9 Best Shopify Marketing Strategies to Boost Sales

Shopify is one of the top-performing e-commerce platforms on the market, with over 4.4 million sellers globally. Merchants love its user-friendly interface, wide range of features and low barrier to entry. If you want your Shopify store to be successful, you’ll need a detailed Shopify marketing strategy along with all the right tools to execute your strategy.

At Collabstr, we’ve been trusted by over 20,000 brands for their influencer marketing, and we understand the importance of incorporating a wide range of marketing tactics to make your Shopify store successful. In this article, we’ll dive into the details of Shopify marketing strategies you can use to boost your sales.

What is Shopify Marketing?

Shopify marketing is a strategy businesses implement to promote their Shopify store and products by using a mix of online marketing channels. These include search engines, emails, and social media. The goal is to build brand awareness, increase sales, retain existing customers, and encourage their loyalty. 

When you’re selling on a huge e-commerce platform like Shopify, it can be difficult to stand out. So using reliable methods and tools to market your e-commerce store is paramount to getting customers to notice you and stick by you.

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Why is a Shopify Marketing Strategy Important for Sales?

Gain visibility

With a clear Shopify marketing strategy, you can present your store to potential customers who may not have come across it before. This is especially useful if you’ve just launched your Shopify store because you’ll need to fight harder to gain visibility in the market.

Show your value

By putting together a marketing strategy for your store, you can highlight the uniqueness of your products, setting you apart from your competitors. Without a marketing channel to target, your product and its value remain unknown to consumers.

Criteria to Consider When Choosing Shopify Marketing Tools

Before we dive into the most effective Shopify marketing strategies and tools, you need to know what you should prioritize when choosing your strategy. 

Your Goals

To make sure your marketing strategy stays on track, you need to define SMART goals in the beginning clearly. For example, how many sales will give you the revenue you want? Using the SMART method helps give you more structure so that you can stay accountable to your marketing goals. 

Your Buyer Persona

By creating your ideal customer profile, you’ll be able to target your content toward the right people. You want a Shopify marketing strategy that makes sense, and knowing your target audience ensures you maintain your overall brand message. Define factors such as gender, age range, location, interests, and spending habits.

You can identify your buyer persona by analyzing existing customers. If you don’t have existing customers, then it’s best to put together a buyer persona based on who you think would benefit from your products. From here, you can test your hypothesis by targeting that buyer persona and you’ll be able to iterate from there.

Your Competitors

You're guaranteed constant competition when selling on a platform as popular as Shopify. The best way to stay ahead with your marketing strategy is to keep an eye on them. By finding out what works for your competitors, you’ll have a better idea of what areas your marketing strategy should target.

Now let’s look at the best Shopify marketing tactics you can implement for your store. 

10 Must-Have Shopify Marketing Strategies to Boost Sales

1. Focus on SEO

One of the best marketing tactics you can apply to your Shopify store is SEO because it helps you drive organic traffic to your site. Organic traffic is the key here because, according to Backlinko, 75% of searchers choose to click organic search results over paid-ad results.  

This isn’t to say paid ads won’t work in your favor, but it’s better to prioritize investing in SEO first because it’s more sustainable, and in the long run you’ll be acquired customers at much lower costs than your competitors who fully rely on ads.

Here’s how you can optimize your Shopify store for search engines: 

• Start with keyword research to find out what your target customers are searching for. Google Keyword Planner is an amazing free tool you can use to get great search terms for your niche. 

• Prioritize long-tail keywords as they help you target customers with a high intent to purchase (e.g. where to buy crocheted toys). 

• Structure your website content with clear headings (containing your keywords) and break it up into easily readable sections. 

• Optimize your website with Shopify’s own built-in functions like meta-titles, alt text for images, and URL structure. 

2. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is on pace to become a $22.2 Billion industry by 2025 according to the 2023 influencer marketing report. Brands have realized that influencer marketing is an excellent method of leveraging the audience of others to gain trust among consumers. 

Customers appreciate purchase advice from influencers because they’re real people who’re deemed trustworthy to suggest certain products. Since they’ve built credible relationships with their audiences over time, you can really benefit from utilizing them to promote your Shopify store. 

