I’m a small artist that sells original and fan made merch at conventions and I’m having trouble driving traffic to my shopify. What should I be doing to drive engagement that can turn into purchases and orders?
Topic summary
A small artist selling original and fan-made merchandise at conventions is struggling to drive traffic to their Shopify store and seeking strategies to convert engagement into sales.
Key recommendations provided:
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Leverage convention presence: Use in-person interactions as a bridge to online traffic since paid advertising may not be feasible for small creators.
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Implement coupon strategies: Distribute website discount codes to convention customers at point-of-sale, and include codes with every online order to create a continuous traffic cycle.
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Develop social media presence: While time-intensive and challenging for introverts, conventions offer natural opportunities for creator collaborations and content generation through networking with attendees and fellow vendors.
The discussion remains open with one concrete response emphasizing that the artist’s existing convention involvement is actually an advantage that many e-commerce businesses lack.
2 Likes
Good question. As a small creator, driving traffic can be really challenging since you likely can’t leverage money to drive traffic through ads. This means you need to find ways to leverage your time and other resources. One big advantage that you have is that you are already involved in your customers’ community through conventions. There are a couple of things you can do to leverage your convention presence into more online traffic:
- Coupons can be huge: If you give everyone who buys from you in person a coupon for your website, that can dramatically increase traffic to your site, and you know that actual customers are receiving the coupons because they receive them directly from you in-person. You can also send out a coupon code with every online order to keep this cycle going.
- Build a social media presence: This is a ton of work and can take a while to pay off. It’s especially difficult if you’re introverted. However, being at conventions gives you some great opportunities. Being in-person makes it easier to collaborate with other creators, and it’s easy to find content opportunities by being friendly with the other people that are attending the conventions.
Keep at it! Usually, in-person promotion is something that we have to really talk e-commerce businesses into.