10 Scary Marketing Mistakes eCommerce Businesses Make in Q4

To carve pumpkins, of course. 🎃

It also means we’re all gearing up for a busy Q4 selling season and taking stock of what’s really scary this time of year: costly marketing mistakes that affect the bottom line.

This post is part cautionary tale and part kick-in-the-gourd for eCommerce businesses still trying to hide from the holiday season just around the corner. Let’s break down some marketing mistakes many eCommerce businesses are making right now, and how you can escape their same fate.

😱 Waiting too long to prepare for Black Friday.

We've been talking about Black Friday 2020 since this August, and for good reason. It’s not only because we wanted to will the hot Summer days away, but because all projections estimate that holiday shopping will begin earlier than ever this year. If you haven’t nailed down your Cyber Month sales plan yet, there’s still time...but not much. Some big name stores are going to kick off their sales as soon as November 1 breaks.

😱 Not testing paid ads early enough.

You don’t want the paid ads you’re running for holiday sales to be test campaigns. They should be tested, re-tested, and optimized to reach tried and true status by the time the critical sales dates come around. Give yourself a few weeks to test creative, audiences, and retargeting strategies. By the time Black Friday comes around, your ads should be lean, mean, revenue-earning machines.

😱 Haven’t optimized their website for mobile.

In 2019, 39.6% of holiday season eCommerce spending can be attributed to smartphone and online shoppers. Shopify reported that a whopping 69% of sales over BFCM 2019 weekend were made on phones or tablets. That’s a big (and growing) share of eCommerce spending, and it’s not something you want to miss out on because your website just doesn’t work on a mobile device. Right? Right.

😱 Confusing, inaccurate, or just plain crappy product descriptions.

Remove friction for shoppers by providing thorough, relevant information in product descriptions. This information should answer common questions, speak to your target audience, and maybe even bust a few objections from the get-go.

😱 Not defining your target market.

Not only is targeting everyone, everywhere extremely expensive, it’s also ineffective. Before you can rake in the big sales, you need to understand your customers. Go beyond a one-size-fits all approach and deep dive into demographics, behavioral data, personalization, and testing to define and refine your target market.

😱 Slow page load speed.

How long do you think a visitor is going to sit around waiting for your site to load? Unfortunately, it’s about 3 seconds. In 2018, a Google study found that page load speeds between 1s to 3s saw the probability of bounce increase 32%. 1s to 5s load time bumps that number up to 90% bounce probability. The answer definitely varies by person and perhaps your chances are better if they are a return customer, but why take chances?

😱 Confusing checkout process.

So your customer has added an item (or 5, 10, 15, 20) to their cart and they initiate the purchase process. You’re this close 👌 to making a sale. Why would a customer exit now? It turns out, there’s a lot of reasons. Your checkout process should be easy to complete. Don’t force visitors to create an account, provide unnecessary information, or take them through needlessly long and confusing forms. Online shoppers can be fickle, and your conversions are only as good as sales completed.

😱 No email marketing plan.

Emails aren’t all about making sales in eCommerce. Since your customers don’t get a chance to interact with your store space, salespeople, or product in person, you need to think about how you can build a relationship with customers. Make sure you’re keeping your store at the top of their mind and getting them excited about upcoming sales.

😱 Surprise fees.

$12 shipping?! No, thank you. We’ve probably all added an item to our cart, initiated a checkout, and even entered our address only to find out that shipping is just...not worth it. Be up front with shipping costs or additional fees. Don’t catch customers by surprise with fees they didn’t anticipate. Include copy on your website that gives clear and concise information about shipping fees. Offer estimates if possible. And if you can swing it, offer free shipping to push shoppers over the edge from browser to purchaser.

😱 Not taking enough time to nurture customers.

There are definitely upsides and downsides to the long 2020 holiday shopping season. One upside is that people who would typically do their shopping in stores will be more likely to make eCommerce purchases, and they will be more deliberate about their purchases because they can’t interact with them ahead of time. That means you have more time to reach that customer with the right kind of ads, emails, social media, etc. that will push them to convert. Take advantage of the Cyber Month timeline to catch audiences, nurture your funnel, and make the sale...and invite them to make another purchase before the season ends.

Phew, that’s a lot of scary mistakes. The good news is you’ve still got time to prepare for huge Q4 sales and avoid these mishaps.

You’ve been warned!

Most business owners running digital ads are trained early on to focus on ROAS. By definition, “return on ad spend” sounds like it MUST be the holy grail metric of digital marketing. You’ve spent money on advertising with the expectation that in return, you will receive revenue.

However, few words sum up the panic and despair you feel when, in the early days of your ad campaigns, you see $150 in Shopify revenue on one tab and $500 in ad spend on the other.

⬆️ Level up your ROAS with Snapchat ads. →

For most business owners, it’s impossible not to lose sight of the long-term goals.

In that moment, it’s important to take a step back and consider the bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve, both as a company and in your digital campaigns.

