Want to Scale to 7 & 8 Figures in Revenue? Don’t Forget These 3 Systems
Every day I talk to ecommerce entrepreneurs who are ready to scale their business.
Most have a great product, a pretty website and an eagerness to grow.
Unfortunately, they also have terrible systems in place that are blocking growth and sabotaging their whole venture.
For example, I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs focused solely on driving traffic to their site.
In their defense, it makes sense, right? More traffic = more sales, right?
Not so fast.
Traffic is important, of course. But traffic alone will not help you scale your business.
If you don’t take the time to build effective “purchase funnel” systems and infrastructure, all the traffic in the world won’t matter.
In fact, too many businesses struggle to effectively sell to their customers and essentially position themselves to fail from the start.
So what systems are critical to scaling your business?
Here’s three big ones you’ll need to have in place to create game-changing growth:
1. Pre-Purchase Acquisition
Even if your site converts well — say 3 to 5% — that still means over 95% of your traffic (traffic you are PAYING for) will leave and most likely never come back.
You need a bulletproof strategy to acquire these visitors and then nurture them into a sale.
Pre-purchase acquisition is either capturing visitors’ email addresses before they buy or convincing them to follow you on social media.
Ideally, you’ll convince 10 percent of your not-buying-today visitors to share their email address or follow you on Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Now you might be thinking: “Great, we already have this one covered! We have an onsite pop-up that immediately offers visitors a discount for a shared email address.”
Sorry, that’s not going to cut it.
Consider it like a customer visiting a bricks-and-mortar store. Would you race up to someone and throw a coupon in their face right away?
Of course not.
You’d want your salespeople to first greet the customer, ask how they are, ask if they need help finding something, etc., before selling a product.
Pre-purchase acquisition is just the first step in your relationship with a customer.
After that, you must nurture your relationship with them through automated email campaigns and your social platforms before you start the hard sell.
Sequence, timing and messaging really matter here.
But once done right, this combination of acquisition and nurture can literally add a full 1% to your current conversion rate. That’s a lot of extra sales.
2. A compelling “Message to Market”
What’s the #1 most important factor for a successful ecommerce company?
Product or marketing?
Most say product.
And they would be very wrong.
The market is littered with brands who had the best product in the world, but still failed.
Why? Because they didn’t know how to SELL it.
We call this your “message to market.”
It’s half-art and half-science. And there’s three main components:
- Determining who your target market is (at a granular level)
- Understanding what’s unique, compelling and powerful about your brand
- Explaining to your target market why they should care (and buy)
You need to show that you care about what your target customer cares about — whether it’s making sure they find a great deal on a hotel room, get a pair of running shoes that still feel great after 300 miles on pavement, etc.
And don’t get bogged down in gimmicks, technical facts or unique qualities unless it will really wow your target audience.
For example, say you develop a baking dish that withstands temperatures up to 2,000 degrees F.
That might be an engineering feat, but will this help you sell it to people who will be using it in an oven that maxes out at 500 degrees F?
Ultimately, when people visit your site and read your messaging they should have an “A-ha!” moment.
They should be thinking: “These are my kind of people. I’m in the right place.”
Now maybe you’re not convinced your existing branding and marketing message is holding you back.
I’m telling you right now that it is.
Last summer, we had a client who grew their conversion rate over 250% in 8 weeks by simply adjusting their message to market.
It’s that powerful.
3. A way to increase the average order value and repeat purchase rate
A sale is great. But upselling and repeat purchases are where you make the real money.
This is the #1 most overlooked area for most merchants.
It also happens to be the #1 fastest way to increase your profit margins.
You’ve already paid for this customer, so any additional merchandise they buy goes straight to the bottom line.
There are two definitive ways to upsell and lure former shoppers to buy again.
And if you aren’t doing these, well, you’re doing it wrong.
First, you need compelling upsell offers on your site, as they shop.
Second, you need to send past buyers well-crafted emails that will drive them back to buy more (ideally using automated flows in Klaviyo that fire automatically for you).
For example, do your customers love free gifts with a purchase?
The perfume and cosmetic industry has created excitement and moved tons of product over the years by offering free gift sets with certain purchases.
Maybe your customers would respond to special sales based on thresholds, such as amount spent or number of items purchased.
At Blue Stout, we have a proven formula for how to do this all successfully (I’d like to say it takes finesse, but it doesn’t. It just takes knowing the answer – and we do).
Final Thought
Every day I talk to smart people with great products who are making incredible mistakes when it comes to selling.
They tell me about their growing site traffic and think this means their revenue will jump too.
In the meantime, they neglect key processes or do them so badly they might as well be throwing money out the window.
Remember – building a successful business is about more than having a great product and tons of traffic flowing to your site.
You need to be able to sell shoppers on why they need your product (or convince them it’s ok to indulge in their desire for it) and then have the infrastructure to make it simple for them to keep buying.
The systems above — when well-designed and efficient — can replace the stagnant, linear growth your company is seeing and turn it into stunning, hockey-stick growth.