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Many people say that January is a weak month, but it hasn’t been for our client – in fact, it was the strongest since launch. We want to share how we took existing products, ad-spend & audiences and turned it into the most successful month ever. We realize that these numbers may be minuscule in comparison to what others may be doing online, but Shopify counts for only a portion of revenue to my client and growth is growth.
We've attributed this growth to 4 pillars
1) Creating demand for the best selling product 2) Implementing a video strategy 3) Testing new placements 4) Email
Let's start with the first – creating demand for the best selling product. In December, we pulled a report at year-end to see which products sold the most. You can find this report in your analytics even on the basic plan. Taking this product, we discounted it slightly [10%] as the store never does discounts. We drafted a strategy around this, making sure that all communication included the deal. We didn’t create a discount code but rather marked down the price. In addition to this, the homepage banner (if someone went direct to site), communicated the sale. The way it was communicated didn’t sound cheap either, we called it “_____ Month”.. and consumers loved it. Roughly 80% of all sales in January came from that specific product.
The second, implementing a video strategy, somewhat goes hand in hand with the first pillar. The video content was testimonial based. We had 4 different people talking about the product benefits in roughly a 1 minute video [10-15 seconds each]. The video was communicated through the same audiences we’ve been targeting for over a year. However, we added a secondary touchpoint to people who viewed at least 50% of the first video. This secondary touchpoint was a more digestable 10 second video clip that was literally just a cut of the longer 1 minute video [each testimonial]. I was able to rotate 4 different testimonials throughout the month, each showing a different benefit and effectively decreasing frequency and diminishing returns!
The third pillar, testing new placements. We had the video re-oriented for Instagram Stories, and man, was that a good call. We skewed the audience a little younger, using the same criteria as the other ad sets, and duplicated the 10-15 second testimonials. Originally, we only wanted to put 15% of the monthly budget towards this new tactic, but it was so successful, that it ended up being a 50/50 split by the end of the month. Adjustments needed to be made daily to the budget split differential, but it definitely paid off! With that said, the content looked extremely organic, as they were testimonials of real clients. We wouldn’t suggest doing this with a static image. Always have an overlay of the content with “swipe up to learn more”!
Lastly, emails. we would recommend funneling here, but the truth is, we didn’t even do that. The video strategy caused both traffic volume and quality to increase dramatically - we were able to capture 300% more emails than any other month! We sent out an email blast twice a week for a total of 8 in the month. 4 were sales focused and 4 were content focused – we just wanted people to come back to site. We probably could have squeezed 5-10 more orders if we funneled and segregated by open rate, but the focus of the month was video. Either way, we grew our list dramatically and monetized it to the best of our ability (considering the scarcity of time).
To conclude, growth can occur despite constraints on budgets, products and audiences. Drafting a promotion within your current offerings is the way. Take a few hours, step back, analyze your data and draft a promotion around it that will create demand.