When choosing an influencer to work with for your Shopify store, you’ll want to consider a few things. 

• What niche is the influencer in? (Fashion, beauty, sports, food, etc.)

• Does the influencer align with your brand values?

• What is their follower engagement like? (Micro-influencers tend to have great engagement, you can use an engagement calculator to confirm)

• Which social media channels do they prioritize? (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok)

• Is their following similar to your target audience? 

• Will you be able to measure your return on investment? (make sure you have some influencer marketing KPIs in mind)

If you’re unsure how to start researching and reaching out to influencers, you can look to Collabstr for all the help you need. Discover a broad selection of authentic influencers through our influencer search tool at no cost. 

3. Quality Content Marketing

By supporting your Shopify store with meaningful and relevant content, you’ll maintain a genuine and long-term interest in your products. In fact, 70% of customers prefer to learn about businesses through content rather than ads. 

Content marketing for Shopify is simple but it’s not easy. With content marketing, you’re going to identify a content channel, such as a social media platform like TikTok, or blogging, and you’re going to create content on that channel consistently over a long period of time. Slowly but surely, the content should begin bringing in customers organically.

The main benefit of creating quality content is that you can repurpose it across different online channels, such as your website, other websites, emails, and social media. 

For your Shopify store, you can consider these content channels and strategies: 

Blog posts

Blog posts help to give more context around your brand and what it offers. You’ll also establish your brand as a reliable authority in your niche, making more customers consider your store for those specific needs. 

For example, Getmaude is a sexual wellness brand that sells many products, from candles and supplements, to help improve intimacy. Their blog is unique, well-researched, and dedicated to exploring intimacy in the modern world, with the ultimate goal being to educate customers on their brand message. And clearly, it works because their blog gets over 190,000 visits monthly.

Leverage your blog posts by adding case studies from real customers to help other customers see how your products can benefit them. If you write quality content on your blog, it will rank higher on search engines and ultimately drive more organic traffic to your website. 

Videos

Video content is currently the most engaging type of content because people find it more entertaining and informative, especially in short form. Video content is also much more likely to go viral, especially on video-sharing apps like TikTok and YouTube. Creating interesting videos around your brand and sharing them on social media is a great way to gain attention.  

Infographics

You can create attractive and useful infographics to display on your store product pages. It adds more dimension to your brand and shows customers that you genuinely want to add value to their lives with your products. Fortunately, there are useful tools, like Canva, to help you create infographics for any platform. 

Interactive materials

Interactive content allows your customers to participate and engage fully with your website. You can use fun activities like quizzes, polls, surveys, and short games to test customers on their topic knowledge and help inform them in an entertaining way. 

With interactive content, you also get the added benefit of gathering their information which you can utilize to identify their preferences and interests to help you target their needs. 

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is unique because it involves you sending personalized messages via email to your customers, to update them on any news or offers from your Shopify store. It’s quite a cost-effective way to stay engaged with customers between their purchases. To ensure your email marketing is effective, emails must be cleverly written with relevant personalization to avoid reading like an ad. 

To set up your email marketing, you’ll need to build your email list by;

• Including a newsletter sign-up form somewhere on your website

• Segment your audience according to their product preferences

• Assign your content according to these audiences

• Confirm your email schedule 

• Ask customers for content preferences so that you can deliver content relevant to them

When it comes to email marketing, you don’t want to bombard your customers with frequent emails because they’ll be more likely to unsubscribe. So, keep tabs on your unsubscribe rate and be mindful of the reasons why customers do it, so you can improve as you progress. 

To elevate your emails, try adding interesting content besides store updates. For example, the men’s grooming brand Beardbrand, uses catchy subject lines, real case studies, and excerpts of new blog posts to keep their customers engaged.

5. Leverage Social Media

If you’re a Shopify store just starting out, social media is the best place to kick off your Shopify marketing strategy. You can build your customer base and stay engaged with them throughout their buying process. 

Here’s how you can establish your social media marketing plan: 

• Set goals - do you want to achieve brand awareness, build a community around your brand, or elevate your customer service? 

• Understand your target audience so that you can choose the right platforms.

• Choose your KPIs to monitor how well your social media strategy is working.

