It's been over a year since Apple rolled out their mobile software upgrade iOS 14.5, which was a massive downgrade for all marketers. Also, Meta followed data privacy updates and a lot went south for a bit. Dig right into the article and find out how we adjusted and even managed to grow clients' revenue. And we’re not talking about the necessities like verifying the domain, prioritizing events, and so on... You will get some real advanced badass tips that are our bread and butter .💸
First, let's get some background and circle back to what happened in the last year and what were the reasons the performance started to drop.
Since most of the iOS users opted out (+90%), the efficiency of retargeting significantly dropped, and the performance of the Lookalike audience based on data sources that weren't being tracked correctly, began to decline. Also, you are not able anymore to target some of the interests that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive (health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation).
The limitations are seen in breakdowns, where you can't breakdown and see performance for specific placement, gender, age, and region. Then there’s delayed attribution, which is not making it any easier, and overall all metrics are overreporting or underreporting since pixel can’t track all the data properly.
Apple limited Meta advertisers to only 8 conversion events per website, which provided a significantly lower amount of data points for an algorithm to learn from and properly optimize.
Now let’s get to the juicy stuff.
Strategically, of course!😎 We stuck our heads together, brainstormed for quite a while, and then started learning, testing, and optimizing our tactics.
Inefficient retargeting? Try re-engaging audiences ✅
Retargeting audiences are getting smaller and they don't include all people - wrong! That happens only with audiences where the customer leaves the Meta platform and visits your website. We are using re-engagement audiences, for example video viewers and engagers, which are based on the first-party data from Meta.
Poor performance of Lookalike audiences? Try Lookalikes based on customers list & engaged audiences on Influencers’ pages ✅
It's a fact that Lookalike audiences based on events outside Meta platform dropped in performance. We found that lookalikes based on re-engagement and re-engagement of our whitelist influencers outperform lookalikes based on events like add to cart, view content, or website visits, because of better data and bigger audiences. Also, try importing customers lists and make lookalikes from them.
Disabled interest targeting? Try dedicated creatives. ✅
The algorithm will work its way around disabled interest and still find your targeting audience. Based on your previous performance and activity, the algorithm can assume pretty well who you want to target. You can do that with dedicated copy, dedicated creatives, and dedicated captions or text in creatives. For example, if you target pregnant women, you need to craft a copy where you address them. The creative needs to be straightforward and show a pregnant woman in the ad and the algorithm will keep pushing the ad to the right audiences.
Facing delayed attribution? Use 3rd party tracking tools. ✅
Testing a killer batch of creatives can be a pain in the ass when you get decent traction on metrics like ATCs, clicks, CPMs, but there are no purchases. You turn it off and in a few hours the sale comes in. With 3rd party tracking tools like Hyors, Triple Whale, Wicked reports, or Anytrack this doesn't happen. We gave them a try, and our golden combination is using Triple Whale and Hyros which turned out to give the most value. These tools also come in very handy when you are running time-sensitive offers and you need real-time data fast if you want to skyrocket your campaigns. You can also make rules that apply to 3rd party data, which can save you a lot of money.
Lost data from iOS opt-outs? Set up Offline conversions ✅
Since Meta pixel isn't collecting as much data as it did prior to privacy updates, sending offline conversion back to pixel is a must. This way pixel optimizes better for your desired events and also performs better. We found Integromat to be the easiest way to push these valuable pieces of data back to the Meta platform. It's completely automated and stress-free once you have connected the Meta platform and your website or CRM. You can also try to do this with Madgicx, Zapier automation, or other 3rd party apps.
These are some of the most popular tricks our team is using to deliver such awesome results. Do we think that everyone should implement them? Hell yeah!🤘
If you want to get more of these tricks let's jump on a call and let's see if we have the potential to work together and put them into action!
Fill in our "Scale" form with some basic information of your business and we'll get right back to you if we're a good fit!
Ever heard of the term a boutique agency before? Many people get thrown by that term. So, let us clear up for you exactly what that term means.
🔍 A boutique agency is a smaller advertising agency that provides more customized services and focuses on the client's industry and niche. Boutique agencies center their work on higher quality branding, strategic and creative projects.
We like to say it is a hybrid between a typical performance marketing agency and an in-house marketing department. The full focus is on the limited number of clients with dedicated teams which provide personalised approaches per each brand.
First of all, boutique agencies work with a smaller number of clients and that enables a very detailed and personal approach to every one of them.
At WeScale, we see our clients as partners and together we discuss the vision, strategy, expectations, goals, and timelines needed to reach milestones towards the big goals. It's necessary to be on the same page and share the same values and goals for the future. Both parties must have a big vision and also realistic expectations. Another component that is needed is chemistry between both parties. Mindset, trust, work ethic, and strong wish for growth are a few of the components that enable successful cooperation. A good way to see if you are a perfect fit is to start with a testing period. In approximately 2 months you should be able to see if the specific boutique agency is a perfect fit for your brand and yourself. If successful, there's where the fun begins. Teams are aligned and know exactly what is needed for the improvement and can start working on all the extra details for future growth.
Within a boutique agency, each client gets its project team working as an external marketing department. Inside this team, you will find experienced specialists who are always in touch with the latest trends and continually work on their knowledge within and outside the company. The client does not need to stress about monitoring the latest trends and tricks but they must have a person or an internal team of people who communicate with the agency and understand the ever-changing environment. At WeScale, each person can dedicate themselves to each project individually or focus on those things that interest them the most - so they become a specialist in a certain field.
Let's see if we can scale your business in Europe together! Apply to work with us, and let's talk about the possibilities of your brand.
