Table of contents
- What is understood by Shopify marketing?
- Why is Shopify marketing useful?
- How can you implement Shopify marketing ideally?
- 1st stage: Foundation
- 2nd stage: Conversion
- Thanks to the preliminary work in the first two stages, the perfect basis for success is created here. Since you have already dealt with issues such as the conversion rate and the technical side of the shop, you can now fully focus on campaigns.
- Shopify marketing is an exciting field where new apps and features to discover every week.
In the past decades, online shopping has developed from a non-existent sector to a billion-dollar business.
Especially during the Corona pandemic, the number of people buying goods and services online has increased more than ever before.
Today, platforms like
Shopify offer everyone the ability to create their own shop with intuitive operation and simple setup, and to participate in this global growth in e-commerce.
This represents a great opportunity for many businesses that can now be present online without great effort. However, this also comes with disadvantages. Due to the large number of online stores, it becomes more difficult for your own shop to stand out and be successful.
So how can you set yourself apart from the crowd with your Shopify shop and use the global trend in e-commerce?
This is exactly the question our guest author Christoph Dahn wants to answer in this article, showing you how you can be successful with the right Shopify marketing approach.
He draws on many years of experience as a certified Shopify agency. He and his team have been able to develop a framework through their work with various companies, which breaks down all of the nearly endless options into a simple and effective system. He will introduce this concept more closely here.
At the end of the article, you should know not only what opportunities your Shopify marketing offers, but also which measures you should implement in your shop and when, and which tools are best suited for that.
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What is understood by Shopify marketing?
The term "marketing" essentially describes all activities of a company aimed at increasing sales and acting in a customer-oriented manner. There is a wide range of different methods ranging from advertising campaigns to price changes to the establishment of new product ranges.
Shopify marketing more specifically refers to all those marketing activities that take place in and around a Shopify system. It is typically about a Shopify online shop or the connection of an online store with local branches via
Shopify POS.
Being an expert in Shopify marketing does not suffice to only know the traditional marketing tools such as Google Analytics or advertising platforms. It is more important to understand the Shopify system as a whole and to have a good overview of all apps and integrations.
Moreover, one must be able to use this knowledge in such a way that the right measures are identified at the right time and implemented accordingly.
Successful Shopify marketing, therefore, means fully exploiting the special possibilities and options of the platform, thereby providing a good experience to its customers and achieving business objectives.
Why is Shopify marketing useful?
“Build it and they will come” is a long-gone idea. Since seemingly every bakery now operates an online shop and the number of shops has reached the millions, a solid marketing concept is imperative for you in order to stand out from the large online selection and be competitive.
But why should you specifically invest in Shopify marketing measures instead of just following general approaches for online shops?
The main reason lies in the development of Shopify since its foundation in 2006.
Many apps are now so well integrated in the Shopify Appstore that they function like an extension of the system.
Apps like
Klaviyo are seamlessly connected to Shopify and allow you to use all customer data directly for a better user experience and more personal approach.

Apps like Klaviyo are perfectly integrated into the Shopify system.
Over the last few years, an ecosystem of its own has developed around Shopify.
It's important to know and fully exploit the full potential of Shopify, rather than just running an "online shop".
Today there are numerous examples of e-commerce giants like
Allbirds and
Gymshark, which have grown based on Shopify.
Although Shopify has a low entry barrier, it is a platform that allows seamless growth from a startup to a global market leader.
Due to a wealth of options, the question that shop operators are now most concerned with is not “Can you implement X with Shopify?” but much more often: “What should I implement when and with what tool?”
In our work with numerous customers, we have repeatedly found how much time and energy can be saved with the right measures.
This not only leads to significantly more growth but also allows you to invest your time and energy into your company's core business instead of being stuck in implementation.
To find the right measures at the right time, we have developed a Shopify marketing methodology, which we will introduce below.
How can you implement Shopify marketing ideally?
In order to use Shopify marketing efficiently, a well thought out system is essential.
Over time, we've tried very different approaches, measures, and methods with a wide variety of shops. As a result, we came up with a thoroughly tested, manageable, 3-stage framework.
The framework consists of 3 fundamental stages:
- Foundation
- Conversion
- Scale
These 3 phases assist in assessing where a shop currently stands and what measures are most effective. We have assigned clear steps and tools to each of these three stages.
We generally recommend tackling the stages one after the other. Once the foundation is established, you can address the conversion and then the scaling. However, it is significant to not lose sight of the previous stages.
It's helpful to regularly check on the structural condition of the shop and verify the tracking. The same holds true for the optimization of the conversion. This is not a measure that you simply implement and then maintain just like that. Instead, it's about dynamically reacting to data and constantly improving the customer experience through feedback and constant adjustments.
