Thanks to everyone who participated in our AMA with 2H Media: Marketing Your Shopify Store! Both @MatthewHerchel and @AronMurch, of 2H Media Marketing Agency, were excited to engage with you and answer your top Shopify Marketing questions.
During the AMA, we noticed a common theme. Many of the merchants that participated were looking for creative ways to drive traffic to their websites. While it’s true that the most obvious methods, paid search engine ads and paid social ads are some of the most surefire ways to drive traffic, there are some other great tools for encouraging brand awareness that are just as important to leverage.
Here are some great Q&As about driving traffic to your Shopify store:
Question From @lumbafan:
Apart from running paid ads (YouTube, Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.) What other options do I have to drive traffic to my store without paid ads? I’m just starting my Shopify Print On Demand (POD) store and would start by running Facebook ads. Would you advise me to start with paid Facebook ads or rather start organically with going viral, using SEO or writing and publishing content about my designs. Which of the 2 ways is more effective and efficient when just starting out, or do you have suggestions regarding marketing my store when I’m just starting out on Shopify and with Ecommerce?
Answer From @AronMurch:
Good question. This is really tricky and a lot of people who are just starting out really underestimate how difficult it is to drive traffic to an online store. Let’s break down some of your options:
- Paid Ads (YouTube, Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.): Nothing will drive traffic to your website more quickly and consistently than paid advertising. However, there are a few things to consider. Namely, this requires deep pockets. A healthy paid advertising budget starts from $2K-$4k per month per platform, and the higher the better. If you only have a few hundred dollars per month to advertise with, this will likely be ineffective. It is also really important to choose the right platform. If people are likely to already be looking for your product, google ads work really well. If, on the other hand, your product is more novel, social media ads may be more effective.
- Organic Social Media Posting and “Going Viral”: This can be effective but there is a lot of luck involved. Betting on “going viral” is a pretty high-risk strategy since it’s not something you can’t typically force to happen. If you already live and breathe social media, this is a powerful marketing channel but if you find social media challenging then expect this to be a slow and painful way to build an audience.
- Using SEO/Writing and Publishing Content: This is important but is a long-term strategy. SEO makes you more discoverable on Google but your content needs to be high-value and heavily optimized. Even with excellent content, you need to continually release content on a regular basis to become an authority in your space and it can take years to really see improvements in organic traffic.
- Local Networking/Traditional Advertising: This is my main suggestion that’s not on your list and something that’s often overlooked by ecommerce startups. People are much more likely to make a purchase from someone they know and like. One of the fastest methods of generating online sales without a massive budget is building your local network. Print on demand can mean a lot of things. If you are selling artwork, consider connecting with local community groups, attending fairs, etc. and handing out links to your online store. If you’re selling something like branded office supplies, local business networking groups can be a great place to gain connections and nurture leads. You also may be surprised by how effective and affordable traditional mailing campaigns are, especially since companies have stopped sending as much “junk mail” as they used to by paper in favour of email marketing.
- Email Marketing: This is another long-term strategy. Email marketing can do a lot for you in terms of repeat sales. It’s also a great lead nurture tool for converting visitors into eventual customers. You don’t need to do anything aggressive with this to start but should have an email marketing sign-up on your website to start collecting emails. Try to come up with an engaging reason to join your mailing list. Most people are likely uninterested in “product news and updates” and would rather receive information that they will get value from.
Ultimately, you will likely need to leverage all of the above tools to be successful. Developing a marketing strategy will mean figuring out which tools to adopt when, and how deep to delve into each tool. Selling print on demand products is extremely challenging and it’s going to take some creativity.
Question From @Fergy03:
I want to help my mom with her business which is a small hardware store. It’s in a tourist-y type town and she does decently well in the summer, but suffers in the winter for sales. Any recommendation for hyper local marketing/ advertisement that could be done virtually?
Answer From @MatthewHerchel:
Hyper local marketing has many pros and cons.
I’m assuming there aren’t too many other hardware stores in the local region, so competition should be low. Having an up to date Google Business Profile will help with local SEO. You should try to get as many customers as possible during the busy months to leave a review. Additionally I’d try the following:
- Connect with all the local influential business owners, politicians (Mayor, city counselors, etc), as well as any business groups (Chamber of Commerce)
- As a hardware store I assume some of your sales are b2b and b2c, both providing businesses with products to fix or upgrade their locations as well as homeowners. Start posting content for both audiences on your own social accounts.
- Start generating content that highlights the local nature of your business. If you sold new fixtures, paint, hardware to a local business, go take a photo and post.
- Small towns have an advantage of being a tight knit community. Everyone in the town should know you and your business. There is still a major movement to support local.
- Collaborate with other businesses in the town. If all the tourists leave in the winter, many other businesses will be in the same position as you.
- Make sure that the locals know what you sell. Every hardware store I’ve been in has a ton of SKUs. You want to make sure everyone in town knows what you sell so they can support you before turning to Amazon.
- Email marketing. The major hardware stores do a ton of print adverting. I get the flyers in my mail every week. Print might be too expensive for you, but a digital flyer through email is super cost effective and targeted.
