Acquiring new customers at a profit, and keeping them coming back again and again, is essential if you want to grow your business. Without it, you won’t have the cashflow or the profitability to sustain your business, because those two things – cash flow and profits – are like blood and oxygen to your business. However, the way you go about acquiring and retaining customers will be different depending on what kind of product or service you sell. And most likely, it’ll change over time as...

Using Facebook Ads has been a tried-and-true method of increasing traffic and sales for eCommerce businesses over many years now. But, it’s never without issues along the way…  I’m sure we all know the frustration when you invest the time, energy, and money into ads that either don’t produce the expected results, OR that suddenly take a nosedive for no apparent reason. The truth is, many business owners run into the problem of their Facebook ads not converting.  Lately, Facebook has been...

In the increasingly busy digital landscape we operate in as brand owners and eCommerce businesses, it’s harder and harder to capture the attention of your customers. Think of the last time you spent time on social media. How many pieces of content did you notice? Did you scroll past most of it? What was it that actually stopped you scrolling? One of the most effective ways to cut through the clutter is through brand design. I don’t mean just your logo. A logo is only one small part of your...

Did your eCommerce revenue drop in March? Or maybe February? When results decline, the common knee-jerk reaction is to assume you’ve stuffed up in some way. That you did something to cause the downturn.  Or, to blame poor sales on the state of the economy.  Either way, you’re liable to end up in the same place: not investing time or money in marketing to drive your business forwards. First of all, just because your sales might decline sometimes, does not mean your business is a failure.  ...

Is your business amazing yet? What do you need to do to get to Amazing? This past month has felt a bit chaotic and unpredictable, with things like Afterpay Day promo being a massive high, and then a bunch of changes on the Meta Ads platform destabilising ads. And I know a few of you have been feeling anxious as a result, wondering if it’s something you’ve done to stuff things up. Trust me, it’s not you, it’s across the board. However, you don’t want to let it stay like that! As we draw to...

Do you feel like you’re working your butt off but getting nowhere fast? Like, you’re so busy all the time you could not possibly work any harder or longer hours than you already are.  I want to talk about the concept of Return On Effort. Not Return On Investment, but Effort.  How can you get a bit more leverage into your days so that the results and outcomes you can produce are bigger and better compared to the efforts or inputs you put in. Often, people don’t figure out if their efforts...

It’s often the case that entrepreneurs launch their brands feeling as though they’ve done the hard work by actually getting their product to launch.  But while designing and manufacturing a product and getting it to market is no small feat, the real hard work of growing a business is yet to happen. Building an audience. Gaining brand awareness. Getting customers to actually buy your product – not just once, but over and over again to produce consistent and growing revenues. None of that...

One of the hardest things when it comes to planning for growth, is estimating your future revenue and setting goals around how much you’ll grow month on month and year on year.   Business owners and leaders crave predictable, profitable growth.   But, most people who have been in business for even a short while, know from experience that there are a lot of variables outside your control, which makes it extremely difficult to plan ahead with confidence.   It also makes it extremely...

With all this hype and media coverage around Taylor Swift's Downunder Tour, and with all the records this tour has smashed in terms of ticket sales and revenue, it got us thinking about the marketing for such mania.  Did you know that the average Swiftie fan wasn't just attending a concert, but embarking on a full-blown adventure?  With an estimated spending of $1300 on tickets, travel, accommodation, and merchandise, it's clear that attending a Taylor Swift concert was more than just a...

One of the most critical elements of a high converting eCommerce website is the navigation. We know, statistically, that providing customers with a great website user experience is hugely impactful on conversions. With an intuitive navigation, your customers can quickly find what they’re looking for. Additionally, with more than 70% of website visitors now on mobile devices, the navigation becomes even more critical. We have such a small amount of real estate on a mobile device screen, so...

Most eCommerce brands that are struggling to grow right now are stuck because they’re making this one critical error:    They don’t have the right, over-arching growth strategy in place.    It’s not that these brands aren’t implementing some marketing strategies… They’re usually implementing a bunch of tactics like email marketing, posting content on socials, maybe spending money on advertising. Sometimes even SEO.   But if you’re doing all that and finding it’s still not working, and...

While the ultimate aim of an eCommerce business is to generate revenue, the name of the game is TRAFFIC.  Without traffic first, without getting eyeballs onto your website, nothing else matters and your business will remain the world’s best kept secret. But, not all traffic is equal and getting quality traffic at a profit is harder than it used to be.  To scale and grow a profitable online store, you need a mix of three kinds of traffic: owned – from your own database, such as Klaviyo;...

