26 Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website in 2025

Before anyone can shop your online store, they have to be able to find it—yet 21% of business owners report low site traffic as their website’s biggest challenge. With only 22% of website traffic coming from people typing URLs directly into their browser’s search bar, it’s crucial for businesses to diversify the ways prospective customers discover their site. 

Below, you’ll find 26 proven strategies to promote your website across a wider variety of traffic sources and turn visitors into customers. Each traffic-boosting method is designed for savvy internet audiences, helping you build a modern online presence for your brand.

How to drive traffic to your website

• SEO
• Content marketing
• Organic social media engagement
• Paid social media advertising
• In-person traffic

SEO 

For many major industries, including retail and professional services, an average of 33% of website traffic is attributed to organic traffic. Boosting organic search traffic primarily comes down to making your business more visible in relevant Google searches—and you can make that happen with SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of fine-tuning your website to increase its chances of ranking well on the search engine results pages (SERPs) of relevant keywords. When customers search for your products, you want your website to rank on the first SERP among the top 10 results. Earning these prized positions is a key ingredient for generating consistent, relevant website traffic.

SEO is a fine science that requires learning the rules that govern search engines like Google and applying them selectively to your site. SEO tools such as Ahrefs and SemRush can help you find opportunities to optimize your content and improve its performance. 

In this section, we’ll discuss ecommerce SEO best practices that will help you optimize your site.

1. Write title tags that match search intent

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

Title tags are the text that appears on SERPs, influencing whether a user clicks through to your website. Along with the meta description (more below), this is the first impression your site gives to potential visitors discovering you via search engines. 

It’s important to follow these guidelines when writing website title tags:

• Create unique titles for each webpage
• Keep titles less than 55 characters
• Be consistent with your use of title or sentence case across page titles
• Include a target keyword
• Ensure titles match the search intent of queries

“Titles are critical to giving users a quick insight into the content of a result and why it’s relevant to their query,” Google explains. “It’s often the primary piece of information used to decide which result to click on, so it’s important to use high-quality titles on your web pages.”

Learn more: Write the Best Website Titles To Improve Your SEO

2. Write irresistible meta descriptions

Traffic: 👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

The text that appears underneath a website’s title tag on a SERP is known as a meta description. Whereas title tags grab attention and tell searchers what to expect if they click through to the website, a meta description acts as a summary of the linked page’s content. 

Clicks to pages can be won by an alluring and interesting meta description. “They are like a pitch that convinces the user that the page is exactly what they’re looking for,” according to Google.

If your meta description doesn’t offer a compelling reason to click, it could affect your organic search ranking. It’s also worth noting that meta descriptions can be any length, but they’re often truncated to fit the device the search is performed on.

To write a high-quality meta description:

• Summarize the linked page’s content
• Cap its length at fewer than 145 characters
• Make the description unique for each page
• Use sentence case
• Include intriguing, click-worthy information
• Include a page’s target keyword

3. Prioritize backlink building

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: High

One of the primary ranking factors in Google’s algorithms is authoritativeness. Essentially, Google is saying that a website should have a good reputation and produce credible content in order for it to rank higher on SERPs. So how do you demonstrate to Google that your website is authoritative? 

A backlinks strategy is one way to do it. That involves earning links to your website from other reputable websites. Earning backlinks to your content from high-quality and relevant sites signals to Google that your domain publishes reputable and reliable content and therefore should be prioritized in rankings. The more backlinks you receive from trusted entities, the more authoritative search engines will deem your site. It’s also a valuable strategy for combining SEO and CRO (conversion rate optimization).

Here are some ideas for building backlinks to help you improve your sites authoritativeness and generate traffic:

• Guest post on other blogs: Share insights with new audiences and link back to your website where relevant.
• Curate expert roundups: Gather tips from industry experts, notify them once you publish the roundups on your website’s blog, then encourage those experts to share your posts with their networks.
• Solicit product reviews: Offer free products to bloggers with relevant, engaged audiences in exchange for honest reviews that link back to your site.
• Start an affiliate program: Incentivize other people to drive traffic to your website by using an affiliate program and offering a commission on every sale.
• Get press coverage: If you have a great story or an interesting product that people will want to write about, put it out there! Get in touch with journalists who cover businesses like yours and tell them what you’re up to.

