How I’m using Influencer Marketing for Sock Doggo

How I’m using Influencer Marketing for Sock Doggo

I’m hyper-focused on an Influencer strategy for SockDoggo as part of my plan to reach $50K by the end of 2020.

And since I don’t want to spend a fortune on advertising, and I only work Sock Doggo on a very part-time basis, I have to be smart about how I approach it.

At Sock Doggo, I’ve started a new Micro-Influencer Program designed to grow our email list and generate sales.

You can catch more about it here:

The secret to a good influencer event.

The first thing that is most important when working with an influencer — decide on the outcome you want.

We know we should work with influencers. We know these people have a following that may not be following us, and we hope that they will. We trade products with them or giving them a little bit of money, in hopes that they will bring people to our store and raise awareness for our business.

And the problem with that is we can not measure that. 

We might be disappointed because we didn’t get any sales. (That’s always our goal.)

But, that may not always be the outcome we want.

Here are three possible outcomes when working with influencers:

Outcome #1: Content

This is the one that we have used the most at Sock Doggo, so far.

We have been working with influencers for content, so I haven’t paid them any money but we have a lot of images. Really good images that we can use on our website, social media, and email programs. Not just in our email campaigns, but in our email funnels.

It’s content that we couldn’t get otherwise because we’re a really new business.

One of the challenges I had was to get reviews on my website. Because we had worked with so many influencers, we were able to get reviews.

The second challenge I had was that I was struggling with time on site because basically it’s a one-product store. My average time on site was about 30 seconds.

What we were able to do was use this content from these influencers to create a longer product page with more content that people might consume with links to bring them around to the site.

This content has already increased our time on site. That page has gone from 30 seconds to a minute. That’s hugely valuable.

When you are starting out when you need to build assets. I know so many of the people we work with are at the stage where photography’s a problem, and they don’t have a lot of depth. They don’t have stories to tell.

If I had measured the success by my sales, I would have considered that a failure. So decide what outcome you want. And it’s okay that the outcome is content.

Outcome #2: Email Addresses

I know that if I can get an email address, I increase my chance of that person buying from me by at least three times.

So say I have, presently less than 1% chance of somebody buying from me if they’re not on my email list. If I can get them to my site via an email that goes up to a 5% Conversion Rate. And so it’s really important to me to collect email addresses.

In my next phase of influencer marketing, the outcome I want is email addresses. Right now, 55% of my sales are coming from the last click on an email.

So again, if I set up a Giveaway with an Influencer and I was looking for sales and growing my Instagram account and I didn’t get sales, I would say that event wasn’t successful.

But the outcome I’m looking for is email addresses — for me.

I know that I can take that pool of email addresses and convert them over time. And so, I think that’s a really good outcome for working with an influencer.

Outcome #3: Sales

When I think of influencers that you could work with to get sales, I think the biggest mistake people make is they partner with somebody who has a big audience, but not necessarily an audience of buyers.

When you’re looking for sales as your outcome, you need to find people who have an audience of buyers.

When we did our proof of concept event with American Doxie, we knew they had an audience of buyers, so it worked very well for us.

Edith Minne, who owns Renaissance Ribbons, has done a lot of influencer collaborations in the last year that have added tens of thousands of dollars to her revenue. The difference between that and just finding somebody on Instagram is that she’s specifically working with influencers who have an audience of people who are used to buying.

Influencer Marketing is huge, but what’s the outcome?

Content, email sales.

When you work with an influencer with an audience of buyers on an event and you’re looking for sales —expect to pay for that based on results, like a percentage of the sales, because there has to be something in it for them too.

It’s something that I will be doing later on this fall. And I think it’s a great way to build your business.

But, you need to be clear about your desired outcome hen you decide to work with an influencer. Keep in mind what you want to happen and build your promotion and choose your influencers based on that.

Many of our Inner Circle Members have used this training to build their own successful Influencer programs. It’s available to our members at no extra cost. Want to learn more about the Inner Circle? Click here.

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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Our Sales at Sock Doggo: The First 6 Months

Our Sales at Sock Doggo: The First 6 Months

Phew, I’m happy to report that Sock Doggo has graduated to the next stage of business!

If you’re a member of our Inner Circle, you know that there are three stages of an e-commerce business.

And it’s our job to master each stage. It takes time, testing, and consistent work on a few activities that will result in progress. Progress to reach the goals in your current stage, and progress that gets you solidly into the next stage.

I’m happy to report that we’ve cracked the Traffic Stage, and we are solidly into the Conversion Stage. Whoop whoop!

It’s a big milestone as I build this business on a part-time basis, without spending a fortune on ads.

Here’s what it means to me:

Since the day we made our site live, my primary focus has been to reach my goal of building traffic to a minimum of 3000 monthly users.

That’s been the goal. It’s my win.