- Build better relationships with local trades businesses. All of them should be buying from you.
- Get your products online. This is a ton of work depending on how many SKUs you carry, but it’s important to ensure your potential customers can see what’s in stock and it helps you compete against the bigger players.
While many of the participating merchants were looking to improve their traffic, there were also some that already had great traffic, and were looking for ways to improve their conversion rates. Here are some Q&As that focus on improving conversions:
Question From @Jac_Dan_McL:
What should I focus on if I want to increase my conversion rates? I get decent traffic to my store, but I am trying to increase sales. Also, I am taking all my own pictures right now. Do I need to hire a photographer?
Answer From @MatthewHerchel:
Great questions, I’ll answer both here.
If you’re already getting decent traffic to the website we have to check a few things:
- Are your potential customers reaching your product pages or are they leaving before they reach the information they are looking for.
- Is your navigation/header menu easy to use?
- Are your collection pages sorted in a manner that makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for.
Assuming that customers navigate to the correct product page, lets focus on increasing the likelihood that a customer will hit the “add to cart” button.
- Is there enough information on the product page to give the buyer confidence? Is there a good description, is there supporting information like reviews/testimonials. Are there any downloadable resources like instructions or usage guides?
- Does the product have good photography? You mentioned you take all your own shots. Are you displaying the product in both fashion settings and on a white background? I would compare your photos against your competition. In some cases you might not need a photographer, but you might need to take your products into multiple sets or staging areas to highlight their value. If your talent isn’t on par with your direct competitors you will need to invest in outside support.
- Product video. Your hero products should have video to support the product pages. There is tons of research that shows that conversion rates increase significantly if the product page has a video, even if it isn’t watched.
- Focus on the key product values. You need information supporting why a customer should make the purchase. If your products are marketed as strong and durable, you need information to support this key feature. How are you showing that your products are strong and durable? Words aren’t enough.
- If you are getting a ton of “add to carts” but they are leaving before the purchase, there might be some sticker shock during the checkout process. Typically this happens with surprise shipping rates, or added costs. A free shipping or a fixed rate shipping rate are most transparent and don’t shock a potential buyer at checkout.
- If you are collecting emails, running an automated flow that targets users that haven fully completed the check out will help increase conversions.
I would make changes and keep any eye on your analytics. Changing too much at once will make it hard to determine what’s actually moving the needle.
Question From @JulieManders:
Hi, we just moved our website to Shopify platform (2 months ago). We have a cleaning products business. Love to hear your ideas on marketing strategy & what type of content to create. Everyone needs to clean things both businesses & for the home. There are so many pages we could add focusing on how useful each product is & also focusing on the numerous things you can clean with it. Maybe adding lots of “how to clean this” (& that) videos (youtube). (Tempted to add Klaviyo). So much we can do.
Answer From @AronMurch:
First of all, congrats on moving your website to Shopify. It’s a really great platform and there’s a lot you can do to make the most of it – so much that it can be pretty overwhelming. It sounds like you’ve already got some good ideas for what to do but might not know where to start.
It helps to understand how people interact with websites and marketing. Typically, the process goes something like this:
- You run ads or promotions and lots of people see them
- Some of those people visit your website
- A few of those people buy something
- You retarget those customers
- Some of them become repeat customers
The crucial thing that I’m sure you can see from this process is that some number of people leave your sales funnel at every step. As an ecommerce business, you have two jobs: push as many people into this funnel as possible, and lose as few people as possible at each step. Understanding how you are faring at each step really informs where you should focus your efforts.
If I break down your message, you had a couple of core questions:
- What pages should we create?
- Should we add “how to clean this and that” videos?
- Should we add Klaviyo?
The short answer is that you should do all of it but probably not all at once.
In terms of pages, the idea of customers clicking around your website looking to learn is a bit of a myth. Most people land on one page, maybe click into another page, and then leave the website. With that in mind, the best thing you can do is focus on optimizing the most important pages and slowly roll out other lower-priority but SEO friendly pages over time. Focusing on how useful each product is can be very powerful, especially if you highlight the
Also, creating videos is one of the best things you can do. “how to clean this and that” videos should provide value while highlighting your products. The key is to leverage those videos to their absolute fullest. For every video you produce, you should be able to generate a social media post, new content for your product pages, and a great topic for email marketing.
As for Klaviyo, this is a great tool for retargeting customers and nurturing leads but won’t do anything at all to generate traffic in the first place. It should absolutely be part of your marketing strategy at some point but can take some work to set up so it’s difficult to say if you should be prioritizing it with the website being relatively young.
In summary:
- Focus on the product pages. Add other pages later for SEO when you have time.
- Definitely make videos and have a plan to use them across all your channels.
- Consider adding Klaviyo if you are already getting a lot of traffic and have a decent conversion rate.
Thanks again to all who joined us live for our second AMA with 2H Media. You can find all questions and answers from the event in the 2H Media AMA thread.
Want more from 2H Media? Check out their YouTube channel for a library of educational content or visit their marketing services website and reach out to them directly.
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