2: The 10 Common Mistakes New Store Owners Make (and How to Avoid Them) - Part Two

Hello and welcome to the Product Growth Lab podcast hosted by Andrew George and Melissa Pickle. This is a podcast for creative product-based business owners who want to grow their businesses without overwhelm or massive investments. Each episode we explore actionable strategies, real-life stories, and insights from business owners and experts who know what it takes to succeed. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale, we're here to help you grow your business on your own terms. Subscribe and join us each week as we dive into practical advice and inspiring stories to fuel your growth journey. This is the Product Growth Lab podcast. Let's get started. Okay.

Hello and welcome to part 2 of our top 10 mistakes that most e-commerce business owners keep making.

Okay. So mistake number 5, skipping market research. Another one, this one that sounds like really boring and complicated and like it's just for the big businesses, but there should be some sort of element in market research in everything that you do. And it doesn't need to be this big, massive thing where you're out on the streets with clipboards interviewing the public. It can be the little kind of things like looking up things on Instagram and Pinterest and asking tools like ChatGPT, which just launched its search feature to everyone that lets you kind of, kind of have some more sources and actually get the sources for them. So there's a ton of different tools to do that now.

The basics of market research and the one that I see the most people where people mess up is you want to find your competitors out there. Number one, to verify that there are competitors. Because if there are no other people doing what you want to do, selling what you want to sell, that is a possible strong indicator that what you want to sell, nobody wants to buy. You are much, much better trying to sell, or if you want to sell, sell stuff that's already selling. Don't try to reinvent the wheel all the way. Customize the wheel, make it a prettier wheel, but don't try to reinvent it.

I think it's such a common myth that you need to have this completely unique idea. You need to know if the people are searching for it. Maybe there isn't someone who does exactly what you do, but if you use some sort of a keyword tool, something like SEMrush, and you can prove that the people are searching for that thing, you know that there is some sort of market for it. But if you can't find any competitors, you can't see any search volume for it, you're going to have a really hard time getting people to buy this thing. Only option if no one's searching for it and there's no existing market for it is to run ads. They're going to be super expensive. You're going to struggle to find the market who wants to buy it. And even if you do spend all that money and do a ton of research into people who think you'd buy it, they can still either not click the link through your site or not buy the thing because there really just wasn't a market for it.

I see people doing, we'd be like, oh, no one sells this. I would make a ton of money. I'm gonna be so great. If no one's selling it, it means it's not searchable. No one's looking for it. If they don't at least know the type of thing you're trying to do, then you're kind of screwed. Like Andrew said, you're going to lose so much money in ads because you have no way to talk to them, no way to connect with them.

For your business as a whole and for every product, you need some sort of market validation. And obviously the easiest way to validate the market is to make some sales. So sometimes you do have to throw something out there and hope that it will sell. But looking at what other people are doing and seeing that there is a market out there for the things that you want to sell is the easiest way without making sales to do that.

Okay, number 1, go on Google and just search your product. If nothing shows up, if no search results show up, then either no one is buying it or using the wrong name for it. So search a couple of different names, and if you still can't find anything like comparable, similar, any results at all coming up for what you want to do, don't do it. Second one is go on Amazon. These are the free ways, because Andrew message, uh, mentioned SEMrush, which is amazing, but very difficult on the free plan, and the free trial disappears really fast. So the other way to test this is to go on Amazon, and again, Search the type of product you want to do. Does it show up at all? If it doesn't, don't do it. If it does show up, Amazon will show you how many have been bought in the last month, and that is a phenomenal indicator as to if this is a hot product that people are actually looking for or not. If you have listings showing up, but there's no, like, people have bought this, uh, in the past month, and there's no, like, massive numbers of reviews on a product. Again, I'm going to say, save yourself the time and money, don't do it. Do something that is going to get, that does have that kind of market research on. So that's the, that's the 10-minute easy way to do your market research.

People always think that they need to create these brand new ideas. Sometimes they're like, most businesses are, I took this thing and I made it in pink, or I added some little thing to it. You're not trying to reinvent the wheel, you're your— just maybe if you want to be a bit more unique, you can put your unique spin on it. A lot of the stuff I make, it's like, oh, it's this thing that people are buying as gifts anyway, but I can stick some— a name or some words on it. I'm not making these things, right? I'm buying in like blank items from a supplier. So obviously thousands of other people have access to these same suppliers, but I'm putting my unique spin on it and I'm not trying to create something completely brand new and unique that I have no market validation for.

If you find competitors, follow them, get on their email list, follow their social media, subscribe to whatever it is they have, pay attention to what they're doing. That way you can either spot gaps in what they're doing that you can fill, or it's just going to keep you ahead of time. Maybe they're a bigger brand and they can afford the heavy-duty market research, and now you can just like borrow it from them, if you're paying very good attention.

