10 Shopify marketing strategies that get results

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Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms worldwide. It’s a powerful tool that can get your business in front of millions of online shoppers — but you’ll need an effective Shopify marketing strategy to establish and support your business’s growth.

A comprehensive Shopify marketing plan will work to establish brand loyalty, maintain and expand your customer base, and facilitate your business’s development. 

With a well-crafted strategy, you’ll stand out from your competition while meaningfully connecting with customers interested in the products and services you offer.

Below, we outline our top 10 need-to-know Shopify marketing strategies and techniques. From SEO and email marketing to encouraging user-generated content and building popular referral programs, we break down the best Shopify store marketing strategies for your business.

Understanding the basics of Shopify marketing

A cohesive Shopify marketing campaign will help you automate tasks to save time, provide insight into your audience, and track the success of everything from conversion rates to newsletter opens. Ultimately, it will help your business grow by driving traffic to your website and boosting sales.

Shopify has built-in marketing automation tools that store owners can use to build, coordinate, and track successful marketing campaigns. These include everything from Shopify Forms to grow your marketing list and a Shopify Inbox that supports customer conversions through a chat feature.

Shopify Email also allows you to easily create, automate, send, and manage customer communications.

Perhaps most valuable are the free courses on Shopify Learn, which will teach you how to best utilize these in-built Shopify marketing tools for your business’s needs. 

Make sure to take advantage of these tools when planning the marketing for your Shopify store — they’re designed to make your life easier.

Why you need a Shopify marketing strategy

With over two million live websites, Shopify is an extremely popular ecommerce platform. As such, it’s just not enough to set up a Shopify store and expect an audience to come to you. 

Designing and implementing an effective Shopify marketing strategy will help distinguish your business from the competition and support your ecommerce success.

You don’t have to be an established brand either — small businesses can have just as much success by leveraging a comprehensive Shopify marketing strategy to their advantage.

A successful Shopify marketing plan will enhance your business’s overall visibility to customers who want what you have to offer, while building and maintaining a loyal customer base through improved relationships and driving new audiences to your Shopify store. 

You’ll also gain actionable insights and customer feedback through successful Shopify marketing, benefiting your overall brand.

In short, marketing for Shopify supports business growth by maximizing audience traffic, increasing conversions, and boosting overall sales.

10 Shopify marketing strategies that get results

Now that you know why you need an ironclad Shopify marketing plan, we’ll break down our top 10 Shopify marketing strategies:

1. Optimize your Shopify SEO

One of the main ways to ensure that your business is visible on search engines is by properly optimizing your SEO (search engine optimization).

A powerful SEO strategy is a vital pillar of any Shopify marketing plan, helping you rank for competitive keywords and generate more website traffic. 

You can support your Shopify marketing strategy by optimizing the SEO on your product and category pages — particularly your page titles and meta descriptions. Improving your URL structure and publishing keyword-rich blog posts can also optimize your Shopify SEO.

Shopify comes equipped with built-in SEO features to help you optimize your store’s content. These features enable you to do everything from editing title tags and meta descriptions to editing the alt texts of images.

2. Leverage email marketing campaigns

Email marketing is a vital component of any Shopify marketing plan. It can help you nurture leads and build relationships with your email list to establish loyal repeat customers.

The best practices for Shopify email are wide-ranging. You should aim to write compelling subject lines and personalized emails to hook audiences, using a mix of text and images. Send emails regularly without overwhelming customers and ensure coherent and consistent branding.

Email marketing for Shopify should utilize automation, plus in-depth analytics and reporting.

Omnisend has templates and automation features that simplify audience segmentation and targeted messaging. A drag-and-drop email editor is a user-friendly way of creating stunning emails from over 250 templates.

3. Run Facebook and Instagram ads

No Shopify marketing plan is complete without including social media marketing. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer a vast audience for your business to market your products and services. 

Using your social media marketing successfully can be a highly cost-effective way to build brand awareness and trust while reaching new customers and driving conversions.

You’ll need to think through your social media marketing for Shopify — know your company’s target audience and use analytics to establish what content performs best. 

You can also use paid advertising on social media to increase your company’s visibility and drive traffic to your website.

Retarget customers on Facebook and Instagram with an email marketing tool like Omnisend’s Facebook ads. This lets you reach users who visited your Shopify store, pulling them back via personalized ads.

4. Incorporate SMS marketing

SMS marketing helps your business send customers targeted messages, offer promotions, and provide detailed tracking of any orders.

As a marketing tool with some of the best open and click-through rates, SMS can help you build stronger relationships with customers who want to hear from you, driving more sales. And because they’re delivered instantly, text messages are excellent for pushing time-sensitive promotions and bringing customers back to abandoned carts.