The Pareto principle in Shopify marketing
Another important tip before we continue:
Observing the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) can be very beneficial for you! This principle states that in dynamic systems, 20% of the measures are responsible for 80% of the results.
So, in our client projects, we always recommend taking the time for a detailed 80/20 analysis. Whenever possible, find “Best of Breed” software that is easy to integrate and delivers good support and performance. Focus on observing the reviews of entrepreneurs who are in a similar customer segment.
If you're unsure, you can find out which measures are recommended for your situation with the help of experts.
It's important that you become aware of the Pareto principle, keep it in mind at all times, and internalize it!
This will help you focus on what's essential and resist the allure of the gigantic marketing tech industry. Otherwise, there's a risk that you will no longer see the wood for the trees and lose your orientation.
The saying goes in Shopify marketing circles: “A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool.”
1st stage: Foundation
We always start with the foundation, the absolutely necessary framework.
We check whether the shop is set up correctly and does not have any major technical errors. In addition, goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) are defined in order to make the following measures clearly measurable and work in a target-oriented manner.
It is very important to clearly define what you actually aim to achieve at the beginning. The natural goal is often to make more sales. Still, it makes the most sense to measure specifically how, when, and whether you reach the goal.
More sales can, for instance, be a direct result of an increase in the email rate of subscribers if you have implemented measures in this area. Measuring only sales would not be goal-oriented then.
The connection between the company's goal, KPIs, and measures is of utmost importance here. It's best to ask yourselves always:
“If X is the goal, what KPIs should I measure to know if measures Y and Z have helped me achieve the goal?”
In order to be able to track these KPIs, the first analytics and tracking tools are also deployed during the foundation stage.
Goals
When it comes to setting goals, it depends on whether you already have customers, or you want to lead an unknown startup to success.
As an established company, it’s about optimizing channels, scaling, and tapping into new areas, while in the case of a new foundation, the focus is initially on finding the right customers for your product and establishing a product-market fit.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Once you have set a series of goals with the corresponding measures, the next step follows.
If you set a goal, you need to know if you have achieved it. A large part of your task as an online marketer is to regularly check and measure whether you have reached your set goals.
In the business world, as in e-commerce, one of the best ways to define and measure success is to set performance indicators (KPIs). A KPI is a measure that quantifies exactly what you want to achieve with your plan.
The right measuring points/KPIs are a decisive factor.
If your goal, for example, is to increase the conversion rate by 50%, you would measure how your conversion rates for different traffic sources are progressing.
Tracking and Analytics
With the help of analytics & tracking software, you can keep track of all data and understand the usage and performance of your store.
You find out, for instance, where your visitors are coming from and which search terms they are using, how many visits your online shop records daily, and what their respective duration of stay is.
The corresponding analytics tools & software give you a deep insight into how visitors interact with your website. Over time, you will increasingly understand how your customers "tick" and how you can better meet their needs to bind them in the long term.
With analytics & tracking, you can also make better decisions about further measures, as you can include much significant current information.
It is significant that, through the best possible view of your data, you get the perfect insight and develop a deep understanding of the interactions of your e-commerce.
Google AnalyticsWith the free basic version of the analytics tool, you can centrally analyze company data and measure the performance of marketing activities, content, and products. With
Google Analytics you can easily determine which pages, topics, and authors are performing best in your content strategy. This way, you'll find out which of your content is particularly popular with your target groups. You also recognize at a glance where users are coming from (e.g., via search engines, display ads, or social media) and how long they stay on your website. As website admins, you can derive relevant findings from the usage data of the Google Tag Manager (GTM) with the tool, thereby making better decisions for your company.
Hotjar
Hotjar, founded in 2014, describes itself as “the leading solution for companies that sell online, and their marketing, analytics, UX, and CRO teams, who want to better understand user behavior and collect their feedback”. It offers, among other things, heatmaps, on-page polls (pop-ups), and surveys. At the moment, the solution is reportedly used by more than 550,000 websites in over 180 countries around the world. Prices for usage vary depending on private or business use (business/agency).
2nd stage: Conversion
Once the foundation is in place, we focus on the conversion. This is about looking closely and analyzing where customers drop off. What prevents them from making a purchase? Can they sign up for a newsletter?
The Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) offers a wide range of tested and proven marketing techniques. These focus on optimizing all areas of your e-commerce that influence the conversion rate.
The priorities here are:
- The optimization of product communication
- The improvement of the checkout process by setting up optimal, user-friendly features and perfected onboarding processes
- Setting up product recommendations as part of cross-selling measures
- The implementation of loyalty programs, gamification, etc., to motivate your customers to make repeated purchases.
