The Simplest Way To Get Massive Traffic To Your Shopify Site

Jun 11, 2021

In the last 30 days, we've had over 100,000 people visit our Shopify site (www.pixiefaire.com). They visited 240,000 times in total and looked at 1.2M pages.

In this article, I'll share the simplest, most effective, and most under-utilized way to get lots and lots of people to visit your Shopify site. Here is a screenshot of our analytics to prove my traffic claims,

Focus On Why They Come

The newbie marketer asks, "where" do I spend my time getting people to visit my website? Is it

Facebook?

Instagram?

Youtube?

Pinterest?

Twitter?

Snapchat?

Viral Video?

Email Marketing?

SEO?

The veteran marketer asks "why" would people want to come to my site and how can I make that "why" incredibly attractive to my ideal customers.

Get a good "why" and the "where" is simpler. The "where" almost takes care of itself if you design this strategy correctly. (I'll explain how in a moment).

So let's look at why someone might come to your site and how to build a system to make that happen regularly...

First - Understand The Psychology

Before I tell you the one simple way to drive massive traffic to your Shopify site - Let me share a tiny bit about the psychology we're using to make it happen. Hang in there and trust me for a moment.

I really believe it's super important for you to understand the why of this idea ... not just the how... because in my experience - people who just see a tactic (and maybe try it a time or two) without understanding the deeper concept behind it - generally tinker, toy around with, and trivialize the concept in their heart and mind - and give up before they hit pay dirt.

So take the time to really learn this concept in the next few moments. Jot down a post-it-note about it - or journal about it - and bake it into your marketing toolbox. It is not a gimmick. It is not a fade. It is not an internet marketing trick. Okay, with that said, here are a few of the concepts that undergird the idea.

Motivate Via Self-Interest

Tapping into people's self-interest is a hallmark of economic thinking. Adam Smith the father of economics first wrote about this idea in the Wealth Of Nations. And if you're going to create a strong economic system on your Shopify site - you're going to want to figure out how to integrate this important concept in an ongoing, repeatable, systematic way. (I'll show you that way in just a moment). According to Investopedia self-interest is defined as,

Reciprocity

Another core motivator of human behavior is the concept of reciprocity. The idea that if you give someone something - they'll feel compelled to return the favor. This concept is best articulated by Dr. Robert Cialdini in his ground-breaking book Influence, (which you should study very carefully). Here is a brief clip of Professor Cialdini describing this concept:

Secondary Motivators

The simple strategy I'll walk through next also taps into almost all of Robert Cialdini's 6 core influence triggers. As well as triggers that other marketers (like Jeff Walker) have identified. They are,

Commitment and Consistency: if people commit orally or in writing to an idea, they are more likely to honor it moving forward.
Authority: People tend to obey authority figures.
Liking: People are persuaded by other people they like.
Scarcity: Perceived scarcity will generate demand.
Event (or time bound) activities: It helps create a sense of urgency.
Anticipation: People are influenced by the announcement of upcoming benefits

These concepts are all very top of mind as we work to create our traffic strategy techniques. Okay, enough of the background context. What is the simplest way to get massive traffic to your site and how can you implement it in a professional way?

The Simplest Way To Get Massive Traffic To Your Shopify Site: Contests

Yes. Contests. A well designed contest, repeated over and over, can push your brand into the path of your target market in an effective way. How? Social sharing.

Let me explain how we do it, how we think they can be done very well (or very poorly) and how it can drive massive engagement if you do it right.

Style #1 - The Weekly Voted Upon Digital Giveaway

We do a simple product giveaway each Friday, (called Freebie Friday) of one of our digital items. We make the product free so that everyone gets a copy. There is no "winner" in this type of giveaway... everyone is a winner.

Here is a super important part...and how it feels like a contest...

We only give away what our customers say they want. How? We announce our Freebie Friday the Wednesday before and we ask our customers to "Help Us Decide" by participating in a poll and voting on one of four options.

We use Polldaddy.com for this voting process (here is an example screenshot). In March alone we've had over 9,600 votes on our poll daddy polls. You can see a recent example here, (notice it has 197 comments in addition to the voting which occurred). This creates anticipation, participation, and a commitment to action that customers tend to follow-through on. If they vote for it - they generally come back and get a copy.

Now, this type of Freebie Friday is possible because what we are giving away is a digital item. It is transacted through our Shopify shopping cart as a free item, so it has no transaction fee. We simply make one of our items free for 24 hours and let people know about it. We don't use a coupon code to make this happen, but if we did, the outcomes would be different.

I realize not everyone can pull off this type of weekly concept because you don't have the digital goods to do it. But there are other options...

Style #2 - The Weekly Social Sharing Raffle

Another style (and one that can be done if you don't have any digital items to give away) is the weekly physical item raffle. This is a straight-forward contest that has 1 lucky winner. This costs "real" money. It also requires shipping and coordination with customers, so it's important to think this through carefully. Set a budget. Test it, and evaluate the results.

