Category: Marketing

  • SEO Metric: Time to First Conversion

    This is a SEO case study on “Time to First Conversion”, which involves tracking how long it takes to reach the first conversion after the SEO campaign begins. In this case study, the conversion was tracked as a email web form submission to a website. In Google Analytics, this might be setup as a goal, but in this case, it was tracked by the actual email message.

    Handyman Escondido

    Handyman Escondido was launched on May 9, 2013 and by July 22 had its first web conversion. 3 days later on July 25 it had it’s second conversion. It took 2 months and 13 days to get the first conversion.

    SEO firms can’t promise or guarantee Google rankings, but they typically state that results will come in approximately 3 months. In this case, it was true, but here’s the thing: only on-page SEO was done to this site. There was no inbound marketing, no backlinks, no blog posts, no social media marketing, no Google Adwords.

    And how many pages do you think this site has? 1. This site has one page, it’s home page. It reads like a Dan Kennedy sales letter without the testimonials, but hey, the information is all there. This site got 2 conversions in 3 months from it’s domain name and on-page SEO alone.

    It currently ranks #6 for the keyword term “handyman escondido” and #16 for “escondido handyman”. However, the handyman is not located in Escondido, California. He’s located in North County San Diego, California. So how does he rank for “North County San Diego, California Handyman”? #21. How’s that for no off-page SEO?

  • Anyone Can Take a Reservation

    One thing I keep hearing from programmers and product owners is that the most important thing (or the hardest thing) is marketing and sales of their product. And to that I say, you have to have a product to market and that’s the hardest part is figuring out what people want, making it, and getting feedback on it. I guess you need both.

    When I worked at banks, one of the things I heard over and over was that “Retail can’t work without Operations and Operations can’t work without Retail.” They both needed each other. Can your lungs say to your heart, “I’m better than you.” It could, but it still needs the heart. While the brain thinks it knows everything, it can’t get around without the rest of it’s body.

    Clearing the Cruft

    I’m continually amazed by how little you have to do “right” to be successful in business. You do have to do some things right, but you can still do so much wrong and still succeed. This creates a filter for me, one that highlights what actually matters, not just what I think matters. Here’s what matters: giving people what they want, making sure those people can find it, and charging them for it.

    I sent this as a text message to a couple of people and got a couple of different responses:

    Spoken like a man who has seen the last domino in his master plan be set up – ready to fall.

    The key word is do. You have to do it. Yes you may stumble several times, but if you keep on the road it works out.

    The latter one echoes thoughts I’ve had in the past about work. Anyone can take a reservation, it’s the holding that’s most important.

  • Business Cards vs Email Marketing

    I recently sent a “soapbox” email to a couple of friends about how I’ve felt recently about business cards in relation to networking and building up your business through local interactions. I’m currently in the process of building up my business consulting business again and I’ve been thinking a lot about networking I did in 2012 and how I want to market myself in 2014.

    Is it just me or is the act of asking for someone’s business card the equivalent of “I just want to end this conversation and never talk to you again”?

    I get asked for my business card [a lot?] and it’s almost always from someone who does not want to do business with me, but wants to either spy on me remotely later or end the conversation.

    What are some positive interactions from potential customers?

    They seek me out. They call me. They email me. If I don’t write back, they email me again or they call me. No business cards are involved. They’ve heard about me from someone else. It’s a referral thing.

    So how do you get referrals?

    Mostly by doing great work that’s shareworthy. Add a ton of value, show ROI, or other thrilling things that makes someone want to share your work with other people. Other than that, it’s a matter of showing up.

    Email Marketing vs. Network Marketing

    I brought this up while reading about networking meetings in the book, Double Your Freelancing Rate, which I did a lot of last year and had very, very limited success. The greatest success was from simply staying in contact (via email) with existing clients, meeting their needs, and being referred to others by those existing clients. I’m looking to do more of that, but not sure exactly how. That’s why I’m reading the book and looking to other experts in my field for help/feedback.