But shouldn't traffic be treated as a priority in e-commerce marketing?
NO, it's important and sensible to prioritize CRO.
You should only consider traffic measures and advertising after that.
The reason for this can be easily illustrated with an example:
If only 1 visitor buys something out of 100 visitors, then your shop is losing 99% of the visitors. If you now display an ad and thus get 10,000 visitors to your shop, then 1% of that is only 100 buyers.
If, however, you first work on the conversion and increase it to 2 buyers, and then display an ad, you can, in this case, win 200 buyers through the same 10,000 visitors over the ad.
Here, too, the Pareto principle applies. If the conversion in your shop is relatively poor, then it's probable that you can achieve an improvement, such as an increase of 20%, with relatively little effort.
To achieve the same sales exclusively through more traffic, you would, with a constant conversion rate, also have to increase it by 20%. This is often more difficult, especially in the beginning, than working on the conversion.
Due to the exponential growth, you also benefit from improving various adjusting screws. Instead of only increasing the traffic by 30%, you can, for example, as shown in the graph above, increase the traffic, the average shopping cart, and the number of orders per customer, each by 10%, and thus, instead of 30% more sales, get 33% more sales.
In CRO, the “law of diminishing returns” is extremely important as well. Especially if you've been successful with your Shopify shop for a while, you will notice that further growth in one area becomes more and more strenuous.
Whenever you notice that it slowly becomes very difficult and elaborate in one area to achieve even a small improvement, you should ask yourself:
“Do I perhaps have more potential with another control lever or is my time currently really optimally utilized?”
It is crucial that you don't get stuck on one detail and miss out on opportunities in other areas because you absolutely want to get the shopping cart to X or the conversion rate isn't quite right. Here, conversion rate benchmarks, which are available on numerous websites and blogs, are very helpful.
In the CRO, we have chosen SEO, Shopify email marketing, and lead generation as blocks. Through these measures, we could induce a significant sales growth for most of our clients.
With these areas, many automations can be developed, which can then run in the background during the scaling phase, significantly positively influencing the added value of advertising campaigns.
Especially if you want to place ads in competitive niches and platforms like Facebook, the acquisition costs are often a hurdle for young companies. It is therefore highly sensible to cover these areas first.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Solutions
SEO for online shops is a method to get search engines to position your website at the top of the search results.
With the correct SEO expertise, you can ensure that potential prospects and customers, who are looking for related topics and keywords in the jungle of the internet, will find your site.
You can have a professional agency completely take over the SEO for your company. As a rule, they will then record the growth rate for you in a monthly report.
Alternatively, you can decide to carry out the SEO tasks yourself and only obtain help and support as needed. The selection of tools in this area is very high. The following recommendations are particularly relevant for Shopify content marketing:
SeobilitySeobility is probably one of the best tools that you can use to improve your search engine ranking. The tool has a comprehensive dashboard that offers various options for checking your website, keywords, and backlinks. Many other SEO tools offer similar features for a lot more money; this is one of the reasons why Seobility is our top choice.
Google Search ConsoleWith the webmaster tool,
Google Search Console you can easily monitor your website. You receive targeted information to check if everything is in order on your website. Perhaps errors have occurred or Google doesn't like a certain element of the website. Or maybe your content is criticized, and you need to take action. This tool also allows you to check where there are navigation problems (e.g., broken links) on your website so you can fix them as soon as possible.
NEW Yoast SEO for Shopify
Finding the right keywords for your website can be a daunting task. It's even more difficult to find the keywords that attract enough visitors to your website. But we have good news: Yoast SEO, the popular tool, is now also available for Shopify. You can comfortably add the app through the Shopify App Store to find the best keyword combinations for your website.
Shopify Email Marketing/Marketing AutomationThe right email marketing is crucial if you want to continuously increase your conversion rate and sales closing rate.
With targeted or automated email campaigns, you can convert interested visitors of your online shop into paying, regular customers and recover lost customers and sales.
It plays a big role to set up customized email campaigns and ensure that they run well and show exactly the content that is relevant for your visitors and customers.
In Shopify marketing, it is therefore not just about the technology and the tools, but also about how you can get in touch with your potential customers in a unique way.
When it comes to suitable tools for sending newsletters, there are a range of great services. Each of them offers a series of pros and cons.
To decide which service is right for you and your company, it always helps to take a step back and take a look at the possibilities, strengths, and weaknesses of the individual providers.
The corresponding links to the ratings of the tools on OMR Reviews also give you an insight into the experiences and assessments of other users.