Even though it would be amazing to get a lot of sales, the reality is that I can’t expect sales without traffic. Traffic has to come first.

My goal of 3000 monthly users (without spending a fortune) gives me a chance at one sale a day, based on a conversion rate of 1%.

I’ll walk you through, step by step in the video here:

Or, here’s a snapshot of where we’re at today:

Total Site Traffic: 25,000 users

April Traffic: 4040 users

March Traffic: 3990 users

We’re there. We’ve easily cracked 3000 2 months in a row.

Total Site Sales: $7727.00

Number of Orders: 193

Average Order Value: $40.71

My next steps?

It’s time to work on Conversion. The fun part. This is where I turn my attention to activities that turn my visitors into customers.

I need 1038 more orders to hit the $50K.

Stay tuned.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share my plan to get these sales, and I’ll tell you how I finally got the traffic I need!

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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February on the Roadmap: An expensive mistake and a big clue about what’s really working.

February on the Roadmap: An expensive mistake and a big clue about what’s really working.

Plus: The 3 things I’ll implement this week.

→ Watch and you’ll see what I did that cost too much money, and why. Gah!
→ What I tried that did not work in February
→ What DID work in February
→ One big clue that dictates my next steps

I’ll walk you through, step by step in the video here:

Or, you can see the highlights here:

February Traffic: 2289 users
February Sales: $695
What didn’t work: Facebook ads experiment with purchase conversion (details in the video)

What did work?
I changed the lead magnet on my popup, and it is performing well.
Email was responsible for 50% of my sales in the month of February.

My one big clue:
I’ve got an ROI of $1.26 for each email subscriber that receives my welcome email.

Next steps:
I’m going to test an Exit Intent popup to see if I can get more people into my welcome funnel.
I’m going to test a different offer on my abandoned cart funnel.

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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These three results tell me I’m on the right track even though I don’t have a ton of sales.

These three results tell me I’m on the right track even though I don’t have a ton of sales.

My advice to our Inner Circle Members is always to be really consistent with just a few things. If you do that, you’ll make progress.

But often, it’s almost impossible to see that progress so it’s very tempting to change course and spend time looking for new strategies.

And here’s the thing…

Progress comes in baby steps, so it’s hard to see.

That’s why I always focus on strategies that I can track and measure, so that I can check my progress. That way, even if it’s not visible at first glance I just need to check my numbers and I’ll know.

At Sock Doggo, I’m working on the very same strategies we teach in the Inner Circle.

So even though I don’t have a ton of sales, I have three ways to check my progress.

You can see my results and how I get clarity here:

If you’d rather read, I’ve got you covered.

Reason #1

Returning Visitors buy twice as often as New Visitors.

You can see, in my first 90 days of sales, I got 28% of my sales from 12% of my visitors, and they spend almost 3x as long on my site.

Here’s the clue: I am driving some quality traffic, I just need more.

Next Steps: Focus on getting more Returning Visitors
I’ll do this by being more consistent with my email, posting more on Social, and spending more of my ad budget on warm audiences.

Reason #2

My Conversion Funnel is working.

I look for a conversion rate of at least 25% of my number of Added to Cart.
To me, that’s a sign of a healthy funnel.

For the first 90 days of sales my funnel is converting at 33%.
(99 completed purchases / 299 add to cart)

Here’s the Clue: My checkout process is good, I just need more people to Add to Cart so I can sell more.

Next Steps: Focus on more Returning Visitors because they are more likely to Add to Cart.

Reason #3

My email marketing is working, (even though it feels like it’s not.)

I’ve sent out many campaigns that have 0 sales attributed to them. And when I look at my email flows, I don’t think they’re converting very well.

Here’s the Clue: When I look at the big picture, I see that in the past 90 Days, 34% of my sales are attributed to email. That’s a big number, and one that I can track and measure to improve on.
Right now, I know that for every email I send, I’m getting .03 back.
A tiny amount for sure, but one I can build on.

Next Steps: Focus on growing my email list.

I can do this by driving more returning visitors to my site, and by running Events like The Perfect Giveaway, that bring more new people onto my list.

There you have it!
Even though it feels like things aren’t happening, and I’m tempted to try all the things, one look at my data tells me to stay the course, focus on driving traffic to my site, getting people back for a second and third visit, and using the tools I have to grow my email list.

If I do that, my sales will grow.

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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Case Study: How I got my sales in Month 2

Case Study: How I got my sales in Month 2

I’ve got two months of sales under my belt at Sock Doggo.

I’m feeling like the results are “ok”, but I wish they were better. Sound familiar?

All of us store owners (me too) tend to see SALES as the only measure of success.

And while sales are the most important thing for the long haul, when you’re at the beginning stages of business, I don’t think we do ourselves any favors when we use sales as the measure of our success, and here’s why:

My new business is still at the “Traffic” stage. I have had some success driving traffic to my site, but I really haven’t perfected it. I still have work to do before I can reach my goal of getting 3000 monthly web visitors at a cost I can live with.