When we start with cooperation, we usually take over certain existing channels and prepare everything for the expansion to new channels and markets. Based on the needs we suggest what can be done to help with the results and growth. Since we are a full-stack agency, we provide eCommerce strategy, media buying (Meta, Google, TikTok…), post-production of the materials, email & SMS marketing, content creation (production and UGC), and influencers. Just as it is important to choose the right clients, so is choosing your employees who are the engine of the company. We hire primarily for the mindset and values, not just experience. We hire people who share our main values: growth, teamwork, quality, honesty, and respect.
For big agencies, the one-size-fits-all proposal is most efficient. Boutique agencies are making their proposals 100% customized to the client’s needs. We always make a very thorough audit of our clients' accounts and metrics before the collaboration to get a better picture so we can determine the strategy and eventually be prepared for every situation that could come our way (iOS14 updates, for example).
A boutique agency will take the extra time and focus on learning your situation and world, designing a plan customized for your business, and then executing it and providing answers on ongoing improvements. If you search for a reliable partner that can provide quality and personal attention so you can work on other business areas next to marketing then the boutique agency is your ideal option.
Because your overall experience will be much more personal. Considering its limited partnership, a boutique agency has the time and dedication to get to know clients as people, not just companies. That being said, they will provide a much more personalized and detailed approach to your marketing. You will be in direct contact with eCommerce strategists and client solution managers who are dedicated to working on your project, so the questions you have will be answered much faster and with additional suggestions to help you perform. Being boutique doesn’t mean the team is small, it just means the team puts all of its focus on a hand-picked batch of clients with the same mindset.
Boutique agencies usually try to provide the personalised approach to each client, which includes the whole team of specialists for certain areas needed for client’s brand. They usually don't outsource because they don’t have to. They have all of the specialists that they need right there in their organization. Unlike large agencies, there are no rigid rules and procedures, boutique agencies are flexible and will adapt to your changing needs and requirements continually and offer you dynamic solutions.
In Q1 2022, many eCommerce businesses struggle with hitting KPIs, being profitable, and understanding the data on their paid social platforms.
Although it is now much more complex than during 2020 and 2021, you can still achieve excellent results if you implement the 5 tactics we use to scale our partners in Europe.
We want to guide you through what we did to achieve an incredible 1.1M € in 72 hours, hitting an MER of 4.5.
Important note: That was not in Q4; during the BFCM period, we did it at the beginning of March 2022.
Let's jump right into it.
We're mentioning this quite a lot, and our CEO Jure has been practising it for over 7 years. However, many people still don't understand the opportunity to go global with a localised approach in European markets. All gems and detailed explanation of our glocal approach are available here: Localising and scaling up eCommerce in Europe.
We strived to work closely with our client to represent the brand on the local market as local as possible to expand the potential customer base, achieve higher conversion rates, and improve the returning customer rate.
Main markets we were targeting: Germany, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
By analysing all the creatives from the past campaigns, we achieved a better success rate on the advertising side that empowered our scaling ability to move fast.
How?
We use a consistent naming structure on all our channels, so we always have a visually clear report.
By doing that and diving deep into the analysis, we can see which creatives worked best, what type of content it is, and understanding the common data points of the best-selling creatives, elements, CTAs, and advertising angles are the real winners.
Apart from our raw-data reports, we use tools to identify the best-performing creatives for each format: Scripted videos, user-generated testimonials, photos and videos, GIFs, and high-end product photos.
First, our creative team combined their lessons learned from the best performers and creativity and produced all assets for the new offer we launched with the advertising team. Second, we had clear directions about which creatives we would use on specific personas and stages of the funnel to achieve the ultimate experience for our customers.
After having these pieces in place, we went all-in into reproducing them to fit marketing strategy across all channels.
Main metrics we were analysing on paid social side:
The real power of marketing is unleashed only when you combine different channels and move away from being dependent on one channel only.
Like many others, our go-to push channel is still Facebook (still working surprisingly well & enables scaling), but the real party starts when you add email, organic channels, Influencers, TikTok, and Google to the mix.
How we separated them based on the goal:
Stoked to see results of this scale?
We'd love to hear about you and your business and see if we can grow together.
Before planning all the marketing activities, we analysed the data in Shopify first to understand the purchase behavior during the day.
Breakdown per hour in a day helped us understand which time is best to send our emails, post organic content, and Influencers to shoutout to catch the customers’ attention when they are most active.
By planning and executing these, we sent many positive signals to all the paid advertising platforms, so we scaled the budgets faster during those hours on Facebook, Google and TikTok.
When scaling the budgets 2-5x every couple of hours, you need to have a strong tool stack to understand the real-time results and not burn money during the scaling phase.
Using tracking tools enables us to follow the real KPIs in real-time, so we combined them with platform metrics to optimize and scale the right ads.
The north star metric we were following was profitability, with the combination of the MER on the market and tool stack helping us understand where the sales were coming from to help us optimize and scale smarter.
Automated rules come in handy in a flood of ads and campaigns if you want them to trigger fast and adjust the budget rapidly.
Without them, we wouldn't be able to scale the budgets confidently and reach this kind of scale across all markets.
Exclusive, time-limited, and easy-to-understand offer enabled us to scale on the new customer's acquisition side (65%+ of the revenue coming from the new customers).
We tested multiple offers with a smaller budget on cold audiences to understand the most appealing offer to scale on the top of the funnel because we know that will be the key to achieving massive growth on our daily revenue.
We combined push advertising channels using evergreen ads (higher conversion rates because of the offer) and offer-oriented ads.
The end result was 10x the daily sales in 3 days, and we did it profitably. Which we believe is the most crucial part.
And… We are done 🙂
Here there are the 5 key tactics we used to scale:
Super proud of us for delivering such amazing results!
Let us know if you have any questions about it on our social media so we can share some extra tips with you or dig deeper into a particular topic.
Till then, SCALE. 🚀
Let's see if we can scale together! Apply to work with us, and let's talk about the possibilities of your brand.
If you are curious about localization and scaling your business in multiple countries at the same time, you’ve come to the right place.