Klaviyo
Emails are an effective means to stay in contact with your potential customers on a large scale. But creating and sending them manually is not ideal: It can be expensive and very time-consuming.
Klaviyo is a marketing automation tool based in the US that is aimed specifically at e-commerce companies. But automation is not enough. You need software that can be integrated into your shop system and helps you create e-commerce customer profiles. Klaviyo offers the best solution for this in our opinion.
It is compatible with common shop systems such as Shopify, Woo Commerce, and Magento. Klaviyo enables users to segment their customer data and send automated emails and SMS messages from the customer database to increase revenue per customer.
In doing so, users can also set up multi-level “email flows”, with welcome emails, discounts, or requests for ratings. Moreover, the database can be linked to social ads to address custom or lookalike audiences on Facebook.
Especially when combined with Shopify, Klaviyo can fully leverage its strengths. The integration is extremely easy to set up, the learning curve is very manageable despite the functionality.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)The Berlin-based startup Newsletter2Go, founded in 2008, convinces with its good price-to-performance ratio, as well as its Office-like, simple, and intuitive design, high user-friendliness, and large functional scope.
Now the service and the brand are part of the French start-up
is an email marketing service that is probably the most used newsletter tool for small businesses.In addition to email marketing, the platform is now present in almost all marketing disciplines and offers products in the areas of customer analysis, social media, content creation, and CRM.Lead GenerationSome of the visitors in your shop will not be ready to buy immediately. Maybe they just wanted to read a blog post on a specific topic or just browse.
Nevertheless, these visitors are very valuable and you can often persuade them to make a purchase by perhaps just asking them first to leave their email address in exchange for a freebie.
3rd stage: Scale
The third stage is about scaling the shop. After a solid base has been built from goals, tracking, and conversion in the first two stages, it is now time to set the shop in motion.
Thanks to the preliminary work in the first two stages, the perfect basis for success is created here. Since you have already dealt with issues such as the conversion rate and the technical side of the shop, you can now fully focus on campaigns.
Furthermore, you can now expect that the campaign performance depends on the campaigns themselves and not as much on harder to measure factors such as the shop and technical errors.
In the “Scale” stage with us, mainly paid traffic, content marketing, and special growth hacks are located.
The paid traffic, or the advertising campaigns on different platforms, is the perfect test for the conversion work in the second stage. As long as the conversion rate remains stable with the additional traffic and doesn't decrease, you can focus on the campaigns.
However, if the conversion rate starts dropping again, it might be time to go through the second stage once more and improve the shop further. Due to the paid traffic, here you are also collecting significantly more data that you can then use for further analyses and CRO measures.
With content marketing, you have the opportunity to build a relationship with the customers and help them with their problem.
Creating content is time-consuming, but if you use the right content directly on multiple platforms, there is an enormous added value for the company.
The growth hacks are special measures and tricks that, with creative combinations of tools and new practices, can provide a unique customer experience. Here, we introduce some of our favorite hacks:
Paid Traffic
Traffic is often seen as the most important marketing measure. Many Shopify shop owners conventionally focus directly on measures to increase visitor numbers. Contrary to popular belief, it is however advisable to only implement Shopify traffic measures once the conversion rate has reached a certain level.
By selectively playing out ads on various channels, you can attract new customers to your shop. Different platforms, ranging from Facebook and Instagram to TikTok, to Google or Pinterest Ads, are available for this purpose.
Shopify simplifies this through direct integrations with the best-known platforms. This eliminates the need for complex installation of a pixel, and you can start right away. In addition, the products from the Shopify shop can be automatically integrated into the systems of the partners, which saves a lot of work over time.
The integrated Shopify marketing thus simplifies the entire process enormously and helps avoid tracking errors. Especially for technically less skilled users, this is a tremendous advantage. It enables you to fully focus on the campaigns instead of having to deal with bug fixes.
Which platform is best to reach your target group varies from shop to shop. However, there are some indicators that can help you in the selection.
Image-based platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest are particularly suitable for visual campaigns, Facebook Ads are a good all-rounder, and Google Ads allow you to address customers who are actively looking for your product. Newer platforms like TikTok offer the chance to set yourself apart from the crowd with a creative approach.
In Shopify marketing, it is essential to really understand the customer and the business model. Only then can the available tools, integrations, and apps be used and implemented effectively and successfully within the framework of a good strategy.
Facebook & Instagram Ads
Facebook and Instagram have a common advertising platform: Facebook Ads. Due to the enormous reach of the two networks, you can reach a suitable target group here for pretty much every Shopify shop. The setup of the campaigns is very intuitive, and you can achieve success with relatively small budgets.
