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Hello everyone and thanks for joining us this week for our Digitize NS webinar.
As always, I hope you have been enjoying the course so far and have brought any and all questions you may have. For anyone wishing to catch up on our webinar from last week or one from previous weeks, we will be happy to provide you with a link in the chat. As with all of our Digitize NS webinars, this will be recorded for later playback if you wanted extra time with a certain section or for listening on the go.
For those who may be joining us for the first time, we’ve been exploring a fictional entrepreneur named Joe who runs a local business making sweaters.
Joe has owned his business for over 20 years and is located in Downtown Dartmouth. Joe has been selling at the Halifax & Dartmouth Farmer’s Markets in addition to his shop, but he is seeing a decline in business. To tackle this issue, he has decided to take his storefront online to open up his consumer base.
To date, Joe has successfully launched his own website full of content he created himself and sent his first email blast from a customer list he created.
Today’s webinar is going to focus on Joe:
Before we dive in, however, let’s refresh ourselves on where Joe left off.
When we last left Joe, he:
Here is a diagram of Joe’s strategy with the objectives he wants to achieve outlined as Step One, Two and Three. Today we’re going to be returning to each of these steps to follow Joe as he creates strong goals that will guide his use of his new channels.
Currently, Joe has completed Steps 1 & 2 and is now primed to finish Step 3 of his strategy.
When we last left off, Joe was building a Facebook profile – the last step in his plan.
After gathering and making decisions, he is come up with a fantastic Facebook page to launch with. It has his logo for the profile picture, a sized background image, and a story section for giving visitors a quick rundown of his company.
Additionally, he has updated the page with information as to where his shop is physically located so visitors can also quickly find out where he is located along with his business hours and the services his shop provides. He has even gone into the settings and chosen a template that works best with his business location and hours directly below the background image at the top of the page.
He has even put in a Call-to-Action (CTA) button that directs visitors to his website so they can see his full online inventory and start shopping.
For his first post, he posted a link to one of his top selling sweaters to garner interest and promote his new website.
As we’ve discussed in previous webinars, before he presses the ‘launch’ button, he does a complete read-through after a good night’s sleep to catch any spelling errors or inconsistencies. Things that Joe looks for are broken links, anything that isn’t consistent with his brand (similar colors, up-to-date photos) and any sentences or phrases that don’t make sense.
Once that is done – he sets the page to ‘public’ and it has launched! Great work, Joe!
Now, the question that everyone has after they’ve launched a Facebook Page – what do I do know?
Well, Joe’s first objective will be to begin gaining ‘likes’ so people can follow his page. One of the best ways to organically grow your page is to tag stakeholders and those who may have an interest in what you do. In this case, Joe has done his research and he makes a post about launching his Facebook page and tags ‘by adding in the @ (at) symbol’ his area’s business association.
With any luck, the business will both ‘Like’ his page and share the post so it can be seen by everyone who follows the Business Association on Facebook.
This is just the beginning however – as Joe then logs on to the backend of his e-commence website and uses the site’s built-in social media options to insert a link to Facebook. After he saves the link, the iconic white ‘f’ appears near the top of his site. This link will not only move traffic to his Facebook to help it grow, but allow for people to interact with his brand, rate the products and message him if they are more comfortable with Facebook than conventional emailing methods.
When Joe sends out his next email update, he can also include a small piece on the launch of his website and the link to it. From now on, he can also include a Facebook ‘button’ on the bottom of his email before the unsubscribe link. To create a button, he just needs to save a copy of Facebook’s logo, insert into the email, shrink it inside by re-sizing it in the email editor and hyperlinking the Facebook image to his page.
Now – Joe has officially completed his strategy. So, what next? Well, it’s time Joe started setting some goals set for all of his new channels.
For some of you, the idea of goal setting may come as second nature and for others, this may be a great refreshing!
Goals are a fantastic way to track progress and provide motivation for both yourself and staff as you have something to work towards.
A common acronym used in when setting goals is SMART, which makes to make goals that are:
Specific – a goal that can be clearly defined.
Measurable – you can achieve tangible results.
Attainable – they are realistic and can be achieved.
Relevant – it fits into your company’s objectives and goals.
Time-based – it is a goal you can achieve or set within a period of time.
