As a full-service eCommerce growth agency, we know firsthand how important into to scale the profitability of your online store in a reliable, systematic way. Whether you’re a startup operation or an established eCommerce business looking for a more streamlined path to success, having the right team is crucial to achieving your long-term growth goals.
But what do these growth strategies really look like from an agency perspective? In this blog, we’re pulling back the curtain on our systematic approach to creating lasting eCommerce growth for our partners, giving you the insight you need to adjust your own marketing efforts in a calibrated way. Most importantly, we’ll show you what a successful partnership between an eCommerce brand and an eCommerce growth agency should look like, so you can determine if your current digital marketing agency partnership is really benefiting your business.
Let’s see if this sounds familiar…
You have a successful eCommerce business with many loyal customers,making anywhere between 1M to 5M in revenue annually. Yet, you’ve been using the same conversion rate optimization (CRO) and growth strategies throughout your journey, and suddenly your marketing efforts are no longer yielding the results you’re after.
Now, you’re looking at other eCommerce companies in your niche and wondering why you’re only making 5M while others are easily earning 50M.
Well, the truth is that it all starts with having a systematic process that aligns with your profitability goals and the know-how to implement these systems effectively. Thankfully, our in-house strategists are here to let you in on the exact processes and tactics we use to create this level of success, plus 10 growth hacks you can use to elevate your online store ASAP.
We’ll cover:
Our Systematic eCommerce Growth Process
- Onboarding
- Creating Roadmaps
- Daily & Monthly Actualization
10 eCommerce Growth Hacks You Need To Know
- Testing Offers
- Email Campaign Optimization
- Long-Term Creative Testing
- Unlocking More Ad Volume
- 24-Hour Flash Sale
- Limited Edition Products
- Cultural Moment
- Build A Loyalty Vault
- Influencer Collabs
- Pre-Sell New Products
So, let’s jump in!
Our Systematic eCommerce Growth Process:
Step 1: eCommerce Business Onboarding
We operate as a dedicated growth partner for every eCommerce store we partner with. But before we can build a successful partnership, we need to know your goals and expectations as a business owner. From startups to established eCommerce brands, no two companies have goals that look exactly alike. So, we use a few key questions to help us determine what your growth goals may be.
First, we ask, “What does winning mean for your business?”
In eCommerce growth, the answer almost always involves increased profitability. But for us to create a clear path to success, we need to know exactly which numbers you hope to increase during our partnership. For example, do you want to see:
- More Net Profit ?
- More Gross Profit ?
- Better ROAS ?
- Revenue growth?
- More Gross Rev ?
- More Net revenue ?
- More new customers?
- More customer retention?
From there, we can start paving a roadmap that leads you to your ultimate goals.
Step 2: Growth Hacking Roadmaps
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will never reach there”
Our role as an ecommerce marketing agency is more than just crafting and executing successful marketing campaigns. We are here to make sure that these campaigns contribute effectively to your company’s growth, measured by your chosen winning metrics. To ensure we’re on the right path, we design a strategic roadmap tailored to your unique end goal, based on insights collected during our initial engagement phase.
In traditional setups, financial forecasting is typically an arena governed by the CFO. This conventional practice, however, isn’t always as effective in the dynamic world of ecommerce. Unlike traditional sectors where financial departments control most of the financial forecasting, ecommerce operates differently. Two of the largest expenditure components – media advertising and inventory procurement – aren’t typically within the CFO’s jurisdiction. More often, these vital pieces of predictive information are housed within the marketing department, demonstrating a marked departure from traditional finance-operated forecasting.
Recognizing this difference, the most accomplished direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce brands are shifting their perspective. They’ve come to realize the significant advantages of partnering with a growth agency that offers a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies of ecommerce, as well as a deep knowledge of finance.
Creating a roadmap for ecommerce growth primarily hinges on two essential factors:
- Efficient Management of Product Inventory: Having a clear strategy for inventory procurement based on expected order volumes.
- Effective Media Ad Spending: Strategizing ad spend on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for maximum impact.
Traditional approaches often suffer from disconnects between the finance and marketing departments, leading to sub-optimal forecasts. The solution is to integrate these operations to have a more cohesive, holistic view of the business. Instead of relying solely on the CFO’s financial forecast, successful brands collaborate with growth-focused marketing agencies that understand the financial aspects and can assist in creating more accurate forecasts.
For smaller businesses unable to afford a growth partner, devising a financial forecast is still an essential starting point. Remember, you can’t reach your goal if you don’t know where you’re heading.
Our strategy involves creating a clear end goal and a roadmap that breaks down monthly and daily targets. This way, we can ensure that we’re moving in the right direction towards our year-end goal. The forecast isn’t just a document we refer to at the end of the month; instead, it’s a crucial tool that guides our daily operations.
