How to Promote Shopify Store: 15 Solid Strategies + Inspiring Examples [2024]

Well, not quite right!

Yes, building an eCommerce store is one of the important first steps. But building your Shopify store is just the beginning. The harder part starts after building it.

You need to put it out there in the universe (of the internet).

You need to implement different marketing strategies to raise your brand awareness and bring sales to your store.

So, if you’re trying to learn how to promote Shopify store — we’ve got more than a dozen rock-solid ideas in this blog post along with actionable tips and examples.

How to Promote Shopify Store for Free (Organically)

1. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines:

For any Shopify store, or online business for that matter, this is a non-negotiable factor. Search engine optimization (SEO) helps your website rank higher in Google Search results.

How to optimize your website for search engines? Well, there are multiple methods to do it. Briefly speaking, you can focus on these two main aspects:

1.1 Optimize your website content and copy:

Your website content and copy on the homepage, collection pages, and product pages can be optimized for search engines by using the relevant keywords in meta titles and descriptions.

Also, make sure your images and videos are optimized to load faster as your Shopify store speed is also one of the important factors in SEO.

1.2 Start a blog:

Starting a blog is a great strategy for multiple reasons and SEO is one of them. Aim to write content that provides value to your niche, i.e., target customers — and you can “artistically” include your products in your blog content.

Pro Tip: GemPages—one of the most popular page builders apps for Shopify—allows you to create highly customizable article pages with its drag-and-drop visual editor. What’s even more amazing is that you can easily embed your products inside your blog content for promotion—no custom coding required.

2. Run an Affiliate Marketing Program

Affiliate marketing can help you promote your business without spending upfront capital as you only need to pay the commissions only after sales are made.

This is called a “revenue-sharing model” as you’re not spending money on marketing (typically), but sharing a small portion of revenue when you make sales through your affiliates.

Shopify App Store has some great affiliate marketing apps that can help you set up an affiliate marketing program and automate payouts to your affiliates.

Pro tip: Verify affiliates before approving their request. You don’t want random people putting your website links on whatnot websites and spam people. Also, it’s best to promote your affiliate program with your customers because they already know and love your product.

3. Promote Your Referral Program

Referral marketing is a somewhat similar concept to affiliate marketing, as in, both are revenue-sharing models.

However, the key difference is that affiliate programs typically offer commissions to any member who joins the program — regardless of whether it’s a customer or a third-party person. 

In comparison, the referral program focuses on rewarding existing or loyal customers by offering commissions for referring their network, families, and friends.

Similar to affiliate marketing apps, the Shopify App Store also has many apps for running a referral program on your Shopify store. Some apps offer affiliate marketing and referral program in a single app.

Branch Basics, a Shopify-powered brand, is a great example to get some inspiration for starting a referral program.

According to the case study published by ReferralCandy (one of the Shopify apps for referral program), Branch Basics generated nearly 10% of its revenue through referral sales and made over $1.5 million through its referral program.

‍Kelly Love - Co-founder, Branch Basics

Promote Your Business Through Social Media (Free + Paid)

In 2022, more than 4.59 billion users were using social media across the globe and that number is estimated to increase nearly to SIX billion users in 2027.

Now, think about how big an opportunity is this for your business!

Social media is a great tool to promote your Shopify store in more than one way — including free marketing strategies and paid campaigns as well.

4. Run Social Media Marketing Campaigns

This should be a part of the fundamentals. Make sure you have a defined social media marketing strategy in place before starting your social media campaigns.

What makes you stand apart is how creative you can be with your social media campaigns. Come up with out-of-the-box ideas to create the buzz.

Take a look at this example of the Valentine’s Day special campaign from Glamnetic—one of the popular Shopify-powered brands in the beauty and cosmetics segment.

Also, a great job by the social media team of Glamnetic for paying attention to the comments from its followers and responding to them appropriately. Things like these create a long-lasting bond with a brand.

Important Note: While the above methods can be implemented without investing money, keep in mind, it takes time to see results through these methods. That said, you can put some budget to speed up the process. For example, you can hire content writers to write your blog content at scale, which will help you speed up your SEO efforts.

