Growth is every new Shopify merchant’s big objective.
We all want to increase sales, build brand awareness, and establish customer loyalty.
But not all growth is good growth.
The expression ‘too big for one’s boots’ is appropriate when we speak of unmanageable growth. If you grow too fast, it’s easy to end up dealing with more orders than can be fulfilled on time.
That means you’ll be disappointing customers, cancelling orders, and sending out a lot of “We’re sorry!” emails.
Here are 6 important factors to consider when planning for growth:
Cash flow – Can you afford to pay for the necessary stock, labour costs, and storage to keep up with increased demand?
Facilities – Are your current facilities large enough and well-equipped to store all your products and fulfil all your orders?
Hiring – Do you have the right staff – and enough of them – to get the work done on time?
Margins – As your expenses increase, can you remain profitable?
Tech stack – Do you have the right software set up to automate your workflows and work more efficiently?
Time – Growth requires a lot of time for administration and operations planning: do you have enough of it available?
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for any of these challenges, but they must all be considered when preparing your growth strategy.
How you grow your business will largely depend on your niche, your skill set, and the resources available to you.
If you’ve got a background in social media marketing, for example, it might be effective to start there. But if your customers aren’t on social media or your product doesn’t fit a certain channel then you’ll need to start somewhere else.
The checklist below provides a list of potential growth tactics you could implement. It is not chronological, so focus on what’s going to be the best fit for your business right now based on the considerations above.
Social media marketing (SMM) is a strategy that involves building brand awareness and driving sales through various social media platforms such as Facebook, Tik Tok, and LinkedIn.
SMM can be organic – which means you don’t pay platforms to distribute your content – or paid – which involves creating advertisements and content that you pay platforms to put in front of your target audience’s eyes.
This strategy is ideal for businesses that:
target younger audiences
sell viral products
sell low-ticket items that have short consideration stages
want to build brand awareness.
are focused on increasing their repeat customer rate
already have an existing database of email addresses
are looking for a low-cost growth strategy
know their target audience well and can break them down into obvious customer segments.
sell products that are popular among most types of people
are young and have a limited budget
aren’t afraid to get their faces out there.
know their target audience
sell products to a young base
are looking to build their own social media following.
Risks and challenges of SMM:
It’s easy to waste a lot of time and money on ads that don’t work if you don’t know what you’re doing.
It requires a strong brand identity and consistent messaging.
It can be difficult to attribute the success of organic social media campaigns.
You must first build a substantial email list before you can start marketing.
It requires some skill in copywriting to get customers to open emails and take action on them.
If done in a spammy way, your email address can get flagged and all future emails will end up in customers’ junk folders.
It requires creativity and usually physical involvement.
It comes with a risk of giving your brand a bad reputation if not executed well.
It’s difficult to attribute and measure the success of a guerilla marketing strategy.
You’ll need to carefully vet influencers to ensure your product will be seen by the right audiences.
If they perceive your product to be bad, influencers can give you a bad brand reputation.
You will need to manage influencer relationships on an ongoing basis.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a strategy in which you optimise your website to appear on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO is an element of content marketing and can be highly cost-effective when done right.
I come from an SEO background and am able to generate about 90% of my sales through SEO. In fact, it’s a large part of what made me ‘try my hand’ at ecommerce.
Now, whenever someone in New Zealand searches for the phrases “hat for big heads” or “XXL hats” on Google, my Bucket Hat for Big Heads usually appears in the top three results.
This strategy is ideal for businesses that:
have existing SEO knowledge or can afford to hire an agency
sell products or serve an industry that is commonly searched for on Google
are not worried about growing their business overnight and can afford to wait for results.
Risks and challenges of SEO:
It is a long-term strategy that requires patience and constant updating and reviewing.
There are a lot of tiny details that go into optimising a website for search results and learning everything you need to know can take a long time.
Google and other search engines are always changing their algorithms, meaning you need to keep up with the latest SEO news to maintain your position in the results.
SEO isn’t just about making your products appear in SERPs. It often also involves creating relevant, optimised long-form content to drive traffic. For example, I also sell beanies in my store, so I have written a blog about “How to wear a beanie” to drive beanie-wearers to my website.
Email marketing is one of the most reliable growth strategies when done correctly. This is because you know exactly who is receiving your messages, allowing you to communicate in a way that’s tailormade for specific audience segments.
Businesses typically develop email marketing strategies by acquiring email addresses in exchange for incentives such as discounts, special offers, and free downloadable content.
This strategy is ideal for businesses that:
are focused on increasing their repeat customer rate
already have an existing database of email addresses
are looking for a low-cost growth strategy
know their target audience well and can break them down into obvious customer segments.
Risks and challenges of email marketing:
You must first build a substantial email list before you can start marketing.
It requires some skill in copywriting to get customers to open emails and take action on them.
If done in a spammy way, your email address can get flagged and all future emails will end up in customers’ junk folders.
Guerilla marketing is an alternative marketing strategy that involves making noise, publicly, to bring attention to your business.
This is often executed by way of surprising or unique tactics. A friend of mine posted about his mattress business in local community groups. He even offered free and discounted beds to victims of recent floods.
There are plenty of ways you can implement guerilla marketing: Think outside the box and focus on making a memorable (and positive) impact.
This strategy is ideal for businesses that:
sell products that are popular among most types of people
are young and have a limited budget
aren’t afraid to get their faces out there.
Risks and challenges of guerilla marketing:
It requires creativity and usually physical involvement.
It comes with a risk of giving your brand a bad reputation if not executed well.
It’s difficult to attribute and measure the success of a guerilla marketing strategy.
Influencer marketing is a strategy that involves reaching out to popular social media accounts that share a similar audience to the one you’re trying to serve.
The influencers promote a brand or product to their following, usually in exchange for revenue share, free products, or discounts.
This strategy is ideal for businesses that:
know their target audience
sell products to a young base
are looking to build their own social media following.
Risks and challenges of influencer marketing:
You’ll need to carefully vet influencers to ensure your product will be seen by the right audiences.
If they perceive your product to be bad, influencers can give you a bad brand reputation.
You will need to manage influencer relationships on an ongoing basis.