Mistakes I made in the ecom world

_{Forward this email to someone who spends most of their day refreshing Shopify.}

Up first, special announcement — introducing ✨office hours!✨ 

A few times a month, I’ll open up a handful of 15-minute “brain-picking” slots. They’re absolutely free, so if you have some marketing questions you want to chat through, or want to see if it could be a fit to work together, you can grab some time with me here.

There used to be a clear-cut ecom playbook. At its most reductive, it read something like “Find manufacturer, stand up Shopify storefront, spend a ton on Facebook ads, print money.”

While it’s no longer this easy, the principles hold. Find a manufacturer once you’ve identified a quality product that solves a real pain point, set up your Shopify storefront with UX and brand principles in mind, and acquire customers responsibly — and retain them.

Truthfully, I’ve learned a lot of this the way most of us learn important lessons — the hard way. But what are our mistakes if we can’t grow from them?

Here are the 9 biggest mistakes I’ve made running marketing in ecom, and what to do instead.

Focusing on your products instead of your offer

A few years ago, I was brought in as the first in-house marketing lead at a women’s health product startup. I was excited about the mission of women helping women to easily and discreetly bring healthcare to your door, for products that otherwise might be embarrassing to buy.

This peace of mind should have been the core offer.

Instead, I focused too much on marketing the individual products that made up this offer, talking about their features and benefits, and why people should buy them. I learned quickly that when acquisition marketing that runs on limited budgets, and focuses on too many individual products, it’ll never be profitable.

The problem is, most potential customers are NOT ready to buy at any given point. This is even more true with healthcare products that are only needed on occasion. But if your marketing is offer-focused (creating and communicating value) rather than product-focused (buy buy buy!), you can gain a potential customer’s trust.

A clear, core offer — in this case, being the place to go for peace of mind when it comes to women’s health — reinforces your brand, so customers come right to you when they’re ready.

Forcing subscriptions instead of offering trials

At the women’s health startup, there were a handful of products that made sense as subscriptions, like supplements, and others that did not, like UTI tests. Slightly discounted subscriptions were offered for every product regardless, and when the time came to figure out how to increase our subscriber base (gotta love that LTV), my bright idea was to make our supplement products only available via a subscription.

Well, subscriptions certainly increased. Then cancellations followed. Turns out, no one likes being forced into subscribing to a physical good before they can try it out (whereas of course a subscription model is core to services, software, and media).

Particularly for products that claim to drive some sort of improvement, why wouldn’t you let someone trial the product before locking them into a subscription? If the product doesn’t work as advertised, then you have bigger problems to solve.

And a cancelled subscriber is way worse than a one-time purchaser — the cancelled subscriber is never coming back. You can still heavily incentivize subscriptions where it makes sense, but giving customers a choice will ensure those that subscribe stick around for the long haul.

Adding products that seem similar, but are for distinct user groups

Understanding your users, what they want, and the utility and value they’re getting out of your product is paramount before you start adding new products and marketing them.

Expanding your product line is often a great way to increase LTV and bring in new customers, but there’s a fine line to walk. When we added new products for distinct health conditions to the existing line, my mistake was to try to market new products to the user we already understood — here’s why that doesn’t work.

“Women’s healthcare” is an extensively broad category. Even within the same product — like pregnancy tests, one of this brand’s core products — there are distinct user groups purchasing for totally different reasons (planning pregnancy vs. avoiding pregnancy). Speaking the same way to everyone who purchases this product, let alone different products, is a recipe for failure.

This is the same reason that if you think your total addressable market is “everyone”, just because anyone could in theory benefit from your product, you’re playing a losing game from the start.

Working with the wrong 3PL

3PL selection doesn’t typically fall under marketing’s purview, but if you have consistent pick-and-pack and delivery issues, you can kiss retaining customers goodbye.

If you sell a physical product, the 3PL you work with has massive implications for your business’ success and your brand’s perception. Customers who receive a damaged product in a torn up box, or receive their order later than anticipated, don’t care if this is the packer or carrier’s fault. These experiences reflect poorly on your brand, regardless who’s responsible at which step.

I’ve seen brands work with everyone from well known-global 3PLs to boutique, white-glove 3PLs. Logistics will never be perfect, but interviewing multiple 3PLs to understand both price and level and service is critical.

