What can you learn from Pinnacle Climbers that would enable you to effectively DOUBLE your eCommerce growth speed?
As you know reaching the Pinnacle of a summit is one of the hardest challenges known to mankind, it can mean literally climbing to the top of the world…
Reaching the pinnacle in e-commerce, around the 10-20 million dollar + yearly revenue with your online store, means becoming one of the top 3% most successful stores in the world.
And you know the secret to reaching the pinnacle?
It’s preparation, pacing and knowing where and how to go.
You plan your work, then you work the plan…
You see, when a climber sets out on his journey to summit the pinnacle, he doesn’t just rush up in one go. That would be equal to suicide. If he did, he would get tired, disoriented and may potentially succumb to the weather.
Instead, if they climb from one camp to another on the mountain where they rest, recuperate & change equipment. This allows the climber to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead.
Sounds logical, right?
Well… growing your eCommerce store is very similar.
You can’t just rush up from $0 to $10 million in sales overnight. Like reaching the pinnacle, you need to adapt your steps and marketing strategies to match each of the growth milestones.
Why?
Because it wouldn’t make sense if you use the same growth and marketing approach you have used to get to from $10k to $100K or $500K yearly sales to hit $10+ Million Mark, right?
The problems you will face when you are just starting vs when you are reaching to hit your first $5m in revenue are completely different.
While we can’t help with a lot of internal things like hiring people, restructuring supply chains etc. (We still often consult and give strategic advice for our clients as their success is our success).
But most importantly we adapt our marketing strategies to match the level of growth in the business, to ensure as smoother path as possible for our partners.
So what is “Pinnacle Growth Framework”?
It’s a growth framework we have created from six years digital marketing experience and growing numerous clients stores to 7-figures.
To be exact, it’s four stages of eCommerce growth with clear steps and focuses where one should focus their time, energy & capital maximise the growth potential of the business & minimise any downside risk.
Part 1: Plan & Prepare – High Converting Website or a Funnel
At the eCommerce basecamp, we make the necessary preparations. In our case, this means acquiring quality tools.
For a climber, it is clothes, bags, ice picks, climbing, and safety equipment.
For eCommerce, it’s a high converting website with an average conversion rate of above 3%+. Because looking at recent statistics, 3% is the new average for conversion rates.
Now you know the importance of good preparation, how do you do it?
First, you make sure that your website has a smooth UX (user experience), that it has detailed product descriptions, high quality images, is easy to navigate and looks clean and modern.
Then you start running some basic campaigns to drive traffic and A/B test the hell out of it.
You split-test:
- product names
- descriptions
- images
- prices
- button colours
- placements
- social proof
- different offers
From our split testing only about 30% of the tests will be winners and typically deliver small, incremental improvements.
But with time these incremental improvements stack, causing a multiplying effect which can result in exponential growth.
Part 2: Fire up - Efficiently deploy ONE Channel of Traffic Acquisition
Now, you may be thinking why we are focusing on just one channel, here’s why:
Focusing on too many things at the same time is a mistake a lot of eCommerce store owners make early on.
They simply spread their attention and cash resources way too thin…
Reality just one channel, e.g. Facebook Ads, should be more than enough to get you to $2-$5 Million a year mark.
When you divide your attention too early on, this happens:
- Your cash is being spread too thin like multiple employees, inventory, contracts or at worst… You spend your own time trying to learn and manage multiple and complex channels which not only results in poorer performance than a professional managing it, but also takes away your valuable time, which a CEO should be investing in growing the business overall.
- Having ad spend distributed makes it harder to test enough to beat out your competition in any of the channels.
The BIGGEST Challenge for any online store below <1 Million a Year mark is just getting one channel working, getting consistent sales, optimising the current channel and actively working your website to maximize Average Order Values and Conversion Rates.
As you start to pass 1 million a year in sales (~90-100K a month) a big focus should go to expanding your product line to increase repeat purchases. This will enable you to continue scaling your ads and enable Part 3 of the Pinnacle Growth Framework. See below.
Part 3: New Tools - Maximising the Value of Traffic
As we now have a well-performing website, steady traffic & a customer base that is growing, you will want to start upselling and maximising repeat orders.
Best place to start is almost always with new products & offers using your existing customer acquisition channel. A well seasoned pixel with multiple segmented customer audiences can provide a field of opportunity for the digital gold miner. Emails flows and newsletter campaigns start to become relevant as your customer base grows past 10k, 20k & 50k customers. Set-up correctly, new channels & email can easily add additional 20-30% of monthly revenue. That’s a 20-30% INCREASE in sales revenue.
And it’s at this point where the biggest eCommerce stores make their most profit.
Part 4: Scale Up - Brand Value Creation
Now as you have a solid foothold in your ONE channel, the next obvious step is to simply start stacking up another marketing channels.
This is where you set the primary triggers to explode growth!
But the most important thing is to come at it at the right time and not to rush to it unless you have the solid groundwork done.
There are some exceptions to that where you need to blitz the market and you have all the resources to do that, e.g. from Venture capitalists, but it’s rare.
Typically at this stage there are numerous ongoing challenges within the business. Think Inventory, Warehouse Space or enough staff to fulfil increased orders demand.
To ensure that rocket ship you are now riding on doesn’t explode mid air, it is important to ensure your warehouse, staff & infrastructure are in place to support the businesses sustained growth.
Does this approach sound like what you are using to grow your eCommerce business?
Didn’t think so…
You have two options:
Your first option is to go at it alone. You know you’re not an expert, but you try to figure out everything yourself, try to learn from your mistakes. You commit countless hours learning, reading, studying and hoping that it will all pay off soon. As you know, in most cases after months of trying you’ll find yourself back at square one.
Or…
Second option: You can press the button below, apply for an accelerator call with us. It’s 100% free and there’s no obligations on you. It’s a good way for you to discover if we can help you scale your ecommerce brand. And even if we’re not a good fit, at the very least you’ll walk away with a few strategies and tips you can start applying today, at no cost to you.
Register your details below for a discussion about how we can help.