Toronto retail store finds success with Shopify, Social and Google
Our transition to launch the new Shopify store was seamless with RiseUps support. I truly appreciate their personal approach to simplify the complexities of digital and up-skill my team to use the new tools, how to write SEO-content and see the new online we would never have had before. We’re super happy and exceeded all our expectations.
Facing pandemic-driven challenges, a Toronto retailer with two brick-and-mortar stores needed to improve their digital readiness to reach new customers online, move their aged inventory all while keeping operational costs down.
By adopting an ecommerce strategy with Shopify, launching a customer-centric content plan optimized (SEO) for Google, and and implementing marketing automation, the retailer transformed their local brick-and-mortar business into a thriving digital enterprise.
Within four months, they achieved 43% revenue growth online, grew instore foot traffic, more than doubled website traffic, and reduced marketing and operational costs by 30%. This case study explores the steps taken and the results achieved.
The Problem & Challenge
As retail rapidly evolves, retail businesses that fail to embrace digital transformation risk falling behind. For this Toronto-based retail store, the pandemic was a wake-up call, among what followed after with sky rocketing interest rates and change in local consumer shopping habits. Once thriving with steady foot traffic and in-store sales, the business found itself struggling to stay afloat in a digital-first world. Without a strong online presence, the store faced mounting obstacles that threatened its growth and sustainability.
- Declining Revenue & Limited Reach: Reliance on local foot traffic left the store unable to scale beyond Toronto’s downtown core. Shrinking revenues made it difficult to keep up with rising costs.
- No Online Sales Channel: The shop lacked an customer self-serve channel to shop online. Their existing website was considered a digital brochure to showcase their store and the brand story. There was no ecommerce store an are means for consumers to browse, shop and purchase online, leaving a massive opportunity on the table.
- Invisible on Google: Poor local search engine visibility and rankings for key terms meant the business was almost invisible to potential customers searching for their products and location.
- Falling Behind Competitors: Local competitors surged ahead, leveraging Google, Ads and social media to capture market share, while the store’s visibility remained limited.
These challenges underscored the urgent need for a tailored digital strategy to restore growth, optimize operations, and build long-term resilience in a competitive marketplace.
The Solution
Faced with growing growth and operational challenges and shrinking opportunities, the Toronto store needed more than just a quick fix—it needed a comprehensive digital transformation.
The business partnered with RiseUp Digital to craft a tailored digital adoption and growth plan. This plan not only addressed the store’s immediate issues but also laid a foundation for long-term growth and success in the digital economy. The solution focused on these core areas:
- Google SEO & Visibility
- Designed a strategic customer and product-centric SEO roadmap to improve rankings and visibility in Google for high-value keywords and content tailored to consumer trends, and local shopper buying signals.
- Conducted market and competitor analysis to identify gaps and opportunities to outrank local competitors and capitalize on the existing consumer demand online that the store was not participating in.
- eCommerce | Online Store
- Evaluated multiple eCommerce platforms under to identify the best fit for the business focusing on features, scalability, operations and cost efficiency. Shopify ranged among the strongest for the stores requirements and ‘fit for business’.
- Setup and customized the Shopify store with seamless experience between the main brand website and online store, feature-rich capabilities as capabilities for customers to rate products, leave reviews, one-click check-out experience, ‘customers also bought’ cross-sell recommendations, add to wish list and more.
- Real-time synchronization between the stores inventory system (LightSpeed Retail) and Shopify
- Multiple payment processing methods, including credit card, PayPal and debit cards
- Measurement & Insights
- Launched KPI dashboards to enable a simple visualized view of the marketing and stores performance, target setting to gleen insight on how the marketing and online sales are pacing to set targets, and ROI of digital marketing impact on sales. Combined empowered the business with simple non-technical capabilities to understand what’s working, and not working, along with actionable insights.
- Integrated analytics to track and optimize all marketing campaigns in real time from digital ads, social media, content and SEO and offline promotions.
- Scaling with Digital Advertising
- Targeted Audience Segmentation: Four unique ad strategies tailored for specific audience segments: new customer acquisition, abandoned cart shoppers, product browsing intent behavior, and existing customers with past purchases. Personalized ads included re-targeting, discounts, product and local recommendations to drive engagement and conversions.
- Advanced Advertising Methods: Leveraged PPC campaigns with dynamic search ads (DSA), audience layering (combines demographic, behavioral, and intent-based data to build highly refined audience segments used for repeat buyers, high-intent shoppers, or in-market audiences), re-marketing lists for Search Ads (RLSAs), geo-targeting with geo-fencing the downtown Toronto core, in-market and affinity audiences, personalized Display Ad retargeting including customer look-alike profiling for new acquisitions, Shopping Ads with product inventory feeds and website personalization to re-market visitors and customers products they expressed interest in or recommendations from past purchase behavior to optimize ad relevance, conversion rates and ROI.
- Native Advertising & Geo-Fencing: Used content-driven native ads to engage customers with product stories in non-intrusive ways, paired with geo-targeted ads via geo-fencing to drive in-store foot traffic with exclusive offers. For example, paid article placement in online local and national media articles.
- Data-Driven Optimization: Continuous monitoring and refinement of campaigns ensured maximum impact, improving ad spend efficiency and increasing both online and offline sales.
- Social Media Growth & Performance
- Build Strong Social Media Profiles and Audiences
- Establish and optimize the stores brand profiles on key platforms like Meta (formerly Facebook), Instagram and TikTok, ensuring alignment with the stores brand and target audience. Consistently post engaging content—such as new fashions and reviews, behind-the-scenes stories and UGC (user generated content) via influencers—while using hashtags, influencer collaborations, and active community engagement to organically grow a loyal follower base.
