The Nuts and Bolts of Scaling for Marketing

Scaling can be a daunting feat.

True, it’s an exciting time for your business. But it’s also a precarious period in which you’ll need the right amount of support to ensure you scale sustainably.

Scale too fast, and you won’t have the infrastructure to keep up. Scale too slow, and your competitors will whiz by.

Only about a third of new companies make it past their first decade, so we’re not kidding when we say scaling at the right time could impact the health of your business for the rest of its life.

That’s where marketing comes in

Consumers can’t visit your store and purchase your products if they haven’t heard of you. Scaling the ecommerce marketing arm of your business is a crucial step during these early days, and should go hand in hand with the growth of your sales team.

As the word gets out about your product, you’ll have to entice your leads to make a purchase — hopefully creating loyal return customers along the way.

When scaling for marketing, you should be designing a plan of action for all angles. Pulling multiple levers as you grow will ensure you’re building brand awareness that’s reaching your ideal consumer base. Below, we’ve listed a few marketing strategies that every ecommerce brand should be tapping into when considering how to scale for marketing.

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Email marketing

Nurturing would-be consumers through email has been around for a long time, and there’s a very good reason for that—it works! Send potential and current consumers personalized and relevant email content at a regular cadence. It’s a great way to ensure customer retention and keep your eCommerce store top of mind.

Social media marketing

Very few companies founded in the 21st century exist without an active social media presence. Promoting your brand through social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin will help you connect with your audience as you grow your brand and garner some brand loyalty.

Influencer marketing

A subset of social media marketing, influencer marketing has grown in popularity over the past few years. Many brands see it as a viable means of leveraging established trust within specific audiences to grow their brand. It involves partnering with individuals (usually social media influencers) and organizations to promote your product to their dedicated audiences.

Content marketing

Most people think marketing is about selling and selling alone. But content marketing focuses on building brand awareness and equity using educational content to bring your brand to life. This includes anything from blogs to webinars to videos, and everything in between. While the goal is to attract and ultimately retain customers, content marketing uses storytelling to appeal to a wide audience.

Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can be found almost anywhere, but the most common form of PPC advertising is paid search. Paid search displays your ad at the top of optimized search engine results, commonly seen with Google searches. Having a robust paid ad strategy means you’ll be putting out hyper-targeted content to the right audience.

Search engine optimization

In addition to paid advertising, you should also be targeting organic traffic as you scale. This means growing the traffic to your website via search engines. To achieve this, you’ll need to ensure your site is set up optimally, with SEO best practices in place.

Don’t forget to invest in the right technology

You might have all the right strategies at your disposal, but if you don’t have the right technology in place to streamline operations, your growth will likely stall. When scaling an ecommerce business, choosing the right technology partners will come down to your product and your vertical.

To start off the process, list all the tasks operationally that could be automated. Consider email marketing, for example. Platforms like Omnisend can automate behavior-based email marketing messaging, ensuring that your audience will get the right content at the right time.

In terms of the customer journey, having automated lead nurture campaigns means you won’t have to worry about having to manually reach out to potential customers.

Consider working with an agency

You may not have the existing infrastructure to grow your marketing team in-house — especially when you’re first starting out. If you think you might need help mapping out a marketing strategy as you grow, working with an agency is a great option.

When scoping out potential agency partners, you’ll want to consider the following, among others:

• Do the values of the agency align with your company’s? Is there a cultural fit?
• Does the agency have previous experience working with companies at your stage and in your industry?
• Does the agency have the proper bandwidth to focus on your business’ projects?

How Clearbanc can help

Clearbanc is the world’s largest ecommerce investor. For those looking to scale their business, they provide data-driven funding without requiring a credit check, personal guarantee, or interest.

Additionally, Clearbanc offers the resources you need to scale for marketing, specifically with regards to technology and agency partners. Their directory of tech partners and marketing agencies provides you with the support you need to achieve your goals—marketing or otherwise—as you grow your business to the next level. For more information, you can get in touch with our expert team at Clearbanc today