    In reply to this email, my friend wrote this about his graphic design business:

    I can see that I’m getting local referrals on the basis of the work that I’ve done…For a designer, it is important to have a business card because that is likely the first chance (and maybe the last chance if you don’t have one) that they will have to see your work. They may not get a chance to sit in front of a screen before they make a decision about whether or not to work with you. I’ve always had positive interactions around my cards because they are premium paper and thickness, they are slightly larger than your standard US business card, and they prominently feature my branding (pixel perfect at 300ppi) on the front and a playful, full-bleed image on the back. I think if I had a vanilla business card, it wouldn’t be much of a boon and it would probably hurt me (especially if it were a Vistaprint template card). I also get asked for my card from friends/acquaintances that aren’t looking for design services, but want to share with someone they know or a business owner (to help me or them out).

    Good points. And I like how he was pitching his design services right into his reply. Nicely done.

    Email marketing is one goal I’ve had to start doing more of in 2013 and it will continue into 2014. KissMetrics recently posted 7 Overlooked but Critically Important Details of Profitable Email Marketing in which they mention how Nathan Barry, a web designer, launched an eBook that made $12,000 in sales in 24hrs and went on to make over $85,000 in its first year (what they don’t mention is the 10,000 hours of work he had in his life leading up to that point). But seriously, I’m not even talking about product launches or information products here, I’m talking about communicating with your customers – decent human-like things you could be doing to let them know you’re not dead. Your competitors are talking to them so you should be too. Hopefully this blog post helped someone take some action. Stop reading and start writing!

  • Video as a Marketing Tool

    Video is both one of the most powerful and underused tools in marketing, training, and communication.

    I think it would be wrong of any new endeavor in 2013 to not include video as an integral part of their marketing strategy. This is how I am going to include it this year:

    1. Work to create an “interview”-style of videos in a series where I talk about things that interest me published on Youtube and this blog
    2. Work to create videos where I go to events or to work for different clients as a way to showcase what I do in the field in my daily work
    3. Develop video for common IT helpdesk solutions such as how to add apps to your phone, how to setup voicemail, or search the Internet

    Just Get Started

    The best thing you can do is to just do something. You’re not going to get good at it until you try and fail. It’s okay to fail, it’s how you learn.

    Erich Just Doing ItThe video on the right is a perfect example of this. I have a stain on my [T-!]shirt, I didn’t shave, the lighting is horrible, there is no script, and the camera is wobbly. But what you don’t know is that I specifically bought paint and painted that part of my house AND bought a special light to make videos, but I only made them this one time. And the only reason I made this one was because I told someone that I would (she was supposed to make one too, but she did not). The fact is that I did something – and now I can do the next one better.

    Video as a Conversion Tool

    I ran across this article on video and it reminded me of how important video is in conversions. It encouraged and reminded me to keep developing video for my products, my services, and my clients.

    Video is a very strong conversion tool and one that is increasingly being used by companies to help customers learn more about their products or about the community you’re trying to establish around your products and company. Letting people know the ‘rules’ of your ‘tribe‘ and how to act in it will help your customers feel like they are part of something when they do business with you. It’s an intrinsic way to make each customer feel special. Video is one way to let people in on that culture.

    I’m not the best at making videos (SEE above), but it’s something I’m learning more of how to do this year. I’ve done some work for other clients (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) but for a professional, there are others I can recommend.

    Tools to Make Better Video

    Michael Hyatt uses a lot of video and talks a lot about the tools he uses to make video:

    I used a Canon 60D camera on a tripod. I did not use any special lighting. I also used an Audio-Technia ATR 3350 lavaliere microphone with a mono-to-stereo adapter from Radio Shack. I also used an iPad 2 as a teleprompter, using the Proprompter HDi Pro2 from Bodelin Technologies. I decided to invest in this gear, since I have a number of instructional videos I plan to shoot in the future. I edited the video in iMovie and then uploaded it to Vimeo, which I like much better than YouTube. It has many more options, including the ability to use a minimalist video player and custom thumbnail image.

