Not earning enough money in your Shopify store? You may not be promoting it hard enough. Promotion is the answer to all Shopify website owners’ woes when it comes to getting more traffic and sales to their stores.
Today, you’re in luck for I am going to show you 50 ways to promote your Shopify store. This will give you plenty of choices so that you can choose the method that you are most comfortable with.
Are you ready? Let’s go.
A very fast way to promote your Shopify store is to start a Shopify Affiliate Program. You only pay your referral users when they send you a successful sale, this is one great privilege the referral program provides. To increase traffic sometimes you may have to use other people’s voice.
2. Give Customers Outstanding Service
Even though you have a good product, but your customer service is very bad, it can drive potential customers away. Your customer retention rate and increase in your overall reputation among other competitors is possible with great customer service.
3. Instagram Stories
Even if it gets deleted after 24 hours it would capture a very large number of audiences in that time frame. Showcasing promos or other feature of your product is now quite easy.
4. Make use of Special Holidays
It is not just only during Thanksgiving, Black Friday or Christmas holiday period that people tend to buy things or share gifts around, but also during valentine’s day, and Mother’s day as well. You should always see this period as a key time to advertise your products on social media and the likes.
5. Social Media Contests
Social media contest is a great method to promote any product on the social media. It is very powerful as it would not just encourage large number of viewers but would also make the amount of sales for a certain period sky-rocket at a flash. It is that easy. Who doesn’t like to win a prize to be awarded after a contest?
6. Advertise Your “coming soon” Sales
This is a way of making customers anticipate those goods that they really want, and would constantly increase their curiosity level per time and are also ready to buy once the product is up for sale.
7. Facebook Stories
It would also be removed after 24 hours but showcasing your items in your shop and promoting time-limited stock is settled with this method.
8. Organize Sales that Lead to Charity Donations
Customers are usually more social conscious than ever before, you can use this to your benefit. You can support causes that customers really care about. Once they see that buying your product will benefit a cause they have interest in, will make them not even think twice to buy your product.
9. Youtube
Video is certainly one of the mainstream social platforms in line with content marketing. Promoting your product and also giving behind the scenes to your customers is easy with a video. And as YouTube is dominating today with opportunity of a live broadcast option, it is at your disposal for use.
10. Email Marketing Limited-Time Discounts
Sending an urgent mail on limited-time discounts is also a way to promote your Shopify store. Your target customer would be interesting in acting as soon as possible once you can offer limited-time discounts. Time is of the essence in marketing.
11. Promote Your Store with Discount Coupons
We cannot talk about promotion without talking about discount coupons. This is one of the oldest ways that ecommerce website owners promote their sites and the strategy continue to work up until today.
You’ll see it even on big ecommerce sites. You’ll see a discount coupon on top of the page. They put it there for a reason. They do that because they want to attract customers by giving them some discounts on their purchases.
12. Offer Free Shipping
Aside from discount coupons, you can also provide free shipping. In fact, many buyers are discouraged from buying online because of the incredibly high shipping fees. Taking the shipping out of the equation usually makes people feel at ease that they’ll get their products without the extra cost.
13. Give Away Coupons in Exchange For Subscriptions
I could not stress how valuable a list is to an ecommerce website. It is like having a customer list and potential buyer’s list at the same time. You have this list that you can contact in case you have a new product or promotion and you will be able to do this with a click of a button.
However, you can only have a list if you start asking for it. The best way to do this is to offer an incentive in exchange for your customers’ emails. Sometimes, a simple discount coupon is all you need. In my experience, I found that the best time to promote this is right when your customer is about to buy something. The discount would often entice them to sign up.
14. Reward Referrals
What’s the easiest way to grow your ecommerce website? The answer is referrals. This is quite simple. All you need to do is implement a referral campaign using a software or an app. From here, your customers can start adding some referrals. Each referral should earn them points or rewards. These rewards can be a discount coupon or a free item in your store.
