Outsourcing branding and marketing to an agency is common. So is outsourcing to an individual. But think about the number of times you’ve heard people come around complaining about how that agency/ individual was not able to deliver results. If you ask us, we have these conversations every day.

There are brand owners of all business sizes that walk up to us and tell us about how bad their previous branding agency was.

Or how bad they strategized the marketing and how it led to no sales or ended up being just a big drain of their resources (especially money).

And then are times when brand owners walk up to us with a pre-fed notion in mind about how good their branding is. But how their marketing does no justice to it.

Either way, here’s what we end up telling them all – “Your eCommerce branding and marketing agency has been fooling you. And you’re the first one to be blamed for the poor results!”

Come at us all you want. But the truth remains that if you were seeing your branding not make as big an impact or marketing not drive as many sales, did you ask the right questions to who you were working with?

Agreed, that most of us don’t come with a marketing background. But there are a few gives when you know ‘clearly’ that your eCommerce agency is doing nothing to help your store grow.

Here are the most common BS statements you get to hear when your eCommerce branding and marketing agency is throwing darts in the dark or isn’t ready to have a ‘real’ conversation with you about your conversions.

Things your eCommerce marketing agency say when they’re lying to you

Your branding and marketing/ advertising efforts don’t need to go hand-in-hand.

Oh no no no.

Imagine Amazon branding with the message ‘delivering smiles’. And then their marketing/ advertising campaigns showing unreliable products from sellers you wouldn’t buy.

Or Johnson and Johnson. Imagine the baby brand suddenly talking about high street fashion just because that’s an ad campaign that will get you ‘attention’. Absolutely bonkers right?

If you ever feel or get a hunch that the campaigns your eCommerce marketing agency is running, are not in line with what your brand stands for, stop them right there.

Even better, take a step back, ask them to pause your campaigns and communicate these things transparently:

• Your vision
• Your mission
• What you want to be known for
• How you want to reach your customers
• What you want to promise and what you don’t

If you’ve just started an online store and don’t have answers to the above, read this guide: What is brand identity? How to design and develop a great one.

Your marketing/ advertising results have nothing to do with your UX.

Ha-ha.

You know the very first thing we do when someone reaches out to us seeking help in marketing their online store?

We conduct an in-depth audit on their website and their existing campaigns.

We look through every single detail – right from the home page, product pages, cart page, the checkout process to the thank you page and more. We go through it all to identify where you are or might lose your customer when we start running campaigns.

Also, we point out exactly where your store UI/UX is losing the brand value. You can’t be promising consumers one thing and leading them to another. You can’t convert visitors into customers that way!

In fact, we recently worked on a project with a beauty and cosmetics wellness brand. Their store UX was so poor, that it overwhelmed the visitors that landed on it.

So we personally took on the responsibility of pointing out the leaks with a thorough UX research.

We first worked on making their store leak-proof and only then started to plan running their campaigns.

Want to know where you’re losing customers? Reach out to us for an audit.

Your existing store data has nothing to do with your targeting.

Pfft.

Really? Come on.

If your eCommerce agency just said that all your data is ‘old’ and ‘not relevant’, a big BOO to them. Why?

Well, by store data we mean – data on how your products are performing, the number of sales you’re making and who your customers are. Is that not important? Does that not give you leverage or a baseline to start your marketing and advertising efforts?

All data is important.

• It tells you what sells the most from your product range (best-selling and trending products)
• It tells you how interesting shoppers find your brand (visitor data)
• It tells you who your customers are (who our of those visitors actually buy from you)
• It tells you which marketing/ advertising platform is actually driving traffic and which ones are leading to sales
• It tells you how much customers want to spend on your products (average order value)
• It tells you how many shoppers abandon their carts (missed opportunities)

Well, you get the drift.

Be it data from your social platforms, your advertising channels, your email marketing tool, previous SMS campaigns or offline marketing, ALL OF IT MATTERS.

It’s just about being able to sift through it all and turn it into actionables that will help you grow your store.

You just need to focus on the number of sales you make.

Ahem ahem. There are so many other eCommerce growth metrics you need to look at.

If your eCommerce marketing agency has been flashing the number of sales you make every time you ask for a report, time to step back and take a raincheck.

You need to ask them metrics like the reach of your campaigns, the average conversion rate on your campaigns, your average spend, the ROI you’re getting on it and most importantly, the ROAS.