Spoiler: The internet isn’t a money in, money out kind of place.

The digital marketplace is complex. There are countless variables that influence whether or not someone buys from you.

😱 Are your analytics lying to you? →

Ad creative, ad copy, price, promotions, free shipping, the purchase process, trust in the brand, trust in the website, customer service, other sites selling the same product, other sites selling similar products, people who sit on a cart to decide – and then forget.

Every one of these variables – and many more – have a direct impact on whether you will get a return on your ad spend. And whether your company will be around in 6 months.

However it’s impossible to know, much less get these critical factors, right if your sole mission statement is to increase ROAS month over month.

Knowing and understanding what creates a growing and sustainable buying process requires time, iterating, testing and repeating – all of which require some ad spend.

The ugly truth: You’re going to have to spend some money on knowing your market.

No one wants to hear this: investing money to know your buyers’ process and what will make your company successful will lower your ROAS, as some of your money is diverted to testing. But invest, you must.

Founders are engineered to trust their gut, sometimes to a fault. They don’t want to spend money – or time – on iterating and testing because they are sure their assumptions are correct.

💊 Hard to swallow pill: Facebook ads don't always work. Here's why. →

The unfortunate reality is that the longer you begrudge ad spend on testing, the more money you waste on less effective ads, the lower your ROAS, and the longer you’re wasting money and suffering a low ROAS.

For instance, you may have perfected a BBQ rub that you sell out of every weekend at the local farmer’s marketing. You’re positive that as soon as you get your online store up and some ads running, your greatest obstacle will be keeping up with inventory. I mean, people LOVE this stuff. 😋

You get a Shopify account and start to run some ads. The ads are driving a lot of traffic to your site – you may even be getting some adds to cart. Unfortunately, your orders are bumping around 3 a day.

You may have forgotten to account for some of those critical variables or external factors we mentioned – like trust-building elements, shopping flow, technical issues and shipping issues. No one is buying from you for one or many reasons.

This is a classic case of "You don’t know what you don’t know."

Credit: peerinsight.com

However, now that ads are driving traffic to the site, testing various usual suspects, you come to understand that people need some convincing with testimonials, BBQ awards logos, reviews, free samples – and they need free shipping to push past the finish line.

🍨 Get the scoop on conversion rate optimization. →

These external factors can be smoked out as quickly as possible (pun intended, see what we did there?), removing obstacles to people buying – and increasing that flow of ROAS back to you. But more importantly, you’re building a stronger company and a brand with staying power. You now know what’s important to your customers and are removing barriers that frustrate them. This is an exercise in growth marketing!

Beyond ROAS, though

Let’s say your investment in market research by way of ad traffic pays off, and you get to a comfortable ROAS. It’s tempting to assume you’re good to coast into retirement on the back of your world class BBQ blend.

You may have hit a ROAS that makes you happy, but it’s important to continue viewing that number as one indicator metric of many. Even when it’s trending upward, it cannot become the focal point of your business.

As a growing company, it’s important to turn your attention and an allotment of your ad spend to understanding bigger metric fish: like the lifetime value of each customer.

And what makes one customer more valuable than another, and how do you specifically target more valuable customers?

Which customers are more likely to advocate for your product, resulting in more customers and more sales?

Calculating Sustainable Growth Goals [Worksheet]

FEATURED RESOURCE: Use this spreadsheet to calculate critical KPIs like CPA, target ROAS, and gross profit.

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What this means for you starting out

Your main objective for the first few months of any digital campaign should be to come away with a deadly accurate pulse on your market conditions, your purchasing audience, what compels them to pay for your product and any obstacles getting in the way of paying for your product.

Armed with this knowledge, you can make critical decisions around HOW to market your product in digital ads, through a keen understanding of your audience’s pricing tolerance, preferred messaging and detailed targeting.

For the first phase of your digital campaign, ROAS is simply the cherry on top. You’re building the sundae from the bottom up, starting with:

• Detailed demographic, interest and behavior-based breakdown of what groups of people are eager to buy from you, those who can be coaxed into buying from you and those who aren’t worth your ad spend

• Average number of impressions it takes for a person to reach the purchase tipping point

• What X price point you need to set to achieve Y ROAS under non-cyclical conditions

• Accurate comparison of how messages perform (and compel to purchase) with various audiences

• How other channels might be brought in to assist in a conversion – and to increase the long term value of the customer by upsell and repeat purchase

• Which customers are most likely to purchase again (and again) and why

While any business owner would jump at the above information, few actually get there. Far too many are dissuaded from the testing it takes to uncover this valuable information by one difficult truth: These kinds of objectives are often at odds with increasing short-term ROAS.

Unlocking seven or eight figures of revenue might mean taking a hit on the first few months of ad spend. Brace yourself – it may be even more with big ticket items or those with a long purchase path. That's not a bad thing if you're laying the foundations for long-term success!

🏫 Want to get schooled? Check out our free training resources. →