No Digital Marketing can help boost your Shopify sales unless you understand the current commerce landscape.

Current State of eCommerce

It's easier to start an e-commerce business than ever before, but it's tougher to actually survive and thrive than ever before.

Anyone telling you otherwise might be misleading you.

My intention isn't to discourage you, but rather to give you some realistic expectations.

I don't ask you to trust my opinion blindly.

You can ask other 7/8/9 figure eCommerce operators on Reddit/X (Twitter). You can listen to their podcasts. And they'll tell you the same.

Let me share with you summary of a few segments from Episode 53 'Temu & Politics' from (9-figure) Operators Podcast:

"The landscape of e-commerce has evolved significantly over the past decade, moving away from arbitrage tactics towards a focus on adding value to the customer.

Success in e-commerce now requires building real brand value, exceptional operational capabilities, and unique selling propositions. Amazon has raised the bar for sellers, emphasizing the importance of operational excellence.

Creating income and a sustainable business in e-commerce necessitates valuable skills and adding value to the customer's life.

The era of easy arbitrage and generic digital marketing strategies is fading, replaced by a hyper-competitive environment where distinctive superpowers are essential for success.

Businesses must leverage various strategies to create uniqueness and establish a sustainable competitive advantage. Finding a specific niche where one can excel and offer unparalleled expertise is crucial for e-commerce success. The internet provides the opportunity for significant outcomes, even without traditional margin structures, by tapping into a large total addressable market. The future of e-commerce is likely to witness extreme niche specialization and the rise of highly unique, expert-led businesses with sustainable competitive advantages."

"To succeed in e-commerce, you need to have at least one exceptional skill or 'superpower' that sets you apart and allows you to outperform the market.

Having a unique superpower is crucial in a competitive digital business landscape, which offers immense opportunities but also intense global competition. While e-commerce may seem easy to start, it is actually one of the toughest ways to make money.

However, having and leveraging your superpower can lead to extraordinary success and make the journey feel like magic."

"The key to success in e-commerce is finding a specific niche where you can excel.

By being an expert in a particular area, you can create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business. This advantage can come from offering unique products or services that cater to a specialized market segment.

Leveraging expertise and becoming the go-to person in a niche allows for selling in a large Total Addressable Market (TAM) even without traditional margins.

Creating a moat around your business by being the best at something is essential in building a successful e-commerce venture."

What is your brand's USP?

That brings us to this difficult yet most important question to reflect on.

How is your product different from countless other options already available in the market?

Many of them had built a loyal customer base over many years and spent millions of dollars.

How are you going to convince them to choose your brand's product over others?

How are you going to compete with these existing players in capturing the attention and trust of potential new buyers who might want/need a hair growth serum?

More likely, these brands have a larger marketing budget, better content production infrastructure, and equally good (if not better) quality products, to just name a few.

Where is the gap that you can use to your brand's advantage?

How are you selling without ads?

If not, focus on that first.

If you aren't selling through other channels:

How are you confident that your product is validated?
How did you decide that you have a product-market fit?
Your Pixel does not have enough conversion data to look for the right audience
You do not have Organic Creatives & Captions tested that you can confidently test as ads

Bitter truth: Ads help scale the sales of products/services that sell well without ads.

Skipping 'selling without ad' part, will require you to spend money on ads to test & figure out what works, what doesn't in terms of

Offers
Ad copies & Creatives
Strategy
Targeting
Audience
etc

That requires time, money, and patience. Without capital, it can be tough.

Before I share some other ways to sell without ads, I will strongly recommend:

Setting Up Shopify Right

Any traffic strategy (paid or organic) requires time, money, or both.

Unless your Shopify site is set up right, you are going to waste time, money,,.

