How To Grow a Sustainable Business Like an Expert

Okay, I know we can agree. When it comes to business and business coaches, no one needs an armchair quarterback. Am I right? Nobody needs someone on TikTok or wherever telling you how to run your business that maybe has never run a successful business before. That's why I'm so excited about today's guest, because she is a fellow business expert, a business coach, someone who fully understands our industry and I truly admire because she is to the point. She loves facts and figures and data. She loves talking about the numbers and about not just the art side of retail, but the science side of retail and everything behind it. Today you're going to meet my friend Susan Bradley. She's the founder of Social Sales Girls. I have followed along Susan's journey for a while, and she's as real and as straightforward as they come. So today you're going to hear us talk about everything from traffic to optimizing your store. And if Facebook ads are right for you and how you should really start to grow your business to be more than just a hobby, she's going to show you how to get there. So without any more wait time, you guys, grab a notebook. Meet Susan Bradley, the founder of Social Sales Girls. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, guys.

Welcome back.

This week, I am so excited to have this guest, Susan Bradley, the founder of Social Sales Girls. Susan, I was so honored to be on your podcast. I've been a fan of yours for a long time. And now today, I'm so excited to have you on this podcast because I know that we are at such a similar level when it comes to how we view this industry and how we view helping fellow entrepreneurs find success. So thank you for being here.

Well, thank you for having me. It's good to see you again.

It's good to see you again. I always like nerd out a little bit. My heart just like pitter patters when someone else gets excited about talking about data and numbers and how we're going to measure and track success. So I know we're going to go down that rabbit hole lots of different ways today, both for those who are brand new, those who are Just trying to get traction, who've maybe been around for a while and those who are scaling and growing. We're going to have something for everybody today, but I want to start here. So the state of the world that we're in right now, we're having this great resignation happening. There's more new entrepreneurs, you know, than we've seen in a long time. It's really reminiscent of probably 2009 in the great Recession. And so we have so many people thinking about starting an E commerce business, getting into retail, whether that's brick and mortar online. When you think about everyone who is brand new today coming into this industry, what's your advice on where to start? What are the best tips you can give for startup success for someone in this industry?

Well, I think first, Ashley, is manage your expectations. Understand that there is a learning curve to this journey and so find a way to kind of focus on your results and what you're working on. And although we want to be in communities, we need to filter through and think, don't compare my starting right now to somebody else's halfway there because you want to protect your mental health. But beyond that, when we think about the practical things you can do, the number one thing you can do is build an audience. You need to build an audience and get your products in front of people. And it's not as hard as people would think it is. You know, social media, you know, we all love to complain about our reach on social media and the fact that we are not getting a lot, we're not seeing a lot of engagement on social media. But still, it's the very best place to find your people and have them join your community. Whether that's just your virtual community, people who see your posts in their feed or your email or your text list. But what you really want to do is build those, build that audience. And so it's something that we teach all the time. Of course, there are just some really key, simple things that you could do consistently. And I know you love the consistent thing.

Yes, very much.

Yeah. So I would, if someone was brand new, I would recommend that they. They post on Facebook and Instagram every day. And. And they don't talk about their business in we and Us. They talk about it as, hey, I'm a real person. Start business. You can talk about your why in a way that will be appealing to your target audience. And you're going to show not the perfect and the staged version of your business. You're going to show the real and the raw and just Maybe tell a story as you're creating your journey. And you can do this from day one, before you even have product. And what I would recommend is that you just get really consistent and maybe you give yourself 90 days just to build that audience, talk to people you can write, run simple ads to those posts so that you get in front of more people. We can talk about that if you want. You're building that audience. You're inviting them to like your page. You're engaging with them on Instagram. And we're actually building an audience of people that can see you. You can put your posts in front of as you go.

I love that. Do you recommend. Actually, before I ask this question, let me back up because I just want to reiterate something. You said that I think a lot of people ask, and that is when you get started. We feel like we have to be we or us. We feel like we have to be bigger than we are. But I always feel like people do business with people. So I love that you said, it's, it's me. It's. I'm starting this business. I'm a real person. Here I am to serve you. Here's what we have in common. Let's build a relationship and let's go on this journey together. At that point, before maybe I have cash, right, I'm still investing into getting started. Do you recommend people use paid traffic at that point, or would you say wait until you have something tangible?

So the good news is that, you know, I think you need to start building your audience from day one. And the good news really is that it's. It's very inexpensive. Those kinds of ads are super inexpensive. And you don't have to have all the tech in place. And so what I would recommend that people do is they can actually even use. All the ad gurus are going to lose their minds, Ashley, when I say this, but I want you to start building an audience. And you can actually use that boost post button. And so if you are doing a video, you'll choose a video view option when you use the boost post. And if you're doing you just want more people, you want to collect people, you'll use the engagement option. And you can do this for Facebook or you can do it for Instagram, you can do it for either. And you can do it for a dollar or two a day. And what that little ad is going to do, you can target who you'd like people to see. But what that ad is going to do is it's going to start Collecting a pool of people that you can grow and you can actually down the road you can go back and make an audience in Facebook and Instagram of all those people who have watched your video or have engaged with your post. And, and when you have product to sell, when you're ready to get traffic to your website, those are going to be the people that are twice as likely to click on whatever you, or do whatever you ask them to do and go to your website. You might ask them to sign up for a giveaway so you can build your email list, or you might ask them to go to your website. If you take the time, give yourself 90 days to build that pool of people, they will be the people who are most likely to take the action you ask instead of just asking the whole world. So it's totally worth it and you could probably do it for, you know, a couple hundred dollars.