- Advanced Audience Targeting
- Implement dynamic audience segmentation to target its demographic, but locally and national, including customers, returning buyers, and website visitors or ‘tire kickers’. Use retargeting ads to re-engage social media referrals who abandoned carts or browsed inventory, personalizing ads with recommendations and offers.
- Engage Influencers & UGC (user generated content)
- Partner with micro and macro-influencers aligned with the brand to create authentic, user-generated content such as fashion and style reviews, unboxings, and tutorials for wardrobe mix and matching. This content was amplified within the paid campaigns to enhance trust, credibility, and reach, while leveraging their audiences to drive engagement and conversions.
- Measure & Track Performance and Optimize Strategies
- While each social media’s ad platform had their own analytics tools like Meta Ads Manager for Meta and IG ads, and TikTok Analytics, we consolidated the reporting into a one-stop-shop dashboard, measuring KPIs as reach, engagement, cost per acquisition (clicks and sales), revenue and AOV (average order value) and overall ROI. Implementing multi-touch attribution model to understand how social media supports the broader customer journey and marketing is/was prioritized for the next phase. But first and foremost, refining campaigns for better targeting, optimized spending, and attain the strongest performance.
- Build Strong Social Media Profiles and Audiences
The solution provided a comprehensive digital transformation and marketing plan addressing key areas across technology or new capabilities, data and analytics to enable evidence-based insights and customer personalization, a digital marketing growth strategy, new sales distribution channels and training and development to up-skill areas of teh strategy for the stores team, such as areas of Social media and content generation.
Additionally, future initiatives on the roadmap include marketing automation to enable personalized, targeted messages direct to each customer at scale via email and the website, while seamlessly integrating the personalization into a holistic multi-channel experience to message consistency that unlocks sustained and incremental growth and scalability. This strategic approach ensures the business is equipped to thrive in an increasingly competitive digital landscape and fortify the future of the business from unforeseen economics conditions and global events (ex. pandemic).
Implementation & Execution
- Collaboration, Goal Alignment & a Strong Bench of Experts: Implementation began with tight collaboration with the stores team and leadership to align on their goals, challenges, and priorities, informed by a comprehensive gap analysis of current capabilities versus future needs. To ensure success, RiseUp Digital brought together a multi-disciplinary team of experts, building a strong bench strength across key areas like strategy, technology, technical development, project management, growth marketing, SEO, social media, and content creation. This collaborative, cross-functional approach ensured that every aspect of the roadmap was executed with precision, and governance processes aligned in-store operations with the broader digital transformation strategy.
- Team Enablement, Training, and Operational Alignment: The execution focused on upskilling the client’s team to confidently adopt and manage new technologies and processes. Training programs covered Shopify training, SEO optimized content production, social media best practices and management, and creation of SOPs. The strong bench of RiseUp Digital’s specialists worked closely with the client’s team to transfer knowledge, build internal capabilities, and establish operational alignment between digital strategies and in-store processes, fostering a people-first and results-focused culture.
- Phased Execution with a Crawl, Walk, Run Approach: Execution followed a crawl, walk, run approach, starting with a minimum viable product (MVP) to test core strategies and assess performance. Insights were gathered from data, customer feedback, and internal stakeholders, enabling iterative refinements for continuous improvement. With expertise spanning multiple disciplines, the team remained agile, adapting the roadmap as the client’s needs evolved. This phased approach delivered immediate wins while ensuring long-term scalability and sustainability across all marketing and operational channels.
Results & Outcomes
The comprehensive digital transformation empowered the Toronto-based retail store to overcome its challenges and unlock significant growth opportunities. By executing a tailored strategy across Google SEO, eCommerce, social media, digital advertising, and analytics, the business achieved measurable results that exceeded expectations.
- 43% Increase in Online Revenue: Enhanced SEO, targeted advertising, and eCommerce drove significant sales growth in just under 3-months from launch.
- 35% Reduction in Operational Inefficiencies: Streamlined processes through technology integration and automation improved efficiency and lowered costs. In short, the solutions enabled the stores team to focus on higher-value areas of the business while the technology and automation reduced and eliminate manual processes and repetitive tasks.
- Achieved First-Page Rankings on Google: Targeted SEO efforts secured prominent visibility for high-value keywords, driving organic traffic, and establishing a massive presence of share-of-voice compared to their competition and prior online presence.
- Expanded Customer Reach: Local geo-targeting and personalized campaigns boosted awareness, attracting new customers both online and in-store, but also well beyond the local market where untapped consumer demand was previously unattainable.
- Enhanced Team Capabilities: Through training and upskilling, the client’s team now manages areas of roadmap and new digital tools confidently.
This transformation set the foundation for long-term growth and scalability, enabling the business to thrive in an increasingly digital marketplace.
Conclusion
Faced with declining revenue, limited market reach, and underperforming traditional in-store sales channels, the Toronto-based retail store recognized the urgent need to protect its business model against risks like economic uncertainty, rising supply chain costs, changing interest rates, and evolving consumer shopping behaviors. To address these challenges, the business partnered with RiseUp Digital to embark on a comprehensive digital transformation.
Tailored solutions across SEO, eCommerce, digital advertising, social media, and analytics delivered measurable results, including a 43% increase in online revenue and streamlined operational efficiencies. This collaboration not only provided immediate success but also empowered the client’s team with the skills and strategies to sustain and grow their business.
Looking ahead, the store is ready to optimize its current strategy while exploring opportunities to expand into new sales channels, such as Amazon’s marketplaces, and to innovate with online franchising and white-label models. With this strong foundation, the business is well-positioned for scalable and resilient growth in the future.
