TABLE OF CONTENTS
- What is Shopify?
- What makes Shopify so Adaptable?
- Significance of Marketing Strategy for Shopify
- Nine Effective Tactics to Improve Shopify Marketing Strategy
- Adding new products to Pinterest
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Collaboration with Influencers
- Creating a Blog
- Video Marketing
- Creating Loyalty Programs
- Use Affiliate Marketing
- Organizing Contests and Giveaways
- Examples of Brands using Shopify Marketing
- STAPLES
- GYMSHARK
- Final notes
Bloggers use WordPress. Artists use Etsy. Business and store owners use Shopify.
If you own a store or a business, you might have watched a video about opening an online store on Shopify. Or maybe your family or a friend might have talked about Shopify, but you didn’t understand. Or maybe you have opened a Shopify website, but you face a hard time getting visitors or revenues.
Fortunately, this article is for you. Here you will learn about Shopify and a few marketing tactics for your Shopify website.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce platforms that helps you build your store, offline and online. It isn’t any singular product, but a store builder that enables you to sell products. It is a commercial business that can empower your business or start-up and create revenue.
KEY STATISTICS
- Shopify powers over a million businesses worldwide with two million active users.
- Shopify has contributed over 183 billion in global economic activity.
- A survey from Statista showed that in 2018, the e-commerce industry grew by 21%, while Shopify grew by 59%, outpacing the general growth trend.
- In 2019, Shopify took almost 20% of the e-commerce platform market.
What makes Shopify so Adaptable?
The high demand for Shopify is because it is simple and convenient to use. You can launch an online store without the need of knowing web development, codes, or issues. It is a full package that meets all the essential needs of an online store.
Shopify has a range of templates and preformatted themes that you can customize according to your specific requirements. Moreover, you can access your dashboard from your phones too.
To promote your business, you will need various tools for marketing campaigns. Shopify offers a range of features and tools to assist with promotional campaigns.
Significance of Marketing Strategy for Shopify
Whether you have an established business or you are launching a startup, a solid marketing strategy is vital for the growth and development of your business. Marketing strategies are roadmaps that help you direct your business in the right direction.
Shopify powers more than eight hundred thousand stores. The competition is vicious, but a strong marketing strategy will put you ahead of several others.
- An efficiently planned strategy will fetch you several benefits.
- It will help in more effective distribution of products/services.
- It is a powerful weapon in building a brand image.
- It helps you create the right products.
Nine Effective Tactics to Improve Shopify Marketing Strategy
It isn’t easy to start selling from your Shopify store with a steady flow of income. If you are unable to generate any revenue from your website, you will be just running a hobby.
Hitting your sales and revenue targets is one of the toughest challenges of small businesses. But, we have got you covered. Here are ten effective strategies to improve your Shopify marketing strategy.
Adding new products to Pinterest
When it comes to social media marketing, everyone focuses on Instagram and Facebook, but they usually forget about Pinterest. Pinterest is a great tool that allows you to post high-quality images of products with direct links to your page. It also allows you to add descriptions and prices.
About 77% of weekly users have discovered a new brand or product and 83% of weekly users have made purchases through the content they saw through a brand on Pinterest.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is one of the most critical marketing techniques for your online business.
“SEO does not help you get traffic. It helps you fetch the intended traffic and the relevant audience. ”
Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is a process of improving your website to increase the relevant traffic through organic search engine results and rank as high as possible. SEO helps creates high, recurring, and free traffic for your website.
Various studies indicate that search is the accounted for most traffic of websites. A study by Outbrain showed that organic search beat social media by more than 300%.
Collaboration with Influencers
To gain a huge fanbase, you can get celebrities and bloggers to create sponsored posts about your products and feature them in advertisements.
One of the best examples of influencer collaboration is Calvin Klein. Through their Instagram campaign, they created a viral campaign featuring supermodels and celebrities. Within two weeks, they gained 13,000 new fans on Instagram and 38,000 on Facebook.
Creating a Blog
Studies show that people are more likely to buy a product if they read about it. However, instead of writing about products, you can expand the subjects to appeal to a wider audience.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is emerging to become one of the most powerful marketing tools for businesses. It is progressively dominating the entire industry. Make sure your videos have relevant content and should be informational.
Another powerful video marketing strategy is releasing emotional videos instead of general commercials. It will draw the attention of customers by engaging with them on a deeper level and creating a positive image of your brand.
Creating Loyalty Programs
A study showed that 84% of consumers are more likely to stick to a brand with loyalty programs.
Repeating customers are way more valuable than new ones. They are open to spending more, persuasion, and create user-generated content that promotes your brand.
Loyalty programs show how much you appreciate their trust in you. These programs can come in several types, like premium memberships of accounts or membership points.
Use Affiliate Marketing
In affiliate marketing, you will pay third-party members to advertise and promote your products. Amazon is the mastermind of this strategy, offering free affiliate programs.
Organizing Contests and Giveaways
Everyone loves gifts. Offering freebies through giveaways and contests is one of the easiest ways to attract public attention without much effort.
Giveaways have become a new trend for brand promotion. They invite users to like or follow the brand’s page and tag friends.
Examples of Brands using Shopify Marketing
- STAPLES
“ Typically, enterprises of our size will choose Salesforce or Oracle, or SAP Hybris. We evaluated all the big players. They would’ve taken more than 24 months to re-platform a site of our complexity. We were able to do it in under 12 months with Shopify Plus—at less than half the cost.”
—Andy Lee, Senior Director, Digital Product Management, Staples Canada
In 2018, Staples created a new logo and slogan intending to begin a new era for retail. They needed to be reborn. Since they were displeased with the complexity of custom platforms, they migrated to Shopify Plus.
In less than a year, their new website was live. They saw huge traffic come in without any degradation in performance. They set a record on the Black Friday Cyber Monday sales and the site revenue increased more than 100% in thirty days from March to April 2020.
- GYMSHARK
Ben Francis founded Gymshark, a leading fitness wear and accessories brand, at the age of 19 in a UK garage back in 2012. Gymshark re-platformed with Shopify Plus so that they could scale on demand, grow their brand, and reach the international market.
Trusting Shopify Plus helped the business reach 41 million euros in sales in 2017, generate 5.1 million social media followers from 131 countries, and become one of the most rapidly growing global fitness and apparel brands.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Shopify is a fabulous ecommerce platform. Moreover, it is seamless and consumer-oriented, empowering businesses to create great online shops without spending too much effort or time.
However, being dependent on Shopify’s features and functionality is not enough. Since the competition is tough, you will need to develop and deploy a step-by-step marketing strategy to grow your brand.
By starting your path with Shopify, you will surely cross a major step, but you will still have to breathe life into your brand, something you will have to do yourself. Ultimately, there is always room for improvement.
Deepak Wadhwani has over 20 years experience in software/wireless technologies. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies including Intuit, ESRI, Qualcomm, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone, Nortel, Microsoft and Oracle in over 60 countries. Deepak has worked on Internet marketing projects in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange Country, Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, New York, San Francisco and Huntsville. Deepak has been a founder of technology Startups for one of the first Cityguides, yellow pages online and web based enterprise solutions. He is an internet marketing and technology expert & co-founder for a San Diego Internet marketing company.
