Knowing where to put your time, energy and resources can be overwhelming… but I've got a simple way you can decide what to focus on next in your business and a few ideas for how to pick the best strategy based on your current needs.
What You’ll Learn
- How to decide what to focus on next in your eCommerce business?
Links Mentioned
The Lounge: Membership for eCommerce Business Owners
Episodes Mentioned
93: All the Ways to Grow Your Business in 2022
READ THE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Each month in the Lounge, my membership for eCommerce Business owners we hold a monthly Q&A call and pretty much every month without fail someone asks, which training should I focus on right now or I want to grow my business, what should I be working on?
Now, in all fairness, there is A LOT of training in there, everything from Google Ads +
I gently remind everyone that there is a reason why it’s a membership and why it’s so affordable because you’re not meant to keep up. You’re meant to take what you need when you need it, and then come back when you’re ready for more.
But then, everyone deserves a more concrete answer than that – so if that’s you, wondering where you should be focusing in your business, keep listening.
The first thing I want you to do is to figure out what metrics or KPIs do you need to improve to hit your ultimate goal… is it your traffic, your AOV, your repeat customer rate?
And you don’t have to do all of them at once – you shouldn’t! Focus on one at a time so you can dig in and do them REALLY well.
I talk about this more on episode 93 – all the ways to grow your business in 2022. Here I walk you through how to calculate the metrics you need to improve to hit your goals and give you some ideas on where to start based on what you discover.
And that truly is my best advice. Before you know what you need to work on, you need to know where you’re at and where you want to go.
If you discover that you need to build traffic – then focus on driving traffic. If you need to increase your repeat business, then start focusing on email.
It sounds simple and that’s because it is. We all tend to overcomplicate things in our head – but let the numbers speak to you. Let them guide where to focus your energy.
I will say, that 99% of the time, what I see, especially with newer businesses, is that you need more traffic.
And that was a question that came up in the most recent Q&A session.
Someone asked, should I focus on the SEO training, or the launch training if I want to increase my traffic?
Anytime someone asks me this question, I always feel the need to explain why my answer is not search engine optimization. I mean, it would make sense to work on that sooner rather than later, right because it takes a while to take effect.
But I want to figure out what is going to support my people TODAY. What is going to boost your business TODAY. And 99% of the time, it’s not SEO.
That doesn’t mean it’s not important and that I don’t want you to learn it and do it – I definitely do. That’s why I talk to you about it and will putting out an SEO course soon… but it’s not going to grow your revenue today. It’s not going to grow your traffic today.
For this person, it made a lot more sense for them to get the product launch process down first, so they would have that on lock by the time Q4 rolled around and could totally kick-ass during the holiday season.
Here’s another example. One of our members is a new mom and that has essentially rocked her freakin’ world. She lost a lot of momentum in her business and now that she has some help at home she’s ready to get back into and start focusing on driving more traffic to her site.
Anytime someone asks a general, how do I increase my traffic… my first question is always do you have more time, or do you have more money? If you have time, go organic. If you have money, go ads.
But what if you’re somewhere in between? You don’t have a ton of time or a ton of money? Welcome to entrepreneurship, right?
Then I wanted her to be able to make a splash, back into the market. To have something exciting to talk about, something she could make a big deal about.
But she wasn’t planning on coming out with any new product because she has other inventory she needs to move and her lead time is on the longer side.
So what else could she do?
I recommended a collaboration with another small business where she offers a bundle of products between the two of them.
This way, even though SHE doesn’t have a new product, the product of the person she partners with will be new to her audience and she’ll be getting in front of an entirely new audience.
Plus, she has a pretty special mission with her brand and products so it’s a great platform to lean into with that collaboration partner.
Ultimately, where you should focus is going to depend on so many different variables. All of our business, circumstances, goals… they’re all different. When you are deciding where you should focus your time, get clear on where you’re trying to go first and then make a plan to get there.
Again, I go a lot deeper on this in episode 93 so definitely take a listen if you need help figuring out where to start.
