Join Us for an AMA with 2H Media: Marketing Your Shopify Store!

[Jacqui]

Join us for an exciting Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with long-time Shopify Partner, 2H Media! This is your chance to get expert insights and actionable tips on how to effectively market your Shopify store.

Date: August 13th, 2024  

Time: 1pm EDT - 3pm EDT 

What to Expect:

• Real-Time Q&A: Whether you have questions about social media marketing, SEO strategies, email campaigns, or anything else related to promoting your store, this is the perfect opportunity to ask!
• Expert Advice: Get direct answers from the marketing professionals at 2H Media, who have years of experience helping merchants like you succeed.
• Community Engagement: Connect with other Shopify merchants, share your experiences, and learn from one another.
  
  

How to Participate:

No pre-registration is required! Simply come to the Shopify Community on August 13th between 1 PM and 3 PM EDT. Feel free to jump in with your questions.

Why Attend?

Marketing can be challenging, but you don’t have to navigate it alone. This AMA is designed to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need to enhance your marketing efforts and drive more traffic to your store.

Don’t miss out on this valuable opportunity to learn from the experts at 2H Media and connect with fellow Shopify merchants. 

Mark your calendars and get ready to ask your burning marketing questions!

Rules of engagement:

We’ll do our best to follow up on every question during the event.

• You must be logged into your account on Community to participate.
• Assume positive intent with one another and be kind. Some users may be new and learning how to engage with the Community. 
• Be authentic and honest with your questions and answers.
• Do not ask for or share store admin login details or passwords.
• Like posts and threads that are of interest or helpful to you.
• Be constructive with criticism, not offensive.
• Share your experiences and insights whenever you can to support others. 
• Abuse, harassment, and spam content won’t be tolerated.

[linesand]

Hi, I sell clothing with print-on-demand and I've tried ads on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. I'm wondering if it would be worth trying Google ads as well. What sets Google ads apart from the others? It feels a bit overwhelming!

[MatthewHerchel]

Hi @linesand,

Great question. There are some big differences between Meta and Google Ads.
We actually have a video that explains this in more detail which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxwU69vMFvM

But I'll break down the key differences to keep things simple.

Meta Ads

• Meta allows you to advertise to individuals based on some of their unique behaviours such as the content they consume, the people or businesses they follow and their specific interests.
• Meta advertising includes Facebook, Instagram, Messanger and their audience network of 3rd party apps and websites. These ad placements are most common for selling directly to consumers (B2C)
• Meta advertising is typically very visual and creative which adds to the production cost of creating your ads in the first place. This includes images, videos, carousel and slideshows.
• Typically Meta ads are a discovery tool as you are injecting your content into the potential customers feed without them making an inquiry or search

Google has a very different ads platform

• Google Ads can appear within Google Search, Youtube, Google Shopping and their 3rd party display network with millions of websites.
• Google Ads typically target "in market" users and potential leads as the ads is only shown to a potential customer after they have made a specific search or inquiry.
• Google Ads formats include: Text, Video, Shopping

Before getting started you can use a free tool by Google called Keyword Planner. This tool will give you a break down of home many times a specific keyword is being searched on a monthly basis within your shipping area. I would find your desired keywords and determine how much potential traffic already exists through the Google Ads platform.

Advertising is overall fairly overwhelming as it requires your to make assumptions about your audience and use the available data each platform provides. If you aren't sure, it might make sense to consult a professional before running a campaign to ensure it's set up correctly.

[linesand]

@MatthewHerchel Awesome! Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Will definitely check out the video!

[TSM_CO]

Super excited for your feedback!

I want to relaunch my side project that I started a couple years ago (self help type e-book), but I am not sure how to market a "restart" as it were. What kind of strategy might you recommend for a business like mine that isn't quite starting from scratch (but never really got off the ground to begin with)? 

[MatthewHerchel]

Hi @TSM_CO,

Great question.

If the business never really got off the ground to begin with, you can treat this like launching for the first time.
It's hard to give a great answer here as I don't know the current state of where you left off but I'll make some assumptions. Below are some low cost/no cost options.

