To make your first sale on Shopify is a significant milestone for every new entrepreneur. Closing a sale on their first deal requires some investment and focus.
With many channels and approaches to advancing your business, finding the ones that will benefit your business and produce beneficial outcomes can often be challenging.
Well, you can easily fall into the snare of perpetually tweaking your store, chasing flawlessness rather than putting that consideration into the main action.
This article, Make Your First Sale On Shopify-a Marketing Checklist for New Entrepreneurs, calls you to challenge; that’s if you’ve launched your store, to go through the next 30 days zeroing in only on driving targeted traffic that will probably make a buy.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Targeted Traffic to New Stores
As the proprietor of a new online store, it’s easy to imagine you’re improving: fuss budget brand colors, tweaking fonts, re-thinking your pricing, and getting engrossed with minor subtleties as you build a business away from public scrutiny.
However, tangible improvement is only conceivable when you open your business to the world. Or how else would you get the hang of what you’re improving unless you can ascertain a benchmark you can evaluate through complex numbers? As such, traffic is so significant.
If you don’t drive traffic, you’ll never know whether there’s any interest in your products, your prices are excessively high, or even your brand resonates with your target demographics.
Against that backdrop, consider driving targeted traffic to your store your top priority for the next 30 days, regardless of where you are in your business.
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To increase your marketing, making your first sale on Shopify provides you complete access to some of the most widely helpful eCommerce marketing strategies organized into a checklist you can leverage to focus your endeavors, alongside apprentice-friendly resources, to figure out how to execute them.
We’ll begin this checklist with accessible, simple traffic sources to get you ready. Then, we’ll proceed to more highly targeted marketing, which requires more time or massive investment.
Before you start
You must understand that if a strategy doesn’t improve your store and what you’re selling, toss it. Suppose you’re selling PC consoles; for instance, Pinterest most likely won’t be your first pick.
Set up Google Analytics ahead of time and look out for traffic as you execute each marketing strategy. Of course, not all tactics will work. So, prepare to go through the next 30 days of learning and iterating asap as you grind for your first deal.
Free Traffic Sources
You’d refer to accessible traffic sources as going after the easy “picks,” so Make Your First Sale On Shopify holds that the primary traffic sources to explore are free. Often, it involves sharing your store physically with your network and relevant online networks.
Since these traffic sources are generally simple to make and accessible to all online storekeepers, they’re an excellent spot to begin. It would be best if you took note of the following tips as you tackle free traffic sources:
- 1: Consider offering a discount code to lure prospects to check out your store. With your supposed Premium Laser Hair Removal store, you can leverage LinkedIn to reach the prospects manually, offering $15 gift cards in return for email addresses and survey responses.
- 1: Every online move can drive traffic back to your store. Add your store URL to your online profiles, such as your Disqus bio or your Twitter profile for blog remarks.
- 1: Don’t spam target demographics with monotonous, inferior-quality promotional messages. Instead, seek to offer some incentive-offer value and make real connections.
Leverage Your Network
Several business visionaries get their first few deals from their associations, and everything is fine; share your store on your Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts to announce it to your entire network.
Additionally, consider directly emailing your closest associations to spread the news about your store’s launch.
Expressly request that they donate a share—they don’t have to purchase from you as a sign of their support.
While any sale you acquire in this manner won’t be as fulfilling as earning a total stranger’s trust as a client, it’s a decent means of soliciting early feedback.
If you don’t get any deals from this method, don’t despair; this is the most unqualified traffic source in this rundown.
Suggested for: It’s best for everyone, particularly those already active online with massive personal networks on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Given that we all have companions/family/coworkers, we can tap this network.
Join Online Networks
Try not to belittle the benefit of placing a link to your store in the ideal spot.
Post on groups like Reddit, join Facebook Groups and discover niche online networks in your industry. Each channel presents an opportunity to reach individuals coalesced around specific interests.
Lead a search for interests that identify with your business.
Join groups that your target clients visit and become active members of. After building a solid reputation and establishing authentic connections, you can connect with others in the network by sharing a link to your store, possibly with a discount code.
Likewise, you can utilize groups to find support consulting with seasoned business people. For instance, check out the following networks:
- Bright Ideas and Entrepreneurs LinkedIn Group
- Shopify Entrepreneurs Facebook Group
- Grow and Sell Facebook Group
- Shopify Community
- r/Entrepreneur
- r/ecommerce
Suggested for: Stores that offer to specific interest groups, such as dog owners. Even so, anybody can use business-focused support groups online to get helpful feedback from those who’ve been there and done that.
Paid Marketing
Paid Ads cut as the ideal approach to get targeted traffic pronto-Spending money to make money, they say. Fortunately, many paid marketing channels permit you to pay per click.
Sometimes, you can begin with a spending plan as low as $10.
Each marketing platform is unique, and you ought to pick these channels depending on your target demographics and how the tools permit you to reach likely buyers.