15. Reward Buyers
You should not limit your rewards to referrals. You should also reward your buyers. How? You can do it through buyer points.
You’ll see stores do this all the time. They will usually have this loyalty card that accumulates points based on the number of purchases that the buyer has done. These points can then be converted into something useful – It can be converted to spending money or it can be used to get discounts on certain items.
16. Have a Facebook Presence
Just because you have an online store doesn’t mean that you don’t need a Facebook presence. In this age where everyone is scrolling on Facebook, it is more important to promote your brand on Facebook than before. In fact, you should have a Facebook page by now. This will help you reach your audience on Facebook as you promote your posts and pictures of your items.
17. Sell on Instagram
You should not limit yourself with Facebook. Instagram is another platform that works extremely well with Shopify websites. Here’s what I do. I take pictures of my products and I post them on Instagram. Then, I engage by following some people and liking and commenting on their photos. When I get a decent amount of followers, I will contact some Instagram stores with the same amount of followers and ask them for a Shout-for-Shout campaign. This would often shoot my follower count through the roof and land me a good amount of traffic and sales in my Shopify store.
18. Advertise on Facebook
Now that you have a Facebook page, you should not forget how powerful the platform is when it comes to targeting people. I love its advertising platform because it allows you to not only choose the location and other demographic details of your target market but it will also allow you to customize your target market’s interests. This is very useful in getting only the most relevant traffic to your website.
19. Advertise on Google
Another place that is worth advertising on is Google. Even though most people are on social media websites nowadays, they still use Google when they need to look for something. When they do this, your brand needs to be in front of them.
The traditional way of getting to the top of search engines is called SEO or search engine optimization. While this is effective, it cannot give you instant results. So if you are in a rush and you want to make money from your Shopify website right away, the best way is to promote it using PPC advertising. This will instantly place your link on the top of the search engines.
20. Make Sure Your Website is Search Engine Optimized (SEO)
But if you don’t have the money to pay your way to the front of search engines, you can go the traditional route and just optimize your website for the search engines. All it takes is just employing a few proven SEO practices: optimizing certain aspects in your website such as the title tags, meta tags, etc. and getting links from authoritative websites for your target keyword. However, SEO is easier said than done. In fact, you need to do SEO on a consistent basis for 6 months before you can see some results.
21. Create Content That Demonstrates Your Expertise
Since you’ll be asking for links from other websites, you will need a website that demonstrates your expertise. After all, no one wants to link to a nobody. With this, you’ll need to produce some content that demonstrates your expertise alongside your online store. This will give you instant credibility and may encourage more people to buy from you.
22. Create Content That is Worth Promoting
We live in an age where the Internet is saturated with content. If you need to know something, you’ll find that there is already some information about that. So how can you stand out?
You can stand out by creating content that is worth promoting. These are the types of content that people love such as lists and in-depth guides.
The good news is this can help with SEO as website owners are more likely to link to content that their followers will find value in.
23. Create Expertise Content in Other Blogs
And if you cannot get people to link to your website because of your content, you can just go out of your way and write for other people’s websites. This is guest blogging and it is one of the few methods that still work in today’s modern way of website promotion.
I think that guest blogging continues to work because it acts as a strong referral that the author is an expert. I don’t think that it will get old. As long as you focus on quality, you’ll be safe.
24. Promote on Facebook Groups
Want to get instant traffic to your online store? One of the ways sellers promote their online stores is through Facebook groups.
There are some Facebook groups that are dedicated to retail products. These groups allow members to post the products that they are selling and buyers like these groups because they can just scroll down when they are looking for something to buy. These are perfect for online store promotion for you can post some products in these groups and refer them to your website.
25. Use your Email Signature
Want to let everyone in your circle to know about your online store without being pushy? Put your store in your email signature. This will allow you to show that you have an online store without telling them directly about it. I think that this works if you want to promote your site to people that you are not really close with. With this, you no longer need to email them about your store. You just append your website’s link when you reply to their emails. That’s it.
