyalty program, ranging from a digital loyalty card (for e.g buy 5 get 1 free) or a membership points system, where every dollar is equivalent to a point, and more points equals more redeemable rewards.

You can also reward customers for specific actions taken on your website, and use it to subtly encourage them to purchase more.

How to implement this strategy

A loyalty program sounds complicated, doesn’t it? Fortunately, it isn’t.

Like many of the strategies on this list, simply install an app like Smile.io on your Shopify store, and your loyalty program woes are taken care of.

Get more reviews

It’s undeniable.

Customers WILL do online research before they click the “buy” button on your website.

And who will they trust when it comes to whether they will purchase from your store?

Online reviews.

No matter whether it’s a review on Amazon, a private review from other blogs, or some kind of review aggregation service, customers will be eager to check out whether your product is worth purchasing.

Go along with this, and encourage more positive reviews for your store and products. Help your customers build trust in what you have to offer.

How to implement this strategy

Ask for it!

Good, satisfied customers tend to forget to leave reviews, while bad, nasty customers tend to leave a lot of reviews.

Encourage more positive reviews by reminding them to leave one. Make it obvious by featuring call-to-actions (CTAs) on your website. Here’s an example from Beardbrand:

If you’re using a loyalty program, you can also make “leaving a review” an action where they can be rewarded with points.

Alternatively, you can also use apps like Yotpo to encourage your customers to leave more reviews.

Send cart abandonment emails

68.63% of customers add your product to the cart, then fail to check out.

That means that if you do not find a way to get them to come back to click that big checkout button, you’re losing a ton of sales.

Don’t worry – all is not lost.

You can get them to come back by sending them a cart abandonment email. A cart abandonment email is an email that is triggered when a customer adds your products to the cart – and does not check out.

When a customer receives that email, he or she will be reminded to hit purchase in your store.

How to implement this strategy

Once again, there are tons of apps (e.g Omnisend) on the Shopify App Store that can help you with trigger-based cart abandonment emails.

Use an upsell

According to ConversionXL, there are only three ways to generate more revenue for your store.

You can either:

• Get more new customers
• Get existing customers to buy more often
• Increase the average order size of every customer

Most of the tactics on this list can help you with acquiring more customers or getting existing customers to buy more often.

What about increasing the average order size?

Simple – add an upsell.

An upsell is selling a customer who just bought something (and is, therefore “hot”) something else that complements what he just purchased. A classic example would be selling a tie to someone who just bought a suit.

How to implement this strategy

There are many ways you can create an upsell that tempts your customers to buy more. How you implement this eventually will depend on the kind of store and products you sell. You can:

• Give them a discount for buying more or in bulk
• Offer an upgrade over the current product they are purchasing
• Sell them a bundle deal
• Sell them a complementary product that will fit what they just bought/am about to buy
• Give them an extended warranty
• Ask them if they want to purchase faster shipping

Set up a Shoppable Instagram feed

65% of Instagram users actually use their Instagram feed to discover new brands and look for inspiration on what to buy.

The problem is – they are unable to buy a product at the very moment they are in a buying mood. They’ll have to exit Instagram, go to their browser of choice, and type in your store name (if they remember).

It’s a hassle.

Can you imagine the number of sales you’ve missed out just because the customer couldn’t be bothered to leave Instagram?

Well, it doesn’t have to be this way.

You can turn your Instagram into a Shoppable feed instead.

How to implement this strategy

By using apps like Snapppt, you can turn your Instagram feed into a shoppable store. Snapppt turns your Instagram bio link into an interactive shoppable feed where your users can purchase products featured on your Instagram.

Develop a referral program

The best marketing strategy that always works to get you more customers is word-of-mouth.

After all, people only spread word-of-mouth if they are satisfied with your products.

However, here’s a piece of bad news.

Despite the fact that many satisfied customers would love to tell their friends about your product, the truth is only less than 30% of them actually do so.

Why?

Because your customers are forgetful.

Not only that, there exists in real life few opportunities that they would be able to share your product with their friends.

Solve this by developing your own referral program.

A referral program deliberately influences the word-of-mouth process by incentivizing customers to share your products with their friends.

When their friends become your customers, they, in turn, are encouraged to share about your product with their friends, building some kind of never-ending viral loop that continues to send traffic and sales to your store.

How to implement this strategy

Like a loyalty program, setting up a referral program is easy. You can either set one up using a custom-built solution or use Shopify apps like ReferralCandy to get your referral program going.

Now, your turn

You now have a list of 10 marketing tactics you can implement right away to get more traffic and sales for your Shopify store.

Choose one of the 10, and begin experimenting with it to see how it affects your sales.

Then, when it works, put more time and resources into it.

If not, move on to the next tactic.

Soon, you’ll begin to see your sales skyrocket.

Frequently Asked Questions