5. Collab with Nano & Micro-Influencers

Nano-influencers are social media creators who have a following between 1,000-10,000 followers, whereas micro-influencers have a following between 10,000-100,000 followers.

The State of Influencer Marketing 2024: Benchmark Report shows that most brands have a strong preference when it comes to working with nano-influencers (44%) and micro-influencers (26%) as compared to macro-influencers (17%) and celebrities (13%).

Why work with nano and micro-influencers? Although they may not have a huge following like celebrity influencers, they are likely to have a more engaged audience. Another benefit of reaching out to such influencers is that you won’t have to spend a huge budget on them.

Gretta Rose Van Riel—an eCommerce entrepreneur who has built multiple successful eCommerce brands—talks highly about using influencer marketing strategies as she’s done it for her own businesses.

This is what Greta said in her interview with Foundr:

Also, you can use Shopify Collabs to connect with influencers/creators right from your Shopify admin. The app allows you to:

• Recruit creators for your program
• Design a custom application page
• Track and analyze your affiliate sales
• Pay commission to creators through Shopify billing

Learn more: Shopify Collabs: What Is It and How Do You Use It?

6. Offer Giveaways on Social Media

In your initial days or when you don’t have much content published yet, social media users might think — “why should I follow this account?”

And it’s quite understandable, right? 

Let’s face it! It’s hard to gain followers on a business profile. By running giveaways on social media, you can attract new followers and increase engagement.

Raw Halo did this amazing giveaway on X offering a product bundle to winners. To participate in this giveaway, they asked X users to follow the brand’s official handle - @RawHaloUK and “Like” and “RT” (repost) the tweet/post.

Also, the brand clearly mentioned the eligibility criterion, the closing date, and prize specifications.

7. Make Use of TikTok Trends

TikTok gives you a great platform to make your product go viral if you can come up with creative short-form video ideas.

According to Pew Research Center, 58% of US teens use TikTok daily which is the second most frequently used platform after YouTube (77%).

Keep in mind — people mainly expect entertainment from this platform and you need to create entertaining content and not bland promotional videos.

Analyze the trends relevant to your brand and make the most of it.

Collaborate with Other Businesses

Collaborate with brands or small businesses that are not your direct competitors but share a similar target audience.

8. Offer to Write a Guest Post

Writing a guest post on each other’s blogs not only expands your reach but also helps SEO through backlinking.

Getting backlinks from reputable websites in your niche can benefit your authority and boost your SEO.

First, find the right brands or small businesses that you could approach. Check out their blogs and published articles and you may be able to find the author's name. 

Reach out to them via social media like LinkedIn and put your proposal for the guest post explaining how you could be helpful to each other.

Offer valuable insights and create the desire in readers to explore more from your brand.

9. Organize Social Media Contests

Similar to giveaways as we discussed in social media strategy, contests could also be a great way to pull new followers to follow your account.

What makes contests even more fun is that they add a gamification element to the whole campaign, and thus, more followers may join it AND stay with your account.

Make sure to keep the rules precise and clear. You don’t want to create any disputes or disappoint your followers.

Here’s an example where Chocolat Weiss and April Parfumeries joined hands to organize a social media contest.

10. Cross-Promotion on Newsletter

Running a newsletter is a great strategy to level up your email marketing game. A newsletter helps customers with valuable content such as tips and insights to enhance their lifestyle or business.

But growing newsletter subscribers can be a challenge. Find a brand that would love to collaborate with your brand and send a newsletter edition to each other’s audiences and introduce your brands.

Place a CTA (call-to-action) button to subscribe to your newsletter. To make it even more enticing, you could also offer a special discount code and it’ll also help you measure the success of your campaign.

11. Offer a Gift Card or Coupon

When customers purchase from your brands, offer a gift card or coupon redeemable at your partner’s store and vice versa.

For example, when customers purchase items worth $100, offer them a $20 gift card or coupon that they could redeem at your partner brand’s store. In the same way, they’ll offer a $20 coupon redeemable at your store.

Now, those customers would be enticed to encash those gift cards or coupons and will visit your store even though they might not know about your brand. 

