21 Tips for Growth in 2021

As we dived into the H2 of 2021, we've got our heads full with mixed quirks, it got us wondering - how to get the best out of H2??

It is safe to say that this year will leave a significant mark on the digital advertising space due to the lack of privacy changes, limited tracking abilities, and rock numbers on the digital advertising platforms.

We at WeScale started preparing early for the H2, with the Q4 focus in our minds, targets, and Asana projects.?

To help you get the most out of the rest of 2021, we went into action, found 21 global industry experts, and asked each of them to share their advice for growth in 2021.

Are you ready for it??

Let's jump right in. First, let's hear some great tips from eCommerce experts about?Multi-channel and stability.

Multi-channel and stability - Tip #1

" Become obsessed with a multi-channel mix that is centered around pull marketing and brand building - that is where the opportunity is. Businesses that rely on one strategy that they have had historical success with will die out and burn cash."

John Hagan , Co-Founder of the VOLT agency

Multi-channel and stability - Tip #2

"Think about growth strategically. Are you dependent on one primary channel? It's time to expand. Where?do additional strategic growth opportunities lie? More markets, more products, new categories, more focus on repeat customers? Map out the key directions that can deliver both growth and long-term sustainability. And then start acting on them."

Rok Hrastnik , CEO of Guericom.com

Multi-channel and stability - Tip #3

"Tracking and single-channel attribution will become (and is already now) one of the biggest challenges to drive growth, in comparison with 2020.??

On the front side, one major key will be differentiating paid acquisition channels focusing on MER, while running in parallel longer-term brand awareness & brand reputation activities (like influencer marketing and PR) to counteract the ongoing increase of advertising costs.?

From a profitability and sustainability standpoint, we will need to embrace more and more the concept of Customer Centricity.

Ecommerce Brands have now, more than ever, the need to maximize every chance possible to increase Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, and Customer Engagement, even after the first transaction.

This will primarily help the brand to continue staying "on top of mind," secondly, as a?consequence, will lead to a longer and higher Customer Lifetime Value (which is, unfortunately, too often neglected by many brands)."

Emanuele Maragno ,?CMO & Co-Founder atEcom House

Multi-channel and stability - Tip #4

"Media buying is getting more and more expensive, so you have to learn how to monetise your audience better (increase AOV, CR, and retention). There is always a way.?Also, most of the brands usually rely on FB, so mental exercise "what if FB was gone" would be a good kick in the ass to come up with new ways when acquiring your customers."?

Erikas Plotkinas ,?CMO at Kilo.Health

Multi-channel and stability - Tip #5

"Think about your store and product selling process as a funnel. As competition grows, your ability to maximize the value of each customer is crucial for the scalability of your brand. Exit intent popup with discounts and automation, order bumps, and in cart upsells + 3-4 upsells so you can be as profitable with each transaction. Have these in place, and you will crush 2021!"

Alex Fedotoff ,?founder of eCommerce Scaling Secrets

These were some golden nuggets about the multi-channel marketing strategies and how to build a company that focuses on stability, growth, and/or scalability.

Let's hear more about?building internal operations and strategies?that can support the growth.

Building internal operations - Tip #1

"Constant adaptation to the response of the market or customers should be the primary guide for further directions of the company's path and developing new products/services. In my opinion, the growth of the eCommerce will generate an excellent product or service, creative designs that will be attractive for potential buyers, and the ability to adapt to changes quickly; by that, I mean usage of multi-channel platforms for revenue diversification, timely entry into foreign markets or the addition of products or. Product categories to the existing portfolio. The focus of companies, stable revenue, and growth will in the future be based on creating added value for the user, financial stability, having a complete overview of the business operations, and above all of that having a team that will perform as one unit from marketing, sales, and after-sales activities."

Eva ?kedelj ,?Head of Facebook Slovenia at Httpool, Facebook ASP

Building internal operations - Tip #2

"2021 is the year of tracking, so as boring as it may seem, if you don't have?control of your numbers, looking beyond the ads platforms, you're going to leave money on the table and make bad decisions. Be ready for a big Q4 and prepare to use multiple data sources to make the right decisions on optimisation and scaling."

Depesh Mandalia ,?Founder of The BPM Method

Building internal operations - Tip #3

"Quit using ROAS as a key metric.?Looking at ROAS means you’re thinking about return instead of total profit - and we’re all in business to grow profits, right (not ratios)? Instead, select a gateway product or two, design a customer acquisition method for it, and set an allowable CPA you’re willing to spend to acquire a customer through that gateway product."

Deacon Bradley ,?Founder of Sharp Business Method

Building internal operations - Tip #4

I know this is nothing new, but in my opinion, any business that wants to grow should focus on its team. Having a strong leadership team as well as the teams on the front lines is critical to the success of any business. It’s not easy to create a space where criticism can be given freely without taking offense. A place where team members feel respected and valued and bring in their best selves to work day after day.?I think investing money, time, and heart in your team is the best way to have your business grow,?in 2021 and any other year."?

Bo?tjan Belingar , CEO of Hustler Marketing

Building internal operations - Tip #5

"Focus on collecting and leveraging first-party data. Here are four steps I’d take:

Step 1: Investigate what first-party data you're currently collecting and come up with a list of what information you want to start collecting.

