How to Promote Your Shopify Store: 10 Winning Strategies

by The MNTN Team

7 Min Read

Building an agile, user-friendly Shopify store is a great first step toward growing your business. You just need to learn how to promote Shopify stores so you can get noticed, drive conversions, and acquire new customers.

Fortunately, there are plenty of different ways to market your digital store, and to help you learn how to advertise Shopify stores, we’ve compiled a list of our ten favorite marketing strategies.

1. Optimize Your Shopify Store for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) represents a vital marketing tool for every type of website, including Shopify stores. Enhancing your site’s SEO requires a multifaceted approach consisting of conducting keyword research, incorporating those terms into your on-site content, and adding optimized metadata to each page.

You’ll also need to address technical and off-page aspects of SEO. On the technical side, you must ensure your site is fast and responsive. For off-page efforts, focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks that drive users to your store. If other sites link to your page, it helps boost your authority with Google.

2. Content Marketing: Start a Blog

As for where to incorporate all the keywords you amass, the answer lies in your blogs. While you can weave some target phrases into your product descriptions and landing pages, blogs are what will really up your SEO game.

Publishing great blogs also allows you to connect with prospective customers by providing them with free, educational, or informative content at the top of the funnel, and reviews, product comparisons, and customer testimonials at the bottom of the funnel.

Just keep in mind that while you can include some light calls to action in your written content, go easy on the sales-y language. Prioritize giving value to consumers and entertaining them with cleverly written content.

Ask just about anyone with a little advertising experience about how to market Shopify stores and they will most likely point you to social media. And that’s because the strategy works. Roughly 33% of consumers use social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to discover or research new products.

Whether you want to drive brand awareness, nurture existing leads, or break into new markets, social platforms can help you achieve your goals. Just remember to research your audience and identify their preferred social channels so you can connect with them on the mediums where they are most active.

4. Email Marketing Campaigns

In today’s social media-dominated world, you might assume that email is an outdated marketing tool, but it isn’t. Not by a long shot.

In fact, according to some estimates, email marketing delivers a return on investment (ROI) of 3,600%, which means that for every dollar you spend, you could earn up to $36 in return. Granted, you won’t see that sort of ROI right out of the gate, but just the fact that it’s a possibility goes to show that email remains a powerful tool that you need to be using.

Create segmented lists that divide audiences up by their relationship with your business, sending messages to prospects, new customers, and past clients who haven’t made a purchase in a while. Incentivize each group with personalized content and offers, such as coupons or discount codes.

5. Influencer Marketing

Building credibility takes time. But the good news is that you can borrow some from established internet personalities, like social media influencers. Partnering with a few popular names on a particular platform can introduce your store to new audiences and help you gain your own followers.

Of course, there are a few things to be aware of. First, you need to find partners whose audience aligns with your ideal customer profile. Second, understand that you don’t have to target mega-influencers with millions of followers. An online personality with 100,000 followers (or even as low as 10,000, depending on your audience) can still provide a huge boost to site traffic.

6. Offering Discounts and Promotions

According to a survey of consumers who have purchased a retail item in the past month, nearly three out of four (72%) said discounts influenced their decision of where to buy.

Promotions and discounts can help you connect with these deal-seekers and acquire new customers. The trick is to structure your discounts in a way that incentivizes repeat purchases or larger order volumes.

For instance, instead of offering a blanket promotion for 10% off all purchases, offer a 10% discount on purchases of $100 or more. That kind of approach will encourage customers to buy more than they would have otherwise so they can reach the promo threshold.

7. Using Customer Reviews and Testimonials

Consumers tend to be distrusting (or at the very least, a little skeptical) of ads from brands they’ve never heard of. However, if they hear other customers raving about your products, they may be more apt to believe them.

Once you start acquiring some positive feedback from consumers, showcase these reviews on your Shopify store and in your marketing material. Ask buyers to leave you feedback, and if possible, obtain video testimonials. While any sort of positive review can help your brand, video testimonials tend to be some of the most digestible.

8. Paid Advertising

Learning how to promote Shopify stores involves a learning curve and a bit of trial and error. While you are waiting for your organic strategies to take hold, consider running paid ads to give yourself an immediate boost in in-store traffic. You can run paid ad campaigns on Google, social media channels, and Connected TV platforms.

Regardless of where you run them, the key to effective ads is to identify and target the right audiences. Set specific goals and targeting parameters so your content reaches the right prospects at the ideal stage of the sales funnel. Modern advertising tools allow you to control every aspect of your campaign, including your budget. More importantly, you can track ad performance and determine what content resonates with your audience.

9. Collaborate With Other Brands

Working with other companies that have an audience similar (but not identical) to your own can help expand your reach. For instance, let’s say that your store specializes in fitness apparel, and another brand sells home gym equipment and accessories. By teaming up, the two of you could launch bigger marketing campaigns while splitting advertising costs.

Additionally, you can take advantage of the natural overlap between your two audiences. People who like fitness apparel are more likely to be interested in exercise equipment, and vice versa.

If you really want to mobilize your audiences to action, consider offering cross-platform discount codes. For instance, if someone spends above a certain dollar amount on your site, you could reward them with a discount code for the other brand’s goods. Your marketing partner could offer the same deal to their customers.

10. Streaming TV Advertising

Our last tip in knowing how to promote Shopify stores is that CTV needs to be part of your game plan. CTV advertising refers to ads delivered via the internet and streaming platforms like Hulu, Netflix, and Max.

In the past, advertisers had to launch separate campaigns on each platform, which could be tedious to keep up with. But with a partner like MNTN Performance TV, you can access premium inventory on multiple platforms and reach new customers.

MNTN Performance TV also has robust CTV targeting capabilities to help you achieve specific performance goals, including a lower cost per acquisition or better return on ad spend. MNTN also includes dynamic tracking tools, creative services, and all of the functionality necessary to crush your sales goals.

You can check out MNTN today on the Shopify app store.

How to Market Shopify Stores: Final Thoughts

Learning how to promote your Shopify store is a process that’s going to involve experimenting with multiple strategies. You aren’t going to reach your sales goals with a single approach.

Instead, you’ll need to implement several of the tactics outlined above to reach new audiences, promote customer loyalty, and maximize sales revenue. Combine traditional methods like blogs and email with modern approaches like native social media ads and CTV. By doing so, you’ll create a holistic strategy that propels you toward your growth goals.

Need More Help on Shopify?