Learn more: How To Get Backlinks: 15 Proven Strategies

4. Add internal links to and from important pages

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: High

Similarly to building backlinks, another important SEO strategy is internal linking—the practice of linking individual pages of your site to one another. This creates a structure for your site, improving both user navigation and the way Google understands the relationships between your pages.

Internal linking also distributes something called PageRank, which is Google’s way of measuring the importance of a webpage. Pages with more links pointing to them—like backlinks from high-authority sites—tend to have a higher PageRank. 

When you link from a high PageRank page on your site to another page, you pass along some of that authority. This helps the linked page rank better in search results because of its association to the page that’s already highly ranked. By linking from less important pages back to key pages, you can reinforce their importance to Google.

Here’s what you can do to optimize your website’s internal linking:

• Optimize your site structure.
• Find and submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.
• Add breadcrumbs to your product categories to instantly create internal links.
• Make a list of high-value target pages you’d like to rank better.
• Identify the pages on your website that currently have the most authority and page rank.
• Add a link from your authority pages to your target pages. 
• Incorporate links naturally, using anchor text related to the keyword you’d like the target page to rank for.

Learn more: Link Building Strategies for Improving Your Site’s SEO

5. Add long-tail keyword variations to your pages

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: Medium

Next on the SEO checklist for your website is building a keyword strategy. Because they’re easier to identify, it’s tempting to target short, high-volume search terms. But your domain as a whole needs to be really strong in order to qualify for those keywords. Until then, you’ll have much better luck targeting lower-volume (and therefore lower competition) keywords. 

Long-tail keywords, which are more detailed or specific search queries, are easier to rank for and usually have a much higher click-through rate than shorter, more generic terms. That’s because long-tail keywords often match more niche intent-driven searches. In other words, people searching those keywords know exactly what they’re looking for—and if you can match their search intent, it’ll make a positive impact on your site traffic.

Imagine you run an online store selling running shoes and want to optimize a page to attract more website traffic. Instead of just targeting the broad keyword “running shoes,” which has a lot of competition, you can focus on long-tail keywords—more specific phrases that people are searching for.

For example, your keyword research might show that people are searching for things like “best running shoes for flat feet” or “running shoes for marathon training.” To optimize your product page, you could incorporate those phrases in your product descriptions. To make the page even more competitive, you could create a blog post or landing page that helps people choose from your selection of running shoes based on their specific needs.

6. Stand out with rich snippets

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: High

Rich snippets are search results that have been enhanced with extra information, such as ratings, pricing, images, and availability. These details can help your links stand out and attract more clicks.

To create these rich snippets, your website needs to use structured data. You can think of structured data as some extra coding that helps Google identify specific aspects of your page—like that a particular piece of text is a product price or that a star rating refers to customer reviews.

To check and manage your structured data, utilize tools such as the Google Structured Data Testing Tool, which helps identify and fix any issues with your site’s markup.

7. Focus on local SEO

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: Low

An important aspect of building a traffic generation plan is to ensure that you’re driving the right kind of traffic to your website. If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, it’s going to be pretty important that any traffic coming your way is coming from a specific geographic area: locally. 

Local SEO helps you accomplish two things at once: focus on the right audience and rank more easily on SERPs. For example, you’re going to have a much easier time ranking for “ballet shoe store in Lincolnville, Maine” than for the more general “ballet shoes.”

Here are a few things to keep in mind when building your local SEO strategy:

• Create a Google Business profile: Formerly called Google My Business, Google Business is a free tool that quite literally puts your business on the map. That means customers can find it when searching on Google Maps, but it also means that Google knows to tie your listing to localized keywords (like “ballet shoes near me”).
• Keep your name, address, phone number (NAP) consistent: Google looks for consistent NAP details across your website, Google Business profile, and online directories to verify your business’s legitimacy. Inconsistent information can confuse search engines and harm your local rankings, as Google may struggle to determine if the listings belong to the same business.
• Tailor your keyword strategy to your locale: Use keywords that include your city, neighborhood, or region to attract nearby customers and boost your chances of ranking higher for local searches.

Content marketing

Using focused content and promotion can help drive targeted traffic to your online store, making it more likely that visitors convert. From videos and podcasts to guides and ebooks, there are endless opportunities for your business to branch out into the world of content to generate traffic. 