As you can see, SMS marketing is a vital component of any Shopify marketing plan. You can easily automate SMS marketing and integrate it with email campaigns with Omnisend.

Intuitive to use and offering pre-built automation workflows, Omnisend facilitates easy SMS marketing that fully integrates with Shopify stores for maximum conversions and minimal stress.

5. Use influencer marketing

Collaborating with influencers is a great way to help grow a business and should be included in your Shopify marketing approach. Influencers can help build brand trust and loyalty by advocating for your business in front of new audiences, increasing your company’s reach, and expanding your target market. 

You’ll support engagement with your Shopify store through a cost-effective Shopify marketing strategy. 

Social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram can help you recruit influencers to advertise your products and become brand partners or ambassadors.

Alternatively, you can use Shopify Collabs, a platform designed to help Shopify stores easily leverage creative partnerships. Just be sure to find the right influencer for your company when building your influencer marketing for Shopify.

6. Develop a content marketing strategy

A content marketing strategy for Shopify will allow your business to tell its story, helping you demonstrate your expertise to your niche audience and build a relationship with them.

Content can include everything from blog posts and infographics to videos and social media. The right content marketing channel will depend on your audience and brand — you don’t need to be across every channel.

Be sure to tailor your marketing content based on each channel. Don’t repeat the same content everywhere, or you’ll risk oversaturating audiences. Know that different materials will work best on different channels.

The goal is to educate your audience, build brand trust and loyalty, and engage existing and potential customers. 

7. Create and optimize abandoned cart campaigns

An abandoned cart refers to when a customer adds products to their basket but leaves your site before completing the purchase. This happens often — in fact, the average cart abandonment rate calculated by the Baymard Institute is 70.19%!

A shopping cart abandonment campaign is therefore a vital pillar of your Shopify marketing plan. By creating and optimizing abandoned cart campaigns, you can help recover sales. 

Optimized abandoned cart campaigns are built around urgency and scarcity. You’ll also want to emphasize the benefit of product or service ownership. Omnisend’s abandoned cart workflow can help your business bring customers back to complete their purchases. 

By combining multiple channels, Omnisend provides an integrated omnichannel abandoned cart strategy.

Advanced Shopify advertising tactics for increased sales

If you have experience with Shopify marketing and advertising, you’ll want to distinguish yourself from competitors by using the following three strategies:

8. Use user-generated content (UGC) and reviews

User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content created and produced by a brand’s customers. Also known as consumer-generated content, UGC can be anything from reviews and testimonials to blog posts, unboxing videos, and podcasts. 

UGC is a great way to foster brand credibility and loyalty with your customers — plus, because it’s not created by you, UGC can be a highly cost-effective Shopify marketing technique.

You can incentivize your existing customers to create UGC in a number of ways, such as:

• Asking customers to leave reviews, share photos, and create videos about your product or service
• Running campaigns like contests or giveaways to encourage customers to share their experience with your brand

You can then promote this UGC on your website’s product pages to help drive sales.

9. Create a customer loyalty program

A customer loyalty program allows you to reward customers who repeatedly purchase from you while encouraging them to continue shopping with your store. As part of a Shopify marketing strategy, loyalty programs work by rewarding loyal customers and supporting customer retention.

These programs can take many forms — offering rewards like points, discounts, or exclusive perks — to keep customers engaged and coming back for more.

Plus, by remaining in regular contact with your customers, you can be adaptable and proactively respond to their needs, resulting in higher customer satisfaction. 

With a strong loyalty program, you’re also likely to generate some UGC and increase your likelihood of referrals.

10. Set up referral programs

Referral programs are the companion to customer loyalty programs, and both have a place in your Shopify marketing plan. 

As a form of word-of-mouth marketing, referral programs incentivize existing customers — with rewards like discounts or store credit — to refer their friends and family to your Shopify store. This ad-hoc marketing comes at a minimal cost to you but introduces your company to brand-new audiences.

Plus, establishing a successful referral program can result in a positive life cycle of advocacy for your brand.

Wrap up

Build your brand by attracting, converting, and retaining customers with an effective Shopify marketing strategy.

From using SEO and integrated email and SMS marketing campaigns to target a key audience, to rewarding and incentivizing loyal customers, a successful Shopify marketing plan will support your business’s growth.

Plus, by deploying powerful analytic tools, you’ll be able to measure the success of your Shopify marketing. By leveraging generated data and customer feedback, your business can adapt and improve on its best practices while cementing a loyal audience of repeat purchasers.