Deep Dive Wednesdays

Author

Crys A.
September 25, 2024

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Hey guys,

“Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.”

— Hans Selye

Let’s get into it👇

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Kaushal Pratap

Announcement: Free Ecommerce SEO Masterclass Starting Next Week

Hey there,

Most e-commerce clients we audit follow a similar pattern.

Here's one that stuck with me:

A fashion brand came to us burning $40K/month on ads and influencers. Sales looked good on paper. $100K monthly revenue. Impressive, right?

Except they weren't profitable. Not even close.

When we turned off ads? Sales dropped 80%. When an Influencer would post? You see a sudden spike, then nothing.

They were caught in the paid traffic trap.

We asked them to start investing in SEO. It wasn't instant, it wasn't sexy and there was absolutely no clarity if it would work. For most brands it would take 6-12 months to payback and no one really has the patience.

But they took the leap. Here's how their journey unfolded:

  • Month 1-2: Crickets. The client almost quit.

  • Month 3-4: Organic sales started trickling in. Small, but 100% profit.

  • Month 6: Organic traffic matched their ad-driven sales. But now it was profitable.

  • Month 12: 70% of sales came from organic search. Ad budget? Cut to $10K/month.

So here's the thing: SEO is playing the long game. It's about building a foundation that doesn't disappear when you stop feeding it money.

Want to learn how to do this for your brand?

We're hosting a Free SEO Masterclass next week, Monday to Friday, right here in the newsletter.

This isn't just any course – it's designed around the 80/20 principle.

What does that mean? We'll focus on the vital 20% of SEO strategies that drive 80% of the results. It's all about maximum impact with minimum overwhelm. You'll learn the most crucial aspects of SEO to get you started and see real results, without getting bogged down in complex technicalities.

Here's what we'll cover:

  • Day 1: Assemble Your SEO Toolkit

  • Day 2: Google Business Profile Optimization

  • Day 3: SEO Fundamentals and Keyword Research

  • Day 4: Implementing SEO Fixes

  • Day 5: Blog Optimization for E-commerce

Remember, the best time to start SEO is THE DAY YOU LAUNCH YOUR BRAND.

Why?

It takes 6-12 months to see significant payback from the day you start. The longer you wait, the longer it takes to pay off.

DEEP DIVE WITH IBRAHIM

Happy Wednesday!

If you’re new here, please know that every Wednesday, I write a deep dive on a DTC topic that would be actionable. If you have any questions, you can ask here.

Alright, so today, I wanted to talk about the shopping event known as your customer-backed funding round: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

I’ve always thought that Q4 is essentially the Olympics of eCommerce. The world's best brands take center stage to compete with each other on the best offers, the best ads, the best landing pages and more. And the prize is real. For most of the things, I couldn’t find the data for last year, so we’ll talk about 2022’s BFCM as a reference.

In 2022, according to Salesforce, consumers spent $65.3 billion on Black Friday and $46.2 billion on Cyber Monday globally. That’s a lot of cash. In the US, consumers spent $9.12 billion on Black Friday and $11.3 billion on Cyber Monday.

Shopify merchants, you know, the entrepreneurs that keep the country alive, accounted for $7.5B of those sales with more than 52 million consumers purchasing from brands, all powered by Shopify, which was a 12% increase from 2021 (big when you think about all the talk of a slowing economy).

So with Q4 and “Cyber Week” a.k.a. the entire week during BFCM right around the corner, I wanted to give you some valuable insights as you prepare your companies and your campaigns for the biggest sales week of the year.

Alright, let’s dive in..

So as I was researching for this newsletter, I found a bunch of stats about BFCM 2022 that I thought would be helpful to share.

For example:

  1. Last year, buy now, pay later usage was up 78% during the week of Black Friday compared to the week before. Everyone is using BNPL. If you don’t have it enabled as an option for your store, you’re missing out on a ton of sales.

  2. A record 48% of all e-commerce sales and 78% of all web traffic on Black Friday came from mobile devices last year. With that in mind, always, always, always, test and optimize your ad campaigns, landing pages, and emails on mobile. The vast majority of first click traffic comes from mobile and 48% of all sales do as well!

  3. Average order values were $105 globally and $120 for U.S. sales. This is going to be your sweet spot to aim for as a brand. You should absolutely be thinking about a hero offer or bundle that can compete for wallet share in the $99-$120 range.

