They say you have to spend money to make money.
And what better place to do that than the internet, where 5 billion customers will give brands more than $6.3 trillion dollars this year alone.
They also say if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
And they are — with 4-million storefronts on Shopify alone.
Twenty-seven-million online stores in all, or one for every 12½ people in the U.S.
But what separates a simple storefront from a successful brand?
What makes a great brand relatable, trustable, desirable?
What makes it profitable?
Marketing, really. Branding and marketing.
From higher-level concepts like product-market fit, look, logo, color scheme, and consistency, to tone of voice, presentation and packaging.
And mastering “minor” metrics like click-through and cart abandonment rates.
“The dollars are in the details.”
| Grant Klein, Studio 3 Marketing, Agency Director
For more than 10 years, Studio 3 Marketing has worked with brands of all types and sizes, from startups to publicly-traded billion-dollar companies.
Here’s how and why those partnerships have typically all begun.
Here’s when and why you, too, should hire an ecommerce marketing agency.
When and Why to Hire an Ecommerce Marketing Agency
Our Top 10s on when and why to hire an ecommerce marketing agency for your brand:
1. Your inhouse team is solid, but doesn’t specialize in ecom specifically.
Because ecommerce is a bit unlike any other form of sales or marketing, most companies hire an ecom marketing agency to complement their own internal team. Ecommerce uses the typical channels of paid ads, email marketing, search engine optimization, and more. But it uses these channels in different ways than they’re traditionally used for service based businesses. How and how often you’ll do things like emails, ads, specials, and retargeting vary greatly in ecom, and depending on what product you’re selling to who and at what price point. A good ecom agency knows these differences and the best way to leverage them for today’s sales and long-term growth.
“The dollars are in the details,” Grant Klein, Studio 3 Marketing’s Agency Director, says.
2. To build a seven- or eight-figure brand.
Customer choices are infinite. Brands have to work harder and smarter today than ever before. Consumer demand is definitely there, but so are tens of millions of competitive products, all itching for attention, eyeballs, and credit card numbers. To attract interest at scale, invite the right type of clicks from the right type of people, you have to do ecommerce differently. A great ecommerce marketing agency can help you build and scale a 7 to 10-figure brand, if your product has the potential to do so.
3. To build a (large, respected, strong, profitable) brand, not just a quick buck.
With Shopify, Wix, and WooCommerce, anyone in the world can set up an online store and start selling. But building a valuable and profitable brand involves more than that. We help brand clients with everything from high-level product development and presentation, to crafting ad copy that interests, and streamlining checkout processes to reduce cart abandonment. We also do these things the right way: The “buy from me or block me” marketing mentality is alienating, not profitable. (And yes, it’s a real approach to online sales, just not a very successful one. It involves copious amounts of contact and communication. Copious, and off-putting.) But because you need sales like yesterday, we’ll perfect that proper balance of just the right amount of repetition.
4. For watermelons, not grapes. ($$$$$, not $)
“Sixty percent of a watermelon is better than 100% of a grape,” billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban once said. So no, a good ecom marketing agency won’t take 40 percent of your revenue, but yes, it will help you turn a grape into a watermelon, or a farm of them. If things go for you like they have for our past clients, Studio 3 Marketing’s brand team—S3 Brands—can help you more than double your revenue, increase your conversion and click through rates well above industry average, and maximize your organic website traffic.
5. Slow sales despite effort and ad spend.
One of the more common starts to our long-term ecom partnerships have come from brands putting in plenty of time, effort, and money elsewhere, but who aren’t quite satisfied with the returns they’re getting. Sales are slow or nonexistent, ads are burning cash daily—and way too much of it. Brands that believe they’re already making all of the right moves but are seeing slow or no sales can benefit from a fresh set of skilled eyes, as well as insights on the most up-to-date and effective sales strategies.
6. Lack of prior experience in ecom, product or brand launches.
If this is your first foray into the world of online sales, you’ll want to strongly consider hiring an ecom branding and marketing agency. Ecom is a world of infinite potential—and endless possible errors. Navigating the space can be expensive and frustrating. A good ecom agency will help you optimize your website for mobile-first usage, perfect your product presentation so it's not only appealing but immediately orderable, and fine tune your highest-ROI ads and other outreach methods. High-level, and lower-level, overarching strategy and sales tactics, down to streamlined checkout processes.
What’s an Ecom Marketing Agency Anyway?
An ecommerce marketing agency, sometimes called a growth partner, is a specialized agency that focuses exclusively on online sales.
We’ll act as an extension of your own in-house marketing team—or as your team if you don’t have one already—adding the experience we’ve gotten from building multiple Inc 500, and industry-award-winning eight- and 10-figure ecom brands over the last decade.
Ready to discover if our client-agency fit is right for you? So are we.
To set up a call with our Agency Director, fill out the short form below, or send us an email.
