Can I drive thousands of visitors to my new Shopify store? Are there free and affordable ways to market my store effectively? Yes to both.
As a new Shopify business, you can grow your traffic to reach thousands of monthly visitors and get a good conversion rate. To get there, though, you need the best Shopify marketing techniques.
In this article, you’ll find five of those techniques.
1. Conduct a Google Shopping Campaign
Google advertising is one of the fastest ways to drive traffic to a Shopify store. Get your business account on Google, create campaigns, add info about your products, keywords and target customers, and set up the daily budget. Just like that, you can drive hundreds to thousands of daily visits.
The reason why Google Shopping campaigns are so effective is that they’re shown to your target audiences when they use the search engine to find products. The ads appear only for specific searches and are displayed in prominent places (like the top of the search results)
This means that you get a lot of exposure fast. Besides, high-intent shoppers will take a look at your products, which gives a great chance to score sales.
Like here—the ads appear on top of the rest of the results. So, there’s no way a Google user doesn’t notice them.
2. Encourage Purchases with a Website Chatbot
If you apply any of the Shopify marketing techniques we described, chances are great that there will be some people visiting your store. Most of them will browse and leave, unless… there’s something giving them a good reason to convert.
That’s where a website chatbot comes in. It’s an app that simulates a conversation with a human, but in this specific case, it’s useful for marketing. You can set up your chatbot to show promotional messages to every visitor, thus increasing the chance of conversions.
Example:
Moonbuh Baby, a Shopify store selling children’s clothing, has a chatbot that shares a 5% discount with visitors in exchange for their email addresses. Getting the discount is easy: a visitor needs to click on Yes and type in the email.
Using a chatbot to market your Shopify business actually serves two purposes: encouraging buying and building an email list. Since we’re offering a discount in exchange for an email address, we’re also preparing to conduct email marketing.
Speaking of email marketing…
3. Build an Email List
There’s no way around it — email is a must to market a new Shopify business. Start building your list as soon as you go online by adding email capture forms to pages on your store.
Example:
Asphalte, a French clothing brand, uses this email capture form to get email subscribers. The copy is very benefit-oriented, so it has a good chance to engage many website visitors.
The first step to building a list of potential customers is getting a Shopify email marketing app. It will equip your site with email list building forms and tools to create and send out marketing campaigns. As soon as you collect a few dozen subscribers, you’ll be ready to start email marketing.
This means creating emails to share with potential customers and drive traffic to your store. You can update them on product news, give away discounts, share loyalty program details, and otherwise encourage them to visit. Every app comes with email marketing automation workflows (automated campaigns), so promoting your business with them will be quite efficient.
4. Get Your Store Featured on Popular Blogs
Content creators like bloggers are constantly looking for examples of unique and creative online Shopify stores. Getting your business featured can potentially drive thousands of visitors to your site within a month—depending on the popularity of the resource.
Example:
This post with examples of the best Shopify stores talks about their designs, brand histories, business models, marketing techniques, and products. It’s a nice read for aspiring online entrepreneurs looking for success stories to learn from.
Getting featured on a blog like this is easier than you think. You can reach out to bloggers and website owners that publish similar content and offer them to consider reviewing your store. Tell them why your store is unique and share some brand history details to get them interested.
Consider reaching out to multiple websites to take advantage of this content marketing method. The more mentions your store gets, the more traffic it might get. Just make sure to check the reputation of chosen sites — by Googling them, for example — so your store gets mentioned only on popular, good sources.
5. Reward Customers for Loyalty
Over 90% of companies have loyalty programs because customers appreciate being rewarded for repeat business. That’s why a loyalty program is a must-do technique to keep first-time customers and convince them to visit again.
Example:
Gnomon Watches, a Shopify store, shows this message to every visitor to encourage them to create accounts and/or convert (see below). It’s one more way for this business to engage potential customers and provide extra motivation to consider buying.
Consider starting a loyalty program for your Shopify store, too. There are a bunch of free and affordable Shopify loyalty program apps, so creating such a project won’t be a problem at all. They typically provide advice on rewards—things like discounts, free shipping, gifts, and VIP perks are a common choice.
Be sure to share the news about your loyalty program on every marketing channel you can: chatbot, emails, social media, you name it. The more potential customers know about it, the better chance you get to convert more of them.
How to Market a New Shopify Business: Final Thoughts
So, here you go, five excellent ways to promote your Shopify store and get more customers. As you can see, these promotion ideas work both to encourage first-time and repeat purchases to help you build a large client base as soon as possible.
And the best news is that all the ways here are either free or low-cost. This means you can get started with Shopify marketing without taking money from your budget.
