There is no worse feeling than remembering you don’t have this weeks’ email written yet… and you better get a post up… and… and… and… 

On the flip side, there is no better feeling than having a months’ worth of content created and scheduled in advance. It frees up your mind to work on the business and gives your brain space to think about other creative ideas to grow your business. 

This is why I encourage our students to commit to a planning day once a quarter. In eComm Club we hold a 4-hour planning workshop for the coming quarter, every 3 months. This gives online store owners a dedicated time and space to plan their content for the coming 3 months. 

But once you’ve got your content planned, you need to create and schedule it. Sometimes editing is also required. 

This is where batching comes in and is your best friend. 

What is batching? 

Batching is where you spend dedicated time to a “batch” of similar tasks. 

If you take one video, edit the video, write the caption and then schedule the post it can take hours and it’s not the best use of your time. 

While you have your hair and makeup done (if that’s your thing) then record a whole bunch of videos. Then on a separate batch you can do all the editing, another batch for writing the content, and another for scheduling all your posts. This way you get in the headspace of doing just that one task and it helps you to be more productive. 

What can you batch?

• Planning content (this should be separate to your doing)
• Writing email broadcasts
• Recording videos
• Editing videos
• Creating images for social
• Writing social media captions
• Scheduling social media posts
• Taking product photos
• Updating product descriptions
• Updating and tweaking your website
• Writing Facebook ad copy
• Creating Facebook ads

I highly recommend a monthly recording day where you get your hair and makeup done and record all your video content for the upcoming month. You can do this with a friend, have a planning session over breakfast with Mimosas and then take videos for each other throughout the day.

Tips for a successful batch session

1. Carve out dedicated time

If it’s not in your calendar, it’s not going to happen. Carve out a dedicated time for you to commit to your content production or scheduling. You might like to look at a virtual assistant to schedule your content if time is really critical for you, but we recommend that you create it, especially until you find a rhythm, because no-one can speak in your voice.

2. Be prepared 

Be prepared for a successful batch session. Don’t sit down hungry, have a water bottle within reach, turn off all notifications. This includes your kids, partner and colleagues. Ok, if they don’t have an “off” button let them know that you are in serious work mode and do-not-disturb. 

Have a list of everything you want to get done during your batch session, or all the content you want to film.

3. Use a Pomodoro timer

Pomodoros are dedicated intervals of 25 minutes focus and 5 minute breaks. I use a Chrome extension called Marinara Pomodoro Assistant to keep me on track. If you want to smash out a bunch of content, use Pomodoros and challenge yourself to get a certain amount of content done in a 25 minute focus Pomodoro. I catch up with a friend to do “power sessions”. We both jump on Zoom, say what we’re going to get done in the 25 minutes and then mute the mic while we work and then use the 5 minute break to check in on each other. It helps to have someone to hold me accountable even if I’m working by myself at home. 

Batching is super powerful and if you commit to it to get your content done, your brain and your business will love you for it!

Knowing your customer is critical to the success of your online store. By having a clearly defined Ideal Customer Avatar you will be able to create and target messaging that aligns with them, creates connection and gets them to buy from you. Once you start making sales it’s really important to have an in-depth understanding of who your high-value customers are so you can find more of them! 

Here are 4 really powerful insights into your audience you can get from Google Analytics. 

Traffic & Conversions by Age 

By going to Audience > Demographics > Age you will be able to see the breakdown of the revenue generated by each age bracket. 

If you select the table view you can get a detailed view of the sessions, bounce rate, pages/session, average session duration, transactions, revenue and the conversion rate.

Don’t be tempted to look at one success metric in isolation here. You want to look at revenue and conversion rate. If the conversion rate is really high in one age bracket, like the 65+ bracket above, you may be tempted to think that this is worth pursuing more. But if you then look at the other metrics such as revenue and sessions, you will see that there haven’t been many people in this age bracket come to your site. There isn’t enough data to draw a conclusion around this demographic yet, so test it, but keep a close eye on it. You might find that by driving more traffic to your site in this age bracket will lower your conversion rate. 

Traffic & Conversions by Gender 

In the same section under Audience > Demographics > Gender you can see a  detailed view of the sessions, bounce rate, pages/session, average session duration, transactions, revenue and the conversion rate broken down by gender. 

You can see here that although most of the revenue is coming from female purchasers, the males who do come to the site convert at 6.54%. This means that when they do visit the online store they have high purchase intent. 

Traffic & Conversions by Location

By going to Audience > Geo > Location you can see a breakdown of sessions, bounce rate, pages/session, average session duration, transactions, revenue and the conversion rate by Country, City, Continent or subcontinent. Get curious about the traffic, revenue and conversion rate by city.

Get curious around what’s happening in each location and how you might be able to tailor specific messaging and campaigns to your best-resulting locations. 

Traffic & Conversions by Interests

By going to Audience > Interests > Affinity Categories you can see what your potential customers are interested in. These are the people who are at the top of your funnel and are “colder” audience. 

Affinity categories are used to reach potential customers, to make them aware of your brand or product. These are users higher in the purchase funnel, near the beginning of the process. These are the same Affinity categories that Google Ads uses. Learn more.

