Buying Time To Nail
Your Growth Formula
Written by Franco Varriano.
1. Overview
One of the most underrated keys to success is time. As entrepreneurs, we often assume that by working hard and gathering the right resources, we hold the odds of success and failure in our hands. The timing factor is the one you have less control over, yet highly impacts your potential for success. It’s not easy to know if now is the right time to launch. If we could all guess that, we would all be (even more) successful business owners by now. The truth is there are always going to be uncertainties, competitions and even paradigm shifts that threaten the potential of your venture.
In order to reduce uncertainties, we experiment until we find something that works. Ironically enough, the only way to experiment until you find a growth formula is buying time. In startup lingo, they call it runway. Basically, how long can you afford to survive assuming your current income and expenses stay constant. Knowing your runway is critical as it directly impacts your decision making process. Increasing your runway is even more critical as it gives you extra time to experiment until you find something that works. In the ecommerce world, there are straightforward ways to increase your runway. In this article, we will explore actionable tactics to buy time to nail your growth formula.
2. Pre-Orders
Start before you’re ready. The vast majority of ecommerce stores can start promoting their products while they are being manufactured. You can start accepting pre-orders and most importantly, start experimenting different customer acquisition strategies.
You really want to understand where your prospects are coming from, how did customers learn about your product, and what do they have in common with each other. Understanding your buyer’s persona is one of the first steps to nailing your growth formula. Pre-orders not only allow you to make money before day 1, but they give you the opportunity to understand customers before having to deal with logistics, inventory and customer service.
As soon as you start seeing trends, double down on the channel to see if there is a direct correlation between the investment and the results.
3. Build An Email List
We always advise new stores to start collecting emails as soon as the website is up, and even before the product is ready, because you have the opportunity to start building a relationship with prospects. Email marketing campaigns give you the ability to make your customers part of the journey.
You can not only test different call to actions via email, but also ask for feedback and test new strategies to see what works. Nailing your email marketing early is the most cost effective way to use your constrained marketing budget, especially in the early days.
4. Launch An Affiliate Program
If your product has the ability to be shared, an affiliate program with cross-sell initiatives is an effective way to increase your runway because your marketing expenses can be saved by utilizing established influencers to do your marketing for you.
The key here is to save money while leveraging established communication channels to promote your product. This is also a great opportunity to test different incentives to see what works and what value you can add to partners within your industry. Good partners will help you grow. As James Corr, from Only Growth said: “it’s almost like having hundreds of salespeople all over the industry in the field selling your product”.
The goal is to spend less money than you earn, although this can be tough when getting started. There are product development costs, website costs and plenty more costs that must be met before even launching the product.
While keeping costs as low as possible, it is highly important to get creative, bring revenue, and understand your buyer’s persona early. Doing those three things will not only increase your odds of success, but they will save you time and money…which significantly increase your runway.
5. Conclusion
If you’re an ecommerce merchant and don’t have automated email marketing campaigns setup for your store, you’re losing money. Right now.
Rare.io makes it easy to start using automated email campaigns for common challenges like: Welcome Series, Abandoned Carts, Order Follow-up emails and more! You can learn more about our powerful email marketing automation features here or go ahead and get started right away by using Rare.io for FREE.
And if you’re one of the thousands of merchants who are already using Rare’s Smart Email Marketing software and want to see how our Customer Success Team can work with your brand to grow your revenue – feel free to book a call at your convenience here.
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