Because if you’re spending a thousand dollars and getting 10 sales worth $10 each, that’s not growth.

You’re losing more than you’re earning!

Ask your eCommerce marketing agency to give you a better performance report on your campaigns. If they can’t create one, it’s time to move on to someone who can.

We don’t like to boast, but we’re focused on data all the time. Here’s a list of some of the analytics tools we make use of to give our clients the ‘correct’ picture with the right metrics.

You can’t scale your marketing and advertising efforts.

*Rolls eyes*

Have you ever seen Amazon run one type of a campaign and then pause all their efforts to reach new customers or keep the existing ones engaged?

Have you ever seen Walmart just rely on email marketing and not explore reaching out to customers on SMS?

The answer is NO.

If your eCommerce marketing agency has been giving you this excuse, it’s time to look into their technology stack.

If they’re not able to scale your marketing and advertising efforts to grow your business, the real reason is probably that they don’t have the right partners.

For example, we know how a growing store will want to explore different marketing channels to reach their customers. That’s why we’ve partnered with leading eCommerce players and solutions like Nosto, Klaviyo, MailChimp and others. You can get a glimpse of our eCommerce marketing stack here.

And here’s how we did it for American jewellery brand, LACE by Jenny Wu.

You aren’t spending enough on your marketing/ advertising.

One of the most common things that eCommerce business owners hear from agencies and professionals alike, is that they’re not spending as much on their campaigns.

Yes, throw in a few more thousand dollars and you’ll see sales. Oh, your competitor’s spending hundred more dollars than you – mind giving us more budget?

These are baseless conversations.

We’re not saying you’re going to get thousands of dollars worth of sales by spending just a dollar. That isn’t true either.

But if every time your eCommerce marketing agency has this to say when your campaigns don’t work, you know something is wrong.

Turn around and ask them what you’re being asked to spend on.

If they’re doing things the right way, they probably have multiple analytics tools in place to measure the spend and the most important growth metrics.

You need to set up more campaigns.

Another thing that most store owners – disappointed with their agencies or seeking more advice – come to us with, is asking ‘how many campaigns’ do they really need to set up to drive more sales?

They’ve been fed the ‘the more, the better’. But is that really the truth? NO.

What matters is actually the quality of your marketing and advertising campaigns. It’s about the number!

You could have a 100 ads set up at any given point in time. But if none of them entice the shoppers to purchase from you, you’re only going to end up spending on thin air.

Or you’re going to end up looking at data that just does not matter when it comes to driving actual sales for your store.

PS. We do firmly believe that your campaigns need to be refreshed frequently. This is important so that you don’t exhaust your ad’s audience, and you don’t start to ‘bore’ your customers by showing them the same thing over and over again.

Also, we’re firm believers of A/B testing.

You don’t need to worry about customer retention.

Sure, reaching new customers is great. But does that mean you forget about those that you spent thousands of dollars on to acquire? NO.

According to surveys and studies conducted across different industries, improving your customer retention by 5% can help you increase your revenue from anywhere between 25%-95%.

That’s because these are customers who know what your brand has to offer and are more likely to buy from you, even if it’s a high-value product.

So if your eCommerce marketing agency has been telling you how their goal is to just reach new customers, time to call them out on their bullshit!

You can’t personalize your marketing and advertising efforts.

Wrong.

If you or your agency was paying close attention to your data, you would know exactly who your shoppers are, what motivates them to make a purchase and how you can turn them from being a visitor to a customer. You would clear customer segments in place based on their purchase behaviour.

For example, you would have clearly been able to tell who your price-sensitive customers are and who are customers that simply look for limited-edition products. With that information, you CAN or any agency/ freelancer can personalize the marketing and advertising efforts.

Remember one thing – personalization leads to a minimum increase of 13% in conversions from campaigns.

If your eCommerce marketing agency is lying, what should you do?

Well, step away from them. Please.

The number of online stores are increasing by the day. This means that irrespective of what a consumer is looking for, they have at least ten brands to choose from.

The competition for consumer attention is getting tougher by the day.

It requires you to be present where they are. But that does not mean you spread yourself too thin and start to spend beyond what you can in the hope of reaching them.

Not should your eCommerce marketing agency.

What you do need is a systematic approach to eCommerce marketing strategy. Data. Data. Data.

Not sure if you have enough data to get you going or not sure whether your eCommerce marketing agency is sharing the right metrics with you?

Contact us for a consultation today and we’ll show you how actual marketing is done.