Google Ads
Google Ads
is the advertising platform of Google. Here you can display ads directly in the Google results or on partner sites. This is very interesting for Shopify shops, as you can reach customers at different points in their customer journey here. Moreover, Google Ads ensure that the shop is actually displayed during relevant searches, significantly increasing sales.
Tik Tok AdsTikTok has established itself in the social media field in recent years and is now one of the largest networks worldwide. For some time now, there has also been an advertising platform for TikTok where companies can plan and roll out their campaigns. This is a special opportunity for creative and video-talented individuals to stand out from the crowd and have success with TikTok marketing.
Content Marketing
You might be wondering whether it's worth investing time and money in content management.
We are convinced – yes, it pays off!
The fact is that more and more consumers decide to purchase a product or service without having had any direct contact with the company beforehand. For this reason, content marketing plays a particularly important role in corporate communication.
With the right know-how, you can gain attention from a clearly defined audience, generate it as a customer, and ultimately aim for long-term customer loyalty.
The focus is always on creating attractive, valuable, relevant, and helpful content that is conveyed in an entertaining and exciting way.
No matter whether it's about stories, videos, blogs, or other formats, everything must be aligned with the highest benefit and ideal problem solution for your target audience.
Anyone who has ever tried to implement a content marketing strategy in a company knows what we mean. Because creating content is just the tip of the iceberg.
The greater challenge is choosing a coherent format, publishing it at the right time and through the appropriate channel, and then tracking its success.
No wonder more and more companies are using content marketing software for support.
The following software will not only help you create better content, but also optimize your processes and improve your overall results.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite
is a software that combines the management of all social media channels on one platform. Whether text contributions, pictures, videos, or stories – with Hootsuite, you can create and easily plan content for all networks. In addition, Hootsuite offers customizable boards, which let you easily keep an eye on the content of competitors or other channels.With the Social Inbox, you can monitor and answer messages from all of your profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.The social listening tool helps you find relevant conversations on any topic by searching for specific keywords or hashtags.You can also add filters to quickly show only the most important conversations.Plan your posts in advance and Hootsuite will automatically publish them at the time you specified.Shogun Landing Page BuilderIf you as a retailer are looking for a way to customize your shop without the help of a developer, one of the most popular apps on the Shopify platform is a drag-and-drop page builder and editor called Shogun.
The app is touted as a “drag-and-drop tool for creating beautiful custom pages on Shopify and has a five-star rating, as well as many good reviews.
Shogun works with all Shopify themes and features a Page Importer for editing existing pages. It works for all marketing pages in a Shopify shop: homepage, FAQ, about us, contact, other landing pages, promo pages, etc. as well as Shopify blog pages.
Growth HacksLet's be honest for once... we all love hacks. Hacks are shortcuts that lead us directly to the goal without much effort. That's why we would like to introduce some tools to you at the end that will make it possible for you to achieve amazing results without much time investment.
Outgrow
With Outgrow, you can create interactive content that is not only entertaining and engaging, but also helps you capture valuable data from your customers.
The platform for creating interactive content offers a variety of interactive tools like calculators, quizzes, and ratings to support your sales funnels and content strategies. Have you considered enriching your content pages and blogs with interactive tools?
OptimonkWithout bothering your visitors, OptiMonk helps you create the ideal popup, with the perfect message, exactly at the right time.
Shopify marketing is an exciting field where new apps and features to discover every week.
This flood brings many benefits as the increased competition among app developers continuously raises the quality of the offer. If you manage to keep track, you can always stay one step ahead of the masses.
Here are the most important pieces of information from the article at a glance:
Shopify is now a serious system with which companies of all sizes can be successful
- To stand out in Shopify marketing, deep knowledge about integrations, apps, and features is helpful
- Especially smaller companies and start-ups can benefit from a well-thought-out planning and application of the Pareto principle. There are thousands of measures that would probably be quite good (SEO, content, A/B tests, influencer marketing, social media marketing, email marketing…). The question always arises on how to best set the priorities. Think carefully about what your goals are and into which measures you should invest your time right now in order to achieve them.
- Begin with the basics, then improve the conversion, and finally put the work into more traffic. It's worth patching some holes in the bucket before pouring more water into it.
- Fangt mit den Basics an, verbessert dann die Conversion und steckt erst dann die Arbeit in mehr Traffic. Es lohnt sich, erst einige Löcher im Eimer zu stopfen, bevor man mehr Wasser hinein gießt.
Nun hoffen wir, dass Euch unser Artikel und Framework gute Dienste leistet und Ihr Euch damit etwas sicherer in der Marketingplanung Eures Shops fühlt.