Lately we have received a lot of questions about how to localize businesses in Europe; why companies should do it; what localization brings to the revenue and work side, and other really important queries around this topic.
With these questions in mind, we developed this guide to help companies through the process of localizing their marketing, and to share some important information we’ve learned from our journey.
This article took a lot of blood, sweat and tears – not only in writing it but as a reflection of our experience generating over 130M€ in revenue across Europe with our bespoke approach to localization. We will keep this guide as up to date as possible as we continue to grow and learn new ways to help our customers succeed.
We’re going to walk you through a lot of information, so get a snack and let’s get started. 🚀
The first question we always get is “what is localization?” and it’s a fairly simple idea. We love to call it the GLOCAL approach – going global with a localized approach. This means we treat every country as a unique market (because it is) while also keeping the bigger – more global – picture in mind.
We use this approach because localization has been proven to:
Open new market opportunities;
Expand audience size at the country level; and
Build a more substantial local presence around community and branding
The next question that usually pops up is: “Every country in Europe is different! How could we possibly provide services to every country based on their local culture and language??”
Truthfully, it’s a fair question. Targeting all of Europe, in English, means one language for customer support, websites, ads, influencer and email marketing, etc. It’s certainly an “easier” approach to your marketing strategy but we challenge you to ask yourself some tough questions: Do you think a one-size-fits-all solution is the optimal way to increase your revenue and build your brand? Do you really believe this approach will build a strong presence in your local market or will inspire meaningful experiences and word-of-mouth recommendations from your existing local customers?
At WeScale, we believe that for a business to successfully scale up, it is essential to understand your local market while also maintaining an international presence.
And you don’t even have to believe us – the numbers speak for themselves:
According to CSA Research, 75% of people want to purchase products in their native language and 92.2% want to make purchases in their local currency.
To support this, we recently co-created two eCommerce stores that reached eight-figure returns with the power of going GLOCAL:
The first increased their revenue from 0 to 50M€ in four years by expanding their localized presence within 10 markets.
The second one increased revenue from 0 to 40M€ in just two years within six markets.
Additionally, with our other selected partners, we have expanded their reach across Europe by localizing their approach, reaching seven and eight-figure revenue with their stores.
When we use the GLOCAL approach, we test each new market with English-language websites and ads to build a trusted, international brand and create a global tribe around your business. Once we see momentum, we capitalize quickly by jumping straight into localization to position you as a stronger player in the local market.
To do this, we increase brand presence through localized stores, logistics, customer support, and marketing to become a solid local brand. With increased visibility comes increased revenue, profitability, omnichannel presence, social proof, community, and branding.
On the flip side, we also work with a lot of small businesses with a significant local presence trying to expand to new markets to broaden their potential audience size, increase their revenue and profitability and create a global community around their products and brand. We approach their expansion into new markets the same way.
Are you with us so far? If so, let’s continue with some actionable steps to take your business GLOCAL.
Choosing where to expand can be a challenge. We recommend the following steps to help streamline the process:
If you have an international store, analyze where people come to the website and buy products from, whether they’re direct purchase, influencers, PR, or organic traffic.
One of our favorite ways to choose a market is to use Similarweb to analyze and understand the strengths of competitors and bigger players. With Similarweb, we can easily understand the breakdown of traffic within a country including its sources and much more.
The great thing about Europe is that there are multiple options for the size and types of markets to expand into:
There are big markets, such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland with populations of over 20M that enable you to tap into 10-30M€+ yearly in a single market.
The mid-sized markets, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, the Czech Republic, and Belgium have 10-20M people and provide an interesting opportunity to expand your localized efforts.
There are also smaller countries with populations of less than 10M that allow savvy businesses to capitalize where competing companies may not consider.
(For reference, here is a list of European countries by population)
WeScale Tip: If you are a small business from a smaller country (less than 5M people), and you make between 200K€ and 300K€ per month, our advice would be to first try and tackle 2-3 mid-size markets to create a more substantial presence before expanding into larger markets. We’ve also seen considerable similarities in purchasing behavior based on market size and purchasing power (GDP per capita), so that might be a good tip for you, based on where you start.
WeScale Disclaimer: while these are our general predictions, there is always room for exceptions. For example, we experienced 20M€ revenue in one country with a population of 10M and abysmal performance in a different, larger market – so the moral of the story is there are no hard and fast rules, you can create them and we can help!
This step is optional based on your experience and budget but we wanted to share it anyway.
We recommend creating Facebook ads (if this is your preferred channel), in English, with regional targeting (Europe, European Economic Area, etc.) and using your international website to understand the purchase intent of a particular country.
The metrics to look at are:
WeScale Tip: We usually go two rounds with this kind of assessment:
When this is ready, it’s time for translation. Let’s scale!
Oh no, wait, we’ve forgotten to tell you something REALLY important.
In the past, we’ve tried many ways to quickly expand to new markets, and we always come back to this first, crucial step:
“Do your research first!”
We’re not sure why, but this step sometimes gets left out, and it can cost you down the road.
We’ll share a practical example with you; maybe it resonates:
Five years ago, when I was two years into eCommerce and marketing, I had just started discovering the opportunity to expand to other markets. Before that, I was only advertising in Slovenia and saw that sales were flattening out over time. I wanted to expand into Germany because it’s a big market with a lot of potential customers. The tactic was to localize the language on the website and in ads, then watch the sales skyrocket in the analytics. Surprisingly, the sales were high, mostly coming through the COD (cash-on-delivery) payment option. I believe we sold like 5.000 units in only 5 days!
This is where the story takes a turn: the result was that 70% of the products sold were returned to the warehouse because people didn’t know about/weren’t used to the cash-on-delivery option (which is popular in Slovenia, but not in Germany). Customers in the German market wanted to pay with the methods they were used to (such as Kauf auf Rechnung, Sofort, etc. which are must-haves in Germany). When we got feedback from the customers that returned their items, it was abundantly clear that we missed the mark – these customers were expecting to receive the product and pay for it later with Klarna like they were used to.
