Running effective marketing is essential to growing sales in your Shopify store. There are countless marketing methods out there, and many store owners struggle to decide which ones to implement.
This article clearly introduces marketing strategies that work well with Shopify and tips for making your marketing successful, organized by objective. If you're wondering where to start with marketing, we hope this serves as a helpful reference.
Why marketing matters for Shopify
Simply creating a store on Shopify makes it difficult for customers to actually find you. In addition, if you fail to respond appropriately to customers who do visit your store, they will likely leave without making a purchase.
This is where "marketing" becomes important. The main roles of marketing are as follows.
- Increasing customer acquisition
- Improving conversion rate
- Increasing average order value
- Strengthening customer relationships
- Improving customer loyalty
As shown above, marketing is an element that is indispensable to the success of an e-commerce business.
Shopify marketing: 15 strategies that work well
We've picked out 15 marketing strategies that work well with Shopify and will explain each one. We'll also introduce effective apps for implementing each strategy.
Marketing to strengthen customer acquisition
SEO
SEO is the practice of optimizing your e-commerce site so that it ranks higher in search engine results, such as on Google. By improving keyword selection and site structure, you can increase traffic from organic search. The benefit is that you can gain long-term acquisition effects while keeping advertising costs down.
Reference article: SEO measures you can take with Shopify: SEO basics and benefits
SEO: SEO Manager
Image source: SEO Manager | Shopify App Store
SEO Manager provides features such as meta tag optimization, keyword suggestions, and SEO error detection to help improve your store. This makes it possible to aim for higher search rankings even without specialized knowledge.
Price: from $9/month
Content marketing
Content marketing is a method of building trust with customers by providing useful information through blog posts, YouTube videos, social media posts, and more. The cost of producing content varies greatly depending on what you create. Since content can be used long-term once created, its benefit is that it contributes to ongoing customer acquisition and branding.
Reference article: Making full use of Shopify's blog feature: apps for customizing your blog posts
Content marketing: RuffRuff Table of Contents
Image source: RuffRuff Table of Contents | Shopify App Store
RuffRuff Table of Contents is an app that automatically creates a table of contents for blog posts and product pages. Adding a table of contents improves the usability of your content.
RuffRuff Table of Contents requires no coding and is easy to set up in just two steps.
Price: from free/month
Marketing that leverages advertising
Social media advertising
Social media advertising is a method of running ads on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. Its benefit is that ads can be placed with relatively simple settings. Depending on the platform, detailed targeting is possible, allowing you to efficiently reach users with specific attributes or interests. It's useful for short-term customer acquisition and boosting brand awareness.
Social media advertising: Facebook & Instagram
Image source: Facebook & Instagram | Shopify App Store
Facebook & Instagram is an app for connecting Shopify with Facebook and Instagram. Using this app allows you to seamlessly drive traffic from Meta ads to your site. Visually compelling Instagram ads pair especially well with Shopify.
Price: Free/month
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a system in which bloggers, influencers, and others promote your products, and you pay them a reward based on results, or you place referral banners on your own site and earn a reward per click or per contract. Since it's a performance-based model, its benefit is a high return on investment.
Reference article
Affiliate marketing (in-house): Affitch
Image source: Affitch | Shopify App Store
If you want to run your own in-house affiliate program, Affitch is a great choice. This app is no-code and available in Japanese, making the program easy to set up.
Price: from free/month
The blog article below introduces Affitch's main features, pricing plans, and how to set it up. If you're considering introducing Marutto Shukyaku, please use it as a reference.
Affiliate marketing (external): Marutto Shukyaku
Image source: Marutto Shukyaku | Shopify App Store
Marutto Shukyaku lets you complete sign-up in just four steps, making it easy to start an affiliate program. Because it lets you place listings with affiliate networks (ASPs), it has the strength of getting your program noticed by a larger number of affiliates.
Price: Free/month
The blog article below introduces Marutto Shukyaku's main features, benefits, and how to set it up. If you're considering introducing Marutto Shukyaku, please use it as a reference.
Retargeting ads
Retargeting ads are a method of showing ads again to users who visited your site once but did not make a purchase. This is mainly done on platforms such as Google and Yahoo. Since you can re-approach users with high purchase intent, you can expect improved conversion rates and efficient ad operation.
Marketing that acquires customers and builds credibility through word of mouth
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a method of promoting products or services by leveraging influential individuals (influencers). Common promotional channels include YouTube and Instagram. Leveraging their credibility and follower count is effective for acquiring new customers and expanding brand awareness.
Referral marketing
Referral marketing is a strategy in which existing customers introduce new customers. By offering incentives such as coupons or gifts to the referrer, you can promote word-of-mouth effects. It enables highly credible customer acquisition and helps expand your customer network.
The blog article below introduces tips for successful referral marketing. Please use it as a reference.
Referral marketing: Letters
Image source: Letters | Shopify App Store
Letters is an app that's easy to set up with no coding required. You can offer incentives such as gift cards, coupons, and campaigns to ambassadors (referrers). It can also automatically send ambassador invitation emails to new customers.
Price: from $39/month
The blog article below introduces Letters' features, recommended functions, and setup process in detail. Please use it as a reference.
Word of mouth and reviews
Word of mouth and reviews is a strategy of publishing evaluations and impressions from existing customers to help other customers make purchase decisions. Reviews serve as highly credible information that contributes to improved conversion rates. Posted reviews can also provide hints for product improvement.
Reference article: Benefits of adding a review feature to Shopify: recommended review apps
Word of mouth and reviews: Judge.me
Image source: Judge.me | Shopify App Store
Judge.me is a highly popular review app. It supports posting not only text but also images and videos. It can also send review request emails to purchasers.