Customer complaints I’ve seen range from shipping product in other brands’ packaging (🤯), packages arriving waterlogged, dirty, and damaged, packing inventory in incorrect boxes such that merch gets jostled around in transit, you name it. The best thing you can do is figure out who’s going to treat your products as carefully as you would.

Not paying attention to margins

Margins are just as much of a marketing problem as they are an ops and logistics problem.

Your margins are critical to pricing your products, but they’re just as important in how you market them. Your business probably has an aggregate margin you need to remain above, but margin on each individual product likely differs.

If marketing costs start shifting toward moving lower-margin products, it’s going to be hard to maintain that healthy aggregate. I’ve made the mistake of not building this view into my regular marketing tracking docs, and not realizing until much later that last month’s spend was not as profitable as it seemed.

Understand the margins on your products, and use this knowledge to your advantage when budgeting.

Not having a cohesive content and promo strategy

Consumers are savvier than ever, and yet we still think we can get away with content and promotions calendars centered around made-up holidays (today is purportedly National Peanut Butter Cookie Day, and Pride apparently shares June with National Turkey Lovers Month and National Headache and Migraine Awareness Month).

Even if there’s a made up holiday that seems relevant to your brand, customers see right through it when you email them and say “it’s national x month, so we’re doing a sale!” Sure, maybe you’ll incentivize them to buy — everyone loves a deal. But your promos should be a part of building your brand, not cheapening it.

I’ve learned how important it is to build your content calendar from a place of authenticity, and to use promos sparingly so as not to train your customers to wait for them.

Ignoring the power of social proof

If you go to your site right now and can’t pinpoint at least 3 examples of social proof — like reviews, awards, press logos — within a few seconds, stop what you’re doing and figure out how to get it.

Everyone constantly talks about social proof, because it really is that psychologically powerful. Most consumers know that brands have total control over the reviews they show on their site and the press logos they choose to share, but they still work.

When our shopping options are virtually endless, we need to see that someone else has found this product valuable, or that the brand is associated with a publication we trust, before we hand over our credit card number.

If you’re struggling with garnering social proof, take a step back and ensure you’ve started with an excellent customer experience layered on top of an excellent product. I’ve found that if you try to incentivize reviews without these things, those reviews will be lukewarm.

Not getting buy-in on conversion rate optimization

Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, can get a bad rap. Sometimes founders aren’t convinced that some tweaks to the user experience can make a massive difference in performance. And UX should really be at the forefront of CRO — the intention is never to deceive customers into making a purchase, it’s to make their journey as frictionless as possible (note: friction is a good thing in intent-based conversion paths, but not in ecom).

I’ve learned that focusing on the human element is one way to get buy-in to opening up resources for CRO. Another is to demonstrate how CRO is one lever in your efficiency equation — and it’s often one of the last to get pulled.

If your messaging is dialed in, your paid channels are optimized, your post-purchase experience is top notch, and you haven’t challenged your assumptions about your site experience, you’re probably sitting on a goldmine.

Not understanding that alternative forms of problem solving are your real competitors

I’ve fallen into the trap of beginning to work with a brand and immediately looking to see what all their direct competitors are doing. It seems logical — especially in ecom, where for almost every brand, there are a handful of virtually indistinguishable copycats.

While keeping a pulse on what competitors are doing is worthwhile to a point, arguably more important is to stay on top of the alternative ways someone could tackle the problem your product exists to solve.

Selling DTC women’s healthcare products? A potential customer could simply go to the pharmacy if they need something ASAP, or to their doctor if they have a more pressing concern.

Selling soda that claims to boost gut health? A potential customer could simply add probiotics to their vitamin regimen, or consider making changes to their diet if they have real health concerns.

Selling high end fitness equipment? A potential customer may prefer to spend less cash at a time for a gym or studio membership, where they also get some social interaction.

You could argue, perhaps correctly, that folks seeking out these alternatives are not “your customer,” but being honest about what you’re up against can only help you build stronger positioning.

✨ One marketing thing: Brilliant ad to announce a new product launch, particularly for anyone who loves both Succession and peanut butter (it’s me, I’m the target audience)

✨ One fun thing: I went to see the band Goose this past weekend (they’re from my hometown!) and they played this cover. The original is one of those songs that you know, but don’t know why you know it, and then are pleasantly surprised to hear at a jam band’s show.

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