Startup → Growth

Step by Step Guide to Six Figure Months

A healthy eCOM business is built upon paid ads, organic sales, referral sales and return customers through SMS & email marketing.

Here is how we are structuring the growth for our brands for this month.

Paid Ads

Here are the campaigns that we are running:

Google Ads branded search
When someone searches for your brand by name, show up!

Google Ads Shopping feed
Use the Shopping feed to show up for targeted products against your competitors.

Google Ads Competitor Search
Show up for when people are searching for your competitors to show your products and offers.

Google Ads for targeted keywords
Show up when people are searching for specific products and include your discount offers and other promotions here.

Meta Ads for Product Feed
Target your recently visited store visits that did not end up in a sale with your carousel of products.

Meta Ads with your Top of Funnel Promotion
Have a promotion that is targeting first time buyers, then use video ads to talk about your business.

TikTok Ads
We need to get approved for our product feed in shops, which is going to take contacting customer service, so that is something I am working on this month.

Organic Sales

Optimize your products for search engines. We are using SEM Rush to detect our competitor keyword terms, then optimizing our store to rank for those terms.

There is nothing better than organic sales through SEO, this will drive up your profits, your AOV and your conversion rates.

Use Reels, Shorts, YouTube long form videos and TikTok to drive awareness for your brand. What we are currently doing is running giveaways to tag their friends and BOTH people could win a gift card to our store. Just use a software to grab a winner each day, then use social media to talk about the winners. This will drive up the organic engagement on your social posts.

Referral Sales

Have an affiliate program and use influencers to promote your products. Most people want to get paid upfront, but don’t fall into that trap as you will never see the profitability for the business. Instead, have an affiliate program that allows them to have a link and a promo code for check out.

We use GOAFFPRO for this.

SMS & Email Marketing

Assemble promotions and other bundles to share out video promotions. New promotions work best for discounts and special offers. So keep switching up your offers and be creative!

Different Promotions Running

Promotions that are working really well for us each have a purpose. eCOM is a numbers game, especially for new brands that are using paid promotions to acquire the first 10,000 customers.

Let’s break down the numbers in the game so you know where you should be:

AOV: Average Order Value
This is one of the biggest factors in a new store, getting first time customers to trust you and love your products to check out with 2 or more products in their first order. This can be hard to do, but we accomplish this with GIFT BOX APP.

With Gift Box App we can give incentives to buy more and unlock special free offers. For stores that do not want to give away free products, you could always offer free gift cards with check out orders over $XXX. For apparel brands we typically do free shipping unlocked at $100 order, then $25 gift card at $150. We do an additional $25 for every additional $50 spent.

I know this sounds expensive, but most people will not use the gift card, and if you do this right and encourage them to share their gift card code with a friend, then you could acquire new customers with their purchase. Which is a win win all around here for everyone.

For brands that like to do free products, then pick something that has a low cost that you have a lot of them, and incentivize to hit those higher AOV numbers.

Here is where the real ninja planning comes into play…
Find the sweet spot where people need to add another product to unlock the next level. Base this upon your previous customer sales to push them to add another product to their cart. Meaning, don’t unlock anything for free on the first product, but on the second product unlock something for free that only cost you $1 or $2.

Sales / Number of Sessions
This metric is important especially for new brands that are promoting through paid ads. You want your sales number to be 3X or more higher than your number of sessions. At 3X, that means that your revenue per visit is $3. The higher your revenue per visit, the more profit you have from your paid ads.

Cost per Click
This goes hand in hand with revenue per visitor as you need to keep a close eye on your cost per click.

Often business owners will run “traffic” PPC campaigns that typically have a much lower CPC. Then when running “sales” campaigns, the cost per click is typically 3x to 8x higher!

Why?

I honestly have no idea where Meta gets those traffic clickers from, but they don’t seem to convert to sales very well at all. They feel like the wrong customer!

My target on Meta ads is using “sales” campaign targeting with my goal optimization being purchases only. Then I use the behavior targeting on Meta for “Engaged Shoppers”

An Engaged Shopper on Meta is someone who buys frequently from that platform. Such as my wife (LOL)

Traffic ads mostly push in the wrong people, Engaged Shoppers in sales campaigns will force Meta to go find your best customer.

Pair that with lookalike targeting based upon your previous buyers and you have a great audience to test.

Online Store Conversion rate
You want to have your store conversion rate to be over 3%. Anything less than 3% and you will not be profitable.

Note that this number will go up as you start using SMS & email marketing to drive back customers for their next purchase from you. Also these return customers SHOULD spend more money on their second visit if you did this right!

How do you improve your conversion rate?
1. A higher converting theme
2. Better store optimization
3. Better photography and text on site
4. Better targeting of your core traffic
5. Getting people to refer in sales
6. Creating more trust through social media presence
7. Video content that is telling a great story
8. Having great products at the right price

^ If you continue to improve every month on each of those 8 points…
Your brand after a year should be at a really good place!

Be creative! Come up with ideas! Test new ideas fast!
And keep pushing!

This will make your SMS and Email marketing 10x more effective!
Especially when your first time customers are checking out at a 3% conversion rate! Which we currently have!

So when we get to the point that we are doing new product drops weekly.
We should be at a 6% store conversion rate daily across all customers.
At that point you are printing money and on your way to $1m months.

$1k a day in ads spend should drive $80k a month in sales
(Along with everything else above)

Then it is a numbers game from there!

$2k a day in ads spend should drive $160k a month in sales
$4k a day in ads spends should drive $360k a month in sales
You get the point!

$10k a day should get you past the $1m a month level!
And the more return customers you have, the more profits you have as you push beyond $1m a month!

A great place to get to is between $100k a month and $200k a month in ads spend to drive $2m+ in sales per month.

And be sure to use a credit card that gives you perks like free flights and hotels!
Perfect for taking a few weeks off a year to celebrate your eight-figure a year business with your family and friends!

Let’s get after it! $1m a month this month? MAYBE!

If we don’t hit $1m this month, then definitely we should get there by next month. Key thing for us now is INVENTORY! So it’s time to reorder!

Cheers!