By going to Audience > Interests > In-Market Segments you can see what your potential customers who are ready to buy are interested in. 

Users in these segments are more likely to be ready to purchase products or services in the specified category. These are users lower in the purchase funnel, near the end of the process. This is the same In-market designation that Google Ads uses. Learn more.

And by going to Audience > Interests > Other Categories you can what visitors to your site who don’t fit into affinity or in-market are interested in. Basically, everyone else who’s visiting your site. 

These are more granular categories than Affinity or In-market, and let you identify users who are not in those other categories. These are the same category designations that Google Ads uses. Learn more.

This is super interesting information because you can use these insights to influence your audience development when getting clear on your ideal customer avatar, you can also weave these insights into the implementation of your social media strategy, and you can test creating audiences to target with your Facebook Ads based on these insights. 

How to turn on Demographics and Interest Reports

You need to go to your Google Analytics and click the blue Enable button. 

You should then receive a Congratulations message. Your data may take up to 24 hours to populate:

So get curious around who is visiting your site and most importantly who is spending money with you! Then, go find more of those people.

Megan Winter

Megan is an inspiring, brilliant and fun digital marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping purpose-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact. 

You may be wondering whether Facebook Ads will work for you. 

Facebook Ads can get big results. But (and this is a big BUT) there are non-negotiable ingredients that your business needs in order for Facebook Ads to work for you. 

I’m going to lift the hood on our processes for seeing whether clients are going to be the right fit for us in our eCommerce growth agency and you can use this to get a gauge as to whether Facebook ads may work for you. 

There are a few non-negotiable ingredients we look for when choosing whether to take on a client or not and these are… 

A good product that people actually want 

First, they have to have a good product that people actually want and need. Seems obvious right? But if you don’t have an amazing product with market demand, no form of marketing or advertising is going to give you long term, sustainable results. 

Do you have a tribe of existing customers who rave about you to their friends and/or come back and purchase again. 

If you are launching a new product to market and starting from scratch you will need to invest more in building awareness and getting a group of early adopters to take a leap of faith to try your product. If you have a good product, the tribe will follow. There is always a tipping point but you need to have patience. 

A website that is ready for your customers

Think of your potential customers like water. If you send your customers to a website that is not ready for them, it’s like turning on taps without having any buckets in place to capture the water. 

A good benchmark conversion rate is 3%… meaning for every 100 people who come to your site, 3 should buy. If your conversion rate is low you can dig a little deeper and find out why. Usually it’s that your site is not optimised for sales, but sometimes it’s that you’re driving the wrong traffic to your site. You wouldn’t setup your ads to drive men to a women’s shoe store, right? 

Integrated & holistic business approach

When we work with clients we see ourselves as part of their team. We work with them to develop ideas for campaigns and new creative. We analyse and interpret the data from the Facebook Ads to help them improve their business. If Facebook Ads are going to be seen as a silo and not integrated into the holistic business approach, we respectfully decline to work with that client. 

A proven strategy 

Facebook ads are simply a media placement tool. You need a full-funnel strategy in place in order to get the most out of your ad spend. You can pop one or two ads up and get sustainable results. You may have short-lived success, but we are looking for sustainable, scalable results. If a client isn’t interested in developing a sustainable strategy, which is an interactive process, then we are interested in working with them. 

Realistic Expectations 

It takes time, effort and ad spend to test, measure and optimise the performance of your Facebook Ads. If we sense that a client is looking for a magic wand or silver bullet solution, we run!

If investing in Facebook ads is a last ditch effort to save your business and you are making decisions based on fear and panic, we would advise against investing in ads. You are going to have the fortitude to let us crack the funnel.

Sure… we have been delivering Facebook Advertising Services to our clients for over 5+ years and have been helping our clients grow using digital marketing for over a decade but there are no guarantees with Facebook Ads.

We only work with businesses who are serious about generating a positive return on investment (ROI) from their marketing and who understand marketing is an investment that helps their business grow. We employ a wide range of tools and skills to develop a comprehensive strategy that we know gets results. 

BUT… Facebook ads are simply a media placement tool. They aren’t magic. They give us unprecedented testing, optimisation options and agility, but they aren’t magic. 

We don’t pretend to own or control Facebook. I actually don’t love Facebook Ads, I love results. And right now, Facebook Ads are what is getting the best results so that’s what we use to help our clients grow.

So… if you’re thinking about using Facebook ads to grow your business use our filter to see if they may work for you.

Megan Winter

Megan is an inspiring, brilliant and fun digital marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping purpose-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact. 

It’s really common for online stores to feature their latest collection on their homepage as the very first thing that visitors see. 

They have put so much energy into birthing their new collection and they are so excited to tell the world about it… 

So it does make sense that online store owners want to promote their newness here… some web developers and brand experts would even recommend it to “keep things fresh”. After all, all the big brands do it. 

But we don’t recommend it for most online store owners. And here’s why. 