Our 6th mistake is poor inventory management. One of the things is having too much stock and too many items. The other really big thing when it comes to inventory management is understocking. I've been guilty of this. I've run out of stock, especially around Black Friday. It can be hard to manage stock. Sometimes there's cash flow issues. The very first product I made, The very first order I got, I underestimated the amount of materials that go into making a product and ran out halfway through my very first order and had a panicked Amazon shop to make sure that all of the materials I needed would arrive on time and I could still get this product out. It's like all of these mistakes we're saying, we've made these mistakes at some point and we probably still do.

I've had to overnight supplies for a random product that I didn't realized had sold out, or ones where I know I have that component somewhere in the studio, but the order needs to go out, and I can't find it, so I have to overnight the supply in. And what happens 2 days later? I find the original supply.

But making sure you know what products to have in stock, what materials to have in stock, and some— can be something simple as a spreadsheet. But again, there's a ton of tools that made this easier even in the past few years since I started my business. Things that Shopify will warn you when things are selling out. But one thing I tell people to do, I've always told people to do, is bundling and gift sets. Especially recording this in November, this is the time for bundling and gift sets. People want these bundles where people can buy the item on its own, or they can buy it in like one of 3 different bundles. Plus that happens across Shopify, Etsy, and Amazon. My stock management was a nightmare. I couldn't trust any of the numbers on any sites. I had to look at the physical stock and I had to go between each of these sites and the bundles and make sure that if I have one of one of the things in the bundle, I have to make sure each of them— you can't order more than one of any of them. And if someone buys the item on its own, I need to make sure that the bundle— I have to manually update the bundle so I can buy the bundle. That was a total nightmare. Shopify bundles and the Shopify Connect thing has really streamlined that, and I've started using that already, and that definitely makes things much easier. And also, Etsy's just launched a tool that lets you, instead of having to make bundles, which is still a thing you can do here, but you can just do it as another kind of app checkout style. It'll say, okay, add these things on, and then that will automate stock management for you there as well.

One last thing on stock management that's like, we've talked about like making sure that you have the inventory, you don't over stock or understock, but knowing where you put it. If you have a list of supplies somewhere, if you have on there how much of that supply you have, it's also a really good idea to put another column being like, where is it stored? And then just making sure you put it back where you're supposed to at the end.

I have boxes for everything and everything has a label on it, but whether the label matches what's inside it is a whole nother question.

I take my magic markers and I have like, it's on the top and at least 2 sides, if not 3 sides of the box. What is in it? Is it a completed thing? Is it supply? Is it raw? Does it need stuff?

Yeah, the boxes all have lids and sometimes the lids don't match the bottom 'cause I've just picked one up. Uh, but what I have done is I used to print out labels and they were fixed. I now have whiteboard vinyl and I have cut out labels and then I can erase them and update them so that they are, as long as I remember to do that, they are actually up to date.

And it just makes your life so much better.

One last thing is just making sure not only that you have plenty of stock of the actual items, but do you have tape? Do you have printed paper? Is there plenty of ink? Do you have a pen? Do you have labels? All of those little things. What is all of the things that you need to run your business? Having a good eye on that. And the easiest way I found to do this is to have RestockBox. Your very last pen, your very last ink cartridge, your very last Ream of paper are all in this box. And as soon as you need to reach into that box and take something out, you go on Amazon or go to Staples or wherever, and you buy another one so that you don't run out. That's the, like, you can do all sorts of fancy computer stuff and spreadsheets, but the like easiest, most visual way, and I know people who are creative that we kind of speak to are visual. That is the easiest way to do that. Mistake number 7, my favorite. We might have to do a podcast on this on its own. It's my favorite thing in the world, but it is so important. Leveraging the power of email marketing to drive sales and build relationships with your customers. The most important thing to do— I'm kind of like, how do I say this in like a 5-minute block? But I'll kind of give you the basics and we'll do more deep dive episodes in the future. But the main things I got to say is The second you have the notion of an idea of a plan, like the very first small thing in your brain, make an email list. Find a tool. I always recommend Klaviyo. Find a tool where you can start an email list and start to grow that. You'll be thankful you did. Everyone who ever starts an email list always says, the one thing I regret is not starting my email list sooner. Even if it's your grandma and your neighbor's uncle's dog that are on your email list. That's a great place to start. So go ahead, make that email list. If you have like a social media account, whether it's personal or business, or you have kind of contacts, whatever it is, that might be interested in buying, go ahead, get them on that email list and get that link out there and give people a chance to get on that list. Once you do that, you can start building relationships with them. You can talk to them. You don't have to constantly be selling. I know when you open your own inbox, Most big brands are going to be emailing you pretty much daily with buy this thing and here's the newest arrivals and this is how we stock and it's a sale and you don't always have to do that. You can kind of talk a little bit in your business, in your emails and start building a little bit of relationship. Then once you have products, you can start building in some simple emails that start to sell. And then there's all the complicated advanced automation stuff that we'll definitely dive into at another time.