In the quest for fast and substantial growth, using a forecast as a daily reference is a non-negotiable requirement. It’s not about checking off a box at the end of each month but about continually aligning your actions with your strategic goals.
Step 3: Daily & Monthly Actualization
Once we’ve created one forecast, it’s time to do the one thing that most digital marketing agencies DON’T do…
Actualize it by analyzing our results on a daily and monthly basis.
To do this, we use the numbers in our forecast to create target metrics for each of your KPIs that we need to hit daily and monthly. If we’re consistently hitting these targets, we know we’re on track to reach your ultimate end goal. But if we’re not, we need to readjust our strategies to figure out how to fix it.
The easiest way to do this is to upload your metrics into a SaaS tool that allows you easily track your numbers all in one place. Some of the most popular options for doing this are Statlas and Google Sheets. From there, we can break our days and months down using the eight key metrics that we want to look at, which include:
First-Time AOV
This refers to the average order value (AOV) that first-time customers place when visiting your eCommerce website.
Returning AOV
Similar to first-time AOV, this refers to the average order value placed by returning customers who have placed orders from you already.
Ad Spend
For tracking the amount you spend on paid media, we look at the cost across each of your marketing channels, including social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Revenue Expectation
This number is best described as your end-of-time period revenue goal, assuming we hit all our target metrics consistently.
Contribution Margin Expectation
By taking your revenue expectation and subtracting the amount you expect to spend on all of your Variable Costs and ad spend, you’re left with your contribution margin expectation or the revenue that remains after expenses.
Paid CAC
As we’ve mentioned, this refers to the cost per acquisition (CAC) for all of your paid media marketing efforts. In other words, the amount you spend to acquire a single new customer from one of your ad campaigns.
Weighted nCAC
Instead of paid CAC, this number is the amount you expect to spend to acquire new customers over time. You can calculate it by taking your ad spend then dividing it by the total number of new customers acquired.
Repeat Rate
Like a customer retention rate, this metric deals with how often customers return to your eCommerce platform to place an order. Repeat rates among eCommerce brands can vary greatly and usually depend on the types of products you’re selling.
Of course, it’s important to note that you will rarely ever hit your target metrics with complete precision. For our clients, we base our success on whether or not the number in the forecast is within 2% above or below the number we actualized.
From there, we use this information to ask ourselves three important questions every single day:
“Are we winning?”
Now, when we talk about winning for eCommerce marketing companies, we’re talking about hitting our metrics as closely as possible.
We would measure our ability to win based on whether all your 8 key metrics are being hit each day and each month. This can tell us whether or not our current growth strategies are working and what we might change to strengthen them.
“Which metrics are off?”
Keep in mind that using eight metrics means that some will likely perform better than others. For instance, you could be hitting your revenue, ad spend, and repeat rate goals, but your AOV metrics are slightly off. In this scenario, you can create a marketing plan that addresses these issues.
“How can we fix the problem?”
Now, let’s stick with the previous example. If your first-time customers aren’t placing a high enough AOV, that means they aren’t being incentivized to add more items to their shopping cart. With this information, we can create marketing strategies to encourage potential customers to place larger orders using discount codes, recommended products, and other hacks for increasing online sales.
On the other hand, you might find that your AOV was higher than expected. While this is a win because it means you made more money, it also means that our forecast was off and needs to be adjusted. For instance, if the numbers we used while building your forecast were from a time when you had a sale going on, it could have caused your AOV to be lower than expected.
By adjusting your forecast accordingly, we can create even more accurate methods of growing your eCommerce business.
10 eCommerce Growth Hacks You Need To Know
Once you’ve created your forecast, analyzed your daily and monthly metrics, and built a system of automation that allows you to analyze your results in real-time. That’s where growth hacking strategies come in.
Simply put, eCommerce growth hacks are just a type of marketing strategy online retailers can use to fix a problem like the one in our previous example. So whether you’re struggling with customer retention, AOV, revenue, or some other key metric, the flow chart created by our team of growth hackers has a solution for you.
#1: Using A/B Testing For Your Offers
If your first-time AOV metrics haven’t aligned with your goals, you’ll want to create new offers that spur your customers to buy more products. But how can you be sure that your marketing strategies are right for your target audience?
By using A/B testing for your offers, you can identify which strategies work for your brand. For example, let’s say you’re a jewelry brand, and you want to increase the number of items your customers buy. Two marketing strategies for this would be either creating a coupon code based on the amount of money in their cart or offering buy one, get one 50% on select products. After you’ve done A/B testing, you can tell which option is the best to help you improve your AOV numbers for new customers.
#2: Analyze Your Email Campaigns
The most common ways to build a connection with returning customers is through SMS or email marketing, reminding them to come back to your online store when you have a special deal or a new product they’ll love. So, if your returning AOV numbers are low, you can try isolating the variables in your email campaigns to figure out which products aren’t performing.
After that, you can create new email creatives that push different products or develop another type of referral program that would encourage them to add more items to their new order.