I would start the following:

• Re-engage with your audience on social media. Depending on how many follows you had when you last left off you might be able to pick-up some quick traction. Otherwise start posting on a regular schedule again. To build some confidence give your audience some insight into your plans and let them know what you're trying to achieve. Social Media is meant to be social, so speak like a human.
• Start promoting your product. You want to start driving traffic to your store. This can be through partnerships, paid advertising, email, or any of your previously existing connections.
• Take your product to your customers, don't wait for them to come to you. If your product is designed for parents, go to where parents go for information. Self help can mean a lot of things, so make sure your audience clearly knows how the product will help them.
• Start gathering reviews from early adopters. If you have a few customers already reach back out for a review. Ideally you get both a Google Review as well as an on page review that can be seen on the product page of your store.
• Start building your person connections in the industry. Depending on the type of self help book, you need to start building your connections with other influencial people already operating in the space.
• Try to find places where the conversation is already happening. Based on the content of your book, there might be similar conversations happening online already. Consider Reddit, local news papers, LinkedIn, Meta, Youtube, etc. You want to determine where your potential customers are going to find related information.
• Podcasting - Don't start your own, you want to appear on someone elses. Preferably an established podcast with an audience. Uses the major platforms and reach out to the hosts and try to secure a spot. We've done this countless times with great success.

You should also look at your competition. Scroll back in their timelines to see how they started. Understanding the industry better will only help you succeed.

[TSM_CO]

This is super advice! Thanks @MatthewHerchel!

Any tips on finding partnerships, in general or for podcasts? Also, how do you participate where the conversation is happening already without coming off like a used car salesmen? 

[AronMurch]

We've found the key is to avoid the hard sell and be personable - as simple as that sounds, it really works. I've appeared on a ton of podcasts and the process was pretty easy. I identified podcasts in the space I wanted to talk to, I looked for contact information since most are seeking guests, and I'd send the following in an email:

---

Hello,

I’ve recently discovered the <name> Podcast and it looks fantastic.
I was wondering what it took to be on your podcast. Do you accept pitches?
I'd love the chance to find out more.

Best regards,

Aron

---

Once I got permission to pitch, then I'd tell them a bit about myself and list some topic ideas. I also always reassured them that my podcast appearance wouldn't just be a sales pitch. Afterall, the goal with this kind of strategy is to build market authority and get your name out there. Usually, they will give you an opportunity to do some selling if you keep the conversation high-value.

That approach applies pretty broadly. Most of our partnerships have evolved naturally by surrounding ourselves with likeminded people - a combination of networking groups, trade shows, technology partners like Shopify, and accelerators. Participating in the conversation without coming off as a used car salesman is easy when you have a genuine interest in learning about the other people involved in the conversation and sharing your own insights without necessarily making a hard push for sales. Networking events are a great place to practice, especially since the people in them typically want to hear your elevator pitch anyways.

[Peggy8]

I dont see how I can join this

[Jacqui]

Hey @Peggy8!

This is a text based AMA, so there is no special link for you to join. Simply post your questions here and the 2H Media team will answer them between 1 and 3pm EDT today!

See you there!

[lumbafan]

Hi there, 

         I'm writing to submit a question for the 2H Media marketing webinar.

         Apart from running paid ads (YouTube, Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.) 

What other options do I have to drive traffic to my store without paid ads. I'm just starting my

Shopify Print On Demand (POD) store and would start by running Facebook ads. Would you advise

me to start with paid Facebook ads or rather start organically with going viral, using SEO or writing

and publishing content about my designs.

            Which of the 2 ways is more effective and efficient when just starting out, or do you have suggestions

regarding marketing my store when I'm just starting out on Shopify and with Ecommerce.