The first thing that your customer sees has two jobs: 

1. Instantly tell people what you sell, who you sell it to and why they should buy if from you
2. Get people to look at your collections or products 

A potential customer who has never visited your site before and doesn’t know what you sell isn’t going to care about your new collection, because they don’t even know what you sell yet. 

I’m not saying don’t promote your new collection. Absolutely do. Tell your list, use your social media to promote it and have a page on your website dedicated to it.  Tell all your existing customers who already know, like and trust you about your new collection.

Just don’t use the most precious real estate above the scroll on your home page.

You might change your hero image on your home page to include or feature your newness but make sure you clearly communicate what you sell, who you sell it to and why I should buy it from you.

Now there is an exception to the rule here…if you’re a brand with huge brand recognition and everyone coming to your site knows what you sell, go for it! Think Country Road, Apple, Nike. 

But if you don’t have that level of recognition just yet… stick to getting really clear and concise messaging about your brand. 

Your most precious realestate on your website – the first thing people see when they come to your home page – is NOT the place to announce your newness. It’s the place to tell new visitors exactly what you sell, who you sell it to and why they should buy it from you. 

Keen to learn what a high converting home page looks like? Download our free home page blueprint here. 

After a recent coaching call about messaging, a student who has been with us for nearly 3 years, reached out and said 

“Megan I listened in on your Messaging presentation today… and now I want new messaging. I think mine is getting old … I know it’s not to the new people, but I do think I can do better.”

Here is what I said to that… 

“Love the learning process… it’s never ending!! I saw a few familiar faces on the call and thought “gah.. I need to find a new way of saying this because I’ve been saying the same thing for 10 years”… and that’s kind of the answer to your question! You need to be clear, consistent and repetitive!

So your main brand statement does need to say exactly what you sell… who for and why buy from you.

You need to say the same thing over and over and over and over. Remember, not everyone knows about you. Some people will be discovering your brand for the very first time. Once you have clear, concise messaging… repeat, repeat, repeat! 

It doesn’t matter that your messaging is boring to you. It will be fresh to someone discovering your brand for the first time. And you want them to be met with crystal clear messaging about what you sell, who you sell it to and why they should buy it from you. 

Colleen’s response to my answer confirms this. I literally feel like I’ve been saying the same thing for 10 years. I am bored with myself. Colleen has been a student for 3 years… and she still got something new! 

She said: 

“You don’t actually have to change anything, not yet anyway. I swear to god I hadn’t heard half of what you’d said before. I think we only take in what we’re ready for at that point in time.” 

I haven’t changed my messaging so it just goes to show that even “old” customers (those that have been with you for a while… not the queen-agers) will get something out of your clear, concise, REPETITIVE messaging.

If you feel repetitive, congratulations, you’re marketing.

You may have heard me say this before… and that’s kind of the point! 

Megan Winter

Megan is an inspiring, brilliant and fun digital marketer and has worked with some of the fastest-growing eCommerce brands in the world.

Megan loves helping purpose-driven online store owners to make more income and achieve more impact. 

The mistake that most online store owners make is they put too much emphasis on getting people to their website BEFORE it’s ready for it. They drive traffic to a site that is not traffic ready.

Having a website that is not ready for traffic is like turning on the taps without having any buckets in place to capture the water… or, at the very least, having leaky buckets.

They spend all this time, energy, money, effort and resources in building the pipeline (aka getting the traffic) but forget to check that the bucket they are wanting to fill isn’t full of holes. 

Getting traffic to your website is costly. It takes time, energy and effort – yours AND your customers’ time, energy and effort. It also takes money to get people to your website… and if your website isn’t ready to take money… you might as well flush that money down the drain. 

That’s why we so heavily recommend that you get traffic ready before you drive traffic to your online store. And it’s why we are so focused on helping our clients and students get traffic ready. We do this in several ways: 

• We run free audits in our free group that help you get ready for traffic; 
• We have an entire module in our eComm Ignitor course on traffic ready; and
• We offer website audits to those who want to improve their conversion rate (aka get ready for traffic)

Now, having said all of this… what’s the best way to see if your bucket has holes? 

Once you’ve checked it as much as you can and it doesn’t have any visible holes or cracks, you need to put water in it!

So, once your website is as traffic ready as you can get it… you need to test it out. You need to drive a LITTLE traffic to your site and check if there are any holes in it. 

How do you do this with a website? You check the conversion rate. A good conversion rate benchmark is 3%. 

If there are holes and your site isn’t converting to sales, you need to find where those holes are and plug them. 

You need to get curious and test, test, test. A website is not a tattoo… it’s meant to be changed constantly. 

Then, once you’ve plugged those holes and your conversion rate is healthy again, turn the taps on and get more traffic flowing. 

Overtime, your site might develop more holes and you’ll have to plug them. 

This is a never-ending, interactive process.

If you’d like to deep dive into how to get traffic ready and improve your website’s conversion rate, you might enjoy these free resources: 

Podcast episode 28: How to get your website traffic ready to improve your conversion rate

Podcast episode 7: 5 Tech Must Haves to Increase the Conversion Rate on Your Online Store

Podcast episode 6: 5 Onsite Changes to Increase the Conversion Rate on Your Online Store