#3: Use Long-Term Creative Testing
This hack deals with one of the most challenging metrics to navigate; paid CAC. Although there aren’t many short-term growth hacks for improving your paid CAC numbers, there are some long-term tactics you can try, starting with running creative testing.
Like the A/B testing you would run on offers to improve your AOV, testing your ad creatives allows you to fine-tune your messaging for your target audience, giving you the power to gradually improve your paid CAC over time. Things like graphic design, the web design of your landing pages, testimonials, highlighted product reviews and a strong CTA (call to action) are all elements of your ad creative that you may want to test.
To do this, you’ll need to take a systematic approach that utilizes digital marketing tools like cost caps, which limit the amount you spend on any marketing campaign, and attribution windows that allow you to narrow down the variables that might not be working for you.
Checkout our comprehensive guide on how to do this, plus some of our best case studies, here.
#4: Unlocking More Ad Volume
If you’re struggling to achieve the ROAS you’re after on your ad spend but don’t have the budget to produce all new ad creatives, these hacks can help you produce the volume of ads needed to take your marketing strategy to the next level.
Investing in content marketing strategies like user-generated content (UGC) is one way to cut your spending while improving the performance of your ads. In addition, since this type of content can be produced quickly and easily, it also helps you increase your overall ad volume to get more for your money.
You can also focus on creating ad iterations rather than producing new ads. For example, if you’re running a social media marketing campaign for your online business that is performing relatively well but could still do even better, create a new ad iteration by changing just one element of the ad at a time. This helps you produce a higher volume of ads without the costs of hiring a whole new design agency to make a new creative.
You can learn more about how we produce high-volume ad creatives for cheap here.
#5: Run A 24-Hour Flash Sale
Now, generating a large amount of revenue in a short time frame can be very tricky. But one online marketing hack that stands the test of time is the 24-hour flash sale. This is even more useful if you have a product inventory you want to eliminate without hindering your revenue growth.
These types of sales work because they create a FOMO (fear of missing out) in your audience. Basically, you want your marketing messaging to emphasize that this sale is only for 24 hours, creating a sense of urgency that discourages cart abandonment and drives more online shopping sales. And if your customers are in a rush to get through the checkout process, it also gives you a great opportunity to upsell them along the way, boosting your AOV.
#6: Drop A Limited Edition New Product
Another great way to create a sense of FOMO is by releasing a limited product, and the good news is that you don’t even need to waste years of product development time to do it. Instead, focus on one of your best-selling products and create a limited variation of that.
If you sell accessories or clothing, you can release a limited color option for one of your customer’s most-loved items. A limited edition flavor is also a great option for food and beverage businesses. As long as it’s a product your customers already love, this hack is guaranteed to boost your sales fast.
#7:Create A Cultural Moment
In modern online marketing, seizing key cultural moments can help establish your eCommerce brand and leave a lasting impression on potential customers. So if you know that a cultural moment is coming up that resonates with your brand and target audience, like a heritage or pride month, use this opportunity to craft a sincere message on your homepage or through email marketing to share your story with your customers.
Not only does this add to your overall brand messaging, but it also keeps customers connected to you in a way that enhances the overall customer experience and increases the likelihood that they’ll continue returning to your business.
#8: Build A Loyalty Vault
If you’ve tried boosting revenue with things like giveaways, popups, or referral programs but aren’t seeing the results you want, creating a vault for loyal customers is a unique way to generate more revenue through limited flash sales.
Unlike the 24-hour sale in our previous hack, this hack will be retargeting to customers who have already purchased from you on places like Amazon or Shopify. This is where you can offer things like exclusive deals, product releases, and other perks that encourage customers to buy more quickly.
#9: Do An Influencer Collab
You probably already know that working with an influencer is an easy way to reach more customers and cut costs on things like PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. But when done correctly, it can also boost your revenue. To do this effectively, you’ll want to choose a social media personality who resonates with your audience.
Next, work with their team to create an exclusive collection or coupon code that can be used only for a limited time or in limited quantities. Then, you can cross-sell this offer across both of your social media platforms, creating a prime revenue-sharing opportunity that benefits both you and the influencer, especially if you use performance marketing principles.
#10: Use Pre-Sells For New Releases
If you have a new release coming up, consider creating a pre-sell offer that boosts your revenue before your new launch even hits your product pages. Typically, you would do this through SMS messaging and email marketing, offering it to customers by giving them exclusive access to your new product before anyone else. This leads to more advanced sales, better revenue, and improved user experience for those who buy ahead.
What Should You Look For In A Growth Partner?
To get the best results possible, it’s essential to work with an eCommerce growth agency that uses a holistic approach to helping you achieve your growth goals. Our team has years of experience generating seismic improvements in profitability for clients in the eCommerce industry, and our marketing services are custom-tailored to your brand’s unique needs. Connect with us today risk-free.