Steps for Stragegically Growing Your Business
Reinvest Your Profits
Once you start pulling in a few bucks with your store, you’re going to be tempted to spend those profits. If you have a day job, you’ll want to quit. If you’ve got something to prove to everyone who said it couldn’t be done, you might be tempted to blow those initial profits on something nice, like a new car or exotic vacation.
Hold up…
If you spend your profits as fast as you make them, then you’re going to end up with a store whose growth plateaus and goes stagnant. Not good, right?
So, here’s what you do instead: invest your profits to grow your store.
Initially, you may want to invest ALL your profits right back into your store. As your store grows, you may scale back the amount you reinvest, such as 75%.... then 50%... then whatever number keeps your store growing.
Here are good places to reinvest:
· Outsourcing (from creating product listings to customer care).
· Advertising.
· Conversion optimization.
Which brings us to the next point…
Test and Track Relentlessly
Many store owners throw good money after bad. Or they spend a lot of effort doing things that aren’t bringing in the profits. Not intentionally of course, but rather because they simply don’t know what’s working in their store.
Don’t do that. If you want to grow your store as quickly as possible, then you need to find out what’s REALLY working.
You need to track and test:
· Emails (subject lines, offers, sales copy).
· Product pages (sales copy, photos, prices, etc.).
· Order forms.
· Upsells.
· Backend offers.
· Ad campaigns.
Basically, you need to find out what products your audience wants, what prices get them cracking open their wallets, and what words (sales copy) boosts conversions.
Next…
Build a Brand
When you first start advertising, you’re going to be relying on direct-response ads to get sales going. You send an email to your list, you make sales. You start up a Facebook ad campaign, you make sales. Your affiliates run a promo; you make sales.
This is all good stuff. But you also want to create top of mind awareness in your prospects and customers, so that they think of your store even when they don’t have one of your advertisements sitting right in front of them.
How do you achieve this? The answer: by developing and building a strong brand.
Keep in mind that a brand isn’t just about a logo and a slogan. Instead, it’s about creating a specific feeling in your prospects and customers. Your brand logo and slogan support this feeling.
For example, the luxury watchmaker Rolex isn’t going to position itself on having durable watches or good value watches or even exceptionally good timekeepers. Instead, Rolex is all about wealth, power and sophistication. And that’s embodied in the crown logo and the related slogan, “A crown for every achievement.”
So the question is, how do your customers feel when they shop at your store? How do you want them to feel?
Once you figure this out, then you can create a logo, color scheme and slogan (unique selling proposition) that support this brand.
Then you can integrate this brand fully into your marketing, including:
· Creating a web design around the brand.
· Sending emails that showcase this brand.
· Creating advertisements with your branding infused.
· Using social media photos that highlight the brand.
· Creating content that supports the brand.
· Training customer service staff to handle inquiries in a way that supports the brand.
You get the idea – basically, your brand should drive your activities. And it should be everywhere, so that your customers and prospects have a consistent, uniform experience whether they are browsing your store or interacting on your social media pages.
End result? You’ll create the top-of-mind awareness that drives long-term growth.
Let Competitors Do the Heavy Lifting
Your top competitors already invest a lot of time and money to figure out what works. You can take advantage of their hard work by swiping some of their ideas. Of course, you should still test these ideas for yourself, but they’re great stating points.
For example, check out what your competitors are heavily promoting – chances are, those are the products that are selling the best for them. Likewise, look for products that are specifically designated as top sellers, as well as those with lots of reviews. If they’re selling well for your competitors, they’ll probably sell well for you too.
Of course, don’t stop your “spying” with products. Sign up for your competitors’ newsletters. Join their social media pages. Check out their blogs. All of these activities will give you clues about what works in terms of content and promotions. You can then use these ideas as inspiration for creating your own content and campaigns.
NOTE: You’ll notice I said “inspiration” – you’re not copying, you’re modeling what works.
Focus On The 20%
The 80/20 rule says that 20% of some specific thing is going to produce 80% of the results. This is true in your business too.
For example:
· 20% of your customers are going to create 80% of revenue.
· 20% of your affiliates are going to produce 80% of affiliate sales.
· 20% of products are going to produce 80% of your profits.
And so on.
Your job as a store owner is to identify the 20% that produces the 80% of results, and then invest the bulk of your time and money on managing and improving that 20%.
Email Those Who Abandon Carts
One big source of lost sales happens when people abandon their carts and then forget to come back and complete their purchase. You can save the sale simply by sending an email to those who abandon their carts. In fact, you can do this automatically on many platforms by adding an extension or app. It’s one simple step that can produce big profits for you over the long term.
Here’s a related idea…
Use Retargeting
Sometimes people get really excited about your store and products. They might even bookmark your site with the full intention of coming back. But once they leave your site, they forget. And there goes the sale.
That’s where retargeting comes in. Retargeting lets you remind your prospects about a specific product (or your entire store) by putting an ad in front of them when they are visiting other sites. So if someone looks at a dog toy in your store and then leaves, you can retarget by showing them an ad for that exact same dog toy when they’re on another site like Facebook. It’s a great way to close the sale, even if the prospect didn’t join your list.
You can get started with retargeting (AKA remarketing) using Facebook’s ad platform, or by using sites that offer retargeting services, such as www.adroll.com.
Personalize Promos
One of the keys to generating profit on the backend is to offer products that are highly related to the product your customer just purchased. That’s why you’ll want to personalize your backend and cross-selling promos to the extent that’s possible.
Now if you’re using a platform like Amazon, then Amazon does this for you automatically. Just look at their product pages and the pages they show you after a sale, and you’ll see recommendations for products that are very similar or complimentary to what you just purchased.
For example, if you purchase a bird feeder, Amazon is likely to recommend that you also purchase bird seed.
If you purchase a cap for your favorite sports team, you’ll get recommendations for shirts, jackets, mugs and other team merchandise.
You can do the same thing on your platform by using apps, plugins or extensions that show related products. You can show these related products as a cross-sell during the ordering process, directly after the order is complete, and you can even include a note in the thank-you email.
TIP: Some of the bigger autoresponder services let you create automation rules, where you can add people to specific lists or send specific emails based on their behavior. So, if someone purchases a certain product, you can automatically send them an email about a related offer.