Content marketing is the process of creating interesting, informative, and engaging content to organically attract traffic to your website. With original content, you can connect with your audience, build trust, and grow your brand’s authority. The more useful and relevant your content is, the more traffic you’ll attract over time.

Your content marketing strategy shouldn’t just talk about your products—that would get boring for you and your target audience real quick. Instead, think about the topics or resources related to your business that your customers would find useful. It’s especially wise to focus on topics for which you’re a subject matter expert (SME) because that will help your credibility with readers—and Google. 

Next, we’ll talk about a few ideas to help you come up with a hard-hitting content marketing strategy that’ll have you raking in the clicks in no time.

8. Write a blog

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Months
Effort: Medium

When it comes to content marketing, you can’t go wrong with a blog. It’s one of the best ways to build internal links, attract backlinks, and establish your business as credible in the eyes of both potential customers and search engines.

While there is ample opportunity to reach an audience with blogging, you’ll need to be purposeful about your content to attract relevant traffic. For most blogs, the best editorial policy is to create content optimized for search that answers questions and solves problems that are important to your target audience. Finding the right topics to write about involves persona building, keyword research, and content gap analysis.

To decide what to write about, consider what your target audience would benefit from reading and why your business is the right source for that information. Featuring experts and influencers could be a good way to get traffic right out the gate, as they may be willing to share the article with their followers, which would broaden your blog’s reach.

Learn more: 4 Ecommerce Blog Post Templates To Build Traffic for Your Store

9. Produce podcasts

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Months
Effort: High

Podcasting, like blogging, allows you to tap into a specific niche and reach a target audience. What makes podcasts effective for driving traffic is their ability to build trust and connection with listeners over time. A loyal podcast audience is more likely to follow your recommendations and visit your website to learn more information or explore products.

Unlike a blog or social media post, however, there’s no call to action that easily turns a podcast listener into a website visitor. As a result, you’ll need to find ways for listeners to easily reach your website. Shuang Esther Shan, who manages the Shopify Masters podcast, uses three methods to nudge listeners to the brand’s website. 

Here are Shuang’s tips for driving website traffic via your podcast: 

• Publish episode transcripts and summaries as blog posts to make them more accessible for deaf or hard of hearing audiences. 
• Write an episode summary in the show notes that includes a link to the episode’s corresponding blog post.
• Compile lists of useful resources mentioned in each episode—prioritizing any products or tools that you provide on your website—and link to them in the show notes

10. Make videos

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰
Time to ROI: Months
Effort: High

As the second-largest search engine in the world, YouTube gives you access to a massive audience actively searching for solutions, entertainment, and information. It has more than 2.7 billion active users and a wider reach among 18- to 49-year-olds than all US cable TV networks combined.

By starting a YouTube channel, you can engage viewers through visual storytelling. Videos hold attention longer than other types of content, making it easier to convey your message and build a connection with your audience. 

To make YouTube marketing work for your business, it’s important to focus on content that aligns with your brand and audience. Here are three types of YouTube videos you can create to attract the right viewers and drive traffic to your website:

• Educational content: Teach new skills to build trust with your audience and, if possible, use your product as the centerpiece for solving their problem. Educational webinars are an especially great way to highlight product features and the pain points it solves.
• Storytelling: Communicate your brand’s image and values to a wider audience with inspiring narrative videos that fit your business’s identity and your audience’s lifestyle.
• Entertainment: Capture viewers’ attention and focus it on your products with fun videos that cater to your audience’s interests and use humor relevant to your niche.

11. Invest in email marketing

Traffic: 👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Months
Effort: Low

Whether it’s promotional campaigns or recurring newsletters, email marketing is a dependable way to drive traffic to your website and build a loyal audience. With the right strategy, emails can do more than generate visits; they nurture long-term relationships with customers by offering value and keeping them engaged.

Even better, email marketing is highly cost-effective. With an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent, it can deliver massive returns for minimal investment. And the best part? It doesn’t have to be complicated. Focus on sending personalized, timely messages—such as product updates, special offers, or helpful educational content—to stay top of mind and encourage recipients to return to your website.

Organic social media engagement

Generating traffic via social media requires much more than just posting ads for your website. Whether or not you use paid advertising on social media (more on that later), it’s crucial that you organically build an engaged following on the social networks that make the most sense for your brand. 