[AronMurch]

Good question. This is really tricky and a lot of people who are just starting out really underestimate how difficult it is to drive traffic to an online store. Let's break down some of your options:

• Paid Ads (YouTube, Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.): Nothing will drive traffic to your website more quickly and consistently than paid advertising. However, there are a few things to consider. Namely, this requires deep pockets. A healthy paid advertising budget starts from $2K-$4k per month per platform, and the higher the better. If you only have a few hundred dollars per month to advertise with, this will likely be ineffective. It is also really important to choose the right platform. If people are likely to already be looking for your product, google ads work really well. If, on the other hand, your product is more novel, social media ads may be more effective.
• Organic Social Media Posting and "Going Viral": This can be effective but there is a lot of luck involved. Betting on "going viral" is a pretty high-risk strategy since it's not something you can typically force to happen. If you already live and breathe social media, this is a powerful marketing channel but if you find social media challenging then expect this to be a slow and painful way to build an audience.
• Using SEO/Writing and Publishing Content: This is important but is a long-term strategy. SEO makes you more discoverable on Google but your content needs to be high-value and heavily optimized. Even with excellent content, you need to continually release content on a regular basis to become an authority in your space and it can take years to really see improvements in organic traffic.
• Local Networking/Traditional Advertising: This is my main suggestion that's not on your list and something that's often overlooked by ecommerce startups. People are much more likely to make a purchase from someone they know and like. One of the fastest methods of generating online sales without a massive budget is building your local network. Print on demand can mean a lot of things. If you are selling artwork, consider connecting with local community groups, attending fairs, etc. and handing out links to your online store. If you're selling something like branded office supplies, local business networking groups can be a great place to gain connections and nurture leads. You also may be surprised by how effective and affordable traditional mailing campaigns are, especially since companies have stopped sending as much "junk mail" as they used to by paper in favour of email marketing.
• Email Marketing: This is another long-term strategy. Email marketing can do a lot for you in terms of repeat sales. It's also a great lead nurture tool for converting visitors into eventual customers. You don't need to do anything aggressive with this to start but should have an email marketing sign-up on your website to start collecting emails. Try to come up with an engaging reason to join your mailing list. Most people are likely uninterested in "product news and updates" and would rather receive information that they will get value from.

Ultimately, you will likely need to leverage all of the above tools to be successful. Developing a marketing strategy will mean figuring out which tools to adopt when, and how deep to delve into each tool. Selling print on demand products is extremely challenging and it's going to take some creativity.

I hope that helps!

[Fergy03]

I want to help my mom with her business which is a small hardware store. It’s in a tourist-y type town and she does decently well in the summer, but suffers in the winter for sales. Any recommendation for hyper local marketing/ advertisement that could be done virtually?

[MatthewHerchel]

Hi @Fergy03,

Hyper local marketing has many pros and cons.

I'm assuming there aren't too many other hardware stores in the local region, so competition should be low. Having an up to date Google Business Profile will help with local SEO. You should try to get as many customers during the busy months to leave a review. Additionally I'd try the following:

• Connect with all the local influencial business owners, politicians (Mayor, city counsellors, etc), as well as any business groups (Chamber of Commerce)
• As a hardware store I assume some of your sales are b2b and b2c, both providing businesses with products to fix or upgrade their locations as well as homeowners. Start posting content for both audiences on your own social accounts.
• Start generating content that highlights the local nature of your business. If you sold new fixtures, paint, hardware to a local business, go take a photo and post.
• Small towns have an advantage of being a tight knit community. Everyone in the town should know you and your business. There is still a major movement to support local. 
• Collaborate with other businesses in the town. If all the tourists leave in the winter, many other businesses will be in the same position as you. 
• Make sure that the locals know what you sell. Every hardware store I've been in has a ton of SKUs. You want to make sure everyone in town knows what you sell so they can support you before turning to Amazon.
• Email marketing. The major hardware stores do a ton of print adverting. I get the flyers in my mail every week. Print might be too expensive for you, but a digital flyer through email is super cost effective and targetted.
• Build better relationships with local trades businesses. All of them should be buying from you.
• Get your products online. This is a ton of work depending on how many SKUs you carry, but it's important to ensure your potential customers can see what's in stock and it helps you compete against the bigger players.

Hope this helps.

