This is it - this is the year your ecommerce venture will finally break through the 7-figure (6-figure?) revenue barrier! You've wanted this for some time, but now you can feel it's really possible and are impatient to get there.
Great. But you need a strategy for that. Of which marketing will be a big element. There's a tonne of writing about this stuff online, but today I'm going to give an overview of two key strategies for growth which I feel have really helped me in my own ecommerce brands.
One is the approach to finding the right marketing channels, as discussed in the book 'Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth' by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. The other is the 'Four Peaks Theory', as conceived by Common Thread Collective.
Years ago, I saw Justin Mares, co-author of 'Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth' give a great talk in Texas summarising his approach to gaining 'traction', which persuaded me to immediately go and read the book.
Although it seems to be written primarily for software startup businesses, there are several good ideas for ecommerce operators in 'Traction' and it's not a long book to read. Early stage businesses will benefit the most from implementing the framework, but I think there are many concepts helpful for small businesses in general, even if they've been around for a bit, and especially if they need a refresh on the marketing side.
The 'one-two punch' that really hit me was as follows.
I used to just get overwhelmed by the countless number of marketing initiatives I might try for my business, and the countless well-meaning friends and relatives who would say "why don't you try X? It's worked for so-and-so." But knowing there's an actual limit on the number of them helped me rationalise my overwhelm and get to work trying these channels out.
While 20 might seem like a lot, the key point here is that even as a small business you can realistically test most of them. Start by brainstorming one testable idea for each of the 20 channels.
For example, you could run a few ads on Facebook to test the paid social media channel, or Google to test the search engine marketing channel. Attend a trade show to see how that works for you, set up a Reddit community for the people interested in your product, or send out some press releases and get yourself in the news somehow. Do some research on what's worked in your industry and what your competitors are doing, but don't be limited by this.
Remember, this is a brainstorming list not a to-do list, so no need to be overwhelmed. Don't actually implement all of these things at once. The point of this exercise is that some of the tests will grab you and seem more promising than others. Promote these to your shortlist.
Then go and design and run low-cost, small-scale tests in all of the areas that seem most promising to you. The aim is to establish at what cost you can acquire customers, and to what extent you might be able to scale those channels.
If no distribution channel seems at all promising after this, you may need to re-do the process, and/or go back to your core product and improve it.
This softens you up for the 'two-punch' I received from Traction:
By 'handful', that might actually mean just one core channel - your 'bullseye', that you're focusing on and putting all your efforts into optimising.
What this means: just because something worked well for someone else's ecommerce brand, doesn't mean it will for you. You're better off quickly dropping the stuff that shows no promise and doubling down on the stuff that is working for you.
This is where many marketers mess up, by continuing to spread their efforts over far too many potential marketing channels. Instead, focus your efforts on uncovering new strategies and tactics in one core channel.
For years I wasted time trying to get both Google Ads and SEO to work. Other people for whom Google Ads had worked would always talk it up, and I kept thinking I just needed another shot at it, or another marketing agency to try it for me.
Instead, I needed to accept that search engine marketing made no sense for my specific product as few people were actively searching for it. It was a 'discovery' product that people only got interested in once they came across it, and that truth implied social media and its newsfeeds, structured for discovery, was a way better fit.
What ultimately worked for my ecommerce business was: 1) organic social media, 2) paid social media, 3) direct sales to museums, and of course 4) email marketing (this works for almost everyone, but is harder to scale than some others).
Our core channel became paid social media, because this not only won customers, but was scalable. Literally billions of people use Facebook and Instagram, many of our potential customers among them, and our product images were inherently shareable.
Nowadays, rather than jump on new fads (anyone use Clubhouse?), we focus on improving our core channel of social media. In recent times that's meant investing in short videos for our organic and paid content, where previously we only produced static posts. And taking advantage of new Meta ads features, supported by AI.
Of course, I'm very much on the lookout for new social ads opportunities beyond Meta, whether that's TikTok or some future new social media platform. This all falls within our core channel of paid social media.
I cheat a bit here, because 'social media' for us is both organic and paid so that's two channels really rather than one core channel, but clearly they overlap and we find that one need not pull focus from the other.
If you haven't found your best performing traction channels, it's hard to predict which one will work best for your own business - so keep testing!
For this I give full credit to Common Thread Collective, a California-based marketing agency from whom I've learnt so much over the years. CTC are really a growth agency for 8-figure ecommerce brands, but the materials they produce are still of great help for 6 and 7-figure brands looking to scale.
If you're ever looking to put some money into training yourself up on paid ads strategies for ecommerce brands, I can recommend their Admission membership which I've used myself (I think there's a waiting list nowadays, so join that then wait for it to next open up).
