Marketing checklist

As a small business owner, you often juggle multiple roles to keep things running smoothly. While focusing on products and customer service is essential, it's equally important not to neglect the vital aspects of driving website traffic and boosting sales. To succeed, you'll need to embrace the power of content creation, formulate a robust SEO strategy, and maintain a consistent presence on various social media platforms to effectively promote your brand online. Here's a marketing checklist to guarantee you have all the tools needed to flex your marketing muscle.

Heads up! Several features outlined in our marketing checklist requires a premium plan. If you haven't upgraded yet, you can do so here.

1. Establish your brand and cultivate a following

Developing a strong and recognizable brand presence is crucial for any online business.

• Adding a custom domain helps create a brand

Custom domains are URLs unique to your brand that lead customers directly to your online content when they type it in the address bar. By opting for a more concise and memorable domain over a lengthy one, such as myawesomeshop.com instead of myawesomeshop.bigcartel.com, you can significantly boost brand visibility and facilitate easier brand recognition for customers.

If you don't have a custom domain, no worries. We can assist you in getting connected to one for as little as $1 for the first year! Typically, after the first year, a domain generally costs between $6 and $20 annually. If you already have a custom domain, we can automate that connection process for many providers right in the admin. More on connecting a custom domain with your shop here.

• Expand your brand to social media

Expand your brand presence on social media platforms to engage with fans, fellow creatives, and potential customers from all corners. Leveraging social media enables you to showcase your creative endeavors to a wider audience.

We recommend exploring two insightful blog posts:

Social Media Tips for Creatives

Social Media and Your Shop: Tips for Making it Work

2. Set up email marketing and newsletters

In terms of numbers, email serves as the largest social network online. While social media trends may change over time, email usage remains consistent. That's why email marketing is an incredibly effective tool for website owners. Read more about setting up your newsletter here.

3. Leverage customer reviews

Sharing customer reviews can boost your SEO performance, making it easier for potential buyers to discover your products and make a purchase. They not only contribute to improving search engine optimization but also act as social proof that real customers are actively buying your products. Moreover, customer reviews establish a tangible link with recent purchases, instilling confidence in potential new customers when making a purchase from your shop.

Big Cartel offers multiple customer reviews integration, however, we have discovered that Fera is the perfect tool to collect, display, and enhance customer reviews, photos, and videos for your Big Cartel shop.

4. Craft compelling content to drive sales

Crafting clear and vibrant content on your site is not only crucial when showcasing your products but it's key in relaying important info about your shop. It greatly enhance your SEO practices, but it also creates a much more engaging experience for your customers.

• Keep your product titles unique and descriptive

Unique product titles can be really eye catching, and help customers discover them, it also plays a role in whether they will appear on Google’s search engine results pages. It is important to consistently enhance your titles with appropriate keywords to boost your search page rankings, a practice known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

• Product descriptions

A good product description can make all the difference in attracting a new customer or losing their interest. Not only does it add value and significance to your products, but it also distinguishes them from generic, mass-produced items found in typical retail stores. You can read more about it here.

• FAQs & shop policies pages

Adding an FAQ page, improves your customer’s experience and provides quick information to help customers make a purchasing decision. These can be questions and answers about products or services, how to get in touch, what the refund policy is, and so on. You can create your custom pages in your admin’s Design > Pages section.

Pro-tip: If you have recently made significant updates to your shop or if your store is not yet appearing on Google's search results, you can request that Google recrawls your URLs. However, keep in mind that the speed and effectiveness of this method are solely determined by Google, so you may need to exercise patience and wait for the desired results.

5. Enhance your online presence with SEO

When launching your online business, it's crucial to ensure that your website appears in search results when potential customers search for keywords related to your products. Google still holds a significant 40% share of online searches.

Lots of factors can impact how your shop shows in search engine results. We have an amazing resource on how to improve SEO here.

6. Master promotions strategies

Stay up to date on your shop's stats like order revenue and visitor count with the dashboard. Make well-informed decisions about your marketing strategies and advertising campaigns by leveraging premium integrations like GA4, Facebook Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and Pinterest Tag.

• Paid Advertising:

  Are you thinking about investing in your brand or launching a marketing campaign on popular platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, or TikTok? By connecting Facebook and TikTok Pixels and Pinterest Tags directly to your Big Cartel store, you can gain valuable insights into customer behavior. This approach drives more targeted traffic to your shop, boosts sales through strategic insights, aligns with audience interests, and measures ad performance effectively. It’s an effortless way to extend your reach.

Connect a Pinterest Tag, Facebook Pixel, or TikTok Pixel directly to your Big Cartel admin.

• Add Analytics:

  Marketing analytics empowers you to leverage data in refining your marketing strategies based on your customers' behaviors and purchasing patterns. By examining this data, you can gain insights into your customers' preferences and gauge the efficacy of your marketing endeavors.

You can view all of our resources on analytics here.

7. Reward loyal customers with discounts

Did you know that discounts help as a marketing tool? By implementing discounts, you can generate promotional codes that your customers can apply to receive price reductions on their purchases. This strategy not only boosts sales but also entices new customers to make a purchase while encouraging existing ones to remain loyal to your brand.

You can learn more on how to create a discount code in your Big Cartel shop here. 

8. Boost Your Sales with Abandoned Cart Emails!

Our Abandoned Cart Emails can help turn forgotten carts into completed sales. This feature sends automated reminders to customers who have items lingering in their carts, nudging them to complete their purchase. Available exclusively to our Diamond plan seller, these emails are a powerful tool to recover lost sales, enhance customer experience, and boost your revenue.

Learn more about enabling abandoned cart recovery in this help article!