[galli_media]

Hi there,

I have already set up a Wordpress website which functions as a landing page for B2B marketing services which you can see here.  www.corner-ads.com

We built it specifically for selling one product/service - on board advertising - and we made it as lightweight as possible.

We will start marketing in October for several cities.  My target market is local businesses that want to advertise on board buses and local trains.  My question is this.  I was looking to hire a Klaviyo email marketing expert and several say that they are Klaviyo+Shopify experts. 

We don't invoice thru the website and do not ship goods.  I am wondering if Shopify has other benefits over Wordpress in this instance where we should consider using Shopify + an email marketing platform over Wordpress.

Will the website still score highly in page load and other metrics by using a Shopify web page builder?

Is there any reason I should use Shopify over Wordpress for this new business for reaching my B2B target audience?

Thanks!

[AronMurch]

Hi there, I love this off the wall question! I really didn't expect to be comparing WordPress and Shopify in this thread so this is cool.

First of all, I want to clarify something about Klaviyo; You do not need to switch to Shopify to start using Klaviyo. While Klaviyo has a native Shopify integration that is awesome, it should work with your existing WordPress website just fine. Any serious agency that supports Klaviyo should have no problem getting it set up on WordPress.

Regarding WordPress vs Shopify, it sounds like in your case, there is no major need to switch since you won't be leveraging the ecommerce functionality of Shopify, your website is just a one-pager, and you sound happy with WordPress. However, we support both WordPress and Shopify, and if I could move all of my clients onto Shopify I would, even when they do not require ecommerce functionality. There are a few reasons for this including stability of the platform and ease of use. I have generally found Shopify much more stable than WordPress over the years in terms of updates and errors. As of Online Store 2.0 Shopify has, in my opinion, the best custom page-builder available bar-none. I would rather work in the Shopify customizer than any custom page builder in WordPress any day, and would much prefer to teach a client the Shopify Customizer than a WordPress alternative if given the choice - it's really that much better.

Those are some of the benefits of Shopify that really stand out to me but, like I said, your website is a bit of a different case. I wouldn't expect much of a hit to page load and the other metrics should be fine if not improved but for a single page site that doesn't handle transactions, I don't think you have a strong need to make a change.

[galli_media]

Thanks! I have used Shopify in the past for an e-learning site and only switched to Wordpress because of early days LMS integration superiority in Wordpress. I agree with you 100% about the downside of Wordpress -- outdated themes, fees for plugins masking true cost of ownership, as well as the nearly daily need to check for plugin updates. 

Truth is I have 12 sites on Wordpress and a paid guy managing all of that now so I don't really see it.  From a workflow standpoint it sounds like I don't need to change.

(I prefer Shopify as well, btw...)

THANKS!

[AronMurch]

Right on! Glad I could help.

With that extra insight into your workflow, it sounds like it makes even less sense to change. If you've got someone doing a good job managing everything and he's doing a good job, no need to rock the boat. I feel you regarding the hidden costs and headaches on WordPress. Most of our WordPress plugins, we have developer licenses for so our clients don't have to bear the hidden costs but it's definitely a lot to juggle compared to what you get out of the box in Shopify.

It sounds like we're on the same page. 🙂

[Jac_Dan_McL]

What should I focus on if I want to increase my conversion rates? I get decent traffic to my store, but I am trying to increase sales.

[Jac_Dan_McL]

Also, I am taking all my on pictures right now. Do I need to hire a photographer?

[MatthewHerchel]

Hi @Jac_Dan_McL,

Great questions, I'll answer both here.
If you're already getting decent traffic to the wesbite we have to check a few things:

1. Are your potential customers reaching your product pages or are they leaving before they reach the information they are looking for.
2. Is your navigation/header menu easy to use?
3. Are your collection pages sorted in a manner that makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for.

Assuming that customers navigate to the correct product page, lets focus on increasing the likelyhood that a customer will hit the "add to cart" button.

