I LOVE business. I love being in a business. I love starting businesses. I love helping other people in business and I love seeing results and businesses succeed.
But business can be hard as there is no single thing you can do to succeed and drive results. Instead, I liken it to a big jigsaw puzzle. There are LOTS of pieces to it and you have to get them all in the right place to make it work.
And there are lots of inevitable ups and downs along the way that can make you laugh and cry – and sometimes at the same time.
I have been in the business world for a long time. I started my first business, The Healthy Mummy, in 2010 and after selling it in 2022 I started another business, Healthy Active Pet which is in the pet health and food space.
And prior to this I worked in media and kind of ran my own business there – well I say kind of as I ran a sales division of the old ACP Magazines and I was lucky enough to have a great boss who let me run my own show and it felt like it was my own business.
It was working in ACP for years and running my own division that gave me the belief that I could run my own business as I used to work my socks off and smash all targets and I knew how hard I worked and I thought if I worked as hard as this on my own business I could make it work.
I am lucky enough to have a lot of experience under my belt – and a lot of failures too – to be a better business person today than I ever have been.
And over the past 2 years, one of the things I have really enjoyed is consulting with other businesses to help them grow in the ecommerce space and navigate trickier times.
And here are 8 points that I believe are key if you are or have an ecommerce business or want to transition to an ecommerce business
1) Figure out your target audience – this is so important as the online space is cluttered so you need to identify who your customer is and build the business around them
2) Don’t negate content. For me content is always king. If you run your business on a straight ad model it can be expensive. But if you build content and community around your business you will have a stickier audience and better CPA’s.
3) Make the customer number 1. Build a relationship with them. Talk to them. Listen to them and ensure they are number one in all considerations
4) Stay on top of the developing marketing and tech space. Since the launch of AI, this area is moving with lightning speed and it is an exciting time to have an ecommerce business and it is important to stay on top of the trends and what new tools are becoming available
5) Get involved in marketing and ads. Bad advertising/marketing/social content can really impact the bottom line but conversely good advertising/marketing/social content can transform your top line revenue so it is important to understand it and how it can be optimised.
6) Test, test and test again. There is no wrong or right thing to do – and you don’t truly know the results of something until you test it. Experience and knowledge can help narrow down the tests you do but testing is crucial as the customer really does know best and if they buy it then that is the result you want from the test.
7) Be nimble. Ideas are GREAT but if you spend too much time talking about them and make them too hard basket then they don’t happen or they take forever to happen which costs time and money. But if you are nimble and can get a MVP up relatively quickly – it means you learn faster too. It may not be perfect but you will soon see if it is worth pursuing and investing more into.
8) Focus on the execution. You can have a great idea but if the execution is poor then no one is going to see it, get it or buy it. Always spend time on the creative execution. Is it clear? Does it fit within the fast paced social feed we live in? Will it work well on ads? Will it convert? These are all so important areas and good execution can make a big difference in success or failure.
And finally I think a critical point in all business is to never give up. You need to be resilient and bounce back quickly when things don’t work and having a never give up attitude goes a long way to achieving short term and long term success.
And if you want to talk to me about consulting to your business contact me here