If you’re focusing on specific regions, you should ascertain which social communities are popular in particular markets.
Before exploring paid online media marketing, populate your main profile’s feed with a few posts. Given that this is a simple approach, you must curate content. At that point, it won’t be lacking in activity should your prospects hit your site.
If you need help, consider recruiting Kit, a free virtual assistant for Shopify vendors, to assist with your paid marketing endeavors.
The kit has proved instrumental in marketing many Shopify store owners’ online store marketing online stores. It handles Instagram and Facebook marketing, email advertising, and social posting, thus driving sales and growing your business.
Google Ads
Ordinarily, when many people want to make a purchase, they’d first look it up on Google. Google Ads (Google AdWords) empowers your site to appear at the top of the page when buyers search for relevant terms.
Google Ads offers several alternatives: Shopping Ads that show your product photos and price in a more eCommerce-oriented format and text ads that appear conspicuously in search results.
You must conduct keyword research to assess the search volume for terms related to what your target buyers may search for. Many people find Google Ads intimidating because of its complex interface.
As such, you want to rent a Shopify Expert’s services if you need to take advantage of the opportunity but prefer to hand it off.
Suggested for: Local brands, products/services, and trending products with high search volume.
For in-depth insights on Google Ads, check out the following:
- Common Google Ads Mistakes: You Stop Their Subscriptions
- Effective Way of Spending Your First $100 on Google Ads
- Using Google Remarketing Effectively for eCommerce
Instagram Marketing
Besides the visual format and overwhelmingly millennial audience, Instagram’s platform comes with a horde of other allures.
According to information from Smart Insights, the platform boasts one of the most engaged user bases among social networks. It’s an incredible platform for influencer marketing and regular unpaid posts, reaching a decent number of people if you utilize relevant hashtags.
Instagram marketing empowers you to display your visual ads in others’ feeds to drive traffic. If you venture into the beauty and skincare industry, leverage Instagram ads and offer free samples to promote your products.
Equally, you can utilize a video to exhibit your product, and as such, Instagram ads help drive product deals.
Suggested for: Fitness, food, Fashion, and any vertical emphasizing visuals is an unquestionable requirement.
If you own any high-caliber and alluring product photos and intend to market to millennials (20-30 year-olds), check out Instagram.
Facebook Marketing
Facebook is one of the most popular social networks, piggybacking the most diverse user base in terms of age, gender, income, and ethnicity, as indicated by Pew Research.
That is why many brands can use Facebook’s targeting options, which incorporate age, gender, profession, region, and interest, to reach their ideal prospects.
And that bit on interests—is precious. You can leverage the pages your target audience likes on Facebook as the premise to build ideal customer profiles that determine who your ads reach.
This is suggested for store owners who have a clear picture of their ideal customers and what they like.
For instance, a store that sells shirts with mainstream pop-culture references can, without much of a hassle, discover its target audience on Facebook by targeting demographics keen on mainstream pop-culture icons.
For instance, you can run Facebook ads to advance eco-friendly products, assuming you run an eco-brand.
This way, you can target clients keen on the environment and conservation to market your apparel. In essence, this model is a carousel ad, where you sell various assortments of products.
Pinterest Marketing
Often, this channel-Pinterest is overlooked. On the flip side, Pinterest has the most clearly defined user base.
Pinterest indicates most of its users are female clients, and HootSuite points out that many clients have disposable income. Besides, you can drive critical traffic through free and paid efforts.
Utilizing Pinterest is like scrapbooking; clients create boards to collect and save “Pins” related to specific themes.
Pinterest often proves handy for curating wardrobes, saving fascinating articles, and planning events. It’s necessary; you remember that when you run ads on Pinterest.
Pinterest’s tons of tools make it easier to advertise on both of its Promoted & Buyable Pins.
Suggested for Fashion, home decor, food, artistry, designs, and different verticals where visuals reign, more so if you’re learning to sell stuff online to a female demographic.
For your brand, you can run an ad that directs your prospects to the product page with a comparative look and feel.
Outreach
You want to connect with the existing audience. Sometimes, information about your brand only coming from you won’t suffice—in other words, it isn’t as powerful.
Fortunately, in this era, the internet has saved the day. The web has made it workable for anybody to build a platform and, thus, for you to liaise with partners.
Aside from the following strategies helping drive traffic. However, they regularly use content to do as such— a product review or a news story, for instance—and that enables you to build your brand’s credibility. Principally, with one shot, you’re taking out two targets through each fruitful collaboration.
Whenever you pitch to establish these relationships, ask yourself, “How will this benefit them perpetually?” Keep that in mind.
Partnerships
To make your first sale on Shopify, you must establish strategic partnerships. Partnerships can be a terrific method of getting your products in front of new partners’ clients.
The key is to search for non-competitive brands that share your interests and have already attracted your target audience.
