How to Promote Your Shopify Store (9 Winning Strategies)

You know how it feels! 

You've optimized your website until your eyes crossed and priced your products so competitively that your profit margins are slimmer than a runway model.  

And yet, your sales are about as lively as a Monday morning before coffee.

But not anymore! It's time to make more sales happen, and we've got the winning strategies to help you do just that. From social media to email marketing to influencer partnerships (because let's face it, everyone loves a good #sponsored post), we've got the inside scoop on how to get your store noticed.

Let’s dive in. 

Spoiler alert: If you skip, you won’t get the best strategy that could have degenerated $$$ for you. So let’s dive in. 

Why Should you Promote your Shopify Business?

You’ve probably heard the saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” This means that when one person does well, other people around them tend to do well as well. The same is true for your Shopify store. If you start doing more marketing and promotion, you can expect your sales to increase.

Because promoting your business helps you reach new customers who might not have found you otherwise. By promoting on social media and other platforms, search engines like Google, you can get your brand in front of people actively looking for products similar to your company's. 

This means more traffic to your website, more sales, and more growth for your business.

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But that's not the only benefit!

Promoting your business also has other benefits. 

It can help you build your brand, establish yourself as an authority in your industry, and create a loyal customer base. When people see your ads, read your content, or engage with your social media posts, they start to recognize your brand and associate it with quality, value, and professionalism.

Whether you're just starting or you've been in business for a while, there's always more marketing collateral you can make to get your brand in front of the right people. But how can you do that exactly? Well, that's what we have in the next section.

9 Ways To promote your Shopify Business Online

Here are the 9 strategies that can help you make the most of your investments. 

But make sure you know there is no one-size-fits-all formula for promoting your Shopify store online and that you must experiment with different methods to find out what works best for you.

At the end we will reveal the best strategy too, so stay tuned!

1. Email marketing

Email marketing is an evergreen marketing strategy that works almost every time. You can use it to promote your Shopify store and get a steady stream of customers coming in. 

You can also use email marketing to keep them engaged with your brand long after they have purchased their first product from you.

Email marketers receive a conversion rate from 2% to 5% of their recipients when they send out marketing emails—and that's the average! This means, if you send 100 emails, you could get 2 to 5 sales from those emails. 

This is why email marketing is a great way to build trust with your customers and keep them coming back for more. But doing it all by yourself is a nightmare!

So it’s better to use email automation tools like Getresponse or Mailchimp. These tools will help you send out automated emails based on certain actions that your customers take—like buying a product or signing up for your newsletter. If you're sending bulk emails make sure you follow email sender requirements and set up DMARC, SPF and DKIM email security protocols.

2. Influencer marketing

Want to gain more sales?

Then influencer marketing is the way to go. It's a great way to get your products in front of thousands of people who already have an established audience.

In fact, 61% of consumers trust influencers' recommendations. So why not leverage the same?

Let's say that you sell baby clothes and toys. You could find someone with a huge following on Instagram and send them free samples of these products in exchange for them posting a photo wearing or using them. Influencers do charge more and it's based on the number of followers and engagement rate they have.

But when you choose to try influencer marketing, you must select people with a similar kind of engaged audience as your brand targets. Moreover, you must choose a suitable platform based on the audience and the type of product you sell. 

How do you reach your target audience if the platform doesn't have the right audience?

Isn’t it?

Instagram might be the perfect option for most brands. A study suggests that Instagram is the No. 1 platform for influencer marketing among US brands, with 76.7% of marketers expected to use it in 2023—an annual increase of 4.1%.

You should know which metrics to track when running an influencer marketing campaign. While likes and impressions may be necessary for some advertisers, not all will focus on these results when measuring the success of their efforts.

Instead, use UTM parameters—these provide more informative data about your audience's behavior at specific moments in time by allowing brands to see how many people saw/clicked an ad or visited a landing page upon clicking on it.

And if you have sales quotas, consider creating a unique promo code for each influencer that they can use when referring people to your store. This will help track which influencer is driving the most sales and help you determine who to work with in the future.

3. Paid ads

While organic is the best way to go, it’s important not to overlook paid ads. You may be able to reach your target audience more quickly or at a higher volume than with organic posts. To get the most out of your budget, you have to choose the platform wisely.

For creating awareness and recovering your abandoned carts, Facebook is the best option. You can use many different ad formats and target your audience based on demographics, interests, and more. You can also create a lookalike audience of people who have visited your store and retarget them with ads.

For driving sales, both Google ad words and Facebook works better. Still, the downside is that Ad words are expensive as several other big companies like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and others are also using them.

So, it’s difficult to get your ad in front of the right audience at a low cost. Facebook is cheaper than Google Ad words but offers less control over the ads you create. You can even create YouTube ads, as the conversion is as good as 12%.

