How to find Shopify stores that need marketing, and what to pitch them

To find Shopify stores that need marketing, look for stores that are open and selling but show that nobody is promoting them yet: a homepage with no meta description, product photos with no alt text, links that share with no preview image, no reviews and a social account with a handful of posts. The easiest place to find them is among stores that launched in the last few weeks, before another freelancer or agency gets there.

What does a Shopify store that needs marketing look like?

Most of these are fine shops. A typical one has decent products, a clean theme and an owner who has spent real money on stock. What it lacks is whatever brings people to it and convinces them to buy. You can see most of that from the outside in a few minutes, without logging into anything.

Two or three of these on one store is the pattern you want. It usually means the owner built the shop and then stopped, often because they are not sure what to do next.

How do you confirm a store runs on Shopify?

Most Shopify stores give themselves away if you know where to look.

• View the page source (Ctrl+U on Windows, Cmd+Option+U on a Mac in Chrome) and search for cdn.shopify.com or /cdn/shop/. Shopify stores load their files from one or the other.
• Add /collections/all to the end of the store's address. On most Shopify stores this opens the whole catalog, which gives you a rough idea of how many products they sell.
• Look in the footer for a Powered by Shopify line. Plenty of owners remove it, so if it is missing, that proves nothing.

The catalog is worth a minute. A store with eight products and a store with eight hundred need very different help, and the size of the catalog tells you roughly how big a job you are offering.

Which signs matter for the service you sell?

Different marketing people should hunt for different gaps. Match the sign to what you can fix. If you do not, you end up pitching problems you cannot solve, and the owner can tell.

Two of these rows need a check before you rely on them. For email, sign up with a spare address before you tell anyone their store sends nothing, because some stores send the welcome email hours later. For ads, look the store up in the Meta Ad Library rather than guessing. You can search a brand name there and see every ad it is running on Facebook and Instagram, with the date each one started.

Where can you find Shopify stores that need marketing?

You want a steady list of real, open stores in one niche whose owners have not hired anyone yet. These sources work, and all of them can be started for free.

Stores that launched in the last few weeks

A new store is the clearest case. The owner has just paid for stock, a theme and probably a few apps. They check every visit and every order, and they almost never have a marketer yet. The gaps above are also most common at launch, because owners set up the products first and leave the rest for later.

New stores show up in public certificate logs once they connect their own domain. Almost every site now uses HTTPS, and every certificate issued for one is written to open logs under a system called Certificate Transparency. You can search those logs yourself for free at crt.sh, but for every real store you will find test servers, parked domains and subdomains of large companies, so it takes a lot of sifting.

Vetted Leads reads those logs for you. It keeps the real businesses and online stores, and lists what each homepage is missing, such as no meta description, images with no alt text, no social preview image or no favicon. It covers new businesses of every kind, not only Shopify stores, so use the checks above to pick out the shops. Every email in the feed has been checked with its mail server before it gets there. As of 29 October 2026 Vetted Leads has found 64,665 leads, 45,209 of them with a verified email. You can try it with 3 free contacts, once, plus the newest 50 leads each day, with no card. For the manual side of finding new stores, see how to find new Shopify stores and reach them first.

Google searches

A few searches will give you a rough list in one niche:

Google does not show every match and results change from day to day, so treat this as a shortlist, not proof. Each store still gets the five minute check below.

Instagram and TikTok

New brands try to market themselves long before they can do it well. Search niche hashtags along with words like launch or new drop, and look for accounts with a store link in the bio and a few hundred followers. Those owners are already putting in the effort, alone, and they know exactly how slow it is.

Store owner communities

Reddit's r/shopify and a number of Facebook groups for store owners have regular threads where owners share their store and ask for feedback. Those owners have said in public that they want help. Answer in the thread with one useful point first. Only write to them privately if they invite it or the group's rules allow offers, because a pitch dropped into a feedback thread gets you removed.

The Meta Ad Library

If you sell ads, you can work backwards. Search a product category in the Meta Ad Library and look at the smaller brands. A store running one or two ads with the same image for months is spending money with nobody testing anything. That is a different pitch from a store with no ads at all, and often an easier one, because the owner already has a budget.

How do you check a Shopify store in five minutes?

You are not writing an audit. You want to know whether the store is real, whether it has a gap you can fix, and one true sentence to put in your first message. Run the same checks in the same order every time and it gets quick.

Minute one: is it a real, open store?

Open the homepage. Are there real products with prices, a working cart and a way to get in touch? If the store is still behind a password page, note it and come back next week. You cannot pitch improvements to a shop nobody can see yet.

Minute two: how it shows up on Google

Search the store's name on Google and read the title and the two lines underneath. Then view the page source and look for the meta description. If it is missing, Google picks its own text, and on a new store that can be the free shipping banner or a line from the menu. Google explains how it chooses that text in its guide to controlling snippets in search results. In the Shopify admin, the homepage title and meta description sit under Online Store, then Preferences, so you can tell the owner exactly where the fix goes.

Minute three: the product pages

Open the best seller, or the first product on the homepage. Inspect the main photo for alt text. Copy one sentence of the description and search it in quotes. If it turns up word for word on other stores, it came from the supplier. Check whether there are any reviews, and whether the photos are the store's own or the same ones every other seller uses.