Thus, it’ll not only raise your brand awareness but also increase your sales.

12. Join Hands for a Noble Cause

By contributing to a noble cause or charity, you can truly express how your brand cares about the society or environment. 

This doesn’t need to be treated as a marketing strategy only. Join or initiate the cause that you truly believe in and contribute with genuine care and efforts in whichever manner possible.

You can also share your cause on social media and with the press to spread kindness and positivity.

How to Advertise Shopify Store

13. Run Meta Ads Campaigns

Meta is one of the most popular platforms for running ads with an affordable budget, especially for eCommerce brands. 

Meta products are used by more than 3 billion people across the globe. It allows you to reach out to customers through its worldwide popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

To run Facebook ads, first create a Facebook account, then create a Facebook Page, and then sign up for a Meta Business Suite or Business Manager. 

To make sure your ads get maximum conversion, use appealing images and ad copy to attract new customers to click on your ad and go through your offer.

Meta has certain policies and guidelines about what types of ads are permitted and the ones that are prohibited. Follow Meta Advertising Standards to ensure your ad account does not get restricted.

14. Use Google Ads

Google Ads is another low-cost advertising platform that can help you gain good ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).

Google is the world's largest digital advertising platform in terms of revenue. In 2023, Google contributed a whopping 39% of the total digital advertising revenues across the world.

Google has various types of options:

• Google Search Ads
• Google Shopping Ads
• Google Display Ads
• YouTube Video Ads

One of the great advantages of using Google Ads is that you can leverage “user location targeting” to target the audience from a specific region.

15. Try New Platforms

While Meta and Google have been the dominating platforms in eCommerce advertising, you can also try other popular platforms such as X, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc.

Before choosing any social media platform as your advertising platform, make sure to research where your target customers hang out the most often.

For example, 76.2% of Pinterest users are women. So, if your target audience is women, Pinterest could be a great platform for running your ads.

Start Promoting Your Shopify Store Now!

Now that you have many ideas and strategies to promote your Shopify store, it’s time for the execution.

Start small, measure the results, and scale what’s working the best!

That said, as mentioned earlier, some strategies will take time and you must not give up on it after a few days of testing and experiments. 

Strategies like content and social media marketing can take months to show results, but once successful, they become long-term assets for your brand. So, keep the future vision in mind.

FAQs on the Best Way to Promote Shopify Store

How to start a successful Shopify store?

To start a successful Shopify store, make sure to implement all the fundamentals and strategies in the key areas including website design, branding, marketing, and SEO. Learn more with this step-by-step guide: Shopify Tutorial: How to Set Up A Shopify Store from Scratch for Beginners.

How should I advertise my Shopify store?

You can use popular advertising platforms like Meta Business Suite and Google Ads to run paid ad campaigns with an affordable budget. Also, depending on your target audience, you can try other platforms like Pinterest, X, Snapchat, or TikTok.

How do I get my Shopify store noticed?

Depending on your budget and resources, you can try organic marketing strategies, paid advertising, or a combination of both.

How to drive traffic to your Shopify store?

One of the best methods to drive traffic to your Shopify store is search engine optimization (SEO). However, SEO takes time and you can’t expect overnight results. Thus, you can run paid ad campaigns to drive some quick traffic to your website.

How do I get sales on Shopify without ads?

To bring in sales without ads, you need to invest time and effort into organic marketing strategies such as SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, affiliate and referral marketing, and so on.

Can a Shopify store be successful?

Yes, there are hundreds and thousands of successful Shopify stores across the world. With the right products/services and marketing strategies, you can surely build a profitable Shopify store.

Why is Shopify getting views but no sales?

It means your store has a conversion issue and it could be due to one or more reasons: mediocre website design, high pricing as compared to the perceived value, poor product copy, low-quality product images, lack of social proof, or vague store policies. The best way to identify the exact issue is to ask your customers — no one can identify it better than them.

How do I convert my website visits into sales?

Creating a website conversion funnel is a great strategy to convert your visitors into paying customers. Check out this detailed guide: How to Create an eCommerce Website Conversion Funnel.