Hack to reduce your ad budget: To reduce your ad spend on your campaigns, create "Click to WhatsApp" ads. This will help them to get in touch with you on WhatsApp and help you cut down your ad spend. Even f you launch any new product, you can reach out to them again and get sales without spending on ads.

4. Referral marketing

How about turning your customer base into a salesman who can bring new sales for you for a certain percentage of the sale? That's what referral marketing is all about.

If you have a loyal customer base, it can be a great way to generate new sales without investing in ads. You can even organize contests and give rewards to those who bring in the most sales. This will help you reach out to more people and turn them into customers.

But will they work?

According to Truelist, 85% of millennials are most likely to be persuaded by their friends' opinions. 28% wouldn't even consider buying something if their friends didn’t like it, while Gen Z and Gen X fall close behind with 83%.

After all, who will hesitate to buy products if their friends can't stop talking about them? 

This is why referral marketing is so popular, and it's a great way to promote your brand. To ease the process, you can install a Shopify app that allows you to promote your referral program and incentivize customers to share it with their friends.

5. SEO

SEO is another way to drive traffic to your site. It's the process of optimizing your site for search engines, which means that whenever someone searches, their results will include your Shopify storefront. A crucial part of this process is competitors backlink analysis, which involves examining the backlinks of your competitors to identify potential link-building opportunities and improve your site's authority.

Luckily, Shopify has tons of features that automatically update SEO but it's not sufficient to compete against the competition. It's important to keep track of your rankings and make sure that you're consistently improving them.

Many factors come into play when ranking on Google or other search engines; things like page speed and mobile friendliness can make all the difference between first-page rankings and not even showing up at all.

Apart from that, you should also get reviews for your Shopify products, as it directly influences the ranking of your store. You should try to get as many reviews as possible, but make sure that they're all legitimate and not just made up by bots.

To boost your rankings, you can even create a blog or helping guide section that helps your users to select the best product. This way, you can rank for indirect keywords, like “best product” or “a helpful guide to product selection.” Alongside building a blog, it's worth starting to explore link building, it's always recommended to outsource backlink building due to it's tough nature.

Here’s how Gymshark does the same thing, 

In the blog section, you can recommend relevant products that help solve your reader's problem.

6. Social media marketing

Social media can be your best friend when boosting your Shopify sales. You should try to get as many likes, shares, and followers as possible and then use these numbers to increase your store's sales. You should also try to create valuable content that helps people in their everyday lives.

But it's essential to be available on a platform that has a relevant audience as you have. Here are the possible channels and how to gain more from those platforms.

1. Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms. A recent study found that people ages 18 to 24 are the most likely Instagram users. Almost one-third (30.8%) of all Instagrammers fall within this age range.

You can use images, and reels to get more Instagram followers. The best thing about Instagram is that it's highly visual, so if you have a product or service that lends itself to beautiful imagery, this is a great platform for you.

Moreover, Instagram has multiple features that allow you to get the most out of your efforts. Here's how Phool has developed a strong and established itself as a trusted brand.

That's the potential of Instagram if used properly and consistently.

2. Facebook

Facebook is better if you are using paid ads. Otherwise, it's better to use Instagram. If your target audience is more on the older side and in the same age range as you, Facebook can be a good place to start. It's also great if you have products and services that are more B2B in nature since Facebook has many features that make it easier for businesses to market themselves.

But it's important to note that paid ads are competitive and you have to spend a significant amount of money to get good results.

But Facebook ads are effective when it comes to recovering your abandoned carts or retargeting ads, as they are highly targeted and can be very useful in increasing your sales.

3. Pinterest

Pinterest is another social media platform that you should consider for your e-commerce store. With over 450 million users, Pinterest can be a great way to reach new customers and drive relevant traffic to your site.

The platform allows you to create boards that are specific to your products or brand so customers can easily find what they’re looking for. In fact, 98% of people who use Pinterest say they try new things because they've seen them on the site, while only 71% said this is true for other social media platforms.

4. WhatsApp

WhatsApp is suitable for all kinds of people as everyone uses WhatsApp these days. Compared to the conversion rate of email marketing (1.22%), WhatsApp offers a much better conversion rate as high as 45-60%.

Moreover, with the help of WhatsApp, you can easily reach out to your customers and provide them with the latest updates about the products. You can create auto campaigns and send them messages about your new products, offers, and deals. This is the easiest way to reach out to your customers without even leaving WhatsApp.

What's the unique thing is that WhatsApp messages are personalized and allow your customers to interact with your brand. This boosts your engagement and helps you to build a strong relationship with your customers.