As a new Shopify store, I can't emphasize enough the importance of making the most out of the Marketing tools (mostly FREE) provided by Shopify itself

If you implement these steps before launch or as early as possible when your store is new, your business will benefit significantly:

Setup Lead Capture with Shopify Forms (FREE): If you can't sell, at least capture your traffic to build trust and sell via email.
Use Shopify Email (10,000 Emails FREE per month) for Email Marketing, before jumping into any advanced or costly platforms.
Set up the essential email flow automation:
- Welcome,
- abandoned browse,
- abandoned cart,
- abandoned checkout,
- order confirmation,
- feedback/review request after fulfilled order,
- win back,
- etc.
Enable Shopify Inbox and set up Instant Replies.
Set up Shopify Shop Channel: Pay attention to what % of products are not getting listed for missing categories. Update them.
Set up Facebook and Instagram Sales Channel (Meta Business Manager, Ad Account, Pixel, CAPI, Catalog, etc.).
Set up Google & YouTube Sales Channel (Google Merchant Center, Google Analytics, Google Ads, YouTube).
Set up TikTok Sales Channel.
A Review Plugin.
Shopify Collab for partnering up with Creators.
Discount (Tip: ).Avoid sitewide discounts & deep discounts that might burn money, attract low-quality customers. Improve AOV discounting for higher order value
Ensure cost, inventory, etc., are up-to-date for all products.
Integrate Triple Whale's FREE Founder Dash (Add other expenses beyond Inventory cost). Measure the metrics that matter.

Now full disclaimer:

Even as a Shopify partner, I have to admit that some of the FREE Shopify apps have issues and the support team struggles to help. I sincerely hope that the Shopify team is taking the negative reviews on their FREE apps seriously and taking steps to improve them.

There are 3rd party FREE alternatives as well.

I always recommend new DTC brands keep the tech expenses minimum and rather spend more on customer acquisition.

I have seen 7/8-figure brands drowning with subscription fees from platforms that they barely use or get reasonable returns from.

Another important recommendation is to use a Shopify theme that you or any non-developer can customize just by dragging & dropping sections & blocks.

There are great FREE themes & then feature-rich paid themes like Debutify that you can customize yourself.

You don't need a developer or designer to start with. Researching the top e-commerce sites in your niche will give you pretty good website layout ideas.

Good themes make it easy to create those layouts by any non-developer or designer.

Even if you are busy, you'll be able to hire affordable global talents from to help you customize your Shopify site where you yourself can make changes easily as well.

Things to try without ads:

Organic content ( mostly, to get discovered). Your mobile camera, Reel/TikTok editor are enough. Canva + CapCut would be more than enough. Go beyond products, offers, UGC. Tell stories ( brand, BTS, founder, customer) & build relationships.Vertical videos
Take that relationship deeper inviting your tribe into a community. Did you know 8-figure brands like in their Facebook group? Can you imagine the organic traction they get from that?Obvi have nearly 100K members
Let customers spread word & get rewarded. Tools like Social Snowball can automatically right after their first purchase. They see a referral link on the post-purchase screen. The best practice is to . Graduate the top referrers into tiered affiliate programs with tiered commissions and perks.enroll new customers into a referral programstart giving store credits for referrals
Micro-Influencers: Free products in exchange of contents (they’ll post in their account, permit you to use them as ads, plus honest reviews/feedback). . [Check the Youtube Video on ‘Manufacturing Virality’ from Noah Tuck, Social Snowball] Start this with TikTok shop. Extend to other channels.Be careful about giving away products without getting content in return
Setup & Optimise Google Merchant Center (Next). That’s one of the most important foundations of eCommerce SEO. Find the eCommerce SEO guide by Backlinko. Implement those insights to get even better organic search traction.
Find where your ideal target audience hangs out. Add value & get noticed there.
Try LIVE shopping on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
Start testing waters on Amazon with FBM (not risking sending inventory, fulfilled by the merchant as usual), just listing to get traction.

Word of caution: Run your numbers. Often organic strategies come with operational expenses and headaches that exceeds the same that comes with advertising.