Step 2: Aggregate this data in a way where it’s easily accessible, and it’s easy to draw insights from

Step 3: Leverage this data across all your major channels to create a well rounded omnichannel approach that’s highly personalized for each consumer.

Step 4: Continually find ways to enrich this data. For example, leveraging email marketing is a great way to do this. Especially if you leverage Klaviyo’s ability to create links that auto-add custom properties to subscribers' profiles. Essentially you can survey and learn more about users directly within emails based on what people click on."?

Chase Dimond, Partner at Structured and Founder of ChaseDimond.com

These five tips give us a lot to think about, but wait for it - there's more.?The following section is about?retention and building a community.?

Let's start with the first one from Jan, a very short and sweet tip.?

Retention and community building - Tip #1

" Don't underestimate retention. "?

Jan Vranjek , VP Europe at Flaviar

Retention and community building - Tip #2

"Build out an SMS channel in 2021 if you haven't already. With open rates of 98%,?SMS is a must for incremental revenue with your owned audience.?Good brands should expect 20% of their revenue to come from their email list, and an additional, incremental revenue stream of 10-20% from SMS."

Eric Dyck , Founder at DTC Newsletter and Podcast

Retention and community building - Tip #3

"Start focusing on customer lifetime value?more than ever. In the first half of this year, we could see changes with Facebook, and Google will soon implement big changes. The cost of traffic acquisition is soaring, and tracking is becoming more complex while customer retention is still underrated."

Daniel Budai ,?CEO of Budai Media

Retention and community building - Tip #4

"Understand your audience and build strong connections with them. This is one of the biggest advantages smaller brands have to differentiate themselves from the big ones to grow fast."

Daniel Bidmon ,?CEO of ECOM HOUSE

We are huge believers that the only way your marketing works is if you are consistently working on your content strategy.

Let's visit the following section about?user-generated content, content creation, and testing.

UGC, content creation and testing - Tip #1

"Testing, testing, testing, and UGC(User-Generated Content). A vast majority of the DTC brands advertising on FB & IG aren’t doing even close enough testing to get optimal results. Of course, increased testing brings many challenges. One of which is getting a wide variety of content to test in the first place. UGC offers an efficient way to scale diverse, authentic content that is native to FB & IG platforms which results in an increased number of tests and super-effective Ads."

Sebastian Novin ,?Co-Founder of Influee

UGC, content creation and testing - Tip #2

"I strongly recommend using?the 15x1 Method in Ethical Performance Marketing Ads. This means creating 15 different versions for the first second of the video ads while keeping the rest of the video the same. We were so positively surprised with the 82% uplift in our Return on Ad Spend by creating 15 versions of the first second. Wishing you all the best and go out and crush the first second for your amazing video ads!"?

Chris Erthel ,?Co-Founder of Meller

UGC, content creation and testing - Tip #3

"1. Have a methodical and consistent approach to creative testing

More than ever, in 2021, you need to step up your creative testing game by increasing not only the amount of content you test but also the quality; inferior content will not survive.

Make sure you test as many hooks/angles as you can think of (different people will be attracted to the same product for different reasons), look as native to the platform as possible and test all the different creative formats each platform offers.

2. Get help from others

Many times the problem is that you "don't know what?you don't know." Get help from consultants, mentors, agencies, or reach out to other companies to swap notes; it will give you the confidence to hear the experience of how others solved the challenges you are having right now and accelerate your growth and scale exponentially."?Fred Alves, Founder of GoGoGrowth

Fred Alves ,?Founder of GoGoGrowth

UGC, content creation and testing - Tip #3

"Hire a creative director.?This person needs to edit and shoot content themselves. The number 1 blindspot I see with brands is their lack of respect to the volume of content needed for all channels of advertising."

Nick Shackelford , CEO of Structured

After reading all the 18 tips for growth in 2021 by the eCommerce industry experts, what topic is still missing?

Performance ???

Our number 1 passion.?

Let's jump right in and hear from 3 experts that are skyrocketing businesses across the globe.

Performance - Tip #1

"Since we're primarily focusing on Facebook as the main revenue-generating platform, my main advice would be -?work on your naming conventions. After iOS14, we don't have data anymore about demographics, but we can still collect that if naming conventions are set up the right way. We are able to collect data about age, ethnicity, gender, hair color & much more about the creative itself, like format, style, messaging, etc. Meaning that we're able to narrow it down to what works the best and stop wasting money on creative testing!"

Arnas Jacevicius ,?CEO of A Cool Agency

Performance - Tip #2

"If you are below $300k?a month stop overthinking branding! Focus on performance marketing, launching as many products as you can, and getting attention/sales first. Branding is what takes businesses over $20M+ a year but doesn't have much impact till you get customers and eyes. You have to understand the stage of growth you're in and the critical activities of it to grow to the next one."

Darius Kunca , Co-founder at AdKings eCommerce Growth Agency

Performance - Tip #3

"Focus on?Growing your CAC-to-LTV Ratio & scale profitably?as aggressively as you can. We’re now in a bullish market, and you have the best conditions ever to become a market leader in your niche."

Yahav Hartman , CEO. Madgicx.com

And that's a wrap, 21 tips to get the best out of your growth potential in 2021.

Hope you got a lot out of it, and if you have any question about the strategies explained above, don't hesitate to reach out.

To sum up this article, it gives me great pleasure to wish you high revenue, great blended ROAS, and have fun in H2 this year.

Happy scaling ??