How do you attract customers to your online store?

This is the question you ask when you’ve already set up your beautiful store on Shopify, Amazon, or another platform and uploaded the first bunch of products. 

And that’s it.

You’ve bumped into zero website traffic.

The good news is that there are a bunch of low-cost or even free tactics to help you increase website traffic.

They are just great to attract your first customer and will help you retain your 100th.

We have broken them into the following groups:

• Influencer and referral marketing
• Social media
• Search engine optimization
• Content marketing
• Paid advertisement

Continue reading if you want to learn how to drive traffic to your Shopify shop.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Shopify Shop

1. Influencer Marketing: Reach People that Will Talk Up Your Business

It is the easiest way to start with.

Especially if you have friends with large audiences on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

If not, try to research local influencers interested in obtaining free samples of your product.

Offer them a gift selection of items you want to advertise.

Your second option is to get some popular bloggers to speak of your product.

Yet in this case, you have to season your free sample offering with an interesting story.

You may ask a blogger to write a post about your product or prepare a guest post.

All of these help to increase site traffic to your Shopify shop.

You might be surprised to know that popular brands like Coca-Cola, Tiffany and Co., Starbucks, Maserati, Nike and Pantene are using influencer marketing too!

Their reason is surprisingly simple: to show how real people are using their products in everyday life.

And it works! 

For example, the rebooted Charlie’s Angels invited three TikTok influencers to start a challenge by dancing to Don’t Call Me Angel soundtrack.

The video generated 4.2 billion views. 

2. Social Media Outreach: Start a Page to Chat about Your Products with Strangers

According to Digital Advertising Report 2020, the social media advertising market is the second biggest market within digital advertising.

The worldwide revenue is expected to grow to USD 138.4 billion in 2025.

Today, different business, big and small invest a lot of time, effort and money in SMM strategies. 

If you haven’t started it yet, a good social media page will be a great platform where your customers can ask questions, share reviews of your products and even make orders.

Plus, having social media helps you easily drive traffic to your website for free.

The good news is that you should’t work too hard to start.

All you need to do is start a page and chat to your customers about your products.

Let’s break your tactics into actionable steps: 

• Step 1 –  Create a page on social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, etc.)
• Step 2 –  Get your friends and family share your posts
• Step 3 – Attract the audience with interesting stories (bright pictures, infographics, jokes, and interesting quotes)
• Step 4 – Invite people to follow your page
• Step 5 – Get follow-backs by following people that might be interested in your product (be careful not to over-spam your audience. Don’t go over the limit of 25 people a day, and better keep this number around 10).
• Step 6 – Arrange interesting contests, discounts, polls, and lotteries

The best aid you can have with these tactics is time.

You can’t generate the audience overnight.

Neither can you get people to share your content instantly.

No wonder most successful start-ups launch social media pages long before they open the actual business.

Here’s a use case for inspiration.

As soon as Facebook launched their Live feature, Airbnb started a challenge encouraging people to share unique videos of their places and things they can do at home.

As a result, the company’s number of new potential users boosted. 

On top of that, you have to know there are different additional possibilities to advertise on social media.

For example, you can develop an additional Facebook shop, or launch a branded game to amuse your customers. 

You have to make sure that your website is properly optimized for mobile and has all the set of social media buttons.

Also, you may contact web development services by MLSDev for more information about techie perks that will add more engagement to your social media strategy. 

3. Search Engine Optimization: Get Organic Traffic by Optimizing Your Site

Search engine optimization or SEO is making your online shop visible for search engines.

According to statistics, spending on search advertising is going to grow at a rate of more than 5% annually and is going to reach USD 211,421 million by 2025.

The better your site is optimized, the higher ranking it has.

SEO includes the proper HTML mapping of your website, image optimization, the research and even distribution of relevant keywords, creating user-friendly URLs, and much more.

If you trust your online store’s creation to a company dealing with custom software development, like MLSDev, for example, you can expect SEO optimization to be included in their offering.

Yet, if you build a website on platforms like Shopify or WordPress, you have to invest some time and effort of your own.

Here’s what to start with:

• Learn SEO essentials
• Create an appealing meta-title
• Create a short, but informative short description
• Add internal links between your pages
• Run keyword research and fill your content with relevant keywords
• Add long-tail keywords

For more practical advice, use tools like Smart SEO, SEOptimier, or BiQ.

It’s worth mentioning that at some point, you will have to go further than open-source free tools.

And it will be very important to employ mechanisms that will enable a profound analysis for your keywords. 

What is the best tool to find the right keywords?

Proper SEO is always about using the right keywords.

Look for the relevant keywords to include in your content.

Gather data on keyword volume or learn the keyword competition to make sure they include the best material. 

If you want to outpace them, you need a proper tool.

Pay attention to BiQ’s Keyword Intelligence.

This tool allows you to gather data on trends, needed keyword volume, and which of the relevant keywords are better than others. 

It’s great as it allows you to see why some people might be searching for some keyword.

Having a clear vision of a client’s search intent will help you predict their future activity and tune the keyword selection accordingly. 

Also, the tool lets you sort the keywords based on the keyword value, which is very important.

You will see which keywords bring more traffic to your website at a lower competition.

Thus, you’ll avoid spending a fortune on SEO optimization.

 

4. Content Marketing: Tell a Story of Your Product

So you have great products, what next?