26. Distribute Flyers
Promotion doesn’t have to be online. You can also do it offline. You can do this by creating some flyers and distributing it in locations where your target market is most likely to hang out. So if you are selling some yoga mats, you may want to distribute your flyer in the nearest yoga studios. You get the idea.
27. Reward Social Media Engagement
You may also want to reward your followers for supporting you. This is great for getting more people to like your social media profiles and share your content. Again, the reward can be a simple discount coupon. You can even reward them once they have done multiple tasks such as like your Facebook page, share your page with a friend by tagging them and liking your latest post. You can be creative with this.
28. Send Free Samples to Bloggers
Another strategy that can drive thousands of buyers to your online store is blogger or influencer marketing. You can do this by looking for some of the biggest bloggers in your industry and then asking them to review your products. You can say that you will be sending some samples over and all they need to do is talk about it in their blog. You’ll be surprised on how many bloggers are interested in doing this.
29. Invite Vloggers to Review Your Products
You should not stop with bloggers. Aside from the old-school writing warriors, there is also another group that is making a killing online: vloggers. Vloggers or video bloggers are those people who document their life and lifestyle on Youtube. These people often recommend products to their followers so they are the best people to contact if you are looking to have your product featured.
30. Join a Product Roundup
Bloggers often create posts where they review some of their favorite products. You should aim to join these roundups by pitching your products to bloggers or just giving them a free sample that they can review for their next roundup.
31. Join a Product Haul
If bloggers have roundups, vloggers have hauls. You should aim to join hauls by offering some free samples of your products to these vloggers. Just make sure that your product is worth commenting on. If it is only ordinary, vloggers will just ignore your offer.
32. Join Discount Websites
There is a reason why websites like Groupon made it big online. It is all because there are millions of people who love to look for deals before they make a purchase. These discount websites are a great opportunity to expose your brand to other people. You just need to pay them for every sale they make. No upfront money needed.
33. Join Monthly Boxes
Monthly boxes is now a very popular way of selling products online. These monthly boxes can vary depending on the niche. They are common for niche that requires regular items like art, makeup and skincare. If your online store is in this industry, then this is a great idea to promote your website.
34. Join Samples for Review Websites
Aside from monthly boxes, there are also websites that offer a regular stream of samples. One website that I found that do this is SampleRoom. They give away samples of products to members in exchange for reviews. I think that this is a great place to promote products that are in the testing stage. It will allow customers to test the products and see if they like it.
35. Hold an Event
Want your store to become a go-to brand in the online marketplace? You can do this by holding an event. However, an event can only be successful if you already have a decent amount of followers to begin with. The event doesn’t have to be big. It can be a small event that showcases your products and what you can do.
36. Sponsor an Event
But if you cannot hold an event by yourself, you still have another option. You can just sponsor an event. This is very effective especially if you are sponsoring a very specific industry. You just need to give a ‘donation’ and they will feature your brand for you. Bam! Instant exposure!
37. Join an Industry Event as a Seller
But if you want to spend your money wisely and make money on the side, you can just sell in the industry event. You may not get the permission of the event holder at the beginning. But if you negotiate, you may get them to say ‘Yes’. The best part? You have an event that can help you reach your target customers. The result is often more sales for your store.
38. Join Shared Selling Spaces at Bazaars
Aside from events, you can also join scheduled bazaars. There are weekend bazaars and special holiday bazaars. There are even some themed bazaars that caters only to a particular target market. You can search for some bazaars in your area to find some places where you can promote your online store.
39. Hold a Pop-Up Store
Aside from joining bazaars, you can just hold a pop-up store. This is a store that only appears for a certain period of time and then disappears afterwards. It will save you money and give you some exposure.
40. Hold an Online Webinar
To promote your store, you also need to establish your expertise. Having an online webinar can help you do that. Tools like GotoWebinar will help you set up your webinar in a matter of minutes.