1. Is there enough information on the product page to give the buyer confidence? Is there a good description, is there supporting information like reviews/testimonials. Are there any downloadable resources like instructions or usage guides?
2. Does the product have good photography. You mentioned you take all your own shots. Are you displaying the product in both fashion settings and on a white background? I would compare your photos against your competition. In some cases you might not need a photographer, but you might need to take your products into multiple sets or staging areas to highlight their value. If your talent isn't on par with your direct competitors you will need to invest in outside support.
3. Product video. Your hero products should have video to support the product pages. There is tons of research that shows that conversion rates increase significantly if the product page has a video, even if it isn't watched.
4. Focus on the key product values. You need information supporting why a customer should make the purchase. If your products are marketed as strong and durable, you need information to support this key feature. How are you showing that your products are strong and durable? Words aren't enough.
5. If you are getting a ton of "add to carts" but they are leaving before the purchase, there might be some sticker shock during the check out process. Typically this happens with suprise shipping rates, or added costs. A free shipping or a fixed rate shipping rate are most transparent and doesn't shock a potential buyer at checkout.
6. If you are collecting emails, running an automated flow that targets users that haven fully completed the check out will help increase conversions.

I would make changes and keep any eye on your analytics. Changing too much at once will make it hard to determine what's actually moving the needle.

Best of luck.

[JulieManders]

Hi, we just moved our website to Shopify platform (2 months ago). We have a cleaning products business. Love to hear your ideas on marketing strategy & what type of content to create. 

Everyone needs to clean things both businesses & for the home.  There are so many pages we could add focusing on how useful each product is & also focusing on the numerous things you can clean with it. Maybe adding lots of "how to clean this" (& that) videos (youtube). (Tempted to add Klaviyo). So much we can do.

[AronMurch]

Hi Julie,

First of all, congrats on moving your website to Shopify. It's a really great platform and there's a lot you can do to make the most of it - so much that it can be pretty overwhelming. It sounds like you've already got some good ideas for what to do but might not know where to start.

It helps to understand how people interact with websites and marketing. Typically, the process goes something like this:

• You run ads or promotions and lots of people see them
• Some of those people visit your website
• A few of those people buy something
• You retarget those customers
• Some of them become repeat customers

The crucial thing that I'm sure you can see from this process is that some number of people leave your sales funnel at every step. As an ecommerce business, you have two jobs: push as many people into this funnel as possible, and lose as few people as possible at each step. Understanding how you are faring at each step really informs where you should focus your efforts. 

If I break down your message, you had a couple of core questions:

• What pages should we create?
• Should we add "how to clean this and that" videos?
• Should we add Klaviyo?

The short answer is that you should do all of it but probably not all at once.

In terms of pages, the idea of customers clicking around your website looking to learn is a bit of a myth. Most people land on one page, maybe click into another page, and then leave the website. With that in mind, the best thing you can do is focus on optimizing the most important pages and slowly roll other lower-priority but SEO friendly pages over time. Focusing on how useful each product is can be very powerful, especially if you highlight the impact on the user rather than just features of the product. The best thing to do is share this information directly on the product page through product stories. Having fantastic product pages, and sending traffic directly to those pages with ads will help increase the number of people who actually purchase something after visiting your website.

Also, creating videos is one of the best things you can do. "how to clean this and that" videos should provide value while highlighting your products. The key is to leverage those videos to their absolute fullest. For every video you produce, you should be able to generate a social media post, new content for your product pages, and a great topic for email marketing. 

As for Klaviyo, this is a great tool for retargeting customers and nurturing needs but won't do anything at all to generate traffic in the first place. It should absolutely be part of your marketing strategy at some point but can take some work to set up so it's difficult to say if you should be prioritizing it with the website being relatively young.

In summary:

• Focus on the product pages. Add other pages later for SEO when you have time.
• Definitely make videos and have a plan to use them across all your channels.
• Consider adding Klaviyo if you are already getting a lot of traffic and have a decent conversion rate.

[Jacqui · Accepted solution]

This AMA is now closed.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this AMA with 2H Media! If you still have questions about marketing you're welcome to post to our Ecommerce Marketing board or connect with 2H Media to enlist their services.

If you want to know about any of our future AMAs, then subscribe to our Announcements board so you're notified with every post.