Is This How You Should Grow Your Ecommerce Business?

e are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this new series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

CapForge Founder and Owner Matt Remuzzi reacts to this tip on how to grow an ecommerce business.   

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video: 

If you’re an ecommerce business owner and you’re stuck at $1 million, there are a few things that are stopping you from going to 10 20 30 million. I think the biggest thing is marketing. You don’t know how to market your business. You don’t know how to get customers at scale profitably. One thing that we did for my company is we figured out how to run paid ads and how to make a lot of money acquiring customers. most ecommerce businesses, they think that figuring out how to create upsells and create all the back-end offers, and don’t get me wrong, that is great. But if you can’t acquire customers profitably on the front end, you’re going to have a really tough time scaling from 1 million to 10 million.

Matt Review: 

Okay, I’m not sure when he says ecommerce, what kind of ecommerce he’s talking about. It doesn’t sound to me like Amazon, because Amazon sellers do spend a ton of money on ads, but it’s really mostly keyword-driven ads. You’re looking for a paintbrush set. So you put “paintbrush set” into the search bar and then you see sponsored results and organic results. And that’s how people on Amazon get their customers. But once somebody buys a paintbrush set from you, there’s not much else that you can do with that. You don’t get their name or their information or a way to continue to market to them. Although Amazon is slowly changing that. So I’m assuming that he’s talking more about something that you would do on a Shopify site or your own website. A product where you’re driving customers and then hoping to continue to sell them products. And I agree that being able to get customers is the whole crux of ecommerce. If your product is decent, and people are willing to buy from you and continue to buy from you, then really the challenge is finding the people to buy it, not getting the product and getting it shipped to them. That’s just mechanics. And the way I think people are really successful with this is less the paid ads. Although if you can figure out a way to profitably acquire customers for less than it costs you to sell to them, then you’ve got a great business. But really the trick is figuring out a customer base that becomes your community, that you have something in common with, that you can build some affiliation with, a brand identity with, and then you’re not spending so much on paid ads. You’ve already got their attention, you’ve already got their interest. And they’re waiting to hear from you about what you’re doing next because you’re offering value. Maybe you’re offering free courses or you’re offering educational material or, I don’t know, some, some reason for them to connect with you, even when they’re not just buying a product from you. And then when there is the opportunity. To buy a product that is in line with what you’re already talking about, then they’re willing and ready to buy from you. They’re not shopping around, and they’re not shopping price. 

An example that comes to mind is one of the channels on YouTube that my daughter watches, Moriah Elizabeth. She does arts and crafts kind of stuff, and she sells products that goes with it. Paint sets and coloring books and things like that. And of course, my daughter doesn’t want any coloring book, doesn’t want any paint set. She wants the one that Moriah Elizabeth makes, which is brilliant from her standpoint. She’s got millions of subscribers who want to buy her products. And every time she comes out with a new product, there’s millions of people right there waiting to be interested customers of hers. And they go right to that. They’re not looking for a paintbrush set. They’re looking for Moriah Elizabeth’s paintbrush set. So to me, if you’re in the ecommerce business or you’re in any business, that’s the best way to do it. Have your own dedicated pool of customers waiting to hear from you and interested in buying from you. But she does lots of videos where she doesn’t sell anything, and she spends a lot of time and money making quality videos. So she’s putting the time in building her brand, building her audience, and then the ecommerce just follows from there. To me, that’s a great way to be in the ecommerce world. And it’s less about just buying ads around keywords.