41. Create a Video Tutorial
And if you have some time, you can also create a video tutorial on how to use your products. This is a nice way to showcase what you are selling.
42. Livestream Your Behind the Scenes
We live in an age where authenticity matters. With tools like Facebook Live and Instagram Stories, you now have a way to share what is happening behind the scenes with your audience.
43. Interview Influencers
Can’t get influencers to review you? No problem! Interview them instead. When you do this, the influencer will most likely promote you. The result is often thousands of new visitors to your online store.
44. Collaborate with Influencers
Another way to work with influencers is through collaboration. You can ask to design a product that is based on them. It is a good ego-stroking method to get them to promote you.
45. Create a Viral Video
One of the fastest ways to get people into your site is by going viral. You can think of a concept and create a viral video. This will get hordes of buyers to your website.
46. Share the Story Behind Your Store
It can also help to share the story of the man behind the store. It is a good story and some media people would love to cover something like this.
47. Implement an Affiliate Marketing Program
Don’t do your promotion by yourself. You can implement an affiliate marketing program and ask people to promote your products for you – free marketing.
48. Join Joint Venture Communities
You can also harness the power of joint ventures in your store launch. This will give your store an initial push in the right direction for you’ll have multiple people promoting your products for you.
49. Hold an Affiliate Contest
You can also hold an affiliate content to further encourage your affiliates to promote you. I have seen some big product owners do this. They give away high ticket products to their biggest affiliates.
50. Hold Contests with Other Brands in Your Industry
Want to get your foot inside the door? You can ask other brands to promote you. How? You can collaborate on a contest. I have seen this type of contest being implemented on Facebook all the time. There are usually 5 different brands and then they create a contest with the mechanics of getting likes to the pages of all the five brands. The result is an overwhelming increase in follower count, traffic and sales for all brands.
51. Hold Contests with Influencers
Alternatively, you can also hold contests with influencers. This is where you sponsor the product that they will give away in exchange for promoting you to their followers.
52. Give Influencers a Unique Discount Code
You may also see that some influencers have discount codes named after them. Online store owners do this to get the influencer to promote their brand.
53. Become a Wholesaler
Another way to get more sales in your Shopify store is to go the wholesale route. Sure, the price will be significantly lower. But it will help you sell more.
54. Promote Yourself in Deal Forums
Heard of forums like Slickdeals? These websites allow you to promote your limited-time deals and discounts. Since these websites already have thousands of highly engaged users, it is another perfect place to promote your Shopify store.
55. Form a Retailer Group
No man is an island. The same is true when you’re online. With this, it helps to form a group with other retailers. This will allow you to cross promote your products and get more sales and traffic to the whole group.
56. Go to the Top of Comparison Shopping Engines
It is important to sell quality products. This will help you reach the top of comparison shopping engines and lead more people into your website.
57. Hand Out Free Samples Offline
If you want to get some extra attention to your site, you can give out some samples offline along with a simple message and your URL. If you write an encouraging message, it would often get more people to your site.
58. Promote on Other People’s Lists
You can also ask other sellers to promote your products to their list for you. If they don’t want to, you can pay them to do that.
59. Create and Share an Infographic
In this visual age, you can now use infographics to get more traffic to your store. If the infographic has some useful information, it will often get tons of shares and backlinks which will give more traffic to your website.
60. Try Direct Mail Marketing
Last but not the least, it never hurts to just send your buyers a brochure through direct mail. You can ask for your buyers’ addresses and send them a regular brochure of discount codes.
There you have it – 50 ways to promote your Shopify Store. What will you use? Tell me all about it below.
This list should last me the better part of the year. If I just focus on a few per month I’m good.
I have heard so much about how good it is to do a webinar, I just don’t know what I would talk about. What could people looking to buy retail fashions what to know?
Getting influencers to step up by holding contests is a great idea. It can surely motivate them.
I think direct mail is a true waste of time. I guess that is why its last on the list.
So many great ways, so little time. If only I had a team of workers.