4 Steps to Scale Your eCommerce Business to 7 Figures

Intro

When it comes to eCommerce sales, certain milestones seem rare or difficult. One of these milestones is the 7-figure mark, i.e. $1,000,000 or more in monthly revenue.

Getting to 7 figures is tough. You need a good product-market fit. You need good marketing. And you need enough processes and consistency to succeed repeatedly; not just luck out one or two months in a row.

That being said…

If you ask Will Varney - a strategist at Megaphone marketing agency - getting to 7 figures in ecommerce sales isn’t that tough. Megaphone has gotten over 20 businesses there using a predictable, repeatable framework. Several have already blown past 8 figure revenue numbers.

Today, Will’s going to share the 4 key steps behind his agency’s framework. These have been used to scale dozens of brands to millions of dollars in revenue, sometimes in their first year.

Step 1 is…

1. Create a Funnel That Turns Traffic into Money

The first thing you need to scale fast is a working sales funnel. If you’re not sure what these are, they’re processes that take complete strangers and turn them into customers. Here’s a simple example of a funnel:

Top of funnel: advertisements on Facebook and Google drive traffic to your website

Middle of funnel: your landing page converts traffic into leads (email addresses with names)

Bottom of funnel: email sequences guide leads to your checkout page, where they buy

This is a very simple funnel, and most funnels are a lot more complex than this. But the idea is that you have a way to take traffic and convert it into money. You may not do this very well - you may even take a slight loss - but this is important, and here’s why.

When you have a working funnel, you can optimize it. You can make small changes, drop a few dollars on ads, and see how well you’re doing. You’ll know what’s going on immediately based on how much money comes out the other end of your funnel.

If you don’t have a funnel, there’s no way for you to maintain your business, let alone grow it to 7 figures. You don’t have the business processes you need to grow.

That’s why the very first thing you need to do is create a funnel. Here are some ideas to help you out:

What’s been working so far?

How have you been selling to date? You may not like your historical processes, but if they work, they should be your starting point. Incremental improvements can transform your funnel and brand, but you need to start somewhere.

When it comes to selling your ideas, storytelling is a powerful tool that can captivate your audience and make your message more compelling. By crafting a narrative around your ideas, you can create an emotional connection and effectively convey the value of what you're selling.

What’s the competition doing?

How are other brands in your space selling their product? This is another quick way to find a solution that works for you. If the competition can do it, you might be able to, too.

What’s common in other niches?

Can’t find a funnel that works for you? Look at other niches and offers. For example, how is your product being sold in other markets and territories? How are similar offers from businesses in adjacent niches being sold? More ideas for you to explore.

2. Double Down on What Works and Remove What Doesn’t

Alright, so you have a funnel. Now take a look at what’s working in it… And double down, then see what happens. Focus on what your company does best, be it creating and releasing new products or marketing on Facebook.

A lot of the time, what’ll happen is that your revenue will start growing. For example, let’s say that what’s working in your company is Facebook advertisements. Funnelling more money into them will likely scale your business - and quickly.

You need to keep doing this until you find…

1. Processes that aren’t helping your business
2. Processes that do help your business

With the second category, keep investing money until you feel that an opportunity has been exhausted. For example, many brands will see a drop-off in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) after $100,000 or $200,000/month. At a certain point, you’ll need to back off and look for other tactics.

One advantage to doubling down on what works is that it lets you play to your team’s strengths. It also encourages experimentation, which gives you a steady stream of new tactics that work for your brand.

By the way - this works both ways. If something isn’t working, identify and fix it. For example, one brand we worked with was a subscription service. Churn rates were a significant barrier to long-term growth, and we identified poor customer service as a major contributor.

Here is a list of suggestions we came to the customer with to stop the bleeding:

• Use chatbots to answer basic questions and direct potential customers to a FAQs page
• Offer 24-hour phone support to answer any questions your customers may have
• Use surveys to determine how efficient your customer service is
• Engage with customers on social media and let them know they can get support there
• Initiate a referral program (83% of people use word-of-mouth to discuss and purchase products)

The more you do this - double down on what works, remove what doesn’t - the faster you’re going to get levers that help you grow 10%, 20%, 50%, etc in a matter of days.

3. Run A/B Split Tests

Sooner or later, you’ll run out of things that work (and mistakes that need correction). Once this happens, you’ll need to run A/B split tests to discover new tactics that work.

A/B split testing refers to trying 2 similar but different advertisements, landing pages, emails, etc to see which one performs better.

Using A/B testing allows you to optimize your marketing assets by testing them against each other. 77% of organizations use A/B testing on their websites, and 60% test their landing pages. It’s a highly effective way to quickly see what’s working (and what isn’t).

You can use A/B testing on existing website features, emails, ads, and more. All that matters is testing often and finding new marketing and product elements that work.

Smart A/B testing lets you solve visitor pain points, get more revenue from existing traffic, reduce bounce rates, and more.

4. Try New Marketing Tactics to Reach New Audiences

You should always be searching for additional channels to sell your products, whether it is Etsy, eBay, or a specialty marketplace that caters to your specific audience and niche. This means using…

• Multiple social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok
• Multiple platforms like Etsy, Amazon, your Shopify store, etc
• Multiple marketing strategies, e.g. influencer marketing and PPC
• Multiple content marketing formats, e.g. video and photos

Each platform, channel, and tactic has its own benefits. More importantly, each platform has its own revenue potential to you as an ecommerce business owner, marketer, or manager. You can only reach your full business potential by spreading your efforts around wisely.

This is where I personally see a lot of brands get it wrong. They have one channel, or one winning tactic, and they only do that one thing. Meanwhile, they could double or triple their business if they just experimented a little more and found new effective systems.

One big barrier is difficulty. When trying omnichannel marketing, 77% of companies say they have difficulty creating a cohesive customer experience across the various channels and devices. This is natural - and solvable - but it discourages companies from experimenting.

Another problem is that experiments can seem unimportant. You may be an 8-figure ecommerce, but you’re still going to start with a few thousand dollars of monthly ad spend on Facebook. This may not move the needle in your business, creating feelings of disinterest and disconnect internally.

Still, the end result is worth it. Always be experimenting with new marketing tactics!

In Conclusion

Now you know how to scale an ecommerce business to 7 figures (and beyond). The tips are very simple - nothing fancy - but they work.

If you create a funnel… Focus on what works… Run A/B split tests… And try new things all the time…

You can’t help but succeed over time - at least assuming you’re learning from everything you do and iterating as time goes on.

If you want to get off to the best possible start with SEO for your ecommerce business, I strongly recommend Ranktracker. It’s a tool that helps us manage our own projects’ rankings, as well as our clients’.

Thank you for reading!