You can drive social engagement by doing things like: 

• Encouraging conversations with your target audience
• Responding thoughtfully to inquiries and discussions related to your brand, products, or industry
• Driving enthusiasm and investment through community-building tactics

Below, we’ll cover a few examples of how to cultivate an organic social media presence.

12. Get friends and family to share

Traffic: 👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: Medium

When you launch your business, turning to friends and family for support is a great tactic to generate initial awareness, traffic, or even your first sale (thanks, Mom!).

Take inspiration from the content website Upworthy. It generated its initial traffic by reaching out to friends and family. The company set a goal of getting 1,000 Facebook fans by the end of launch day—and it worked, providing valuable traction.

Reach out to your friends and family in a targeted way. Are there channels for talking to your extended family, coworkers, or community? Send a note and tell them about your new store. On social media, tell the story of your business in an update.

Once you have the attention of your friends and family, ask them to share your website with their networks. This type of exponential reach is the key to successful word-of-mouth marketing.

13. Proactively engage on Instagram

Traffic: 👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Leverage: Medium

You don’t need to start selling products or publishing content before you engage with people on Instagram. It can actually help to build up an engaged following before you start selling, so you already have an audience interested in your brand at launch time. Toronto bakery Blackbird Baking Company built an audience of engaged, passionate bread lovers on Instagram before it opened its first storefront. This ensured it had a great reception when it opened its doors.

Blackbird Baking Company took these initial steps in their social media marketing strategy in order to build their audience:

1. The bakery generated follow-backs by following select people it determined may be interested in a new bakery. These included restaurateurs and self-declared bread enthusiasts in Toronto. You can find people with interests in your niche or field by searching relevant keywords in bios and profiles on the social platforms where you’re building your online presence.
2. Blackbird posted photos of its bread at all stages of the process, giving a behind-the-scenes look at its business with a focus on its core product. It made sure its photos of bread being baked and delivered to stores were mouthwatering and shareable.
3. It engaged proactively with followers to discuss local community issues. Topics included life in Toronto, great food, and—of course—bread. 

Thanks to those Instagram marketing tactics, when the bakery finally opened, there were lots of interested people waiting to buy its goods.

Here’s how you can engage with your brand’s Instagram audience:

• Once you’ve started building an audience, look for chances to help people or add value to their conversations in a way that connects on a human level and lacks a sales pitch.
• Use Instagram Reels to promote specials that are only available to your audience if they contact you on the platform.
• Spend time engaging with those talking about your brand. Instagram is a great place to answer questions and proactively engage with your community.

14. Engage on Reddit

Traffic: 👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: Medium

Reddit poses an interesting opportunity to grow brand awareness and generate website traffic. It’s a place where passionate folks congregate around their favorite topics, sharing advice, best practices, and personal life stories. Reddit has thousands of niche-based forums, called subreddits. You can find a subreddit on nearly any subject, for example, /r/bicycling, /r/scifi, or /r/corgi.

Here’s how you could use Reddit if your business is selling hair products. Navigate to a few subreddits such as /r/femalehairadvice, where there’s discussion on all aspects of hair care for women. There are also subreddits like /r/haircarescience, /r/curlyhair, or simply /r/hair.

To promote your business and drive traffic to your website, create a new post in a subreddit relevant to your brand. Make the post brief but detailed, with concrete examples to engage readers. 

Here are the components of a great Reddit post:

• Catchy headline: Keep it topical to the subreddit. For example, when posting to the curly hair subreddit, you could try the headline, “Who says that short hair can’t be fancy?”
• Add value and be concise: The text within the main body of the post should be snappy, catchy, but not salesy. Also, consider a TL;DR (“too long, didn’t read”) subheading that gives visitors a quick summary of the gist of your post.
• Include a photo: Adding images can help convey your message and more easily captivate readers.
• Link to your store: Make sure you link to your most relevant product, so visitors can find out more about your brand and product line by visiting your online store.

Pay attention to Reddit’s platform guidelines and Reddiquette values. Some subreddits don’t allow promotional material. If you post about your site in a thread that doesn’t want it, you may find that no one upvotes your link, and you may get banned from the subreddit.

Alongside promoting your website on relevant subreddits, you can also turn to threads like /r/entrepreneur or /r/smallbusiness to get business advice, tapping the know-how of millions of subscribers at varying levels of experience across industries.