This really made it clear to us that every country has unique characteristics, and success rides on understanding these particularities. Since then, we have learned that there are many other small things to successfully implementing a local campaign and that doing the research first was the most important step to make sure nothing was missing in the customer journey.
We definitely learned from our mistakes, so in the next section we’ll go through our lessons learned so you don’t make them too.
This one might seem obvious, but we can tell you from experience that in many cases, people just don’t do it (we don’t understand it either).
What to look for:
WeScale Tip: We create a folder on our Drive called “Research” to gather all the information in one place so the whole team can view it and update it at any time.
It’s always smart to see what marketing tactics the local players are using. Our advice here would be to analyze:
Ok. You’ve made it this far. Good work! We’ve covered a lot of ground – we’ve looked at the what and why of localization, how to choose new markets, and we’ve reminded you to do the research (ALWAYS). Now we want to show you how to prepare your business for localization. You may want to stretch for this.
We want to share with you the main areas of localization to look for when going GLOCAL with your eCommerce store and marketing assets.
We’re going to start at the top with language, then move through checkout, and end with marketing because as we’ve learned, the biggest problems usually appear in the lower parts of the purchasing funnel.
We find that the true voice of a brand is best captured by those who have first-hand experience with the target market. When localizing, we always recommend working with local copywriters to maintain the authenticity of the marketing and to make sure nothing is (literally) lost in translation.
WeScale tip: Make sure to check multiple websites, email marketing, social media, and ads from different sources to catch the authentic voice of your target market.
Payment methods are super important because if you want to play as a local player, you obviously want to offer the same purchasing experience expected from all the local stores.
Here are some examples:
This information is easily obtained from the biggest local stores in the market as well as in local industry reports regarding the popularity of payment methods.
The second crucial option after payment is to look at shipping methods.
Some countries prefer a particular logistic partner, especially if you offer COD or have a high return rate. Check bigger local stores to see what they use, and keep in mind that your target audience might love it if they have multiple delivery options to choose from. For some countries (like Germany) it’s a huge upside to have fast shipping because it’s a common option in the other stores and is expected within the market. This ties back to doing your research – understanding expectations around delivery times in each local market gives you an advantage to onboard new customers seamlessly.
Installment Payment Systems might also help your conversion rate if this is a standard in the market and the AOV is high enough.
Here is a comparison of different services that offer installments:
Confirm the usual standard for money-back guarantees within the target market and how/where it is communicated to the customer. (It might be on the home page, in the sticky bar, product page, during checkout, etc.)
Keep in mind that in some countries and/or niches the timelines for money-back guarantees vary in length. Moreover, depending on your product, also consider including the option for customers to upgrade their purchase to an extended guarantee.
There’s not much to say here: every market is different so we strongly advise you to learn about the local taxes from a professional.
Understanding how locals view companies in their markets helps businesses build credibility when they are looking to expand. For some markets (like Germany) that are more “safety-first buyers,” they expect to know a lot about the company e.g. the story, when it was founded, the team, the culture, the vision, etc.
When your potential customer is scrolling on their mobile through your website, two of their main concerns are usually:
To tackle safety, make sure you have your trust badges and payment options icons, and try to include some local certificate badges and/or famous media badges (local + international) where you were featured. You can find ideas from the local stores, magazines, online articles, etc.
Concerning social proof: one of the crucial things you need to do is to add local reviews from Influencers, customers, publishing companies etc.
WeScale Tip: Combine the product-based reviews with general store reviews, posts on social media (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Influencers, etc.), online articles, and third-party review sites (Trustpilot is popular in many countries) because this enables a 360-degree overview of the business.
The trick to this is a good understanding of what the key communication channels for customer support are. Do they expect to message on the messenger or email directly? Maybe there is a standard for mobile phones or WhatsApp?
WeScale tip: Start with one (preferably email) and then try to test additional communication channels.
We have a lot to say about our tactics for localizing marketing efforts – so much, in fact, that it might need its own article.
That said, we would still love to share some of the main areas to focus on and our tips on how to get started.
The idea is to localize the content as much as possible using as many avenues as you can. You can find our tips for this in these two articles:
For emails, make sure you use a local copywriter for the communication and to start the local automation flows as soon as you launch the first round of ads.
To start, we recommend these four automation flows using Klaviyo:
For paid social ads (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, etc.), our first strategy is usually to start with the best-selling creatives and copies from the existing markets, reviewed and adjusted by the local copywriter.
The next move is to test the concepts you researched from local competitors r to find some local winners in the market.
WeScale tip: Make sure to cover the whole sales funnel with re-engagement, retargeting and retention ads from the start to target people at the different levels.
You can learn more about our advertising funnel here.
Make sure that you have your branded search, dynamic search ads, and generic ads running on Google (at least) because any push on the paid social side will create a demand that boosts search volume around your products and brand name.
We always recommend starting with your best-selling products from the existing markets because you already know the creativity and the communication that works.
If you have a huge range of products, we highly recommend creating a shortlist to test the new market (maybe start testing with a dedicated landing page) so you can move fast and then consider adding additional products as your brand gains recognition.
WeScale tip: Analyze the best-selling product categories and products at the local level on a weekly/monthly basis.
We have seen that in many cases, it might turn out that some products/categories popped up from others, and there is a huge opportunity to scale.
We know this was a long article but we really wanted to share some of the main lessons we’ve learned on our journey with our amazing clients. We’re still learning every day about what works for a specific businesses – yet our results speak for themselves and we’re pretty confident that the tips and tricks we’ve given you here are a great place to start.
If there are two things you should take away from this guide it’s this:
So now that you know, what’s the next step for you?
Our goal is to create the ultimate guide to localization so we promise to add more content around webshops and marketing in every round of updates. If there is something you think we should add to our list, feel free to email us at: info@wescale.agency.