Most ecommerce brands typically have two 'peak' periods for revenue throughout the year. One of those is always the Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday late November into early December period, where potential customers are actively looking for both deals and gifts online. It's a 'natural' peak for ecommerce brands and even if you make no changes to your usual marketing, you probably experience an uplift in sales during that period.
The second 'peak' is typically some other buying period especially relevant to your product. For example, fitness-related products tend to do well in January, riding on the back of new gym memberships and exercise regime resolutions. January tends to be a good time for beauty and cosmetics too. Outdoor equipment brands are likely to see increased demand going into summer, while gifting brands may do well around events such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day or Father's Day, depending on their type of product.
For Radical Tea Towel, one of our clients here at Eirios, the Q4 period was always a huge peak, with customers seeking out the inspiring tea towels or gifts that would be a great match for their friends and family at Christmas. This was accompanied by a much smaller but still noticeable peak around International Women's Day (8th March), with Radical Tea Towel's Suffragette and feminist designs spiking.
This typical twin peak pattern leads to a distorted calendar, with revenue spiking during the peaks and spending a long time in valleys in between. This can lead to cashflow problems and excess inventory in the valleys, followed by inventory shortages during the peaks.
Why not take two peaks and make it four?
The simple idea behind four peaks theory is that you pick up your calendar and identify, in advance, two other dates/periods your brand can target to build new peaks. Your calendar can boost revenue by providing storytelling opportunities and a sense of urgency for purchase.
As the examples in the previous section show, these peaks will be unique to your brand and product type, and don't actually need to be traditionally recognised gifting moments to work.
Ideally, these events are right in the middle of the down periods you currently experience. This is so your business has the time and effort available to dedicate to building a new peak, and that new revenue helps smooth out the cashflow dips, enabling you to get sufficient stock ordered for the next peak.
As an example, this year Radical Tea Towel has identified the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War (VE Day is 8th May) as the basis of a new peak opportunity. This event lies very close to the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War (30th April), and some key dates in the American Revolutionary War in mid-April. The plan is to create a new peak covering the whole April-May period, drawing attention to these key dates in the history of peace and democracy.
How do you actually create a new 'peak' though?
Once you've identified your two calendar moments, the key to turning them into revenue peaks is pulling on all the levers available to you simultaneously. Product launches, sales, email list blasts, PR announcements, social media organic and paid - do everything you can, as you're probably already doing during your existing established peaks.
Product launches timed for the calendar moment are the most important here. If you can create a brand new product that's specifically related to the event, all the better. Radical Tea Towel, for example, will be launching new tea towels commemorating the Allied victory in WW2, along with a limited edition mug, ready for the 80th anniversary in May.
New or limited edition products then act as the basis for your marketing. Your emails introduce them, around a discussion of why the calendar events are important. Your ads and organic social media show these latest releases, in amidst regular content themed around the events. Ideally, create anticipation for your product launch with teaser emails beforehand.
You can even decide to run a sale. Everyone else is doing a January sale, but why can't you do a 'Back to School' sale or St David's Day Sale or Fair Trade Week sale?
But you don't even have to be that commercial if you don't want to. Focus on storytelling instead. Interact with your customers, ask them for their stories and memories related to cultural moments. Whether it's Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Fair Trade Week or Black History Month, there are real stories and emotions behind these moments which you can simply showcase.
Pull it all together, and you're giving potential customers a good reason to buy from you now. And it's that sense of urgency - naturally present around the traditional peaks of Black Friday or December shopping - which ultimately boosts the conversion rate on your website and can power scale in your ads.
The other reason this works is that typically there won't be that many other brands doing what you are at the specific time you're promoting yourself. That makes it easier to get heard on social media. It means your emails stand out with a unique headline, and the cost of buying up advertising space is cheaper.
There you go, two new strategies for powering your ecommerce marketing machine in 2025.
The first 'traction' strategy is more likely to be helpful for new and very small ecommerce brands who haven't yet identified their core traction channel. The second strategy of 'Four Peaks Theory' will probably appeal to established brands looking for new ways to stand out and build on their existing marketing channels.
But there's no reason not to look at both. Certainly established brands could benefit from looking again at the 20-or-so traction channels and whether there are any which might work but which they haven't yet tried, or channels which showed initial promise but were never fully explored.
Meanwhile, identifying and targeting a couple of cultural moments on the annual calendar, implementing Four Peaks Theory, could be just the way for a new upstart brand to get heard, when other ecommerce giants are sleeping awaiting their next Q4.
Whatever your strategy for growth this year, throw yourself into it!
© Edwin Capital Ltd