15. Drive excitement with online promotions

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: High

Contests and giveaways are a great way to get more followers on Instagram, increase social media engagement, and drive traffic to your website. With viral contests, giveaways, and sweepstakes, you can quickly drive traffic to your website by exchanging contest entries for sharing your site or following your social accounts.

Contest and giveaway apps in the Shopify App Store make it simple to embed giveaways into landing pages and blog posts. Social sharing gives sweepstakes a chance to go viral and extend your reach. 

16. Offer time-sensitive discounts

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

Offering time-sensitive discounts can be an effective way to get people to take action, generating traffic and increasing sales. Putting an expiration on your discount leverages scarcity, a powerful psychological sales trigger.

Consider adding a minimum qualifying purchase for your discount offer. This can be a smart way to offer your audience an incentive without compromising your profitability.

Product discounts aren’t the only time-sensitive offer you can provide customers. If you don’t normally offer free shipping, then occasionally doing so can be a compelling incentive to direct traffic from social media or email marketing campaigns to your store.

17. Leverage user-generated content

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

Let’s face it: Coming up with fresh content regularly can take up quite a bit of time. That’s where user-generated content (UGC) comes in. Sharing content from customers who have enjoyed your products or services is a quick way to drive traffic to your website. UGC promotes your brand through authentic voices, which increases brand engagement and reach.

It’s also a shortcut to building trust with new leads because, as we know, people tend to trust the words of fellow consumers more than the brand itself. Best of all, reposting UGC encourages more people to share their experiences and tag your business in the future, generating even more organic visibility.

18. Send free samples to Instagram influencers

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: High

Influencer marketing involves partnering with successful social media content creators to promote your website to relevant users. This form of marketing harnesses the creativity and reach of notable people in your industry, leveraging the trust they’ve earned with audiences to refer traffic to your store.

As many as 70% of shoppers use Instagram to inform purchasing decisions, highlighting its potential to convert browsing into sales. This makes Instagram an excellent avenue for boosting brand visibility and driving traffic to your online store—especially when you partner with an influencer who knows how to hack the algorithm.

Bloggers and social media celebrities are highly trusted by their followers. Finding a relevant influencer to feature your products is often an effective tactic for increasing your traffic. For example, lifestyle influencer Estée Lalonde promotes brands by incorporating products into her lifestyle content.

View this profile on Instagram

Estée Lalonde (@esteelalonde) • Instagram photos and videos

Paid social media advertising

To increase website traffic, you need to be able to get your business in front of your ideal customers. With paid social media ads, you can create highly targeted campaigns that serve tailor-made ads to customers who are most likely to purchase your products.

If you’re interested in running paid social media ads and you have the marketing budget, consider the following platforms.

19. Facebook ads

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

With more than three billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. Facebook ads allow you to target users by their interests, behaviors, locations, and more, all of which optimizes your chances of conversion.

Use Facebook dynamic ads to target potential customers based on their browsing history and online activity. The content of these ads is automatically generated, showing relevant products from your website that people are likely to be interested in.

For even more precise targeting, add the Meta pixel to your website. Advertising pixels track user behavior to refine ad content and placement. 

20. Instagram ads

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

More than 62% of Instagram’s two-billion users follow or research brand accounts. That means having your own business account could be a valuable source of engaged traffic. But if you’re only aiming for organic Instagram engagement, you might be missing its full potential. Incorporating Instagram ads into your content mix can boost your website traffic and increase sales. Plus, you can sell directly on Instagram, so users don’t need to leave the platform to become customers.

If you’re using a personal account, converting it to a business account will unlock additional features that are essential for advertisers. You can create ads in various formats such as photos, videos, carousels, collections, and stories, allowing for flexible and creative marketing approaches.

Exploring Instagram’s tools and hashtags, and jumping on the platform’s latest trends can win you more followers and strengthen your campaigns.

21. Pinterest ads

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

If you’re looking for ways to attract buyers to your online store, Pinterest is a source of motivated traffic with clearly signaled interests. According to Pinterest, compared to other social media sites, users tend to be more affluent and more willing to spend.

Promoted Pins are especially useful for reaching people who are actively looking for ideas and products. This type of Pinterest ad displays your content at the top of search results, and it’s been shown to influence users’ purchasing decisions.