If you want to learn more about our current work and the lessons we’re learning, follow us on social media or join our email list to be a part of our journey:
To wrap up this article, we want to share with you a couple tips that have enabled us to scale even higher in local markets.
Later in your journey, we recommend hiring a local CRO agency or local eCommerce specialist to review your website and marketing so you can upgrade your localization efforts and boost sales.
As just one example, we hired a local agency to consult for us and the recommendations they made for a local market helped us scale one client’s monthly revenue from 120K€ to 180K€ and increase their CR from 1.7% to 2.4% in less than two months.
It’s also really important to ask customers, site visitors, and/or the local community for their feedback – whether it’s about introducing new products or improving the website or understanding the personas, or really anything else you are struggling to understand or want to upgrade.
Here are our top three tools for gathering feedback:
Enquire – Post-purchase survey
Typeform – for creating your own surveys for your email list(s) or social media community
As we dived into the H2 of 2021, we've got our heads full with mixed quirks, it got us wondering - how to get the best out of H2?
It is safe to say that this year will leave a significant mark on the digital advertising space due to the lack of the privacy changes, limited tracking abilities, and rock numbers on the digital advertising platforms.
We at WeScale started preparing early for the H2, with the Q4 focus in our minds, targets, and Asana projects.
To help you get the most out of the rest of 2021, we went into action, found 21 global industry experts, and asked each of them to share their advice for growth in 2021.
Let's jump right in. First, let's hear some great tips from eCommerce experts about Multi-channel and stability.
" Become obsessed with a multi-channel mix that is centered around pull marketing and brand building - that is where the opportunity is. Businesses that rely on one strategy that they have had historical success with will die out and burn cash."
John Hagan, Co-Founder of the VOLT agency
"Think about growth strategically. Are you dependent on one primary channel? It's time to expand. Where do additional strategic growth opportunities lie? More markets, more products, new categories, more focus on repeat customers? Map out the key directions that can deliver both growth and long-term sustainability. And then start acting on them."
Rok Hrastnik, CEO of Guericom.com
"Tracking and single-channel attribution will become (and is already now) one of the biggest challenges to drive growth, in comparison with 2020.
On the front side, one major key will be differentiating paid acquisition channels focusing on MER, while running in parallel longer-term brand awareness & brand reputation activities (like influencer marketing and PR) to counteract the ongoing increase of advertising costs.
From a profitability and sustainability standpoint, we will need to embrace more and more the concept of Customer Centricity.
Ecommerce Brands have now, more than ever, the need to maximize every chance possible to increase Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, and Customer Engagement, even after the first transaction.
This will primarily help the brand to continue staying "on top of mind," secondly, as a consequence, will lead to a longer and higher Customer Lifetime Value (which is, unfortunately, too often neglected by many brands)."
Emanuele Maragno, CMO & Co-Founder at Ecom House
"Media buying is getting more and more expensive, so you have to learn how to monetise your audience better (increase AOV, CR, and retention). There is always a way. Also, most of the brands usually rely on FB, so mental exercise "what if FB was gone" would be a good kick in the ass to come up with new ways when acquiring your customers."
Erikas Plotkinas, CMO at Kilo.Health
"Think about your store and product selling process as a funnel. As competition grows, your ability to maximize the value of each customer is crucial for the scalability of your brand. Exit intent popup with discounts and automation, order bumps, and in cart upsells + 3-4 upsells so you can be as profitable with each transaction. Have these in place, and you will crush 2021!"
Alex Fedotoff, founder of eCommerce Scaling Secrets
These were some golden nuggets about the multi-channel marketing strategies and how to build a company that focuses on stability, growth, and/or scalability.
Let's hear more about building internal operations and strategies that can support the growth.
"Constant adaptation to the response of the market or customers should be the primary guide for further directions of the company's path and developing new products/services. In my opinion, the growth of the eCommerce will generate an excellent product or service, creative designs that will be attractive for potential buyers, and the ability to adapt to changes quickly; by that, I mean usage of multi-channel platforms for revenue diversification, timely entry into foreign markets or the addition of products or. Product categories to the existing portfolio. The focus of companies, stable revenue, and growth will in the future be based on creating added value for the user, financial stability, having a complete overview of the business operations, and above all of that having a team that will perform as one unit from marketing, sales, and after-sales activities."
Eva Škedelj, Head of Facebook Slovenia at Httpool, Facebook ASP
"2021 is the year of tracking, so as boring as it may seem, if you don't have control of your numbers, looking beyond the ads platforms, you're going to leave money on the table and make bad decisions. Be ready for a big Q4 and prepare to use multiple data sources to make the right decisions on optimisation and scaling."
Depesh Mandalia, Founder of The BPM Method
"Quit using ROAS as a key metric. Looking at ROAS means you’re thinking about return instead of total profit - and we’re all in business to grow profits, right (not ratios)? Instead, select a gateway product or two, design a customer acquisition method for it, and set an allowable CPA you’re willing to spend to acquire a customer through that gateway product."
Deacon Bradley, Founder of Sharp Business Method
I know this is nothing new, but in my opinion, any business that wants to grow should focus on its team. Having a strong leadership team as well as the teams on the front lines is critical to the success of any business. It’s not easy to create a space where criticism can be given freely without taking offense. A place where team members feel respected and valued and bring in their best selves to work day after day. I think investing money, time, and heart in your team is the best way to have your business grow, in 2021 and any other year."
Boštjan Belingar, CEO of Hustler Marketing
"Focus on collecting and leveraging first-party data. Here are four steps I’d take:
Step 1: Investigate what first-party data you're currently collecting and come up with a list of what information you want to start collecting.
Step 2: Aggregate this data in a way where it’s easily accessible, and it’s easy to draw insights from
Step 3: Leverage this data across all your major channels to create a well rounded omnichannel approach that’s highly personalized for each consumer.