    I have boiled Michael’s list down to a ‘bare bones’ and ‘all-out’ version:

    1. Camera: iPhone ($400) or Canon 60D ($800)
    2. Microphone: 2nd iPhone or Audio-Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier ($18)
    3. Tripod: Tripod Mount for iPhone: Studio Neat Glif ($20) and Vista Explorer Tripod ($25)
    4. Teleprompting: Paper and Marker or iPad with Proprompter HDi Pro2 from Bodelin Technologies ($1195)
    5. Lighting: Cowboy Studio Lighting Kit ($60) or Fancier Studio Lighting Kit ($160)
    6. Editing: iMovie on a Mac ($999) or Adobe Premiere Elements on a PC ($999) – both prices include hardware and software
    7. Publishing: Vimeo or Youtube – Why not both?

    You don’t have to buy all of this at once and can combine your resources with friends or clients who may have iPhones or iPads. Vimeo and Youtube are both free.

    Making Video a Habit

    If you make this a part of your marketing habits and start treating it as a must-do versus a maybe-should-do then you can start to do the things it requires to help make our business ventures a success. In this way, video can become part of your new Marketing Ecosystem. That’s my goal. What’s yours? And how can I help?

  • Customer Acquisition Systems in a Marketing Ecosystem

    You may have heard of “marketing platforms“, but I’d like to introduce what I’d like to call “marketing ecosystems”.

    What is a Marketing Ecosystem?

    While a marketing platform contains a ‘home base’ such as a web site and its corresponding marketing channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and Books – a Marketing Ecosystem takes a slightly broader view and encompasses:

    • The Marketing Platform
    • The People Doing the Marketing
    • The Processes of the Platform & the People
    • The Technology used by the People
    • A/B Testing, Events, Analytics, SEO, Twofers

    Customer Acquisition Systems in a Marketing EcosystemA Marketing Ecosystem is a Customer Acquisition System that funnels traffic and buyers from the Marketing Platform into a trusted Onboarding System that has feedback loops to the Marketing Platform.

    The outputs are blog posts, videos, social shares, books, events, products, and services. The inputs are traffic, phone calls, email, email sign-ups, new clients, and revenue. I’ve written before about how books are the new business cards, but now books can be your advertising too.

    Licensing & Commercialization of Intellectual Property (Twofers)

    In marketing terms, this is referred to as “repurposing content“. Content is the energy that keeps this Marketing Ecosystem running. Content creates traffic. Traffic leads to revenue.

    The most effort should be spent on making the best content possible. Marketers will say “make it share-worthy” or “remarkable“, but let’s get back to basics. It needs to be quality. Quality attracts quantity. This is the core of Content Marketing.

    An Example of Content Flow Through the Marketing Ecosystem

    A trusted, knowledgeable person is mined for their insight. This insight is edited into a series of blog posts, a book, and several videos. In each of these marketing channels, backlinks are placed to buy a product or service and sign up for an email list. The same content is then sent to this email list with more links to buy products or services, but everything should be tested.

    Test Everything (Beta Title for this Section Until Further Tests Completed)

    Test Everything is a Marketing Ecosystem tenet. In SEO, conversions, and sales, the single most important element is the TITLE of the page, post, book, or sales brochure. In books, the cover is the second most important element. But how do you test? Using Facebook, Twitter, and Google Ads, test titles and covers until a significant improvement in sales is discovered.

    Don’t Forget About the People or the Products and Services

    Remember that this Marketing Ecosystem is made up of people talking to people who have problems that the products or services solve. People are messy, emotional, and rarely rational. They make decisions based on copy, design, urgency, FAQs, or personal referrals. And keep in mind that the people who answer the phone or emails also have emotions – so they need properly trained, but all of this cannot happen without quality products and/or services.

    The marketing ecosystem can be perfect, but it will implode if the product or service is awful. A Marketing Ecosystem Engineer must ascertain whether or not a product or service is worth supporting or whether the product or service first needs further developed.

    On Building a Customer Acquisition System using a Marketing Ecosystem

    Once a marketing ecosystem is fully understood and the product or service has been fully vetted, a Customer Acquisition System can be built. This system would provide the editing and implementation of the web and social design, content creation, distribution, events, referral connections, email marketing, onboarding training, and do A/B testing and analytics. This system could be offered as a service.