Are you sure you made everything possible to let your customers know the merits of your brand?

By investing time, effort, and inspiration in your content marketing, you win numerous benefits:

• You boost organic traffic to your store: search engines love websites with good content, so do people. Your store will be better ranked and more interesting to the visitors at the same time.
• You always have fresh materials for your PPC and social media campaigns.
• You build up your expertise and reputation as well: the more you learn and tell others, the more respect and feedback you get.

In general, there are unlimited ideas for content marketing.

Let’s break them into categories.

1. Use Visuals

Pay attention to pictures.

Bright, high-resolution images speak of how trusted your company is and how much devotion you put into your business.

Visual content may include photographs, infographics, comics, typography, illustrations, graphic maps, screen captures, animated gifs, and even brand-specific characters.

One of the most famous examples of a brand character is the Nesquik Bunny, which advertises the drink for about 70 years.

2. Include Video

Mobile users love videos.

Here’s how you can use it:  

1. Create video ads (for a YouTube campaign, for example): 
2. Start a vlog
3. Post a video how-to tutorial on a product page
4. Make a video review of a product
5. Launch a series of webinars
6. Start a series of webinars (short webinars of up to 9 min length)

Perhaps one of the most successful examples of how high-quality video content empowers a business is Wine Library TV by Gary Vaynerchuk who started his vlog to share the story of his family. 

3. Create Good Texts

Although users are inclined to videos and audios, don’t underestimate the value of the text. 

Textual content is extremely important for search engines.

Moreover, despite the growing use of video and audio content, reading is not dead at all. 

According to the Pew Research Center, more younger Americans tend to read the news than watch or listen to them than the older generation that prefers watching the news.

Basically, 42% of respondents aged 18-29 answered they’d rather read the news than watching it, while those in the age group of 50-64 prefer watching the news (52%). 

Here are the types of textual content and how you can use it to boost customer retention.

i) Create a detailed product description

These are used to learn everything we need to know from the package.

Now, a webpage is a package.

Besides the conventional product details like the price and physical characteristics, businesses also add a history of the product, how-to-use tutorials, interesting info about ingredients, etc.

ii) Publish a report

You may use a relevant and detailed report for a boost of confidence in your products’ quality in the language of digits.

iii) Give free access to e-books

A free downloadable e-book featuring your products is a great way to grab and keep customer’s attention and re-engage them in the marketing activities.

It’s also a great way to collect newsletter subscriptions from new users.

iv) Start a blog

By sharing your expertise in the domain of your business, you follow at least three important aims:

1. You prove yourself as a trusted source of advice
2. You get another platform for advertising
3. You attract users seeking interesting information in the domain

Yet, it is extremely important to keep balance in all this. 

According to Shopify, a good blog should be something between promotional and helpful, and each link to a promoted product should look more like a friendly suggestion than a sales pitch.

As they say, “Don’t make every post about your products, but don’t be afraid to drop a link or two where appropriate.”

4. Employ Audio

Although mobile users like videos most, audio is popular too.

And there is also a wide range of content types.

i) AM/FM radio streaming

This old and proven method to advertise your content is still working great.

You can use it in the following formats: guest appearances, promotional stories of your products.

This is a specifically interesting option for customer retention.

If you have a loyal audience, radio is an intimidating and humanly way to keep in touch with them, answer questions in real-time and tell what’s up.

ii) Podcasts

This popular option is also on the rise.

If you find out what’s bothering your audience and prepare high-quality audio materials to serve their needs, like how-to tutorials, it will be a great pro to keep your audience loyal.

We pay special attention to content here because it’s the core element of building customer retention, apart from the high quality of your products.

If you are curious about the recent successful use cases of content marketing strategies, listen to this Shopify’s podcast about how content marketing powered $2 million in sales for a lifestyle brand.

5. Paid Ads: Let the Social Media and Search Engines Find Your Ideal Customer

In the beginning, you don’t yet know who your perfect customer is.

Yet, business sharks like Google and Facebook (and other platforms) have tons of data gigabytes about our shopping behavior, tastes, likes, needs, and demands.

By paying these platforms for advertising, you get the ability to create a tailored message to a highly-targeted customer group.

Check the following advert options:

1. Google AdWords
2. Google paid search
3. Facebook and Instagram ads
4. Buyable pins and ads on Pinterest
5. YouTube ads

To tell you the truth, many advertisers find paid ads boring and a huge number of clients think they are annoying.

Yet, not if you put some creativity.

Here’s a story for inspiration. 

Back in 2009, Alec Brownstein, a copywriter at some marketing agency decided to find another job.

He needed to go through a series of interviews but still wasn’t sure, he’d be spotted among thousands of other candidates. 

So, he picked 5 top creative managers in New York he wanted to talk to and created paid ad targeting their names.

He knew, people liked to search their names on the web.

The campaign cost him just 6 dollars.

But it was stellar: four of five targeted managers called him and invited for an interview.

Summing Everything Up

These are the necessary steps to increase website traffic to your Shopify store.

Yet, the list of other marketing strategies you have to employ is far from the finale. 

Further, you have to pay special attention to your product’s content, quality, and super-responsive customer support services.

The success of any business lies in the consistency of high-quality services provided through different channels.

Short Author’s Bio: Ana is a technology writer @ MLSDev, a web & mobile app development company. She researches the area of technology to create great content about app development, UX/UI design, tech & business consulting.