Step 4: Continually find ways to enrich this data. For example, leveraging email marketing is a great way to do this. Especially if you leverage Klaviyo’s ability to create links that auto-add custom properties to subscribers' profiles. Essentially you can survey and learn more about users directly within emails based on what people click on."
Chase Dimond, Partner at Structured and Founder of ChaseDimond.com
These five tips give us a lot to think about, but wait for it - there's more. The following section is about retention and building a community.
Let's start with the first one from Jan, a very short and sweet tip.
" Don't underestimate retention. "
Jan Vranjek, VP Europe at Flaviar
"Build out an SMS channel in 2021 if you haven't already. With open rates of 98%, SMS is a must for incremental revenue with your owned audience. Good brands should expect 20% of their revenue to come from their email list, and an additional, incremental revenue stream of 10-20% from SMS."
Eric Dyck, Founder at DTC Newsletter and Podcast
"Start focusing on customer lifetime value more than ever. In the first half of this year, we could see changes with Facebook, and Google will soon implement big changes. The cost of traffic acquisition is soaring, and tracking is becoming more complex while customer retention is still underrated."
Daniel Budai, CEO of Budai Media
"Understand your audience and build strong connections with them. This is one of the biggest advantages smaller brands have to differentiate themselves from the big ones to grow fast."
Daniel Bidmon, CEO of ECOM HOUSE
We are huge believers that the only way your marketing works is if you are consistently working on your content strategy.
Let's visit the following section about user-generated content, content creation, and testing.
"Testing, testing, testing, and UGC (User-Generated Content). A vast majority of the DTC brands advertising on FB & IG aren’t doing even close enough testing to get optimal results. Of course, increased testing brings many challenges. One of which is getting a wide variety of content to test in the first place. UGC offers an efficient way to scale diverse, authentic content that is native to FB & IG platforms which results in an increased number of tests and super-effective Ads."
Sebastian Novin, Co-Founder of Influee
"I strongly recommend using the 15x1 Method in Ethical Performance Marketing Ads. This means creating 15 different versions for the first second of the video ads while keeping the rest of the video the same. We were so positively surprised with the 82% uplift in our Return on Ad Spend by creating 15 versions of the first second. Wishing you all the best and go out and crush the first second for your amazing video ads!"
Chris Erthel, Co-Founder of Meller
"1. Have a methodical and consistent approach to creative testing
More than ever, in 2021, you need to step up your creative testing game by increasing not only the amount of content you test but also the quality; inferior content will not survive.
Make sure you test as many hooks/angles as you can think of (different people will be attracted to the same product for different reasons), look as native to the platform as possible and test all the different creative formats each platform offers.
2. Get help from others
Many times the problem is that you "don't know what you don't know." Get help from consultants, mentors, agencies, or reach out to other companies to swap notes; it will give you the confidence to hear the experience of how others solved the challenges you are having right now and accelerate your growth and scale exponentially." Fred Alves, Founder of GoGoGrowth
Fred Alves, Founder of GoGoGrowth
"Hire a creative director. This person needs to edit and shoot content themselves. The number 1 blindspot I see with brands is their lack of respect to the volume of content needed for all channels of advertising."
Nick Shackelford, CEO of Structured
After reading all the 18 tips for growth in 2021 by the eCommerce industry experts, what topic is still missing?
Performance 🙂
Our number 1 passion.
Let's jump right in and hear from 3 experts that are skyrocketing businesses across the globe.
"Since we're primarily focusing on Facebook as the main revenue-generating platform, my main advice would be - work on your naming conventions. After iOS14, we don't have data anymore about demographics, but we can still collect that if naming conventions are set up the right way. We are able to collect data about age, ethnicity, gender, hair color & much more about the creative itself, like format, style, messaging, etc. Meaning that we're able to narrow it down to what works the best and stop wasting money on creative testing!"
Arnas Jacevicius, CEO of A Cool Agency
"If you are below $300k a month stop overthinking branding! Focus on performance marketing, launching as many products as you can, and getting attention/sales first. Branding is what takes businesses over $20M+ a year but doesn't have much impact till you get customers and eyes. You have to understand the stage of growth you're in and the critical activities of it to grow to the next one."
Darius Kunca, Co-founder at AdKings eCommerce Growth Agency
"Focus on Growing your CAC-to-LTV Ratio & scale profitably as aggressively as you can. We’re now in a bullish market, and you have the best conditions ever to become a market leader in your niche."
Yahav Hartman, CEO. Madgicx.com
And that's a wrap, 21 tips for to get the best out of your growth potential in 2021.
Hope you got a lot out of it, and if you have any question about the strategies explained above, don't hesitate to reach out.
To sum up this article, it gives me great pleasure to wish you high revenue, great blended ROAS, and have fun in H2 this year.
If you’re a DTC (direct-to-customer) brand and struggling with producing content, UGC might be your way out. What’s the fuss about UGC? User-generated content is any textual or visual content, produced by people using your brand’s product or services, i.e. users. While high-end branding photos and videos will give you a premium touch, raw, and unedited UGC will give you genuine credibility. People trust people easier than they trust ads - simple as that.
Acquiring UGC might be a hard nut to crack from the start and it might take more time and effort to build a solid base of it. Start with encouraging existing customers to leave a review on your website or Facebook page. From our perspective, there are 3 solutions to fix the content creation problem with cost and quantity:
If you’re at your raw beginning, you might want to postpone trying out the first option due to lack of budget and longer delivery times. If you have the knowledge, the resources, and the place to set up your studio, give option 2 a go. Keep in mind that aside from those things, you also need an experienced team to back you up. A strong plus to this option is having complete control over the execution, production, and delivery of the content. Let’s focus on the last option - creating your own UGC creative engine.
