Do you own a business using Shopify but feel lost when choosing the right business marketing strategy? Among the myriad of suggested methods, establishing a marketing strategy suitable for your business is not an easy task. This article will highlight how to create an effective Shopify marketing strategy with comprehensive details to help you consider in order to increase your sales.
What is Shopify Marketing?
Shopify marketing consists of the plans and strategies used to promote and advertise your Shopify store or its products to reach potential customers and convert them into returning customers. A viable marketing business plan is one that outlines your goals, value proposition, market research, messaging, and the top marketing channels your customers use.
Shopify had 2.1 million daily active users in 2023. By 2024, 4.63 million online stores were using Shopify, accounting for 10.32% of the leading eCommerce software market share (according to Growth Devil). Meanwhile, according to Shopify’s Q1 2024 financial results announcement, their revenue increased 23% to $1.9 billion compared to the previous year, corresponding to 29% year-over-year growth. These statistics demonstrate the strong growth of Shopify users. The increase in revenue and user numbers indicates that competitive demand is driving growth ever higher. In other words, effective Shopify marketing strategies are more important as millions of stores emerge.
Benefits of a Shopify Marketing Strategy
Choosing and building a comprehensive business marketing strategy brings many advantages to businesses, helping them achieve their goals effectively. Here are some benefits of marketing business plans that may assist you:
- Reach and identify the right target audience
- Enhance brand recognition and build trust with the audience
- Outperform your competitors
- Evaluate performance
- Improve customer interactions
- Adaptability
- Quickly adapt and respond to market changes
How to Build a Successful Shopify Marketing Strategy to Increase Your Revenues
Step 1: Conduct Market Research and Create Buyer Personas
Conducting initial market research is extremely important for establishing subsequent strategies. Market research involves identifying the target group of people you want to sell to, understanding their preferences and pain points.
There are several ways to research to drill down into your target audience; for example, you can perform a competitive analysis by analyzing competitors, such as which customer segments they cater to and on which social media channels they are most active.
Additionally, you can use web analytics tools like Shopify Analytics or Google Analytics to collect useful data about your target audience.
In addition to the above methods, you can consider other approaches, such as running surveys by asking questions relevant to the target audience, interviewing a group of people who regularly follow and interact with competitors to understand their purchasing reasons and other detailed insights, analyzing purchase information as you achieve sales, or conducting industry research through Google Trends, Forrester, Nielsen, etc.
Once gathering detailed information, create buyer personas by developing detailed profiles of ideal customers to tailor your Shopify marketing message accordingly.
Step 2: Set Clear Marketing Goals
Setting specific goals is the fundamental basis for any marketing strategy, guiding us toward measurable overall business objectives. You can set appropriate targets and apply SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to your marketing efforts. Specifically, determine how much money you want to generate within a specific timeframe.
Step 3: Explore Marketing Channels
Optimize Your Shopify Store
SEO optimization is one of the most effective ways to enhance your Shopify store optimization methods, especially when a large portion of your web traffic comes from search engines like Google. Optimize your SEO by using relevant keywords in your product titles, descriptions, and meta tags to improve search engine visibility. Although this method takes time to show results, we firmly believe this strategy will optimize and significantly reduce costs for you.
Additionally, you can optimize your store to ensure it is mobile-friendly since the majority of online shopping now happens on mobile devices. According to Social Shepherd, 24.77% of Shopify store traffic comes from mobile devices, such as phones or tablets. This number is still increasing each year. Therefore, you should ensure your storefront on all devices is used smoothly by customers.
Finally, improve loading speed by optimizing images and using fast hosting to ensure your site loads quickly.
Social Media
Social media marketing is an effective business plan for small businesses starting out in the market. Businesses can use free and paid social media marketing to increase sales.
First, choose the right platform where your target audience is most active (e.g. Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest). Then, engage with your audience by posting regularly, responding to comments, and interacting with your followers.
You can also leverage paid social media advertising to target specific demographics and expand your reach.
Content Marketing
Writing blog posts related to your products and industry can drive organic traffic and attract customers. Furthermore, producing product demos, tutorials, and customer testimonials to showcase your products is also an attractive strategy.
Advertising
You can use both online and offline advertising strategies. Specifically, use Google Shopping ads to appear in search results when customers search for products like yours or show ads to previous visitors to encourage them to return and complete your purchase transaction. Besides, you can take advantage of advertising channels such as Facebook, Instagram, billboards, radio, television, etc.
Implement Shopify Email Marketing Campaigns
Email Marketing is one of the strategies with the highest conversion rate (4.29%) on Shopify at a very low cost, far surpassing other marketing channels such as social media, direct search, and paid advertising. If you have not started with Shopify email marketing yet, you are surely missing out on your money-making opportunity.
Build a welcome email series by sending new subscribers a batch of welcome emails. Alternatively, you can create a list of reminder emails to nudge customers about items left in their cart and offer incentives to complete the purchase, such as free shipping, buy 1 get 1 free, 10% off, and more. Eventually, let’s use customer data to send personalized product recommendations.
Step 4: Retention Marketing
Building long-term trust with customers is an effective business marketing strategy to encourage repeat business, as retaining customers is much cheaper and easier than acquiring new ones.
Targeted Shopify Email Marketing
Collect customer emails after they make a purchase and create Shopify marketing campaigns to convince them to buy again, such as transactional emails sent during the checkout process, promotional emails and new product offers, etc.
Offer Promotions and Discounts
Businesses can offer limited-time promotions to encourage customer purchases. Additionally, you can provide bundled products at a discounted rate to increase the average order value or you can create loyalty programs and exclusive discounts for your customers. Consider using the best Shopify discount apps to streamline your promotional efforts.
Step 5: Set Your Marketing Budget
According to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey of 395 CMOs and marketing leaders, the average 2024 marketing budget has dropped to 7.7% of total company revenue, down 1.4% from 2023. Businesses have tightened marketing budgets significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic, as this figure accounted for 11% of total revenue before the pandemic.
Source: Gartner CMO Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Dropped to 7.7% of Overall Company Revenue in 2024
In fact, marketing budgets can fluctuate flexibly on either side of this average standard. Some businesses with aggressive strategies will need a higher marketing budget while new stores might experiment with free strategies first.
Once you have the overall number, allocate it to each specific strategy. Nowadays, every marketing channel has a budgeting tool that explains how far your money will go. For example, Facebook or Google Ads provide specific numbers and reports on Marketing effectiveness and spending. This way, you can keep track of your budget clearly.
Step 6: Analyze and Optimize
We can only truly know how a campaign performs when we have data or results. Use Shopify marketing tools and analytics like Google Analytics to track which campaigns are performing well and which are not, helping you choose the right strategies. Before that, experiment with different versions of your website and marketing campaigns to see which works best. After monitoring and analyzing, regularly review which strategies can be improved and then adjust based on performance data.
Conclusion
By following the steps above, your business can significantly increase traffic to your Shopify store, improve customer engagement through personalized Shopify marketing strategies, and effectively increase sales. Implementing a combination of free and paid marketing tactics optimizes budget allocation, driving customer loyalty and long-term growth. This comprehensive approach ensures a well-rounded and effective marketing strategy tailored to your business needs.
