Every month, I speak with many eCommerce entrepreneurs. I am often available for discovery calls with prospects or to meet up with mastermind groups and network with other like-minded people in the Utah eCommerce space.

One of the common themes in many of my conversations is how difficult it is to scale from $20,000 to $30,000 per monthly revenue to $80,000 to $100,000 per month. To reach that level you will need to change the way you think about customer acquisition and marketing. You’ll also have to solve a host of operational problems that you’ll face. It is not easy to go from a side hustle to a full-time, successful eCommerce entrepreneur. It will take all you have, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Get ready!

Let’s discuss the marketing aspect of scaling Shopify stores. Most people who reach the $20-30k mark per month are usually putting around 15-25% toward their bottom line (net income, profit). Smart entrepreneurs use this money to not only finance new inventory but also fund new marketing initiatives. Smart entrepreneurs allocate most, if not all of their money to marketing and new customer acquisition.

But, where is that money going? What channels are they investing in? Before we get into the question, it is important to remember that doing the same thing that you did to reach $20-30k won’t get you there. This post will discuss seven things that you must consider and invest time and effort in to make your eCommerce store successful. Let’s go.

Grow Your Email List

You must first look at how to increase your email lists faster. Many well-established websites fail to collect email addresses through pop-ups. This is marketing 101. How can you increase your list’s growth faster?

1. Use email capture to increase your site’s visibility
2. Try the offer. These are some of the tests we offer to clients at Kobe Digital:
   1. Initial purchase discount.
   2. Promo code: Buy one, Get One
   3. Receive exclusive products and the latest sales information
   4. You could win a product giveaway, or a gift card to a store.
3. Try something new.

Opt-In Monster is one of the most cost-effective and easy tools to conduct all these tests. Split-test copy, offer, and creative to find the winning combination that will drive higher opt-in rates. They are worth checking out.

You shouldn’t just collect email addresses to sell them. A highly dialed email marketing/nurturing system is essential. If they don’t hear from you at least once a month, they may unsubscribe or mark you as spam.

A Corps of Affiliates to Build An Army

If you’ve been in eCommerce for more than a few months, you probably know what influencers are. Influencer marketing is not something I believe in anymore. It is extremely difficult to track, and many influencers don’t offer any value. Affiliates are what I believe in… and affiliates can certainly be influencers.

Affiliates are a great way to increase customer acquisition. They will promote your product for you in return for a commission. These people might be called brand ambassadors. You are searching for bloggers, journalists, and other individuals. You want people who are passionate about your products and have a loyal following. This is where the magic happens.

The majority of companies I know pay their affiliates between 10-15% and 15% of the revenue they generate. This can be tracked in several ways. The first is through unique promo codes. Affiliates will promote the product by providing a promo code that they can use to add value to their audience. Trackable links are the second. You can track clicks and conversions by using affiliate software. ReferralCandy is a great way to manage both of these.

Scaling your SEO

eCommerce SEO can seem extremely complicated. You need to not only figure out how to attract legitimate backlinks to your website but also how to fight the constantly changing SERPs.

Our team at Kobe Digital finds it frustrating when clients’ rankings drop. When we check the SERP to determine why we find that their search intent has changed. We are finding that results are no longer populated with product pages but instead include top-of-the-funnel, educational content. These shifts require a lot of effort and time to create, optimize and pivot new content. It is a real beast!

You will need to have a process for scaling your SEO.

• Optimizing pages and performing keyword research (could take a few dozen to thousands).

• Monitoring keyword rankings and making adjustments to SERPs. This is done with SEMRush.

• Regular updates and content optimizations to your pages.

• Monitor competitor backlinks. Find out which pages they’re linking to. Also, find out what anchor text they use. This is done using Ahrefs.

• Find ways to obtain the same or similar links as your competitors and find new ways to get them.

Deeper Content is a way to attract potential customers

The production of content assets that educate, nurture, and support potential customers is one of the most overlooked areas in which eCommerce companies fail to make money. You need to know the customer journey. Who are they? What do they value? How do they research? What do they do when they buy? It’s easy to create content or blog posts that educate and promote your product. BOOM!

Let’s take a look at an example to show how it works.

My friend owns a company called Telephone Soap. They sell smartphone sanitizers that are UV-light. They see several things when they look at the journey of their potential customers.

• These people are worried that their phones might be dirty from daily use or a sick family member. They want to know how to clean their phones safely.

• They use Google to find out how dirty their phones are.

• They use Google to search for the best way to clean and sanitize phones.

These assets can be promoted, ranked, and created by the company to help potential customers get to the top of their funnel. They are then educated about the brand and the product offerings. They can also add retargeting campaigns or cart abandonment strategies to convert potential customers if they don’t convert.

Decreasing Cart Abandonment

Site abandonment is another area that eCommerce businesses often overlook. Potential customers are looking at your products but leaving to never return. You might add them to your shopping cart but not start to checkout. Or worse, you start checkout but never complete it. These are all lost opportunities to generate revenue.

There are two easy ways to recover that revenue: exit pop-ups and customized abandoned cart emails. Both methods work well at Kobe Digital.

You should create a series of emails that trigger around 5-6 hours after an abandoned cart is abandoned. These emails should be sent over several days. Customers should receive an email with a coupon code or other promotional offer to encourage them to return and complete the deal. Shopify will send an initial non-customizable email. Klaviyo is a great email marketing tool that handles this task quickly.

These pops are used to convert exit intent customers, even if they don’t make it through the checkout process. These can be created in Opt-In Monster. They trigger a pop-up when their technology detects the user leaving the browser or returning to Google. They can also include discount codes to encourage them to place their order.

Improved Site Mobility

Have you ever looked into Google Analytics to find out where your traffic comes from? Mobile traffic is the most important driver for both our clients and brands. Although most Shopify themes are mobile-friendly, there is still a lot to do.

You can take some time to visit your website regularly on your tablet or phone. Here are some things you might want to check out:

• What speed can you get to the point when writing content? You can do more than one flick of your thumb.

• It is so easy to click on the drop-down menu in the navigation.

• How quickly can someone add a product to a cart and then check out?

You can identify glaring problems that you can pass on to a developer by doing it yourself. Hey, Carson is a great choice for small fixes.

Improved Website Conversion Rates (Mobile & Desk)

The hardest part, however, is finding ways to increase your conversion rates. A half-point increase in conversion rates could result in significant revenue gains. You can use Google Optimize to run conversion rate optimization tests for your website. Start testing different elements on your product pages, shopping cart pages, and checkout pages. You might want to test the following:

• Page Headlines
• Images of the product (type and place)
• Descriptions of the products
• Review Placement
• Add to Cart Buttons (text & color)
• One-Click Purchase
• Etc.

You can see that you have a lot of work ahead of you and a long way to go. This post should have given you some ideas and a little bit of a plan for scaling your Shopify store. We are a trusted Shopify partner if you need help scaling your Shopify store. Please contact us to receive a customized quote. Feel free to ask questions or share your thoughts with our readers below.