    An Example of a Customer Acquisition System at Work

    A dentist is interviewed for his dental knowledge. This is turned into a series of blog posts and videos. Each of these have the opportunity to directly sell or add to an email list. The blog posts are turned into a book, which is sold on Amazon. This book also has links back to his products and services + the ability to sign up for his email list. The dentist can now claim that he is a published author. Each title and cover is A/B split tested to ensure the highest ranking and payout – and ultimately increased conversions.

    How I Have Applied This System in the Past

    I have attempted to create and use a system like this by taking some of my most popular blog posts on Erich Stauffer figurines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) into an ebook on Amazon. However, I did not test the cover and feel that its design has hampered it’s sales. My Youtube channel is called “TheBlogReader” because it was meant to record me reading my blog posts as a form of repurposing content. I only did that a couple of times though, however I still recommend it to my clients, but they hardly ever want to do it. Maybe they are expecting me to do it for them. Video is one of the things I am going to be working on more this year.

    How to Create a Customer Acquisition System

    I’d like to say I have this all figured out, but I’m still learning and trying new things. I’m going to apply some of these principles to a new project I’m working on – one that I can’t share yet – but if you run a business in the Indianapolis area and want to talk about it, please let me know.

  • Content Marketing

    5 Ways to Create Great Content Marketing:

    • Write What Matters to the Customer – Write from your customer’s point of view. Take the time to figure out what they care about – not just the features of your product. In other words, think like a salesman and do your homework. Go where your customers are hanging out online and see what issues they are having with your product or products like it. Write the answers to these problems. Be the answer to there problems.
    • Be Human – Computers have evolved. They can now write articles (1,2, 3), but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about bleeding on the page. Share your mistakes along with your triumphs – like how I wrote over a year ago that my new focus was on content marketing yet I’m just now writing this post. I’m human and I run a small business. This means I am not a machine and can adapt on the fly and relate to humans.
    • Provide Evidence – While you wouldn’t know it from reading this article, pictures and video are the best evidence and it’s what people look for most when they are shopping for a new product or service. If you can’t throw up a gallery or make a short video then at least offer some case studies to show that your product works and some real, believable testimonials from clients who have used your products or services.
    • Tell Stories – Ever notice how great speakers start off by telling a story? It pulls you in and causes you to listen in for the rest of the presentation. Stories are how our brains remember things. That’s probably why Jesus used parables to answer questions. He knew that if he simply answered the questions the answers wouldn’t have had the same effect. Stories stick and to learn more, read Made to Stick by the Heath brothers.
    • Do Something Worth Sharing – This is one of the hardest and most profound steps to content marketing. Why? Because it means you have to actually be good at something, which requires work. Or you have to get out of your chair, go out into the world, and do something worth writing about. That’s not easy to do. That’s because it’s rare – and rare things are valuable. That’s why when people find them they want to share.

    Developing a Content/Market Fit

    Last year I adapted the customer development process for content marketing and developed a way to create content that achieves what I called content/market fit. This content development process allowed our content to be the answer to other people’s problems. When someone would search for the problem they’re having, my client’s solutions are displayed as the answer. This is how I am able to work in sync with Google’s goal of wanting to deliver the most relevant content to users seeking out answers to their problems.

    Content marketing is about writing solutions for your customer’s problems instead of just writing about your products. In 2012 I wrote, “It’s not enough to write content, you have to write what matters to people. Be impactful or risk irrelevance.” Today that’s more true than ever before. Even though I recently wrote on Twitter that content marketing hasn’t worked for this blog, I still believe that content marketing is the best way to attract customers when marketing online.

    Blog Posts about Content Marketing

    In 12 Ways to Make Money Online I wrote about how good content helps attract good ads, adds value to affiliate marketing posts, helps with direct sales, and can even be converted into a book, magazine, or television show. In Write What Matters to Your Customer I wrote about how content is more important than SEO. “Don’t get me wrong, SEO is not useless,” it’s just that good content will beat SEO hands-down every time. This is because Google wants to deliver the best results to it’s customers every time. In my 2012 trends report I wrote about how, “It’s not enough to be creating great content, you also have to temper when you share it.” In other words, don’t be noisy.

