Why Your Internal Ecommerce Team Needs an Ecommerce Growth Coach
If you are an ecommerce brand of any size, it’s likely that your marketing strategy and implementation are either run by an internal team (or person) or by an outside agency. Typically you’re forced to choose one or the other, and both have their pros and cons.
For example, internal teams are usually agile and can work closely with you, giving you more control over what goes on. However, internal teams are not always the best at keeping up with the latest and greatest marketing trends. They’re too busy staying focused on keeping your own marketing afloat. It’s also rare to find specialists to hire internally for all the tactics used in your program. It can be challenging to find a jack of all trades, but it’s also expensive to hire a different specialist for each marketing channel.
Agencies, on the other hand, should be specialized in a variety of marketing skills and very much aware of ever-shifting trends. However, the nature of agency work can be slow-moving as well as a bit removed from your business’s day-to-day. They also won’t risk firing themselves by teaching your team any of their skills, so you won’t learn much from them.
Sounds like a lose-lose scenario right? That’s why we’re here.
In this article, we’re diving into a new, third option that can set up your internal ecommerce or marketing team for success: External coaching from an ecommerce growth team like us at Metacake.
Do these challenges sound familiar?
After 10+ years working in the ecommerce space, we have found that ecommerce leaders tend to have the same set of concerns about their internal team and their business success. These concerns include:
Paid Advertising
Maybe you’ve noticed that your return on ad spend for your paid marketing is not what it used to be. Cost per acquisition is getting painfully expensive on Facebook, Instagram, and Google. It’s become a crowded space, and with changes to protect private customer data, finding the right audience and tracking performance are challenging.
Website Health & Performance
You might be considering a store or platform migration, or perhaps you’re in the middle of one. It can be difficult to determine the right platform for your needs and how to transition seamlessly.
Or, maybe you know your website needs updates because your conversion rate is low, but you’re not sure where to start. How do you know what to improve in order to see more sales?
Email & SMS Marketing
Are your customers only purchasing once and then disappearing? Do you struggle with low average order value (AOV)? Both of these contribute to customer lifetime value (LTV), which is critical for success in any business, especially ecommerce. Email and SMS marketing are the golden opportunity to build and maintain relationships with your customers in a way that grows lifetime value. However, building and maintaining a thriving email program requires strategy and expertise.
Where does your team stand?
You likely have an internal ecommerce team working on all of these elements and more, but here’s the issue with keeping those team members on an island:
It’s impossible for your internal team to optimize your brand’s efforts and stay as cutting edge as possible in order to take your brand to the next level. Your internal team only looks at one brand all day long and likely does not have opportunities (or bandwidth) to see what’s working for other brands or grow in their skillset.
So what’s the solution?
The Solution: An External Coach
The solution to these challenges is not to fire your internal ecommerce team. The solution is to add an external coaching figure to complement and guide your internal team.
An expert team from the outside can provide input based on the success they are currently seeing and what they have experienced across a variety of brands. This type of team exists to be constantly learning what’s working right now (instead of playing catch up on what worked last month). This blends your internal tactical resources with the experience, leadership, and advice your team needs to succeed. It will also help you make more informed, confident decisions about your business and marketing strategies.
Overall, this is a blended, collaborative approach in which you hire experts to guide you and then handle some, most, or all of the implementation with either internal resources or an outside agency. This may be a different way of thinking for your business, but ultimately you will see more bang for your buck.
Now admittedly, there are not many partners out there that offer this type of model. Here are a few options that come close if you want to achieve a partnership like this:
1. Masterminds
Mastermind groups and classes are great for high-level expertise. However, they’re not as helpful for getting answers to technical questions and feedback on your planning and execution.
2. Courses
We strongly recommend participating in courses throughout the year to learn new skills and keep you on your toes. The only downside of using courses as your sole source of expertise is that they won’t be personalized to your business and the questions you likely have.
3. One-Off Advisors or Consultants
In this scenario, you can learn from someone who has done what you’re doing before. While this can be a more affordable way to go, you will be limited to this one advisor’s experience.
4. Traditional Consulting Firm
Again, not a bad option. But these are usually expensive and might lack specialized, tactical knowledge (such as how to improve your digital ad performance or your website’s conversion rate).
5. Hire an ecommerce growth team— like Metacake.
We are a growth team that has years of experience growing the top global brands’ ecommerce channels. Our team helps with ecommerce business strategy, paid advertising, and email marketing, as well as website design, optimization, and migrations. Our primary focus with all of these tactics is to grow customer lifetime value in order to provide healthy growth and scale for ecommerce businesses.
What makes us different from the options above, or a traditional agency?
The main difference is that we are flexible. We realize the benefit of a blended team, so if you want to keep tactics and execution internal or within the agency you work with, you can hire us solely for coaching in our areas of expertise. Our team is well-versed in implementation for all of these areas, so if needed we are also here to jump in and help. Overall, we have the advantage of running a lot of activity for different brands every day, so we are always up to speed on what “works” for ecommerce businesses and what will not.
With the right partner, you can truly have experience and expertise on your side. If you’re an ecommerce business leader in need of guidance for your team and you’d like to learn more about what an ecommerce growth team could do for you, reach out to us! We’d love to schedule a free 30-minute call to learn more about your team and how we can help.