Putting this theory to work, the first piece we will turn to is Joe’s website. For Joe’s first objective, he is going to set a goal for hits.
Goal 1: From three months after his website launch, he wanted aim to have a minimum of 700 hits. As we’ve discussed, Joe has had his website live for roughly a month and has secured over 324 hits so it is doable.
Goal 2: From three months after the website launch, to have over 500 unique hits – i.e., new people visiting the site. So far, Joe has 201 unique hits so he is well on his way.
Goal 3: From three months after the website launch, to have 30 conversions (conversions being items sold). Again, So far it’s been roughly a month and Joe has sold five items – this means for this metric, Joe will have to push hard – but it is attainable.
These three goals will help Joe begin to build out his site and guide him into making changes – if for example, he doesn’t meet a goal, he can try a new tactic to reach it such as changing the site landing page or sending out an email.
Next, we’ll look at Facebook – at a newly launched page, it’s entirely fine for Joe to set goals that are a little lower.
Goal 1: From three months after launch, obtain 50 likes on his Facebook Page. Likes are important as they open up your audience to receiving your posts, allowing them to share or interact them within their own timeline. As your page gets more and more likes, it’s not uncommon to see larger expansions in your statistics.
Goal 2: Three months following launch, receive 10 post engagements – this stat is great to track as a goal because it will push Joe to create engaging content, such as photos and video to really boost those numbers. Shares also count as post engagements which, as we discussed, is a great way to grow your audience.
Goal 3: Three months following launch, receive 50 page views. Page views tend to naturally elevate as Likes rise, but it is important to track how many people are viewing his Facebook page. If the number stays low, it may be best to start putting Facebook specific, digital sales to boost page viewing.
Finally we’ll look at email – which in this case, will be a little harder to track as he hasn’t employed a dedicated email service. For now, his goal will be to send two emails a month and to track for viewing and website spikes on his Facebook and website. Another goal to set is to keep opt-outs or unsubscribes for these emails to a minimum – in this case, have fewer than five unsubscribes each month. This is not a fool proof method, and we’ll be examining better ways to track email results in future webinars.
Now – even before all of these goals in place, Joe has seen revenue already coming from his site.
As part of running his site, Joe has an e-commerce store that has slowly begun to pull in sales. This provides a fantastic chance to not only make more revenue which has driven his site creation, but to begin budgeting how much many he has been making to ensure he is making revenue. In an ideal situation, Joe will be making enough money online per month to pay for his site while also putting a few bucks aside from some digital marketing in the future.
So far, Joe is spending $20 a month ($240 annually) to have his site online, has spent $15 for a one-time purchase of his domain, and there is a 5% transaction fee for each item bought. In total, Joe has spent $40.25 dollars (taxes in) thus far but in terms of annually, he will be spending $258.75 taxes in.
Thus far, Joe has sold five sweaters (4 at 20, and 1 at 40) with the total coming to: $96.90 after taking away both the transaction fee and provincial HST. As you can see, Joe has already paid for his first few months, which means he is off to a good start. Ideally, he will eventually begin to generate enough sales to pay for both his annual fee and internet bills while still breaking even and increasing his overall revenue.
As his site grows, Joe may choose to upgrade to a new package with increased features or store some money away if he ever wants to re-do his site and hire a professional designer. You never know, he could even make enough money from e-commerce store to hire another person to work alongside him.
A matter we didn’t discuss yet is shipping – luckily all of these orders were for instore pick up, but Joe has plan to ship his clothing across the province, and eventually, Canada. Perhaps even the world one day. Should Joe chose this route, he may opt to upgrade his package to feature a label printing option or looking for carriers to send his sweaters through. At its current rate, Joe can easily create labels himself but as demand grows, this may become more of time-consuming task.
He will also need to think about how he will send the items – he currently is stocked in plastic bags with his branding, but that may not be the best way to send items via mail.
Both of these up-coming obstacles will be addressed in detail at our next webinar session.
To review, let’s go over what we’ve covered today:
Well – Joe has successfully completed his three-step strategy, but this is not the end of his story. Join us next week as we follow Joe:
Until then, please put any questions you may have in the chat or feel free to email me at Jay – J A Y @ Simplycast.com.
Have a great week and enjoy this week’s course. If you would like to watch any of our previous webinars, we’ll put the link in the chat now for you.