Pinterest works best when targeting niche audiences. Whether someone is redoing their garden, planning a wedding, or updating their home décor, the platform helps associate your brand with their interests.

22. Google Ads

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰💰💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: High

Google Ads stands out from social media advertising by targeting people who are already searching for the type of products or content your website provides. These ads let you place your web pages in front of users who’ve made relevant searches on Google and YouTube.

There are several Google ad formats, including:

• Search ads that appear on search engine results pages
• Display ads that may appear anywhere in the Google Display Network
• Shopping ads that highlight media and products in search results
• Video ads to capture the attention of YouTube viewers

Understanding these tools and effectively applying them can maximize your ad spend. Creating and managing these types of ads is a discipline that takes time to learn, but when deployed effectively, it can flood your website with relevant traffic.

23. TikTok ads

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Medium

Despite questions over its long-term future in the US, TikTok continues to be a powerful platform for sourcing traffic. Users increasingly view TikTok as a place to find new content that matches their interests. For marketers, it’s a space to connect with large audiences in almost any demographic.

While creating TikTok marketing content takes time, it can be a great platform to add to your marketing toolkit. You can also use TikTok Shop to sell on the platform, so you don’t always need to convince users to visit your site.

The TikTok ads platform is easy to use, with preset options for budgeting and audience selection.

In-person traffic

If your brand has a physical presence—through events, brick-and-mortar storefronts, or product packaging—you can turn interactions in real life (IRL) into website traffic. Bridging the gap between offline and online channels helps you engage customers wherever they’re already interacting with your business. 

24. Encourage in-person customers to connect online

Traffic: 👤👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: Medium

If you have a physical store or pop-up location, use it to build your online audience. Existing customers are more likely to engage with your website if you give them a reason to do so. Incentivize them to explore your online store by offering perks such as exclusive discounts, loyalty points, or early access to new products.

Make sure to advertise your website prominently throughout your physical space. Use signage, receipts, and product packaging to direct customers to specific landing pages or promotions. You can also collect email addresses at checkout by encouraging customers to sign up for your newsletter in exchange for an incentive. For example, they could get a discount code to redeem at your online store. The key is to make the connection between your physical and digital presence seamless and valuable.

25. Create a QR code 

Traffic: 👤👤
Cost: 💰
Time to ROI: Days
Effort: Low

After 2020, everyone and their mother learned how to use QR codes—and started to really appreciate their convenience. QR codes make it super simple for potential customers to visit your website if offline advertising piques their interest. To scan your QR code, a customer simply opens their phone camera, points it at the code, and taps the link that pops up at the bottom of their screen. 

You can embed QR codes into product packaging, event flyers, or in-store displays to direct customers to your site, product pages, or exclusive offers. 

💡Use Shopify’s Free QR Code Generator 💡

26. Participate in local events

Traffic: 👤👤👤👤
Cost: 💰💰💰
Time to ROI: Weeks
Effort: High

Find ways to team up with fellow local businesses at community events, trade shows, pop-ups, and other types of brand activations. This is a smart way to generate buzz and attract new customers locally. Offering free samples, handouts, or product trials helps spark interest by letting people experience your brand firsthand. 

When you participate in events like these, make sure it’s clear how attendees can engage with you later online. For example, you could hand out flyers, promote event-exclusive offers they can claim on your website, or encourage them to follow your brand on social media. 

How to choose a marketing strategy

Having so many options for marketing means you can find one that’s perfect for your business—but it can also feel pretty overwhelming. 

To pick the marketing strategy that’s right for your needs, start by asking yourself: 

• What are your marketing goals?
• How much time do you have to dedicate to marketing efforts? 
• What’s your marketing budget, and can you afford hiring anyone to help?

Next up, we’ll walk you through answers to those key questions to help you choose the best marketing strategies for your business.

1. Set your goals

Your business stage will inform your goals. If you’re just starting your business, you need to build brand awareness fast with a big surge of traffic that will get your business off the ground. Building a social following and testing paid ads could help. 

On the other hand, if you’ve been running your business for a few years but haven’t seen the kind of growth you had hoped for, it may be time to try strategies that take longer to pay off but lead to more consistent traffic generation over time. In that case, SEO marketing practices could be a long-term boon. 