    When I wrote about how I started my web design business I wrote, “what mattered more [than SEO] was the creation of content…My business shifted away from SEO and web marketing (although still very important) and into content marketing, management, and analysis. Google is constantly changing it’s algorithm, but content will always remain king. The problem is that as content grows, it starts to need managed.” Later I wrote, “Managing larger back archives of web data used in content marketing. Over the course of time, things you might have wanted to happen in the past to every web post in WordPress may not always apply in the present or the future.”

    Indianapolis-Area Content Marketing

    I help business owners in the Indianapolis area write content for their websites, blogs, or email marketing newsletters that answers their customer’s problems leading to more organic traffic and less customer service issues. By spending more time finding out what problems your customers are having, you’ll spend less time in the customer creation process and more time making money in the company building process. How can I help you build your company? Contact me for a free one-hour consultation or business strategy session. I’ll even type up all of your ideas and send them to you in an email so you have them for posterity. Sound like fun?

  • Top Posts and Keywords for December 2012

    In this 714th post, I discuss my top content, keywords, and income for this website.

    Ecclesiastes 3:5 says that there is, “A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away (NLT).” Since 2007 I have been purchasing domains for speculation or use, but lately I have been condensing the total number of domains I own. Most of the time I roll them into this blog, but this led to a big pile of disjointed posts that had no real, central meaning. I recently spent a day consolidating the post categories down to 9 main categories + 1 called “Tweets” and then redesigned the homepage to showcase the last 3 posts with a thumbnail + the most popular posts + the last 5 posts from the 9 main categories. This is how I overcame the problem. Looking back, the solution seems simple, but there was a lot of work in eliminating and combining categories for hundreds of posts + the custom programming of the home page to do what it’s doing “automatically”.

    Here is a List of Former Domains Included in ErichStauffer.com:

    • mapstrings.com
    • managingactions.com
    • lostpost.net
    • professionaltechnologyconsulting.com
    • geekhand.com
    • watershawl.com
    • telablue.com
    • yourscor.com
    • white-roof.com

    Audience Overview

    The spike in traffic you see at the left edge of the image above is from combining all posts from the old Watershawl site into this blog. As you can see, the traffic didn’t continue and tapered off, despite leaving the posts in place. Total visits were 2,268 with 2,077 being unique. There were 3,504 pageviews with 1.54 pages per visit. The bounce rate was 75.13%, which is slightly higher than last month. Most people used Chrome (25.5%) followed by Internet Explorer (22.5%), Firefox (20.9%), and Safari (18.5%). Most visits were from New York City (166) followed by Fishers, Indiana (35), San Francisco (33), Chicago (26) and Indianapolis (25). Internet Explorer being topped by Chrome means that the addition of new technical content on mobile devices and query strings has attracted a more technical crowd compared to last month.

    Top 10 Content

    The three posts to fall out of the top ten were Arnart’s Erich Stauffer Fake Hummels (45), Collegeclub.com Email (49), and My CEO Heroes (6).

    Top 10 Keywords

    VINTAGE ARNART CERAMIC FIGURINE- BOY PLAYING BANJO BY ERICH STAUFFER

    • erich stauffer – 55 visits
    • collegeclub.com – 39 visits
    • forward text messages to email – 22 visits
    • college club website – 13 visits
    • erich stauffer figurines – 13 visits
    • arnart imports – 12 visits
    • erich stauffer collectibles – 11 visits
    • collegeclub email – 10 visits
    • erich stauffer figurine prices – 10 visits
    • erich stauffer 8515 – 9 visits

    Despite the new, technical content from Watershawl.com, the only change in the top keywords was the addition of “forward text messages to email.”

    Top 10 Sources

    Erich Stauffer on Twitter

    • google.com – 102 visits
    • t.co – 38 visits
    • m.facebook.com – 10 visits
    • google.co.uk – 7 visits
    • facebook.com – 6 visits
    • watershawl.com – 6 visits
    • google.com.br – 5 visits
    • iphoneunity.com – 5 visits
    • google.de – 4 visits
    • google.pl – 4 visits

    I was pleased to see Twitter (t.co) in the mix this time and I am sure this has mostly to do with my testing of the Tweetily plugin to automatically and randomly send links to old WordPress posts.

