Growing Your eCommerce Store?
Find out your next steps here
Gaining clarity and direction on the next steps for growing your eCommerce store is a worthwhile investment. You may be flooded with decisions, questions, opinions from others and more, but it is important not to let this overload, and general busyness prevent you from coming to a single, unified marketing strategy.
With a clear strategy you can save time, save money and grow faster. Your marketing efforts will compound, you will see your entire business move toward your goals and success will come with much less effort.
Knowing what your marketing strategy is will depend on where you are as a business. While your next steps will be specific to your business and your industry, we have provided the following guidelines based on the business life-cycle model.
Where you are at in the life-cycle will affect the types of marketing activities you undergo, the niche opportunities you focus on and your general strategy for growth.
While not all business will go through the exact same phases, the following phases are typical enough that you should be able to map your business to somewhere in this cycle.
Once you have identified where your business sits, read through the characteristics, strategy and recommendations for that phase to help you with your next steps. If you wish to find out more, please contact us.
Start-up
Business Characteristics
- Low sales
- Low (or negative) cash-flow
- Low market share/market penetration
Marketing Strategy
- Identify well defined unique value propositions
- Build foundations for targeting narrow niche categories
- Support sales through online marketplaces and aggregator sites (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Catch)
- Set the foundations for a good user experience throughout the website
- Build social media foundations and a market ‘voice’
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- Analytics Setup – ensure your analytics is set up correctly and data is being captured for decision making and growth purposes.
- Neto Sales Dashboard – build momentum in high performing areas through understanding which products are selling and on what platforms.
Early Growth
Business Characteristics
- Website is gaining organic traction
- Business is starting to see a small profit (inclusive of director time and wages)
- Growing market share among a small number of target niches (still a relatively narrow niche focus)
Marketing Strategy
- Target a strong market presence in several narrow niche categories (e.g. a gym store may focus on ‘functional training accessories’)
- Focus on gaining a high level of mastery in 1-2 major marketing channels (e.g. Facebook Ads, Google Ads, social media marketing, email marketing)
- Build a strong website with good user experience
- Enter primary stages of a long-term SEO strategy
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- SEO Strategy & Market Position – Focus your efforts and speed up growth by clearly understanding your SEO foundations and target niches.
- Google Keywords Dashboard – Gain clarity on your niche keywords and identify the low-hanging fruit for SEO.
- SEO Plan – A lower level SEO plan will ensure you are working toward mid and long-term growth with an SEO expert on-side.
- Google Ads Plan – A Google Ads plan will help you master the channel and build solid ROI to help with overall profitability.
Late Growth
Business Characteristics
- Higher sales and growing
- Business is profitable with positive cash flow
- Successful market penetration across several broader niche categories
Marketing Strategy
- Gain dominance in several broader niche areas through product range and user experience
- Consider the end to end user experience for marketing (e.g. re-targeting and email campaigns)
- Website must be well developed with exceptional user experience
- Greater focus on SEO for larger market share across broader niches (e.g. home gyms Australia)
- Well established multichannel marketing strategy
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- SEO Strategy & Market Position – While mentioned in the previous stage, the purpose of your SEO strategy goes from a narrow niche focus to a broader niche focus.
- Business Intelligence Suite – Avoid becoming bloated or stagnant because of lack of information about what is and what isn’t working. Look for new opportunities to improve user experience and identify ‘low-hanging fruit’.
- SEO Plan – Outsourcing a large proportion of your SEO will help you focus on your business and maximise growth. Even on a full SEO plan it is recommended that a collaborative approach between you and the agency be utilised for optimal synergy between industry knowledge and SEO expertise. This is the time to ensure you capitalise on the momentum you’ve built so far.
- Google Ads Plan – A Google Ads plan will help you master the channel and build solid ROI to help with overall profitability.
Maturity
Business Characteristics
- High sales but slowing; may be in slight decline
- Profitability is steady
- High market share for target niches
- Solid customer base
Marketing Strategy
- Either push for further expansion through a new vision, new product line(s) and/or new markets, otherwise develop an exit strategy
- Leverage end-to-end multi-channel marketing strategies
- The website must be well structured with a good user experience. Invest in high quality product descriptions and media to maintain existing market share
- Build brand image and awareness through social media
- Publish high value content across multiple platforms
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- SEO Strategy & Market Position – If choosing to re-invent yourself, having the right data is critical. The market positioning study will identify potential new areas and markets to move into.
- Business Intelligence Suite – Clarity on your marketing performance is critical if you are to stay ahead of the competition, keep a hold on your current market share and avoid wasted marketing spend.
- SEO Plan – You may look to have an in-house marketing team, however supplementing their efforts with the capabilities and knowledge of a good agency with solid data analytics will help you get the best return.
Decline
Business Characteristics
- Falling sales and profits
- Losing market share to competitors
- Inefficiencies and excess costs
Marketing Strategy
- Realign with core products and vision
- Remove wasted marketing spend
- Refocus on positive user experience
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- SEO Strategy & Market Position – Understanding the performance of all product areas and your current market positioning will help you to focus on your best opportunities whilst eliminating losing product lines.
- Business Intelligence Suite – Solid data and insights will help remove wasted spend, improve user experience, focus on core products and capitalise on market opportunities.