You can see a recent example here. Notice the 352 comments on the post page, in addition to the over 18,000 entries. (I know, right?!).

Those comments were not "required" by the contest. That is a normal occurrence. Note: an entrant can enter multiple ways, so the number of individual entrants is lower than the number of entries. Here is how it looks:

Note: an entrant can enter multiple ways, so the number of individual entrants is lower than the number of entries.

Tools & Legal Issues: To make this happen we use rafflecopter.com and like it a lot. It works well. One aspect of these types of contests is complying with legal requirements in various countries and states. Rafflecopter has a very extensive legal template that you fill out for each giveaway that provides some reassurance that you're complying with these rules in a competent way as you use their system.

Here is the super important part...

The entry methods are social actions. In other words, people have to do things to help us, in order to enter. What things? Commonly we ask them to:

Refer a friend
Sign-up to our newsletter list
Follow us on Pinterest
Pin the contest image
Follow us on Twitter
Tweet something about the contest
Follow us on Instagram
Visit our Facebook page
Do any / all of these things for our partners

Winning Over The Friends Of Your Friends

These actions create the opportunity for viral sharing. In other words, if you ask thousands of people to share an image on Pinterest - the exposure is pretty massive. The new people that are exposed to the message are friends of your current customers and followers - so they are (possibly) in your target demographic.

Viral Sharing Vs. Going Viral: People throw around these terms a lot, so let me just point out a basic concept - when something's virality quotient is greater than one, (meaning that each person that engages with your content shares it with more than 1 person), then it's said to have "gone viral" and the growth is exponential. This is extremely rare. But it does happen and when it does - it results in millions of people being exposed to your content.

But that doesn't mean that you can't have a good solid sharing method - that works to attract your ideal customers in a more realistic way. Although your contests may never "go viral" they can still attract new prospects in an effective way.

The act of your existing customer sharing this to their friends means that in that process - the friends who are good prospects will (over time) see the message, be attracted to it, and some of them will jump into the contest - and repeat the actions, exposing even more people.

Each time you do a contest - a few more of these friends-of-friends are exposed to your contest (and brand/products). Referred by their friends to you - Referral marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing possible (because it comes with the implied endorsement of someone they know and trust).

I hope you see how this can really create an ongoing flow of high-quality traffic.

There are several other tried and true styles of contests - I won't list them all. But I'd encourage you to begin researching what has been tried and proven to work in your niche or industry. Then design a test to see if you can pull off the same results.

One Caution - Don't Break Any Laws

I'm not an attorney, so this is not legal advice, just my opinion - you do need to make sure that you avoid anything that is not legal. As far as I understand it there are two options:

A single-winner raffle style giveaway: no purchase necessary - and the rules of who can enter are defined (again via the RaffleCopter legal template).

A Skills Based Contest: This is where you ask people to do something, (draw a picture, write a poem, design an outfit, etc.) and you judge it according to pre-announced rules, and you pick a winner. Again, no purchase necessary.

You might notice our first example above doesn't fall into either of these categories, because technically, it's not even a true contest, it's a voting process - and everyone wins.

Beyond age and geographic location rules (which again Rafflecopter helps you sort out), the only thing I have heard you cannot do specifically is require someone to buy something as part of the entry method. That, I believe, can be considered an illegal lottery, by States that run lotteries and they can come after you for competing with them. So - don't do that.

The Match-To-Market Mandate

The single most important lesson I can share is that your contest needs to offer your prospect something they truly want (and are willing to pay for) in perfect alignment with what you sell. Even being out of alignment by one or two points of difference can mean the difference between finding good quality leads, and finding very poor leads. Here is an example,

If we sell doll clothes patterns, which we do, and we give away a free doll clothes pattern, then our ideal customer is very attracted to that offer. We want those people to be on our mailing list, following us on social media, etc.

If we sell doll clothes patterns, which we do, and give away a sewing machine, then our ideal customer MIGHT be in the cohort of people that enter, but many people that enter will simply be interested in sewing, but not sewing doll clothes. Maybe they sew children's clothing, do custom embroidery, or quilting. We don't sell items related to any of those things, (nor do we want to). We don't want these people on our email list. We don't want them to follow us on social media, etc. They are not our ideal customers.

If you design a contest to flood your funnel with the wrong people - you'll have made a serious mistake. So be sure to match your giveaway to your ideal customer very carefully.

Conclusion

As marketers, everything we do should be a test. I hope this article gives you something new to test - and the insight into how to do it well. After you master this skill - you'll have a proven - repeatable - testable process to drive massive traffic to your site.

If you'd like additional training and coaching to achieve your Shopify goals, consider applying for our coaching program today!

Jason Miles