Ecommerce Launchpad Toolkit

How To  Launch
Your Ecommerce Store Like a Boss.

Starting a new Ecommerce Store

Here are the steps

A – Attention

You need to grab the attention of the people in your target audience segment. This is going to be hard given TikToks hold over people’s attention. You need to make noise, get and hold attention and then you can sell to people

B – Benefits

People want to know quickly what benefits they get. How does your product help them. Highlighting features and how they solve problems is how you do that.

C – Call To Action

You have less than 8 seconds to influence someone who interacts with your brand. You need to be calling them to take action using Shop Now, Buy Now, Pick a Colour type CTAs.

Store Branding Checklist

Here are the steps

• Clearly Define your category of products
• Clearly identify who your competitors are, we don’t want any confusion between our store and their store
• Clarify your voice and use it throughout the branding
• Create a simple logo yourself with Canva or hire someone to do it for you from Upwork or Fiver
• Picj 2-3 colours to keep the consistency
• Then brand your social media accounts and your website with all the new branding elements

People remember brands, that they found memorable. 

When Should You Scale Product Advertising

Before you can scale your advertising you have to have run viable tests. Without testing basics you risk burning ad dollars and with CPCs being so high right now its smart money to run test that you know lead to opportunities that impact your business.

Audience Targeting 

I would suggest that you test the audiences that you want to target, run a small budget and target these segments for 2-3 weeks. Faster if you get the engagement.

Ad Creative

Test the ad creative you think works best to represent your product and Niche. Make yourself 4 variations to start with. If you have more budget then go wide and test to your hearts desire.

Ad Copy

I think this is the biggest part of the equation and needs to be tested regularly so give this one extra attention. Id suggest making 6 sets of ad copy and running it as if speaking direct to the winning 2-3 audience segments. Talk to them as if they were in your store.

You will see quickly if ad copy is working by click throughs.

Offers

Is your offer string enough? how do you know it is? have you looked around at other product offerings? well, you should. 

Experiment with the offer, what can you do for discounts for first-time buyers, referrals and other levers that can be pulled for someone to see its a value-packed offer for them?

Product Bundles

Dont settle for offering 1 product get creative with bundles, give 2 for 1’s, try new offer types like 5 for the price of 4 and so on. You should see uplifts in engagement if you have a good fit for product value vs price.

Landing Page

Always test the landing page, does it make sense, can it be better? can it be clearer for a buyer? always. Get this sorted out fast this is your money maker.

Now when you have all of these really rocking then you can consider boosting ad budget. But Id wait if you have not had several sales before increasing ad budgets.

Social Media Advertising Strategies

Most channels are saturated with boring ads, but there is opportunity.

We face a challenge every time we start advertising new products. This problem is always around getting the fastest results for the lowest ad spend.

*Currently, in December 2023 Twitter (X) has had big brands leave the platform for what ever reason and the ad ML has dropped the CPC so ad clicks are running sub $0.70 for anyone wanting to arbitrage this and make a killing.

Here is where I would rank the social channel.

What Social Media Channels Give Fast Results

1. Pinterest
2. TikTok
3. Instagram
4. Twitter (X)
5. Google
6. Facebook

What Social Media Channels Are More Expensive

1. Facebook
2. Google
3. Instagram
4. TikTok
5. Pinterest
6. Twitter (X)

So now you have a benchmark you can assess what platform makes sense to use for your advertising. I like Pinterest and Google personally. Google still gets the bulk of my conversions and it’s quite fast for learning what works if you need to experiment.

Marketing Budgets for Brand New Products

If you have $0 marketing budget then build your organic social media following, post daily, connect with other types of brands and focus on your website and social profile SEO.

Use TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest.

If you have between $100-1000 marketing budget You can send out free samples to micro influencers develop your partnerships and create an affiliate program for your products. This is a good way to get some boost for your budget.

Use TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest. Maybe Twitter depending on Elons mood lol.

If you have $1500+ marketing budget then you should give Facebook and Google Shopping ads some focus. They require bigger budgets and can bring in higher yield based on platform traffic volumes.

Example Instagram Content Calendar

When building a brand you need to be on social to be heard and seen. It can be hard to get that first momentum but if you have a plan and can stick to it then you should be able to get the eyeballs you need on your products.

Here is an example Instagram content schedule

Monday 

• Your niche photo with fun caption
• Motivation photo to start the week

Tuesday 

• Fun interesting facts related to your niche

Wednesday 

• Influencer with your niche product (get approval first obviously)

Thursday 

• Tips and tricks on how to use your product best 

Friday 

• Photo of your niche products 

Saturday

• Promote your product be bold

Sunday 

• Share customer reviews with pictures of the product

*I suggest not posting daily, that type of behaviour for a business owner leads to burnout and unwanted stress. 

Tactics for Print-on-Demand Clothing

You should already know your niche audience or at least relate to your niche.

If you want to introduce clothing as a new product into your business but you are not a clothing brand, that’s fine Print on demand works for this if you have a following or some creative thinking to put on shirts and hats.

If you have a clothing brand then here are some 

1. Offer as many sizes as possible
2. Offer 5 colours no more than that. It’s confusing and takes the focus away from buying.
3. Always offer the colour black it’s timeless and everyone owns black clothing.
4. Bundle everything, 2 for 1s, 5 for 4 works and be creative with bundles
5. Allow customisations where they can print their name on things print their faces and other as the print on demand companies now have the ability to highly cuistomise clothing for you.

Cute animals work for most niches and they appeal to kids and women, sometimes to men. The design depends on your target audience.