    Income Stats

    Amazon Associates Affiliate Program: 82 Items Ordered – 78 Items Shipped – $150 Advertising Fees
    Google Adsense: $127 Estimate

  • 2012 Year in Blogging Annual Report

    If you use Jetpack for WordPress, every January you’ll get a “2012 Year in Blogging Annual Report”. Here is mine from this past year:

    Crunchy numbers

    4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 29,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals. In 2012, there were 63 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 260 posts. The busiest day of the year was April 30th with 592 views. The most popular post that day was Email is Dead, Long Live Email.

    Attractions in 2012

    These are the posts that got the most views in 2012. You can see all of the year’s most-viewed posts in your Site Stats.

    Some of your most popular posts were written before 2012. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

    How did they find you?

    The top referring sites in 2012 were:

    • hobbyplow.com
    • Google Reader
    • facebook.com
    • news.ycombinator.com
    • twitter.com

    Some visitors came searching, mostly for “erich stauffer”, “erich stauffer figurines”, “collegeclub.com”, “mexican cat”, and “designed by erich stauffer”.

    Where did they come from?

    135 countries in all! Most visitors came from The United States, but the United Kingdom & Canada were not far behind.

    Who were they?

    Your most commented on post in 2012 was Noise.

    These were your 5 most active commenters:

    • 1. Robby Slaughter 6 COMMENTS
    • 2. J Brock 2 COMMENTS
    • 3. Jessica Poux 1 COMMENT
    • 4. Blake 1 COMMENT

    Perhaps I should follow their blog or send them a thank you note? View the full report here.

  • eCommerce Blueprint 2.0

    I started writing this in January of 2013 in response to the original E-Commerce Blueprint from December of 2012, but now, 2 years later, I have more perspective after having helped several e-commerce companies get started.

    In 2013 I wrote a basic outline of things I felt were important ways to market an e-commerce business: pounding the flesh (pounding the streets and pressing flesh) as well as magazine adverts, Google Adwords, and trade shows.

    Here was my eCommerce Blueprint 2.0 from 2013:

    • Rough Plateau map
    • Buy the domain
    • Build Twitter and Facebook
    • Finalize design request / brand identity document
    • Hire a designer
    • Research product manufacturers
    • Buy a few products
    • Hire a video company
    • Do a Kickstarter campaign
    • Order original inventory

    I recommended Shopify but thought it was worthwhile to mention Squarespace. Lately, both are still fine platforms, but let’s dive into why the list from above is nearly worthless. First of all, what does “Rough Plateau map” even mean?

    Instead of going through them one-by-one, I’m just going to say that this list assumes you have a) a clear idea of the problem you’re solving, b) a known business model (i.e. I do X and I get paid), c) someone to actually do the work.

    Setting up a business in 2015 is incredibly easy. Creating a company that makes money is still hard.

    What Problem Are You Solving?

    There has to be a raison d’être (reason for being). How are you moving someone away from pain or towards pleasure? Do your customers love your product or service? It’s very easy to build a brand, but it’s very hard to build one people care about.

    How Will Your Business Make Money?

    How will you do “X” to get “$” in a repeatable fashion? Discovering the process for acquiring a customer for less than their average customer value (ACV) is called a “business model” and means you actually have a business.

    Who Will Do the Work?

    Even if you have a solution to a legitimate problem people have, customers love you, and you’ve found a way to acquire them for less than ACV, you still need to have someone to actually do the work.

    While at first it may sound obvious, ‘actually doing the work’ is quite complicated. It’s not a hard problem like ‘discovering a business model’, it’s a wet problem because we’re dealing with humans.

    Building a company in 2015 still requires human capital. Somebody has to do the work. Even if you hire someone to do the work for you, they have to actually do the work. No one wants to do the work.

    Who Has the Time to Work?

    It starts with an idea (1,2). You have the best intentions. You’re pumped. You’re excited. You start working on the problem. You get some traction. People are interested. People are buying. It’s time to hire.

    At an e-commerce business, typically the first person you hire is a person to help ship orders. Next, you hire someone to help with customer service issues. Third, you hire a salesperson to get more accounts.