I know that if I focus all my efforts on Traffic, I have the best chance of reaching my goal.

So really, my goal is 3000 quality web visitors each month. That’s a good goal.

3000 quality web visitors = SUCCESS when your stage is “Traffic.”

Sales at this stage are a bonus. If you see them as a measure of your success, you risk feeling disappointed.

In this video, I’ll walk you through my numbers for Month #2 at Sock Doggo.

I”ll show you the most important metrics, and what you should check too.

Then I’ll tell you exactly what we did to get our sales!

Don’t have time to watch?

Here are the numbers for Month #2 at Sock Doggo:

Sales for December:

$1114.22 = 38 orders

Key Metrics:

Traffic: 2176

Returning Visitors: 366 (15%)

Conversion Rate: 1.48%

Average Order Value: $29.45

Ad Spend + Traffic:

1429 web visits were from Facebook ads at an average cost of $0.61. Total spend is $878.

Facebook ad goal was Conversion/View Content Pixel Event

747 free traffic

Source of Sales:

5 were from Facebook

7 were direct (went directly to the site)

7 were from Google Search

3 were from Instagram

1 was from Bing

1 was from Yahoo

12 were from email

Did you catch that that?? 32% of all orders from email!

Marketing Efforts:

Email Mini-Campaign: We did a last-minute, stocking stuffer holiday sale.

25% off from Dec 2 – Dec 16

Out of the Shop: We did a site-wide discount advertised on the website that customers could take advantage of while we were away for the holidays.

15% off from Dec 24 – Dec 30

The Good News:

We got sales.

Our Conversion Funnel is performing better than average.

The Add to Cart Rate is almost 4%.

We reached more than $4k from Oct – Dec with very part-time effort, and very few products.

The Bad News:

We don’t have enough traffic. I dropped the ball and missed the 3000 visitors goal.

Our Average Order Value is below $30. I need to focus on higher priced product.

The Next Steps:

I need to get a popup and New Lead and Welcome email series running.

I also need to increase the Average Order Value by promoting higher priced product.

And last, I have to devote one full day each week to building the business.

Do you focus on increasing your Average Order Value?

If you do, I’d love to hear about your strategy. If not, what metric are you focused on?

Either way, comment below and let me know!

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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What do you do when things don’t go as planned?

What do you do when things don’t go as planned?

I’m probably not much different than you. My first thought when I accidentally derailed our launch this fall was to take a few weeks and come up with another grand plan to re-launch.
I thought I had to do something big.

And then I realized that what I was really doing was finding a way to procrastinate.

And really, I’m committed to showing you how things really happen. And the reality is that most people don’t have a crazy good launch.

Like me, many of you will just stumble into business, and make it up as you go.

And so, I just started.

I think it’s important to share this, because it’s at this stage that many people get stuck, and start to feel a bit lost.

But here’s what you can do when you feel a bit lost:

You can set a few goals, and then create activities that will get you closer to your goal.

Here’s my 30-Day Goals:

1) Get a min of 3000 web visitors without spending a fortune
2) Grow my email list
3) Get some sales and figure out what’s working for us

You can see what we did, what it cost, and take a look at my Shopify dashboard here:

Here’s the short version:

1) Traffic of 3000 web visitors

→ Total Visitors 3706
→ Free Traffic 1690
→ Paid Traffic = 2016
→ Cost per ULC = .59
→ Attribution Sales = 14
→ Value of Sales = $451

2) Build our email list

→ Total email list 2700
→ Launched The Perfect Giveaway (Inner Circle training)
→ Spent $222.95
→ Paid Leads 587 Cost per lead = .37
→ Sales 9 (this list converted at 1.5%)
→ Value of Sales = $264

3) Get some sales

→ Run a simple email only Black Friday event
→ Spent = $140 on lead generation
→ Leads = 113 cost per lead = $1.24
→ Sales = 7 (this tiny list converted at 6.1%)
→ Value = $163
→ Total BF/CM was 14 orders = $482

Summary:

Our total sales: $1289
Our total spend was : $1184

So, we basically spent as much as we sold.
We also had wholesale sales of $1944, so we actually made it through the month with a profit.

But here’s what I know… we are setting ourselves up for success.
When I look at the data, I see a number of clues that tell me I’m on the right track.

Next week I’m going to show you what’s working in this business.
I’ll show you how I find the clues in my business, so you can look for them in yours.

Then, we’ll analyze our results and make some good decisions about next steps!

If you have questions, comment below and ask me!

So, here’s what I need you to do next.

First, sign up to get updates in your inbox:

Then, be sure to Like and Follow my page on Facebook. I’ll be posting regular updates there!

That’s it! It will be a fun adventure, all the way from 0 to $50K on Shopify!

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