Minute four: the share test and the socials

Paste the homepage link into a chat with yourself. Does a picture and a description appear, or just the address? Then follow the social links in the footer. Note the follower count, how often they post and when they last did. While you are there, note the contact: the email on the contact page, in the footer or on the refund policy page, or the Instagram handle if there is no email.

Minute five: decide

Write one sentence: the gap you would lead with and what it costs the store. If you cannot write that sentence, skip the store and move on. If you can, it goes on the list, with a second gap noted for your follow-up.

Which Shopify stores should you skip?

Skipping the wrong stores early saves you more time than any shortcut in the checks. Leave these alone:

• Stores behind a password page. Come back when they open.
• Stores that already have help. Product copy that reads well, a discount popup with a working signup, a busy social feed and several ads running with different images all mean someone is already on it.
• Stores that look abandoned. Everything sold out, no social posts in months, a contact address that bounces.
• Stores with hundreds of unrelated products and no brand. There is nothing to build an audience around, so most marketing work has little to stand on.
• Big brands. Their marketing is run by a team, and the person reading the contact inbox cannot hire you.

What should you send a Shopify store owner?

Keep it short. Say something true about their store, name one gap they can check in seconds, say what it costs them in their own terms and make the reply easy. Do not attach an audit, do not promise sales and do not use jargon.

Sample email: the link that shares with no picture

Subject: How Fennel and Finch looks when people share it

Hi Maya,

I came across Fennel and Finch this week. The photo of the Smoked Fig candle on your homepage is lovely.

When I pasted your homepage link into a chat to send to a friend, it showed no picture and no description, just the address. For a shop that gets found through Instagram and shared links, a bare link like that is easy to scroll past.

It is a quick fix in your Shopify settings: a share image and a two line description. I help new home and gift stores with this kind of thing, and with the product pages that go with it.

Would it help if I sent you the description I would use? No charge for that part.

Sam

The store and the names are made up to show the shape.

Sample direct message

On Instagram you have less room, so cut it to the problem and the offer:

Hi Maya, love the Smoked Fig candle photo. Quick one: when I share your store link it shows no image or description. It is a quick fix in your Shopify settings. Happy to send the wording I would use if that helps.

Sample follow-up

If there is no reply after four or five days, send one follow-up that gives away the thing you offered:

Hi Maya, following up on the share preview for Fennel and Finch. Here is the description I would use: Hand-poured soy candles in small batches, with scents named after English gardens. It goes in Online Store, then Preferences, in your Shopify admin. Happy to set the image up too if you would like.

If that gets no answer either, move on.

Why this works

• Maya can check the problem herself in ten seconds by sharing her own link. Nothing asks her to take your word for it, and a bare link people scroll past means more to her than a missing Open Graph tag.
• The ask is small. Saying yes to a free description takes one word, which is far easier than booking a call.

Follow the email rules that apply to you and the store. In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act covers business email: be honest about who you are, use a subject line that is not misleading, make clear the message is an ad, include a valid postal address and a way to opt out, and honor opt-outs within 10 business days. The sample above leaves that footer out to keep it short; yours should not. UK and EU rules can be stricter, so check before you write to stores there.

What should you offer a store first?

Offer a small, fixed job the owner can see. A new store owner is careful with money, and a monthly retainer from a stranger is a big ask. A small job that visibly fixes something is not. Price it as a fixed fee, low enough that the owner can say yes without a call.

Doing the first job well gets you into their admin and their numbers. From there the next step, a month of posts or ongoing product pages, is a much easier conversation. The find marketing clients page shows how marketing freelancers use new launches to keep that first conversation coming.

What mistakes waste time when prospecting Shopify stores?

• Not rechecking before you send. New stores change fast. The meta description you noticed on Monday may be there by Thursday, so look again right before you write.
• Claiming what you did not test. Do not say a store has no welcome email unless you signed up and waited, or that it runs no ads unless you checked the Ad Library.
• Leading with a score. A speed or SEO score means nothing to an owner, and they will ask whose test it was.
• Pitching everything at once. A list of ten problems reads as criticism. Pick one and attach the fix.
• Changing niche every day. Writing to candle stores on Monday and supplement brands on Tuesday means your examples never match the reader. Stay with one niche for a few weeks.

How many stores should you contact each day?

Pick a pace you can keep every working day. This fits into an hour:

1. 15 minutes: build the list. Twenty stores from a launch feed, searches, social or communities.
2. 10 minutes: first pass. About 30 seconds each. Drop the closed, the abandoned and the ones that already have help.
3. 25 minutes: five minute checks. On the best five.
4. 10 minutes: write. Three short messages, one gap each.

That is about 60 careful messages a month. Keep a simple sheet with one row per store: name, address, niche, main gap, second gap, contact, date sent, follow-up date and reply. After a few weeks it will show you which gaps and which niches get answers.

Where should you start today?

Pick one niche you know, such as candles, skincare, pet goods or streetwear. Find twenty stores in it from the sources above, run the five minute check on the best five and send three messages about the clearest gap on each. If you would rather start with businesses that launched this week, with their homepage gaps already listed and their emails checked, Vetted Leads gives you 3 free contacts to try it, no card needed. The plans for more than that are on the pricing page.