Shopify Tech Partners Meetup February: App marketing for bootstrapped businesses

On a chilly winter’s evening on Tuesday, February 21, we co-hosted our second Shopify Tech Partners Meetup at our Old Street offices in the heart of London’s tech scene. Building on the success of January’s event, when Jack of TranslateCI shared his wisdom about growing online stores in underserved markets, we had Noah Tucker from Social Snowball down to Judge.me HQ to tell us a little about app marketing—and how smaller, bootstrapped businesses in particular can master it.

So what did we learn? We won’t give away all of Noah’s secrets. But we were treated to some fascinating insights. We learned why influencer marketing is one of the most underrated tools in the Shopify app arsenal; how co-marketing can help you reach audiences you never dreamt that you could reach; and how agencies can open doors and create massive opportunities for merchants. Noah was also keen to emphasise the importance of identifying your ideal customer profiler, or ICP. Who you’re trying to target with your marketing is key to understanding both where to get in touch with them (in other words, which social media platforms, communities, and so on) and what kind of messaging might appeal to them. This, said Noah, is key.

Noah’s timing couldn’t be better. It’s no secret that we now spend much of our lives navigating an attention economy, and the ability to get seen by the right audiences is crucial to the success of any business. You have to begin with a quality product or service, but without a sound marketing strategy, you can all too easily find that other players in your space get noticed despite having an inferior offering. What’s more, the online world is evolving and channels are proliferating at a rapid rate. There’s no standing still. Your marketing strategy needs to be as dynamic and creative as the world you work in.

We were thrilled to see a great turnout of people working in the tech space in London and further afield, and we now leave the winter months behind us feeling bullish about what the rest of 2023 has in store. We’re looking forward to our next event, which is in the last week of March, and the many new features, integrations and assorted improvements we have on the horizon as we look to cement our position as the pound-for-pound champion in the e-commerce reviews space. As always, we’re hugely grateful to the merchants that rely on us. We’ll keep working hard to make sure you can keep getting social proof, building customer loyalty, boosting sales, and growing your online store. Be sure to follow us on social media, give us your feedback, and stay tuned for the more great events.

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