First 6 months in ECOM performance marketing
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Let’s move to the topic of the week.
First 6 months in ECOM performance marketing for your brand
What are the DOES and DON’TS
I have seen many new startups focusing on the wrong things and spreading too wide at the beginning, which leads to:
a) Slower growth 🐌
b) Poor performance 😩
c) Feeling of uncertainty 👻
That’s why I created a list of DOES in the first 6 months when you start with your ECOM startup.
And I will break down every one of them.
Ready? Always! 😎
DOES ✅
1) Find a scalable HERO product
At the beginning, you are looking for:
> Product-market fit
> Product-channel fit
> Scalability potential
Find the real problem-solution products that you can sell to the masses with your preferred acquisition channels. Mine is Meta 🤓
The goal should be to either break even on the acquisition or, even better, make some profits immediately on the first order, which you can reinvest in growth.
2) Figure out the messaging
Connected to the first point by finding the product, it’s all about tackling the right messaging in your copy, creatives, and website communication.
Prioritize testing multiple angles, concepts, creators, and styles to find the winners.
In practice, you must find 2-3 angles with scaling potential to scale the ECOM brand to the first 7 figs.
3) Develop a winning offer
Crafting the offer will enable high (enough) AOV and CR to acquire new customers at scale by testing multiple pricing layers, bundle options, and promotions.
4) Master FB ads for acquisition
Facebook (Meta), the greatest channel for acquiring new customers for most ECOM brands.
Master the creatives, messaging, angles, testing and scaling in the first few months and you are on great road to success.
Invest your time, money, and resources to figure out what works and build a scalable process behind it.
5) Track overall performance
Don’t fall in love with micro-analyzing the platform’s performance, segmenting new vs. returning customers, analyzing profitability on the product level, and more.
You will probably need all of them and some tracking tool later on, but not in the first few months of the business.
Reality fact: The tracking is broken. PERIOD. ☠️
What you can do is analyze the overall performance and make decisions based on the blended metrics for your brand.
6) Collect email leads
Start building a list of potential and existing buyers.
Set up the email flows to leverage the automation, send weekly newsletters to share your story and start building that owned channel that you can leverage later on your growth journey.
7) Build landing pages
In the first six months, you should test selling with landing pages to see if you can get better performance results through ads.
My preferred options at the beginning of the startup are:
💡 Listicles (Like five reasons why)
💡 Sales pages (developed product pages with special promotions)
💡 Advertorials (Like performance PR articles)
8) Test 1000s of creatives
In the first months, it is crucial to figure out what works for your newly developed store, and the only way to do it is to test, A LOT. 💪
Set up the flow to produce, test, and analyze creatives on a weekly level.
To move faster, read the next one.
9) Work with creators
Don’t overinvest in branding shootings (at least 95% don’t have to invest).
In the beginning, you are NOT selling the brand; you are selling a product and the solution to the customer’s problem or ways how their life will be better.
So prioritize quantity of creatives before the super quality; that’s why it’s the best move to turn to content creators to produce the creatives that are:
👍 Native to the platform
😍 Engaging
💰 Building social proof and sales
10) Prioritize tools, freelancers and outsourcing before hiring
It’s important to keep your startup lean, so how I approach it and my advice to the businesses is the flow:
#1 Is there a tool on the market that solves this?
*If not, go to the next point
#2 Can I hire a freelancer to do this?
*If not, go to the next point
#3 Can I outsource it to an agency to do it?
*If not, move to
#4 Hire for the work
*First part-time or on the project-based payment.
These are my TOP 10 DOES for the first 6 months in ECOM business as a startup performance marketer.
Let’s look at what NOT to do in the first six months because it will cost you time, nerves, money, and probably the success of your business.
Here are the most common SINS 👿
DON’T ❌
💀 Retention obsession
The truth: you don’t have the list or the data
💀 Invest in high branding production;
The truth: you don’t have a brand (yet)
💀 Fast hiring for full-time positions
The truth: Make your costs lean, not mean.
💀 Tackle 5 different channels
The truth: you will lose the focus and fast traction
💀 Look for overnight success
The truth: it will take time, effort, and money to figure it out
Read them twice again, and don’t do them in practice, please. 🙏
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And that’s a wrap for today’s ECOM growth community!
If you have any questions or you want to break some of this further, DM me on LinkedIn
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Talk soon and as always …
Happy scaling! 🚀
BESTS,
Jure (JK) Knehtl
Founder @ JK GROWTH