The Shopify Marketing Checklist Book: What Is Inside

· 3 min read · Updated

For five or six years I had been giving the same advice to every Shopify store that hired me, in the same order, and watching most of them skip half of it. So one Saturday I sat down and wrote it out as a checklist with the reasons attached. That became The Ultimate Shopify Store Marketing Checklist: From $0 to $50,000.

It is around 45 pages. That is deliberate. The stores I was writing for do not need a 300 page book on marketing theory. They need to know what to set up, in what order, and what breaks when they skip a step.

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Update: I've since published a second book, AI Workflows for Shopify. Where this one is the checklist for starting a store, that one is the story of running it with a tiny team.

What is inside

The chapters follow the order I would do the work in on a new store.

Facebook and Meta, including ads. Claiming the Facebook and Instagram accounts with a usable username, installing the Meta pixel through Shopify’s own channel so the Conversions API comes with it, and the first campaign structure. Tracking is first because it is where most stores are most broken.

Meta Business Manager setup. What the Business Manager holds, how to grant access to someone running your ads without handing over the account, and where the billing lives.

Google, including ads. Merchant Center first, because the free listings alone put your products in Shopping results at no cost. Then the Google Ads account, and the difference between a Shopping campaign and the Performance Max campaign Google will push you towards.

Email marketing. Klaviyo setup on Shopify, the DNS records that keep the emails out of spam, and how to grow the list without discount popups, which is the part most stores get backwards.

Shopify review collection. Judge.me and Yotpo compared, what each shows on the product page, and which one supports rich snippets in Google.

TikTok. The business account, the pixel through the TikTok sales channel, and a note on when TikTok is worth the time for a new store, which is less often than the platform would like you to think.

Website analytics, support and heatmaps. Google Analytics, a helpdesk, and Hotjar, with the point at which a store should stop guessing why people leave and start watching recordings.

Bonus chapter: 12 ecommerce KPIs to start and grow a Shopify business. The same list as the KPIs post, with the targets I use at each stage.

Who it is for

You should buy it if you are starting a Shopify store, or have one running and are not sure what you missed. It is the list I would hand you on the first call if you hired me, and it costs a great deal less than the call.

You should skip it if you are already spending real money on ads with tracking you trust. The book will mostly confirm what you have, and the second book will be more useful to you.

Where the material comes from

Most of it was worked out on client stores, and the $0 to $50,000 in the subtitle is the beauty brand that went from launch to that figure on the sequence in the book. The free Shopify store marketing checklist on this site is the skeleton of the same material. The book is the version with the reasons, the order, and the mistakes at each step.

Editions and where to get it

The first edition was published under my legal name, Divyansh Sharma. The second edition, and everything since, is published as Nikhil Sharma, which is the name I use everywhere else.

It is on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. There is also a German edition, Die Ultimative Shopify-Shop-Marketing-Checkliste: Von 0 $ bis 50.000 $, in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.de.

If you read it and something in it is wrong or out of date, tell me. The platforms change their interfaces faster than I can reprint, and the site version is where corrections land first.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Ultimate Shopify Store Marketing Checklist?
A short book, around 45 pages, that lists in order the marketing setup a new Shopify store needs: Meta and Google accounts, Business Manager, Merchant Center, email, reviews, TikTok, and the analytics to know whether any of it is working. It is a checklist with explanations, not a theory book.
Who is the book for?
Someone launching or recently launched a Shopify store who does not yet have the marketing accounts set up, or has set them up badly and wants to check. It assumes the store itself already exists.
Who should not buy it?
Anyone already running paid ads at scale with tracking that works. The book is about getting the foundations right, and if yours are right it will mostly confirm what you have.
Is the book the same as the checklist on the site?
The free post on nikhil.pro is the skeleton. The book expands each item with why it matters, the order to do it in, the mistakes I have seen stores make at each step, and the 12 KPIs chapter that is not on the site.
Why is the author listed as Divyansh Sharma?
Divyansh Sharma is my legal name and the first edition was published under it. The second edition and my second book, AI Workflows for Shopify, are published as Nikhil Sharma, which is the name I use everywhere else.
What formats is it available in?
Kindle and paperback on Amazon. There is also a German edition, Die Ultimative Shopify-Shop-Marketing-Checkliste, in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.de.
How is it different from AI Workflows for Shopify?
The checklist is for the start: what to set up before you spend on marketing. AI Workflows for Shopify is for later: how a small team runs a store that is already selling, told as a story rather than a list.
Nikhil Sharma

Nikhil Sharma

I run data and operations for a DTC brand on Shopify, consult on Meta and Google Ads, and build AI automations for ecommerce teams. I write about what I build and run.

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