It’s time to learn the marketing basics that you can implement for free to kickstart your sales. When you’re starting your business, unexpected expenses will pop up. So we encourage you to save money by using software tools that will save you money and time.
Here are five ways to generate free traffic that won’t break the bank:
- Google Places
- In Google Search Console, update sitemap & submit URLs to Google, regularly
- SEO Basics – meta descriptions, ALT text, Keywords
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Google Places for Business is a service that helps business owners share information about their stores, products, and locations (geographic or online) with interested shoppers when those shoppers search for products or types of businesses on various types of Google search. To start head to Google.com/business and click ‘START NOW’ at the top right corner of the web page.
- Google Search Console – Use Search Console to monitor Google Search results data for your website. This tool will allow you to update your sitemap, submit URLS to Google. Once you sign up your Shopify store, Google will send you an email to help you go through each step of optimizing your site.
- SEO Basics – Read The Beginner’s Guide to Ecommerce SEO to gain an understanding of how SEO works and how it can help you make more sales. (Next step: The Intermediate Guide to Ecommerce SEO is a helpful read as you grow).
- Social Media Marketing: Every business is different and your ideal customer has their favorite social media channels to learn from. Here are the popular social media channels we recommend you look into for your social media strategy:
- YouTube
New social media sites pop up all the time, so we encourage you to consider your bandwidth when choosing what social media channels to sign up for. When you get started, one to three channels are likely possible to do well, and as you grow you can expand. Though below are recommended social media management software that can help you manage your growth and automate:
- Hootsuite – Manage all of your social media in one place
- Buffer – Buffer is a simpler and easier way to schedule posts, track the performance of your content, and manage all your accounts in one place
- Meet Edgar – The social media scheduling tool that grows with you
- Sprout Social – Social media management made easy
- OnlyPult – OnlyPult helps you schedule your Instagram posts (you can start with a free trial)
Here are some further helpful free tools that are easy to implement:
- Linktree is a free tool for optimising your Instagram traffic, whether you’re a blogger, an artist or run a content platform.
- Bitly – Create custom shortened links for social media
Business Management Tools:
Trello – Trello’s boards, lists, and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects.
Slack – As your team grows, Slack is a great tool to use to communicate with your team. It’s free to start!
G Suite – The Google suite of products from Google Drive to Calendar to Docs, Gmail, Excel and more is incredibly helpful and affordable software that will grow with you!
Graphic Design:
- Canva – Canva helps you create beautiful graphic design for every aspect of your business by providing a drag-and-drop design tool and a library of stock photographs, graphic elements, and fonts.
Social Media Marketing:
- Kit – Kit is a (free) virtual employee for your Shopify store. Kit helps drive sales by doing everything from creating highly-targeted Facebook ad campaigns, to sending personal thank-you emails to customers, to handling the other apps that you use to manage your store.
Here’s what Kit can do for you:
- Set up Facebook dynamic ads, to retarget visiting customers
- Create Facebook and Instagram ads that deliver sales
- Post Facebook updates to drive customer engagement
- Send personalized ‘thank you’ emails to generate repeat purchases
- Create and promote discount codes to acquire and retain customers
- Promote new or back-in-stock products to customers
- Generate quick reports to provide insights on sales performance
5. Email Marketing: Your email list is a business asset that no one can take away from you. Here are some popular email marketing platforms to consider:
We recommend taking 30 minutes or so to take a look at our quick start guide to email marketing. If you’re new to email marketing to learn the value and how to get started.
There are so many helpful marketing resources that can help you grow your business on a budget. At Shopify we’ll also be releasing new courses to help you master different aspects of marketing your business. You can also learn more on a diverse range of topics on the Shopify blog.