Shopify is a really useful platform for ecommerce. It’s so good that it is used by over 1 million businesses worldwide. Some of those businesses include huge brands such as Kylie Cosmetics, Gymshark and Redbull. The Shopify platform is user friendly, designed with built in templates and add ons to assist in the easy creation of a scalable online store. Although creating an online store with Shopify has been made easy, driving traffic to Shopify is the difficult part.

Pushing potential customers in the right direction and towards your site involves a variety of elements. Ultimately, there are two digital marketing methods that are key in driving traffic to your website. The first approach is via paid search and the second is through organic search. This article will discuss both digital marketing methods, what tactics to use and the benefits of using them.

Paid Search

The first digital marketing technique we are going to discuss is paid search. Paid search involves search engines such as Google or Bing who allow advertisers to show ads on their results pages. It can also use social media to target or remarket to potential customers. This method is cost effective and is more likely to provide you with short term results.The reason paid search is cost effective is because it works on a pay-per-click model otherwise known as PPC. This, as the name suggests, means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. Paid search is a great way to increase awareness of your brand and make you more visible to potential customers.

Examples of paid search:

• Traditional pay-per-click advertising through search engine ad text.
• Google shopping
• Remarketing
• Display ads
• Social media advertising

There are a whole host of benefits of using paid search advertising. First and foremost it allows you to be extremely targeted. You can categorise who you target based on age, gender and location. In the case of remarketing, you can target users who have already demonstrated an interest in your product or service by reminding them on social media. Other benefits include that it is quick to execute, flexible, cost effective and is measurable. This is great because it provides you with the opportunity to alter your paid search approach to generate the best results.

Using paid search to drive traffic to your site

First of all, we shall talk through the traditional method of paid search. By this we mean that when you search for something in google, you are presented with pages full of results. At the top and bottom of these search results are normally paid ads. In the middle you can find organic search listings which we will cover later in the article. The paid for ads have a high chance of being clicked on due to their location on the results pages. This makes it a great way to drive traffic to your site. Below we have attached an example of a paid ads in search engine results. At the top of the page you can see google shopping ads, these are another great way to boost the traffic to your site. This is because they drive more quality traffic to your site, particularly traffic with clear buying intent. Beneath the google shopping results are the traditional PPC ads and beneath them are organic search engine results.