Outside of your business’s age, consider your immediate and long-term priorities: Do you want quick conversions for a new product launch, or are you looking to create a steady flow of visitors who will return over time? Some of the marketing strategies in the list above generate highly relevant traffic for your website, while others produce large volumes of general visitors. Your goals should guide your choice of tactics, so think about how soon you need to see a return on investment (ROI), and select the best strategies that fit your timeline.

2. Consider your audience

It’s crucial to understand who your target audience is and which marketing tactics will resonate most with them. For example, going viral on TikTok can direct loads of traffic to your website, but if they aren’t buying what you’re selling, that traffic isn’t going to be of much use to you. On the other hand, a well-positioned LinkedIn post or a targeted Google Ad doesn’t have to make a lot of noise to both drive traffic and convert.

To narrow down the best marketing strategies for your audience, ask yourself:

• Where does my audience spend the majority of their time online? Social media platforms, search engines, or forums?
• What kind of content do they respond to? Informative blog posts, engaging videos, or short social media updates?
• What problem are they trying to solve, and how can my product help? Align your marketing efforts with their needs and interests.

For example, if your audience is primarily young professionals, you might focus on LinkedIn ads or email campaigns. For a younger demographic, Instagram Reels or TikTok could be more effective. Tailoring your marketing to your audience’s preferences ensures that your efforts generate meaningful traffic that leads to sales or engagement.

3. Take a look at your budget

According to The CMO Survey from spring 2024, businesses that make less than $10 million in annual revenue typically spend around 16% of their budgets on marketing. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule—if your business is new or struggling, you might not be able to allocate quite that much to a marketing budget. 

In general, though, you’ll have to look at the books before you can make a decision about which marketing strategy is right for your business:

• High-budget strategies like paid advertising often deliver fast results but come with higher costs and don’t compound value over time.
• Lower-budget strategies like content marketing and organic social media take more time but can be cheaper and more sustainable with long-term compounded value.

4. Use your existing skills (or be ready to hire someone)

Whereas some of the strategies on this list can be pulled off without much of a marketing background, others require time, skill, and experience to execute. When you’re running a business, you can’t dedicate the time necessary to developing a new craft. For instance, if you aren’t already social media savvy, it’s unlikely you’ll get the hang of it quickly enough that you’ll be raking in the views without a significant time investment. 

Some strategies, like blogging or email marketing, can often be handled by business owners, even with little-to-no marketing experience. These tactics are straightforward, affordable, and can be learned through practice. For example, creating email campaigns or writing blog posts can be done in-house with tools like Shopify Email and a simple content calendar.

However, other strategies require more specialized skills. Running PPC ads, managing SEO campaigns, or producing high-quality video content can take months to learn and execute effectively. 

Be honest about what you can handle and where you need help. If you’re stretched too thin, consider hiring an expert. Outsourcing key marketing tasks can free up your time and improve your strategy’s chances of success.

5. Start small and scale up

A good digital marketing strategy layers both short-term and long-term tactics so they work in tandem. That said, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks isn’t going to be the key to success in this scenario. Spreading yourself thin with too many tactics can lead to frustration and poor results. 

Start by focusing on one or two strategies that align with your goals and resources. Once you’ve mastered them and they’re running well, return to this list to pick your next traffic-driving tactic to expand your marketing mix. 

6. Measure and adapt

Every few months, you’ll want to sit down and evaluate the performance of your marketing tactics. Your primary tool for doing so will be your website analytics. If you’re a Shopify user, you have website analytics reports that tell you how your digital marketing strategy is performing, according to traffic as well as by more direct metrics like average order value, website engagement, and percentage of traffic that comes from first-time customers.

Depending on your strategy, you may also want to employ other tools. For example, if you’re embarking on an SEO strategy, you’ll want to use SEO tools like Google Analytics or Google Search Console. Tools like these can help you automate the website analytics process and more easily gain insights into your marketing campaigns.

Analyze whether your chosen strategy is meeting your initial goal. If your goal was to get higher-paying customers, but you’re seeing a strong influx of first-time customers on that marketing channel, it might be time to deprioritize that strategy and choose one that better aligns with your objectives.

More website traffic equals more customers

Increasing website traffic starts with picking a marketing strategy and a relevant marketing channel. Remember, a good digital marketing strategy is about using short-term and long-term tactics in conjunction. Once you feel like you’ve mastered one, come back to this list and pick your next traffic-driving tactic.