It can require some investment at times and luck to land and establish these collaborations, although the trade-off is that you’re in a position to get inventive with the nature of the relationship if you do as follows:
- Bundle samples of your product or exclusive discount codes with complementary products. For example, include a beverage blend sample with each order for your partner’s water bottles.
- Run a contest with your product as a prize.
- Work together in creating a product.
- Sponsor an event.
Suppose your brand deals in Baseball Caps. You can borrow from successful serial collaborators and work with superstars (celebrities) to launch your Cap lines.
Suggested for: The partnership serves entrepreneurs with a knack for sales and business advancement, entrepreneurs already working with different businesses in their niche, or reaching relevant alliances that don’t directly rival them.
Bloggers
The open secret about online content: Publishers consistently look out for new content and tales to tell.
With a compelling pitch based on a good story or an exciting product, you can win a slot on a blog or publication your target demographic reads.
Search for publications that identify with your niche and have a go at pitching them about your brand.
The following are a couple of ideas offering guidance on collaborations:
- Write a guest post highlighting your expertise on a subject, and use your author bio to describe and link to your business.
- Pitch a news story using a compelling backstory or even an exciting product as the hook for an interview-styled piece.
- Request product reviews by offering your product to a blogger free of charge in exchange for a review.
Whatever suggestion you pick, your pitch should fascinate both the author/editor you reach out to and their audience. Before evaluating the size of the publication’s readership, look at publications based on the right “fit.”
Suggested for: This partnership serves the best entrepreneurs with intriguing backstories, exciting products that bloggers have yet to see, and business persons with an aptitude in their niches who can share it.
Guerilla Marketing
It’s not cast in stone that you must drive all your traffic online. If you have it rough, bring in early sales, take your marketing offline, and spread the word yourself.
Suppose you deal in dog collars. In that case, visit your nearby dog park and hand out flyers while you engage people.
Alternatively, assuming you can quickly transform your product into samples, consider giving some away free of charge. Your pop-up shop could likewise generate buzz.
Guerrilla marketing includes a blend of guts and ingenuity. However, in the era of a connected world, it’s never been possible to state, “Check Out Website,” to somebody offline and witness it convert into traffic online.
Suggested for: Anyone close to a spot where groups of like-minded individuals gather offline. It helps if you’re an extrovert comfortable putting yourself out there.
Influencers
Celebrity endorsement isn’t an exclusive reserve for big brands’ product advertisements. Make Your First Sale On Shopify has since established that you can equally work with influencers—creators with a significant audience in your niche—to take advantage of an existing fanbase for traffic and have some content made about your products.
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Influencers exist on virtually all channels, from Instagram to YouTube. Although you can directly reach out to influencers and negotiate a deal, there are a few influencer marketplaces that interface creators with brands. Consider the following:
- Crowdtap is comparatively smaller in scale than the others. However, this marketplace lets you incentivize small content creation “assignments” with money and different prizes.
- Famebit requires influencers with at least 5,000 followers to list on its platform. The marketplace sets its base endorsement at $100.
- Grapevine counts among the more popular influencer marketplaces.
Suggested for: Fashion and innovation products can leverage influencers. By working with Instagram, influencers specifically lend ample openings for lifestyle brands to advance their products in the context of lifestyle photography.
Analysis
The analysis provides a window for reflecting on optimizing. Ideally, you’ve attempted enough strategies to see a spike in traffic and a few sales. The test is intended to create a feedback loop where you open your store to traffic, set parameters for its performance, and make enhancements.
Now, you can start diagnosing your store’s probable issues by looking at your Google and Shopify Analytics analytics dashboard alongside the feedback you’ve gotten from effectively advancing your store.
There are various reasons clients probably won’t buy from you, and you can make educated guesses based on how your traffic indicates:
- When none of your guests add products to their cart, it is possible that you have yet to realize the product/market fit. In that case, you must locate the right niche or try various products. Customers may also need to trust your store more to make a purchase.
- A high bounce rate—that is, guests going to your site and leaving quickly—indicates that your traffic is perhaps of poor quality or that your store may take too long to load. You must test the load speed.
- You may need to re-evaluate your shipping if your store registers many abandoned carts during checkout.
Based on these findings, you can begin tweaking aspects of your store to improve your chances of succeeding in a new round of marketing.
If you’re in the state of mind for all the more advertising ideas, look at eCommerce Marketing Essentials: Actionable Tactics to Drive More Sales.
Get Down to Business
It would be best if you got down to business to grow. Driving traffic is tied to creating the nexus between your brand and your buyers in a world of ever-evolving prospects. That is half what makes marketing so intense—the way that there are countless openings out there.
You want to avoid adopting a straight-jacket approach to this. Exploring, trying, failing, and improving is the only way to discover what works for you.
So, the best way to grow is to get your store out there; it’s the best way to develop.
But it proves a hassle in your case because you need to drive traffic with sales.
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