But why even choose UGC? For starters, it’s cost-efficient without any massive prior investment. A lot of people are willing to share their experience with your brand in the form of photos, video testimonials, or reviews in exchange for your products.
Briefing, briefing, and more briefing - content creators and influencers cannot deliver on-point content if even you yourself aren’t sure what your objectives are. If you’re aiming at gaining more brand awareness and recognition, do mass outreach to a lot of nano and micro-influencers. What might come in handy here is engaging with your actual clients and nurturing your user-brand relationship. When you feel you have the experience and the budget, contact macro influencers and your local celebrities.
If your goal is getting more conversions, search for more medium-sized profiles rather than placing all your eggs in one mega influencer basket. A small investment or giving away a collection of your products might start a great partnership with your chosen influencer and if your product is at the right place at the right time, it will result in conversions.
2. Don’t go balls to the wall, take it easy.
Define the scale of the influencer profile you’re looking for - nano, micro, macro. If you’re on a tight budget, start with nano influencers. While it may be time-consuming in the long run, this is a fast way to get a lot of raw and unedited content from genuine people. Profiles with a smaller following might not have the desired reach, but they often have a more loyal audience. They are more likely to collaborate in exchange for fair compensation and free product.
Be open to people that reach out to your brand with their proposal - you probably already won them over and caught their attention, so they are ready to take it up a notch and become your brand’s ambassador. If they reach out to you and their profile has a decent engagement-to-following ratio, propose a fair deal for both sides.
“Okay, where and how do I start?”
There are 2 ways of creating your very own UGC engine. Either start reaching out and acquiring content on your own or find an existing influencer marketing and on-demand content creation tool. If you want to avoid third-party commissions, start sending emails to chosen profiles or message them on their profiles.
A simple summary of the said options is:
For on-demand content creation campaigns, stick to existing tools. There are tons of up-to-date software and tools that let you open your first content creation campaign and there’s tons of material on how to do it. Our personal favourite is Influee, mostly because it offers everything we need to create a killer campaign brief and negotiations: Campaign guidelines, mood board, clear overview of applicants, deliverables, and delivered content.
For collaborations with macro and mega influencers, go with cold pitching and personalised email outreach. The primary goal of said collaborations is incorporating your product into the influencer’s lifestyle and appearing on their profiles to reach their audience. While these collaborations are often a lot more pricey, you can ask them to deliver the content they posted and use it as social proof on your website or ads.
Let’s focus on the first and more time-consuming option - Reaching out.
3. Create an unique pitch. Make sure to introduce yourself so the addressee knows who’s reaching out and which brand you’re representing. State the obvious facts why you think your products will fit their lifestyle and how you differ from other brands. What always did wonders for us is highlight a few things about their presence that caught our attention. For example, a certain influencer is Youtube-native and you’re enjoying their vlogs on Youtube. Tell this person which episode was your favourite and what part of it stuck with you.
4. Send follow-ups. Always log negotiations and deals you made with each person, even if you only reached out and did not get an answer yet. Try again. And then again in 2 weeks. They might be preoccupied with other projects at the moment and missed your email or they weren’t sure if they had the time capacity to start a new collaboration just yet.
5. Always negotiate the price and deliverables. The most common mistake is closing a deal without a brief description of what your expectations are about the content. Propose the deliverables first, then negotiate a price. If you’re planning to use their content on your profiles and advertising campaigns, make sure to mention it forward and ask for content rights.
6. Set the date of content delivery. If the content will be posted to the creator’s profile as well - ask about the expected date of posting. If you're working with macro-influencers with over 10K followers, generate a UTM link that they can include in their stories and bio. It costs you nothing to generate a UTM, but it gives you an insight into the traffic they drove to your site and how profitable this posting was for you. If you're aiming for more conversions, agree on a discount code for bigger profiles and track profitability by monitoring promo codes as well.
Option 2: Using on-demand content creation software
The assets needed to start this campaign are as follows:
After you have checked the two above, move on to opening your very first campaign and talking with content creators. Check their previous work and decide if their content style fits the vibe of your brand. Keep in mind that most content creators have a distinguished style that differentiates them from others. While they probably will be willing to follow your brand guidelines, it is still better to leave them with at least some creative freedom.
3. Having an Instagrammable product and paying loads to a mega influencer does not guarantee any conversions
Enter the user-generated content campaign journey with a simple mindset - it will not give you a direct or measurable ROI, at least not to all extents.
RELEVANCE x REACH x RELATIONSHIP
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: There are no secret formulas to creating a million-dollar campaign and there are no shortcuts to discovering your winning collaboration. The sooner you start reaching out and closing deals, the sooner you can test different formats and pieces of user-generated content.
Do your homework and explore the most influential people in your niche. For starters, aim for medium-sized profiles and find the profiles that fit your target persona best. When reaching out, be friendly and speak their language, while maintaining a professional approach at the same time. Don’t try to sell them your products at all costs and use cringe-worthy email templates. It will backfire and you will be filed directly under the “Do not answer” category.
4. The best for the last - double down on successful collaborations and try dark posting
Scale the organic content that reached the KPIs and put it on steroids. If you can allocate more budget to the influencer marketing and UGC, work on your ambassador program. There is no formula to say how long your trial ambassador contract should last, but for starters, we recommend 3 months. In 3 months, you should receive a decent batch of content, decide if their following fits your target audience (or if they helped to reach a brand new audience group), and form a mutually satisfactory partnership.
If you feel confident that this person should be the face of your brand, try dark posting from their profile. Influencer dark posts are ad-only purpose posts from the influencer's profile that cannot be seen on their feed. The brand does not gain control over their social media profiles, only the permission to advertise from them. Dark posting renders the conventional direct-response ads less effective. Dark posts appear more user-friendly and trustworthy and as we said at the beginning: people trust people more than they trust ads.