Price: from free/month
The blog article below explains Judge.me's main features, pricing plans, and setup process in detail. If you're considering introducing Judge.me, please use it as a reference.
UGC marketing
UGC marketing is a marketing method that leverages user generated content. It incorporates product photos, reviews, comments, and other content posted by customers on social media or blogs into your own promotions. This increases credibility as genuine third-party opinions and boosts new customers' purchase intent.
Marketing that drives direct purchases
Live commerce
Live commerce is a method of introducing and selling products through live streaming. Because it allows real-time communication with customers, it can increase credibility and purchase intent.
Sales promotion
Sales promotion is a method of driving short-term sales growth through discounts and campaigns. For example, this includes running limited-time sales or bundling multiple products together at a discount.
Sales promotion: Rebolt Bundle Products
Image source: Rebolt Bundle Products | Shopify App Store
Rebolt Bundle Products is an app for offering bundle sales, automatically applying discounts to bundled products. Customers can also freely customize the contents of a bundle, enabling highly flexible promotions.
Price: from free/month
Sales promotion: RuffRuff 予約販売
Image source: RuffRuff 予約販売 | Shopify App Store
RuffRuff 予約販売 is an app that enables all kinds of selling on Shopify, including not only pre-orders but also members-only sales, limited-time sales, and monthly recurring sales. It can also automatically apply any order tag to orders placed through the app, so by assigning a different order tag to each sale, you can also measure the effectiveness of each strategy.
Price: from $9/month
Email marketing
Email marketing is a method of sending information to customers via email. Examples include new product announcements, campaign information, and re-purchase notifications to customers who abandoned their cart.
What is commonly called an email newsletter is a part of email marketing, referring to regularly distributed newsletters or informational emails. These strategies deepen relationships with customers and are effective for acquiring repeat customers.
Reference article: What are the benefits of email marketing on Shopify? Email newsletter apps introduced
Email marketing: Omnisend
Image source: Omnisend | Shopify App Store
Omnisend is a highly functional email marketing app. It offers a wide variety of richly designed email templates with a high degree of customization, making it suitable for everyone from beginners to professionals. It also supports automated email sending, which helps streamline your operations.
Price: from free/month
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is a method of using platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and LINE to communicate with customers and raise brand awareness. By choosing a platform suited to your target audience and boosting engagement through regular posts and dialogue with customers, you can reach a wide audience at low cost if users share your content.
Social media marketing: Instafeed
Image source: Instafeed | Shopify App Store
Instafeed is an app that displays your Instagram posts in your store. Simply connecting it to Instagram lets you display posts right away, and the paid plan also supports autoplay for videos.
Price: from free/month
Social media marketing: CRM PLUS on LINE
Image source: CRM PLUS on LINE | Shopify App Store
CRM PLUS on LINE is an app that seamlessly connects LINE with your store. Based on your store's customer data, it can send birthday-month coupons and deliver shipping completion notifications via LINE.
Price: from free/month
The blog article below introduces CRM PLUS on LINE's features, pricing plans, and setup process in detail. Please use it as a reference.
Loyalty program
A loyalty program is a method of increasing customer loyalty through points and rewards. It provides a mechanism where customers earn points with each purchase, which can be exchanged for discounts or exclusive products.
Introducing a loyalty program helps differentiate you from competitors and contributes to long-term sales growth.
Reference article: 4 Shopify membership rank apps: VIP, RankQ - simple membership ranks and cards, and more
Loyalty program: KINCHAKU
Image source: KINCHAKU | Shopify App Store
KINCHAKU is an app that lets you set up a loyalty program with no coding, awarding points to customers when their products ship. Customers can exchange their accumulated points for discount codes to use at checkout.
Price: from $25/month
Marketing that drives purchases through improved convenience and branding
Omnichannel marketing
Omnichannel marketing is a method of integrating multiple sales channels, such as online (e-commerce site, social media) and offline (physical stores), to provide customers with a consistent purchasing experience. Examples include allowing customers to pick up items purchased online at a physical store, or providing online support to customers who purchased items in-store.
This strategy improves customer convenience and satisfaction, leading to repeat purchases and increased sales.
Tips for making your Shopify marketing successful
Here are some tips for making your marketing strategies successful on Shopify.
Use analytics tools to build a data-driven strategy
Shopify comes with built-in tools by default for analyzing sales and customer behavior. It can also be integrated with tools such as Google Analytics and heatmap tools. By leveraging the data gained from these tools, you can clarify concrete issues on your site, such as which products are popular and on which pages customers are dropping off.
Then, by building a marketing strategy based on that data, you can implement effective initiatives and cut unnecessary costs.
Optimize the customer experience to boost conversion rate
Creating an environment where customers can shop comfortably directly leads to a higher conversion rate.
For example, when you introduce a product through live commerce or social media, it's crucial to provide a path that lets interested customers purchase immediately.
Review your site and purchase path from the customer's perspective, and continue to make improvements.
Turn customers into fans to strengthen brand loyalty
Turning customers who have made a purchase once into fans is essential for long-term sales growth. Use email marketing and social media to maintain ongoing communication with customers, and offer special deals and the latest information. Introducing a loyalty program can also encourage repeat purchases through points and rewards.
Raising customer satisfaction can also help you acquire new customers through word of mouth. Building trust with customers and growing your base of brand fans is key to success.
Implement effective marketing suited to your business!
This article introduced marketing strategies and apps that work well with Shopify. In today's world overflowing with information, products won't sell unless you implement marketing strategies suited to your business.
Continue implementing effective marketing strategies to differentiate yourself from competitors.