With BiteSpeed, you can create a WhatsApp campaign in minutes and send your customers messages. Here are some of the top capabilities of BiteSpeed that you can take advantage of:

1. Multiple opt-in templates: BiteSpeed provides various opt-in templates that enable you to create exit intent pop-ups in various designs and styles. These pop-ups allow you to build a WhatsApp subscriber list, making connecting with your customers easily.
2. Abandoned cart recovery messages: BiteSpeed offers advanced abandoned cart recovery messages that you can send via WhatsApp. This feature helps you recover lost sales by reminding your customers of their abandoned carts and encouraging them to complete their purchases.
3. Chatbot flow builder: With BiteSpeed's chatbot flow builder, you can automate customer queries, take orders, and more. This feature saves you time and effort by handling repetitive tasks and allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your business.
4. WhatsApp shop and catalog: BiteSpeed lets you bring your entire Shopify store on WhatsApp. You can showcase your products to your customers, enable them to make purchases directly from WhatsApp, and provide them with a seamless shopping experience.
5. Photo reviews: BiteSpeed allows you to collect customer photo reviews directly from WhatsApp. This feature enables you to build social proof and gain the trust of potential customers by showcasing real customer experiences.
6. Segmented broadcast messages: With BiteSpeed's segmented broadcast messages, you can send the right message to the right person at the right time without getting blocked or marked as SPAM by your potential customers. This feature helps you improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and achieve better results.
7. Upsell and cross-sell: BiteSpeed enables you to upsell similar products when a customer orders, increasing their orders' average value. You can also cross-sell additional products to customers two weeks after they purchase their initial product, increasing your customer's lifetime value (LTV).

And the capabilities are endless when you have a strong subscriber list.

7. Web push notifications

Web push notifications are a must-have feature to help you improve your marketing. Push notifications can remind customers of upcoming events, offer discounts, or even send surveys.

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The average click rate of web push notifications is 12%, which can be improved to 15% through automated notification strategies. However, it's essential to get things right. Otherwise, you won't be able to get the most out of your efforts. Here are some tips to help you get better with push notifications,

• Keep your push notifications short and to the point.
• Use personalization to tailor your notifications to the recipient's interests.
• Send notifications at a time when your users are most likely to be engaged.
• Offer something of value in your notification to encourage engagement.
• Allow users to opt-in to receive your notifications.

8. Pop-ups

Pop-ups are a great way to reengage with the customer who is about to leave your store or browse your store without taking any action. The goal is to make the purchase or build your subscribers to use later. Pop-ups can be very effective, but they should not be overdone. Use them sparingly and make sure they will not annoy your users.

It's best to use exit intent pop-ups as they are triggered when a user is about to leave your site. This way, you can catch the attention of people who were interested in something but never took action. On the other hand, you can even use "gamification" to get the most out of your efforts.

With BiteSpeed, you can build irresistible pop-ups that users will want to interact with. You can provide the offer or free shipping to collect more subscribers. Later, you can engage with them directly on WhatsApp to make more sales.

After all who will resist a sweet deal?

9. Share coupons through a chatbot

People widely use chatbots to get instant answers to their questions. You can create a chatbot and share coupons to increase sales. 

To make this more effective BiteSpeed offers a WhatsApp chatbot feature that works similarly to a regular chatbot but works on WhatsApp. Through this, you can offer discounts and recommend products that suit your customers' needs.

Here's how Fitshot does the same,

The key here is to be creative and use your imagination to come up with unique ways to engage your customers. No one can refuse the offer when the chatbot pops up and says "Here's the 10% discount for you, wanna avail?"

So What’s the Best for Your Shopify Store?

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Now you have all the sufficient strategies to get in front of your target audience. But you can't put your hands on every one of these strategies simultaneously. 

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You need to prioritize and start with one. Let's say you want to focus on Facebook ads for now, then set up an ad campaign with your budget in mind. Once you get results from that campaign, it's time for another strategy like Instagram influencers.

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Remember to prioritize your customer experience above anything else. If you don't have an amazing customer experience, all your efforts will be wasted. For example, if you want to reduce the number of abandoned carts, it's better to ask your users about the reason and then try to fix it. This way, you can retain the customers ready to buy from you.

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The same goes for a product recommendation; you can use the chatbot to ask the customers what they want and then recommend a product based on their answers. This way, you can reduce the friction between your customers and sales.

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But how can you do this manually while having many things on your plate? That's where BiteSpeed comes in. It helps you take care of the customer engagement part and works close to autopilot to bring you sales. 

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From recovering your lost customers to generating sales from the existing ones and even recommending a product based on their answers, BiteSpeed does all this for you. It helps you automate your customer engagement and sales process altogether.

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But still, there's a lot more that you can do, but if I write, it will become another blog, so why can't we take that to a personalized demo call? Say, when can we catch up? 

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