Additional resources:
UGC: One of the biggest secrets of 7- and 8-figure brand: https://wescale.agency/knowledge/ugc-one-of-the-biggest-secrets-of-seven-and-eight-figure-brands/
All journeys start with the first step on the long road towards the goal, full of challenges, opportunities, and adjustments. With this article, I would like to guide you through the beginning of our agency WeScale.
In August 2019, I had just finished working as a CMO in one of the fastest growing eCommerce companies in the region. In four years, we got from 0 to 50 MM € revenue by bringing together the best of Facebook, Instagram, Influencers, Content creation, localization, and direct response tactics to build up a strong beast in the industry.
Selling in 13 different markets, being strongly connected with other prominent players in the market, leading a 30+ people marketing team, and being part of a C-level management, gained us a lot of knowledge in the eCommerce area.
Some of the main areas were: how to grow, fast-paced a/b testing, implementing different growth hacks, opening new markets, introducing new products, dealing with challenges, creating original video & photo content, integrating Influencer marketing in eCommerce, and much much more.
Back to the drawing board: How to scale these results and help more companies?
At 27 years old, after being in the industry for more than five years, I was at the stage where I had to start from 0 again.
To tell you the truth, this was one of the most exciting things in my life.
Being at home, sitting at my table in the bedroom with my laptop and just thinking about what to do next; Like the first time, when I was starting with my own company.
I wanted to do something different, something that will help our partners grow and inspire others in the industry to go out there and do incredible things on their own.
So the first step was the decision on what I wanted to do. It went somehow like this.
I started thinking...
Since I started my journey, I have always loved the performance side of marketing, looking at the numbers, coming up with ideas with a team, and running thousands of tests to find the winning ads for scaling.
So the first part is clear; it will definitely be a performance-oriented company.
The next question for me was: Whom I want to serve?
The answer was easy → eCommerce businesses that sell products that improve people's lives, meaning that I wanted to work with companies that bring smiles and joy to the customers.
I was thinking deeper...
I compared my years in the agency that I owned to the year I worked in-house for an eCommerce company.
They both had pluses and minuses, and after hours of brainstorming with my sister Maja, who is an excellent coach; 100 podcasts that I listened to on my phone while hiking and tons of Zoom calls with my new network of people in the eCommerce area; I thought of ways of combining all of my years of experience.
That's when the ideas of Boutique eCommerce Growth Agency came to life.
Boutique eCommerce Growth Agency as a business model
Sounds interesting, right?
"But what does it mean?" I asked myself, because I wanted a clear picture of what I wanted to do for many years to come.
So the idea was to build a company of ecommerce professionals who love eCommerce and want to create inspiring stories together by learning new things and executing strategies that would help turn branded life-improving products into brands.
By serving a limited number of clients (quality > quantity), we would be able to go deep into each product and create an excellent environment for personal and business growth for our team members and our clients.
That was it!
After going through the plan, I had an idea of what kind of company I want to start building for the next 10+ years. I got super excited about it, knowing this plan will get me out of bed in the morning for many years to come. On the journey, we will be able to work with many amazing people - people we would never meet, if we weren't on this journey and knowledge we otherwise would not have the chance to gain.
All I could say at the end of that day was: Let's go! ?
Building a 12-member team in a year with zero employee churn
Super excited with a pretty clear idea, it was time to start.
How did it start?
I started working as a freelancer with three clients that I found within my Facebook and LinkedIn contacts. I got on with testing if I can implement some of my ideas and if they would result in sales growth.
This was in late September and October 2019, only one month after leaving the company. Those who had known me for a long time know that I am awful at taking breaks.
I rented a table in the coworking space near my home and started doing the work.
So the first three projects were all at their beginning, generating 5-15 K €/month and selling in a single country. The fastest way was to start in my own country, because I had some strong contacts here, and speed is always essential for marketing and eCommerce.
I didn't wait to find the perfect name for a one-person agency :); I believed that it would come naturally down the road. I started executing and getting feedback on the market.
For the first couple of weeks, I didn't have much execution to do, since the projects had just begun, so the budgets were small and stock limited, but I decided to go all-in and there were no excuses for me.
I started learning 3-4 hours a day about different growth hacking approaches on digital channels, studying the digital-first eCommerce brands and founders, doing the courses, making notes, and creating a plan at which stage to implement tests.
One precious thing was (and still is) the direct communication with clients; I can clearly remember how many hours we invested in our conversation via Slack, Zoom, or just sitting at the coffee shop.
I still believe that this is one of the best ways to shape your business and relationship because you understand the needs, vision, and business.
The first responses within November & December 2019 were incredible; partners loved the strategy we were discussing. We opened the first new countries together, worked with other freelancers to create content, and scaled the sales results.
That was a massive win for me.
Not only did I get the social proof confirming this is something valuable to work on, but at that moment, the name of our agency was born: WeScale.
From one man band to three musketeers
In December 2019, I decided to transform "me" into "we" and start a WeScale agency to help eCommerce businesses grow.
In order to do that, I needed a team, and I went back to my connections on LinkedIn and Facebook to find the people I wanted to work with.
So my first two hires were directly picked and reached out from my contact lists.
They are Jure & Nika, who I both already knew and always wanted to work with, because I always believed we shared the same mindset.
Jure was first, and Nika joined the company a few weeks later. We met in the cafe, and I explained my vision for the company, what I believe they could bring to the team and what I think we can do together.
I'm super grateful that they believed in me and the idea, so they both said yes, and on January 15th, 2020, WeScale officially became more than a one-man band. We started operating as a team and building infrastructure and systems to empower eCommerce growth in Europe.
With that, the exciting story of WeScale had begun. In less than a year and a half, we have worked with 10 hand-picked clients, built a team of 18 KPI-driven individuals and broke dozens of records. On behalf of the whole team, I would like to thank you for your support; our community, family, friends, partners, mentors, and all the others that helped us start and chase our vision. Thank you!
#wescale