Expanding into new opportunities without a solid foundation risks failure. However, strategic diversification—ensuring you’re not dependent on a single channel and leveraging a capable team and robust framework—is a smart approach in today’s volatile economic landscape.

Right Way to Run Facebook Ads (Meta Ads) for Shopify Sales

You have to DO IT YOURSELF (DIY) first before you delegate yourself to any freelancer or agency.

If you can't trust my 15+ years of experience in Shopify sales, my experience as a CMO/Head of Growth of 7-figure US Shopify stores, go & do your own research.

Find a more than one-year-old eCommerce brand with an annual revenue of USD 1 million or more. Tell me none of the co-founders used to run Facebook ads at first.

You are less likely to find one.

The logic is very simple.

For most Shopify brands, Facebook Ads is the #1 acquisition channel.

As a business owner, if you don't know how to:

get started
optimize
scale

you are doomed.

If you don't know how it works, how are you going to evaluate the Facebook Ads employee/freelancer/agency you hire?

Let me give you the very basics of running Facebook Ads for Shopify or any e-commerce store.

What is your ULTIMATE BUSINESS OBJECTIVE?

CONVERSION (Sales), right?

Choose the SALES (Previously called ‘Conversion’) CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE.

Just make sure your PIXEL & CAPI are set up properly before that.

For most eCommerce brands, starting Facebook Ads with low-budget

Start Simple:

1 Campaign

1 Ad Set

3-5 Ads in that Ad Set

How much should you set for the budget?

Start with whatever you can afford, but know the limitations of a low budget.

Ideally, you should set at least a daily budget that allows you to get at least 50 conversions in 7 days, helping the ad set to exit the Learning Phase.

Don’t have that much budget?

Start with a Sales Campaign with Conversion events like ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘View Content’.

It's still better than Traffic or Engagement campaigns.

What should the targeting be?

Start with BROAD. (Either Location, Age, Gender ONLY or Detailed targeting with Adv+ Expansion turned on).

Meta's ad delivery system works best when your audience size is at least 2 million people.

What kind of ads should you run?

Differentiated Creatives. To perform well in Meta's ad auction, each of your ads should combine several different creative elements, including a variety of formats, visuals and text.

Mobile friendly. Start simple. Easy to create, pocket-friendly, and using your mobile.

Make sure:

You are running ads from Ads Manager. NOT from the Facebook 'Boost' or Instagram 'Promote' or Meta Business Suite.
You use with your real identity.1 single Facebook Account (profile)
- Create 1 Meta Business Manager account from that profile for each business.
- Create & organize all other business assets for that specific business under that 1 Meta Business Manager account.
  - Facebook Page
  - Instagram Business Profile
  - Ad Account
  - Pixel
  - CAPI
  - Catalog
  - etc
Under Meta Ad Policies & stay compliant.
Know how to get support from the Meta team.

Hiring for Facebook Ads

If you are new to Facebook Ads, avoid these 2 mistakes in hiring:

Hiring an expensive freelancer/agency to set up & manage ads. You can't afford that kind of operational expense at this stage.
Hiring a super affordable freelancer/agency to set up & manage ads. They are more likely new/inexperienced/ineffective themselves.

Learn the basics first. Don't buy any paid courses or programs.

Facebook (Meta) has provided 50+ official resources to help you get better at advertising on their platform. Message me, & I can share with you a Notion page with all those links. Start with that.

Need more help in learning/understanding or doing it yourself?

I'd recommend working with a consultant/mentor (like me) first.

Once your business starts growing & you have a winning Facebook Ads strategy, find an affordable freelancer/agency here who'd handle day-to-day Facebook Ads under your supervision.

At a higher revenue stage, if you'd like to focus on other areas & let someone else take ownership of the Facebook Ads channel, test these 2 ways:

Hiring an expert Facebook Ads freelancer/agency to do it all
Hiring a full-time/fractional Head of Advertising to lead the junior execution team

That's all for now.

Let me know if you found these valuable.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

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