    As you add more staff, you need more income so you decide to hire a marketing person, who then needs to hire a graphic designer to help create content for the website. Soon, you’re spending all of your time in meetings.

    Meanwhile, the first person you hired to ship orders has worked there long enough and seen enough new people hired that they feel entitled to either become a manager, move on to another organization, or hire someone under them to do what they do.

    “I need to get things off my plate so I can ‘X’,” you might here someone say. Or “I just need someone to help me do ‘Y’ so I can do my job.” These are all signs of humans trying to get out of the thing they were hired to do: work.

    But it’s not just employees. You’ll do it too. You’ll say to yourself, “I can’t ship boxes or write a blog post because I’m the CEO. I need to be out there pounding flesh and signing deals. I need to be leading my people to greatness.”

    All of these things can be true and still be wrong.

    There is a time to hire new people and there is a time to lead instead of produce, but make sure it’s not out of a place of selfishness or entitlement. It’s human nature to want to be doing less work and get paid more.

    How to Manage Your e-Commerce Staff

    Let’s say you have already figured out what people want, how to get customers, and you’re profitable. You’ve created a lifestyle business, but you want to scale it into a bigger company. You need to take things to the next “Plateau”.

    You decide to hire more sales staff and you ask the person shipping to help post to social media. On a whim, you decide to have a sale. Someone suggests a new product idea and you okay the development. Things are starting to hum.

    But then salespeople start fighting about one person stealing their leads or who gets credit for what. They don’t like the CRM they are using and not everyone is leaving contact activity notes leading to some embarrassing interactions.

    The warehouse specialists says he needs an inventory system to keep track of all these new products, but since he’s the one who has to ship out the orders, he’s subconsciously sabotaging marketing efforts with his blog posts.

    You decide to hire an outside IT consultant to come in and help implement and train your staff on how to use the new systems, but despite all the upgrades, sales begin to flatline, all while productivity and culture declines.

    People > Processes > Technology > Marketing > Sales

    Your people are your most important asset. It matters greatly who you hire. People affect culture, marketing, attitudes, and product decisions. Early hires have more impact, but every person impacts the company in some way.

    Processes built on the right people can be used with better effect, but bad processes don’t help the company. Be sure that the processes you have in place are known, are useful, and are being used. Ask them to do it and ask if they did it.

    Technology is a multiplier of people and processes. If you have good people in place with good processes, then invest in technology to support them, they will be happy, productive, and may actually enjoy doing the work.

    Once you’ve got all of those things in place, you can focus on marketing because you know with confidence that you’re not throwing good money against people who will turn customers away either consciously or unconsciously.

    A good marketing campaign supports a sales team – and if you’re going to take your e-commerce company from a lifestyle business to a large company, you need a great sales team. Sales will help you grow more than marketing.

    A good manager asks people to do something and asks them if they did it.

    What is My eCommerce Blueprint for 2015?

    If I were starting an e-commerce business in 2015, here’s what I would do, in order, if I were one person with no capital:

    1. Research trends in Google Trends, eBay, Yahoo Answers, Quora, and Google Autocompletes
    2. Pick a trend and research a vertical/niche that has the problem and cash to buy the solution
    3. Pick a vertical/niche and then start calling people in that niche to see if they have the problem and would pay for the solution
    4. Research a solution for the problem and how much it would cost to buy or manufacture
    5. Call people in your vertical/niche and ask them to buy the solution you found for more than it costs
    6. If they agree to buy it, give them a way for them to buy it (i.e. a PayPal button or Square on your phone)
    7. If they buy it, then use the money to buy or build the thing and then deliver the product to the customer
    8. Get feedback from the customer on the product, ask for testimonials, get pictures of people using the product
    9. Use the materials to create a website to sell the product on either Shopify or Squarespace
    10. Setup social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Youtube, and Google+)
    11. Setup email list on Mailchimp and add the signup form to the website
    12. Write blog posts that answer people’s questions and post out on social media
    13. Reach out to relevant bloggers and offer to write blog posts for their sites
    14. Social bookmark from sites like Reddit, Delicious, and Digg
    15. Call prospects in the vertical/niche and ask them to buy