I send multiple emails a week and the craziest thing is the more emails I send, the more money I make. I fought for so long in the very beginning about I didn't wanna annoy people or I needed to have the perfect email to go out and I didn't know what to send it. I didn't know how to do it. But I didn't want anybody to be mad at me, so I didn't send email and then people left my email list. So obviously they must not like me, but no, they just forgot who I was. So the more emails you send, the better off you are. The less you annoy, the more you send, the less you annoy. How strange is that? Now don't take that to sending an email every single hour. That will annoy. But if you send several emails a week, it's gonna work better for you than sending only one a month, which I've heard plenty of people like, oh, I'm gonna send one email a month, or even better, one a quarter, or I'm only gonna send during Black Friday. They're not that smart.

Yeah, there is a ton of like advanced deliverability stuff and there's so many reasons why you shouldn't do that. If you're, if you're watching this video version of this podcast, you've probably seen like going red as steam coming out of my ears as well. So let's enact an email and view bulk once a quarter. Just take it from me, email once a week. We can go up from there, but we're not going to go down from there.

That is the bare minimum.

Mistake number 8, not having a clear brand identity. And I want to make clear that we're not telling you to go out and spend $10,000 on a logo. I know there's people who will just— social media is kind of where I think about this the most. Is I will open up Instagram and I'm like scrolling through and this person, and that's, I'm not talking about one specific person, just in general, business, who will go in and choose a random kind of a template and they change it every time, they change the colors and stuff, and I never recognize it's them. And I scroll past it and someone will be like, oh yeah, I'm not getting a ton of traction on social media. I'm like, I don't, I don't see posts. They're like, I do. And it's like, oh, they're all that post I ignored because I didn't even realize it was them. So there's really simple ways to do that. Consistent fonts, consistent coloring, and showing up with your own face, which is scary. A lot of people don't want to do it. I didn't want to do it when I started. I kept my face completely out of my business, but getting out there was so important. So there's really simple ways to do it like that.

We covered it all. Consistent fonts, consistent colors, and if you can, a consistent message or a consistent, like, to your business. If there's an emotion that your business kind of represents or like feeds into, have that be consistent as well. And you're solid. We over-difficult it.

Now use AI tools. Canva has a brand kit builder so you can make sure that it consistently uses the same colors and fonts. You can use tone of voice things and all these different AI tools. Like, there's a ton of ways to help you with that. And there's a lot of things. Sometimes there's someone who I've seen on Instagram a lot. And every reel they make, they're sat in the same corner of their house. They have on some sort of shirt and have a mug in their hand. And I instantly know it's them. And if I know them and I like them and want to listen to them, as soon as I scroll in and see that, I'm like, oh, that's so-and-so. I'm going to sit and watch them. Whereas things being totally different and being all over the place, it just blends into the background. Okay, mistake number 9 is focusing too much on getting new customers. Too many businesses focus on acquisition over retention. So acquisition is gaining new customers. You're spending a ton of time on social media and advertising, different events and things to keep growing this email list. Whereas if you have an email list or a social following on Facebook or wherever it is you have, that is full of people who are either considering buying or have bought in the past, And it's like 1 million percent easier to sell to someone who's bought in the past. And they've also told you they want to buy again. And you're just ignoring them. Speak to those people. Keep saying, okay, here's my new stuff. Here's some products. Oh, you look like you're probably out of soap by now. Why not buy another one? And you're just wasting these customers. And it's really expensive and time-consuming to acquire new customers.

Is this only like 10 times more expensive to acquire a new customer? Than to just sell to an existing customer. Yeah, but it's crazy expensive to get new customers in. So if you do not have a retention plan, once you have your first batch of customers in, switch it so like 60% of your thinking is on retention and 40% is on getting new, because you're going to make so much more money off of the people that are in there. I was checking my dad's the other day because Shopify will tell you how many times someone has ordered with you. And I have someone who crossed over 50 orders with me through Shopify. That does not count the other places that she has encountered me, so she might be more along the lines of 60, 70 orders from me. I'm just like, holy shit, I owe this woman some cookies.

Just think about how much time and money you would have had to have spent to get 70 customers otherwise. How much would it have cost in ads to do that?

Oh, even when I run ads, she's like the first person to buy off the ad. And I'm like, oh, come on, I didn't want to pay for you.