• Create engaging content for your chosen platforms and plan your posting schedules.

• Check in with Collabstr to hire influencers that enhance your brand image. 

• Aim to engage consistently with your audience.

Besides just creating content, you can also promote your Shopify store’s products through social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are great because you can easily integrate your store catalog and turn on the shopping feature. 

6. Referral Marketing

With a referral program, you encourage your existing customers to share your store with their family and friends in exchange for a small incentive like a shopping discount or a gift card. This tactic is great for building positive word-of-mouth for your brand and enhancing your reputation. 

According to Social Media Today, 60% of marketers report that referral programs bring in a high amount of strong leads. So, a great referral marketing program will help you secure more traffic for your Shopify store, thus strengthening your Shopify marketing strategy. 

This is how you can create an effective referral program for your Shopify store: 

• Create a catchy headline that expresses the benefits of referring

• Make the referral program simple with just a few clicks to refer

• Include referral message templates for customers to choose from

• Keep track of the results - feel free to use Shopify Apps like Referral Candy to help you

About 70% of beauty brand Glossier’s online sales come from customer referrals, and this is because they used their referral program in conjunction with their resourceful blog and user-generated content. As you can see, a strong mix of tactics can help you elevate your Shopify marketing strategy. 

7. User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is unpaid and unsponsored content created by people who’ve purchased from your store. UGC ads can add more substance to your customer reviews on your store’s product pages and get people to trust your brand. 

Here’s what you can do to encourage user-generated content:

• Simply announce to your social media audience the type of content you’d like to see from them. Your customers will appreciate being asked to participate in creating content when they make a purchase because it creates a sense of community. 

• Leverage the power of campaign hashtags. Creating hashtags inspires customers to willingly create and share content that’s unique to your Shopify store. It offers a sense of inclusion and community. So, with an associated hashtag, you’ll gain more brand awareness and customers willing to participate. 

• Make sure to repost and reshare any UGC you gain. This helps to spark engagement and maintain a positive sense of community with your customers. It’s been reported that 51% of customers will keep purchasing from a brand that shares their UGC. So, it’s best to use all the content your customers contribute.  

8. Paid Ads

Paid ads for your Shopify store are an e-commerce advertising strategy that tends to work best when used with social media, and they’re a quick way to establish your ROI. 

In terms of social media, paid ads on Instagram and Facebook work really well to put your brand in front of potential customers. You can choose different features to apply to your ads, such as single pictures, carousels, or videos. 

To help you with conversion reporting and algorithmic ad optimization, you can install Facebook Pixel. Even better, it can be linked with your Shopify store so customers can easily checkout through Facebook.  

9. Flash Sales & Giveaways

Seasonal sales and giveaways are a surefire strategy to gain brand awareness and get more people excited about your products. 

Giveaways are especially great because they encourage people to share your Shopify store so that they can participate. You’ll also be able to grow your social media following, drive more traffic to your website, and gain valuable insights from your customers. 

If you’re going to do a giveaway for your store: 

• Make sure the rules are clear and simple. The rules shouldn’t be too difficult, as you could discourage people from participating.

• The waiting time for the giveaway shouldn’t be too long because people can easily forget about it, meaning your strategy loses momentum. 

• It’s best to include bestseller products in your giveaway so that more people will be genuinely interested in participating. 

• Organizing an influencer marketing campaign to promote your giveaway can really grow your engagement because they bring in a wider audience. Collabstr can help you choose the right one for your brand!

• Consider using Shopify tools to simplify the process;

• ViralSweep

• Promosimple

• Gleam

Wrapping Up

A strong Shopify marketing strategy based on your goals with a mix of the tactics we’ve explored will help you get the necessary visibility and sales. There’s no harm in testing everything out and dropping the strategies that aren’t working for you. When dropshipping on Shopify, effective marketing strategies are essential to drive traffic, attract customers, and increase sales.

Collabstr can help you hire influencers who fit your brand and buy content from creators to enhance your UGC. Start with our Pro plan. You can post as many of your campaigns as you want and have our influencers apply directly to you. That way, you save time having to reach out to them, and you can guarantee that those who reach out have a genuine desire to work with your business.