Stats From Shopify:

Shopify merchants also crushed it in the year 2022 during BFCM and as Shopify continues to grow as a platform, their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales will as well.

Here were some Shopify specific stats that stood out to me:

  1. Total BFCM sales were up 19% YoY for Shopify merchants.

  2. The top product categories were:

    • Apparel & Accessories (Think ****athleisure, bags, luggage, phone cases, hats, etc.)

    • Health & Beauty (Think supplements, powders, anything related to skincare, serums, creams, vitamins, and more.)

    • & Home & Garden (Think bedding, furniture, cookware, gardening tools and supplies etc.)

    • A few top performing products included Gymshark’s Training Leggings, The MIELLE Rosemary Mint Scalp & Hair Strengthening Oil, and Our Place’s Always Pan.

BFCM Is A Game of Merchandising & Attention:

Beyond the data which I love studying and reading about, IMO, Cyber Week is all about these 2 key themes: Merchandising and Attention.

  • To me, merchandising is essentially the end to end experience of how you select and display your products for sale. BFCM is THE peak contest for who can merchandize the best. A.K.A who can tell the best product and brand story and who can create and (more importantly) communicate the best offers through their copywriting, ads, landing pages, emails, SMS campaigns and more to ultimately win the sale.

  • The next piece is attention. During cyber week, and especially during BFCM, the scarcest resource that we’re all competing for is a consumer’s attention.

  • As a brand, you have to realize that consumers will see hundreds of ads and offers all week. Getting just 5-10 seconds of their time to view, consider, and act on one of your ads or emails might just be all the time and attention that you get. This means that you really have to think outside the box.

  • You need more compelling creative, bigger discounts and offers, smarter and sharper copywriting and positioning, better designed landing pages, more exciting influencer partnerships, and more all around excitement and energy if you want to make a sale.

If you want to compete and win, here’s what I’d do:

Consider “Wallet Share”

  • When I think about Cyber Week, I’m not just thinking about my offer and sale, I’m thinking about the total percentage of “Wallet share” that I’m vying for with my campaigns.

  • You have to realize that most consumers have a limit for what they’d like to spend during Cyber Week. It could be $500 or $5000 but you are competing against tens of thousands of other brands who want those dollars in their bank accounts instead of yours before consumers eventually wave the white flag and tap out on spending for the week.

Start Early

In 2022/23, I saw brands start their campaigns earlier than ever before. I bet that we’ll see some “Black Friday/Cyber Monday” emails coming from brands starting around November 1st this year.

These will be emails like:

  • “Skip the line. Get our BFCM offer early!”

  • “Avoid the stress and shop our Black Friday offers today.”

The sooner you can help a consumer make a decision to choose your brand over the hundreds of other ads and offers that they might see during Cyber Week, the higher percentage of total wallet share you’ll be able to earn.

Clear The Funnel

  • Prime Day and also BFCM campaigns are an incredible opportunity to “Clear The Funnel”

  • Throughout Q1 and Q2, as a brand, you’ve likely spent a ton of money building brand awareness and getting folks into your funnel. They’ve seen your ads, they follow you on social, they’ve interacted with your content, they might subscribe to your text or emails and they are familiar with your products and brand.

  • They’ve wanted to buy from you for a while now, but they are patiently waiting for a sale.

  • Why wouldn’t you go all out with your best discount of the year to clear the funnel when you can?

  • Even if the goal is to move excess inventory, you should take Cyber Week as the most valuable opportunity you’ll get all year to clear your funnel, get more folks into your ecosystem, and start the process of converting first time buyers into repeat customers and loyal fans of your brand.

Focus on “The Moments”

  • Every founder and CMO should think about the days and weeks leading up to BFCM as “moments” where they can run a sale, send an email, send a text blast, or generally educate or inspire an action for their brand.

  • Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, etc. are all “moments” that you can market around to drive sales.

  • As a brand, do not miss out on the plethora of opportunities that you are going to have in November to try new angles, create and share new targeted assets, and run high converting campaigns at scale.

I wanted to continue this deep dive by adding Email & SMS as well, but that would make it extremely long, so we’ll dive deep into that next Wednesday!

Alright folks, that’s it for today!

If you have any questions for me, you can ask here and I’ll answer them in this Friday’s Q&As issue.

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