On average, eCommerce websites convert at 2-3%, whilst average revenue per website visitor varies from brand to brand. Lately, I’ve been auditing a number of eCommerce businesses who are desperately trying to grow their revenue and profits, to make and keep more money in their business. But they not only don’t know these metrics, or any of the other performance metrics that drive growth.  They also don’t know how to improve them so that they can actually achieve their growth goals. Many...

Without fail, every business has areas where they’re struggling and that impact their ability to grow.  If your marketing is inefficient or ineffective, it will also be unprofitable. So not only will you not be growing your business as quickly as you’d like, but you’ll also be heading towards a cash flow crunch that could kill your business entirely.  Similarly, if your operations and fulfilment are inefficient or ineffective, that can act as a handbrake on the marketing so that you also...

One of the biggest frustrations a lot of eCommerce brands struggle with is the constant need to produce creative content.  Typically, photography, graphic design and copywriting is not a core skill set, and so it becomes a time-consuming chore frequently procrastinated over. But if you find yourself always on the back foot, trying to produce some content for social media, or for a major promotion, you’ll know the stress this causes! Unfortunately, this kind of scenario leads to content...

The other day, I read a news article about a 13 year old kid from Oklahoma who became the first person ever to win the video game Tetris.  Long believed to be an impossible myth, the player – Willis Gibson – reached level 157 and a score of 999,999, launching the never-seen-before “kill screen” where the game crashes and there’s nothing left to play.  The video game of Tetris was first launched in 1985, so it’s taken humans nearly 4 decades to master every possible level of the game. ...

Most business owners I know are ambitious. They’re aiming to create something significant with their business. But many struggle with goal setting. Either because they don’t know how to do that (without playing ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ with their revenue targets!) Or, because they’ve set goals in the past and missed them by a big margin, and then felt miserable. There are two problems here: first, they’ve missed the crucial first step in the process.  In doing so, they’ve set...

Ever wondered why some people seem to have a Midas touch in building their business?  It’s not just luck; it’s about filling the right buckets – knowledge, skills, network, resources, and reputation – in a specific order. This systematic approach can unlock your potential and set you on the path to success and fulfilment. At the very outset, the most critical bucket to fill is knowledge. Think of it as the foundation of a skyscraper. The stronger the foundation, the higher you can build.  ...

If you’re like so many business owners that I’ve observed, I really want to share a bit of knowledge and a couple of secrets of mine that helped me to get off the hamster wheel and past the state of sheer exhaustion. You know what I mean. So many entrepreneurs work day, night and all weekend. They work from their phone whilst watching TV at night, or from the sidelines of their kids' sport.  There's never any downtime... Ultimately, I’m going to prove to you that it’s actually more...

Over the last year or so, it’s gotten harder and harder to generate profitable results from paid advertising.  Increased competition from the rapid growth in businesses shifting online and vying for limited ad inventory has driven ad costs up. And the way the ad algorithm has changed means that campaigns require a certain number of conversion events in order to optimise. Without the data from those conversion events, the campaigns don’t exit the learning phase. And results suffer as a...

I think the word that best describes this year is bruising…  For newer and more established businesses alike, this year has presented several challenges that have made it more difficult to operate (let alone profit!) From the drop in demand for online ordering when lock-downs ended. To the increased costs (of production, operations, distribution, even ad costs have skyrocketed!) To say it’s become a lot harder to convert and profit with that change of consumer behaviour would be an...

If you’ve ever wondered, “What incentives should I offer for my Black Friday promotion?”  Or, “What kind of offers are working the best right now to generate sales?” Or even, “How can I get more people buying from me right now?” If you’ve been puzzling over those questions lately, then chances are you’re one of the 95% of eCommerce business owners who haven't quite mastered the most important step in your marketing… What is that magical step, you might be wondering? It’s not magic. It’s...

It’s no secret that this has been a pretty tough year for many, both as business owners and personally.  I think sometimes when we experience challenging times, especially as a small business owner, it can sometimes feel pretty isolating like you’re not cut out for this because you’re finding it so hard.   In times like that it can be comforting to hear that others around you who you maybe look up to or view as being maybe more successful, also find the same or similar things challenging...

Anyone else’s email inbox overflowing with a bazillion promos right now?  It’s the time of year where the digital landscape gets extra cluttered, with  a big increase in marketing messages coming at us left, right and centre.  And that includes YOUR audience… So the big question is…How are YOU going to stand out from your competition and be able to capture the attention and engagement of your customers? If you want to have a successful Christmas and Holiday sales season it’s essential to...