3 Lessons for a Shopify Store Owner

How to market your Shopify store & products better than anyone else in just 3 steps

Are you a Shopify store owner and need help in getting your product seen and “out there”? What do you do? You go on to google and you search how to market or increase the sales of my Shopify products and what do you get? Well, I am sick and tired of hearing and reading blogs like “20 effective ways promote to promote your Shopify products….”, “107 of the best ways to promote your Shopify store….” because these strategies are not targeted and the folks who are dishing out such blogs are just giving you strategies that are not only “ a shot in the dark” but a strategy for a business to fail. If you don’t know your business, your product and how to reach your target audience in the easiest and most efficient way, then you best take a look at your business strategy again. Anyone can type out 1000 digital strategies and ways to reach consumers, but you have to understand these are strategies that are push strategies. The people who are writing those strategies obviously want you to feel that you are insecure and that you are missing something. Well, newsflash, you are the owner of your business, you know your business than anyone and you don’t need to feel insecure that you have to do a 107 or 20 different things just to tick the box and make you self feel secure. In fact, i say why don’t you take those strategies and try them and come back to evaluate if your business rocketed to the moon or not?

We have helped numerous Shopify store owners with products related to fashion and beauty. We can share the good news that you only need 3 steps to embark on to market your store and improve the sales of your products, and we can help you do that. Open your mind to digital marketing agencies as digital marketing services these days are not at all costly and there is no shame as a business owner looking for help and assistance from people like us, after all, your competitors are probably doing that but not telling that to you.

Step 1 — Market Research & Data Science

The first and the most important thing to do is to conduct quick but intensive market research in the city or cities you are targeting. We are talking about recruiting online panels based on the criteria suited for your business and products and we conduct a ratings-based conjoint analysis or choice-based conjoint analysis on your store and products. We will handle all the programming for you and handle all the data science analysis for you. We begin with factor analysis, to get your current positioning and competitor positioning and gaps you should play in to get the best market share. We can also predict your market share in taking on that positioning. Next, we do a deep dive into the psychographic data against the preference data of how the audience rates or choose your products against competitor products. We then use this data and segment the databases using mathematical regression into 6–7 clusters and validate your current products against the segments that would be most likely interested in your offerings. Based on the segments that we know your product wins in, we start looking at the specifics in the segment, their needs, their preferences, where they like to be communicated with and then we start mining for keywords with a specific focus on this segment. With that data, we are then prepared for the next stage, which is a content update, creation and content marketing.

Step 2 — Content Update, Creation and Content Marketing

Using the keywords, phrases and search algorithm target for that specific segment, we start making changes to the meta tags on your store’s page for search engine optimization purposes. We optimize and update everything from the <title> tag to the <description>, <keywords>, <h1> …to <h6> tags per page. We then also optimize and update the schema SEO rich snippets for each page with a product(with reviews preferably), blog and business service schema JSON markup.

We will also start writing a blog with a minimum of a 1000 words capturing all the top 10 keywords in the blog to drive the product story and brand story against the positioning you are after(as discussed in step 1).

After we get that done, we update the sitemap.xml and resubmit that so that google can crawl again to your website to get all the latest tags.

Next, we plan ahead, updating the content is the crucial first step but the next crucial step as google bots start to crawl and understand your site better, is to develop new content and market these new content using your owned media. Here we suggest developing creatives and content that are refreshed and updated every 2 weeks. All of this content will sit on your store page and social media pages and every 2 weeks, they all will have the same syndicated copy, images and keywords that were already determined by Step 1 (positioning, segment and data mining activities). Then after 2 weeks, we will develop new copies, and use new images but stick to the same keywords and repeat the syndication of content again across the owned media channels. This is crucial to get Google understanding that you are a thought leader in a certain field of products and that your keywords seem to target a certain demographic and segment of consumers. This should go on for at least 6 months and it depends on how aggressive your competitors are. In 6 months, you are guaranteed to go to be on the first page of the Google search but more importantly, you need to maintain that spot and the honour of being a thought-leader in that specific product segment. You can then do a simple check on your current site SEO-ability and you should be trending in the 90 percentile.

Step 3 — Optimized Media Mix and Targeting Strategy

Next, take your store and products to a new level by dabbling into paid media and specifically what we would recommend in the paid channel mix — Google Adwords (SEM) and Google Display. Google display is cheaper and converts a lower percentile while Google Adwords is slightly more expensive but delivers on the conversions at a higher rate. In order to get this right, the right media investment into the media mix is necessary and again this is informed through Step 1 where we have the data on the touchpoints to communicate effectively with your consumer base.

Now I have heard people investing in Google Ads in the thousands monthly buying keywords that everyone else is buying and paying a fortune just to be seen, that is just pure foolishness. Because we took a strategic and very targeted approach, our keywords are very targeted and unique to our segment and we thus are not competing against everyone. In addition, our target audience is going to be highly targeted because we know exactly who to target versus a broad targeting strategy that consumes more media dollars. So we could be spending literally a few hundred dollars on paid media every month instead of thousands of dollars.

What we have to ensure though in our paid media endeavour that our content is developed based on the data and keywords and that we are developing the content based on the consumer journey in the segment. That is to say, if that segment is in the awareness and consideration stage then we develop our content for that stage. We usually develop a/b concept or creative and optimize to the best performing. After 2 weeks, we refresh the content and remarket to our segment with another set of creatives a/b again and optimize to the best performing. Then we focus on the intent and purchase stages in this segment and develop creatives a/b to test and optimize to the best performing. These creatives have KPIs of driving conversions as opposed to impressions, and we need to keep a close eye on the conversions/sales. We use that information on conversions for lookalike audience targeting and also analytics information on the drop-offs (using UTM trackers) to retarget with another set of creative to bring them back to our page and to convert them.

That is how you make your Shopify store and products successful.