And if you think kind of in the, like, just as a basic kind of example, if you're spending around, I'm going to say, $15 a month for your email and you use that to keep selling to existing customers, that's kind of fixed, that's $15. If you are running ads, there's no way you're only spending $15 a month on ads to acquire new customers. Yeah. You could probably spend that $15 and make one new customer, whereas you have like, I don't know, 100 people on your list, you would have a couple of people buying from you again every month.

50 pull a lot of ads and get no new customers.

Yeah. So it's like a really basic example to kind of put it into terms that are easy to understand. Focus on retention of customers, but don't sacrifice the customers you've already got and are harder to get new ones. Okay, we have made it to mistake number 10.

Holy shit.

And this is not tracking key metrics. And this one, people of all sizes are guilty of, business of all sizes. And when we, we have some coaching students and we kind of force them into this. We have like weekly things we make them tell us. We normally have a monthly kind of review call where we go and we say, Here is a spreadsheet. These are all the key stats we're telling you you need to track. And we'll like sit down with them, be like, okay, you're not leaving until you give, until you've got these stats in this spreadsheet. And then you can make a ton of decisions based on that.

Great. So some of the big things you should be tracking. Sales. How much money are you making? That's a good one. Expenses. How much are you spending to make that money or fulfill that money? How many new people joined your list or did you get on social media? We just spent a whole thing talking about like, don't prioritize new over existing, but you do have to have new coming in to grow your existing. So whichever platforms you chose to be on, who's new in there? When you look at your emails and your socials, how many people are you getting? But are they engaging? Are they opening things? These are like key, key important things to look at, but like, how much are you making? How much are you spending? And are you growing?

More than just tracking them is actually looking at them and understanding them. Can I have some context behind that? You might go, okay, my sales in October were this much, and in November they doubled. It's probably because of Black Friday. But if you didn't have that context, and then suddenly in January you see your sales drop again. You're like, oh, always that Johnson. People are buying more November, December. And it's natural that your business is going to have ups and downs. So having those pieces of context. Look at things like email. One month you're super consistent and you email every week, and then the next month you email once. You can see your open rate and click-through rates and things drop. It's because of your lack of consistency. It's not necessarily because of the email itself. So having those pieces of context. Things like when you spoke about how much money you're making, we can't speak that one, but how much you're spending out should normally, if your income goes up, your expenses also go up, because you need more things like stock and staff and all. But sometimes thinking like, why was June particularly like that? My sales were lower, but my expenses were up. Knowing that context, okay, that's the month the equipment broke down. I had to buy a whole new machine. I had to invest in this thing. Having those pieces of context, because you'll want to look at these things and kind of compare month to month and also year over year. Because sometimes that, especially months that are outliers like November, December, you need to look year over year to get useful information. And having those things, being like, oh, I can remember in July what happened in June, but I can't tell you what happened in June 2023. Making sure you have that context so that you can actually use this information to make decisions.

And don't trust your gut feelings when it comes to like KPIs and key metrics and whatnot. So many times we'll be like, oh, this month's felt awesome, or this week is great, or look at these. And if we go off of just feelings, our feelings lie to us all the time. If we have a little bit of bad, everything was awful. If we have sometimes a little bit of good, it was the best day ever. Those go back and forth very easily, but they're all lies. Go only by the numbers. And yes, Andrew George says amazing, like contextualize. No, there's reasons behind those numbers most of the time, like have that tracked as well. But trust those. If you have a gut feeling, go back to the numbers and double-check it. How good is your gut? Some people have really good guts, right?

Yeah. And pretty much every week we'll have someone who comes in on our Monday call and they'll talk about, oh, I did a show at the weekend and I thought I did really bad this year. It felt really slow and all that, but I looked at the numbers and actually I made double. Here, or they'll do the opposite. They'll be like, I thought this one was really good, but actually, my, it's down. Having that, trusting that gut feeling can often be wrong. You need to look back at those numbers. And if those people weren't tracking those numbers, they would never know that. And they might make a decision about going back to that show where they decide, you know what, it's slower this year. I'm not going to go back when actually they make more money.

Or they might think this event was amazing only to find out that it did half of what it did last year. It's like, oh no, it sucked.

Yeah, so you'll, you may run into this, making sure that you have that information available there. So those are our 10 mistakes. But before we finish off, I want to add in a number 11. And that is not promoting to your people enough. Doing things like having flash sales is super important to your business. And to help make that super easy, we have prepared a "Flash Sale in a Snap" guide, where you will get step-by-step checklist, email templates, and social media templates so that you can run a flash sale this weekend. Just go ahead and go to theproductgrowthlab.com/flash and grab it today. Thank you for tuning in to the Product Growth Lab podcast. We hope you found today's episode insightful and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. It helps us reach more creative entrepreneurs just like you. Stay connected and keep experimenting. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't forget to join our community for more resources, tips, and support. Until next time, keep growing and creating. This is the Product Growth Lab podcast signing off.