That's really good advice. I think you have to start somewhere. The most important part at stage number one is just getting eyeballs, just building an audience, getting to know your customer, building trust. It's not to come out of the gate, raking in the cash. Right. It's just getting some traction, which it's.

You know, if it does happen, there's always a story behind it that we don't hear. How many years, right. Have they worked on it? And so I would say that it's the best, very best thing you can do for yourself because the other thing you will learn along the way is what people respond to. Very often what we think that people will love or because it's what we love is actually not what they respond to. And when you, when you run these little ads, you'll see which ones are more successful, which one's got more video views, which one's got more engagements. And so it'll help you curate your content in a better way going forward. For even posts that aren't ads.

Yeah, that's so helpful. So I love that you mentioned that and tied in with consistency. But also what I'm hearing you say is be willing to iterate on that consistency and really investigate what's working, why is it working, what's not working, why is it not working? And now here's what I'm going to do slightly different tomorrow and I'm going to keep pushing forward consistently. I think that, yeah, it's actually what.

We teach because otherwise you just, you're guessing all the time.

Yes, there is a lot of that. Let's transition that from the brand new boutique owner to someone who maybe has been around for a little bit, but it's just not going how they want. If you hear from someone saying, hey, I'm just struggling. I'm not getting the traction I want. I'm not growing how I want. People just aren't buying what I'm posting. What advice would you give them? Where would you say for them to start? Focus.

Well, we're right back at their data.

Yeah.

Right back at their numbers. And so the number one reason that people who are past that, what I call is the proof of concept stage. Once you have somebody buy your product that isn't your mom or your sister, your next door neighbor, once you have someone who you don't know purchase your product, you can. You are developing proof of concept. So you know, what you have to offer is appealing to people and they're willing to pay for it. Once you're past that, the next challenge really is how do I start getting regular sales? Sales every day. And the number one barrier to doing that is traffic. If you don't have enough eyeballs on your site, that's why you're not getting the sales that you want every day. Because you already know your product's good, your pricing's okay. But most people think that they're getting a lot of web visitors. But the truth is that with E commerce conversion rates, it's so different than brick and mortar because there's so much less intent. And so E Commerce, it's very common to have a 1 or 2% conversion rate, which means one or two people in every hundred web visitors are likely to buy if they're the right people. And so your first job is to get your traffic to 100 web visitors a day. And most people that are, we call it flopping around. Yeah. Wondering why they're not making sales. You know, generally they're saying, well, I'll just have to do something on my website. I'm gonna have to change it. That's not the problem. The problem is that you're not getting in front of enough people every day.

Yeah, I think that's so true. We always, through retail bootcamp, we talk a lot about the boutique traffic formula. And just working those numbers backwards. Right. I know you do something very similar where you're looking at, here's my sales goal. Okay. In order to hit that goal, what's my average order value? And how many, how many orders is that? And then with that conversion rate, how much traffic is that?

Then?

Then really, where does that traffic come from? So when you're planning out what am I going to post on social media this week? What emails am I going to run this week? How much traffic can I pull from each of those places? What does my app bring in? What's my website bring in organically? And then I find out I have just a smaller pool of traffic than I really need in order to hit this goal. Now I need to think about paid traffic. So if I'm at that stage, what type of paid traffic am I looking to start?

So I think two things. I think that the first thing you want to do is again, get in front of more people. And so you'll want to build those audiences of engaged people and video view people. You'll want to get them. It's shocking really how big you have to get them, but I would say at least to 100,000 or more. And then you're going to retarget those people with ads that are their conversion ads. And we usually say get people to view content. Use a pixel event, that is view content, because that's looking at your products and that's really what you want. You don't want a ton of people, you know, like coming from Pinterest or wherever they're coming. That's not high intent. We want to look for the people in that big pool of warm audience that you have that have high intent to look at your products. And so when you're at that stage, you have to focus on traffic. And you could use ads on Facebook and Instagram or even Google Shopping, but the goal of those ads is viewing content. So conversion view content. And that'll get you some good quality traffic. The second thing you have to do is you have to retarget people who have already looked at your website. And so you have to start building a small pool of people that have looked at your products already and bring them back. Because here's the secret that nobody ever talks about, but it's this. It's that people who have visited your website before and are visiting for a second or a third or a fourth time, those people are more than two times more likely to make a purchase than a first time web visitor. And so where people are slipping through the cracks is we spend lots of time and money getting people to come the first time, but we don't follow up, we don't get them back a second and a third and a fourth time, because that's when the conversions usually happen.

Yeah, it is so much more cost effective to bring back an existing customer, an existing viewer, even if they haven't been a customer yet than to constantly trying to be acquiring new ones. So I think that really, really says a lot about our traffic strategy. Right. And that's not just paid traffic, it's not just ads, but it's also email marketing. It's building funnels that come back and speak to those people who've already been there or who have already purchased to get them to come back and purchase more and to purchase more often. That's great focus. What else would you say to someone who's just struggling with I'm not where I want to be or I'm not where she's at. I see someone else crushing it online. Where do I spend my focus every week?

Well, I think you track your data. There are three, those three key metrics, and I think you mentioned them right at the beginning. So you could set yourself up a little spreadsheet for every week and you would track your traffic, your conversion rate every week, and your average order value. And those three, this is a numbers game when you get to this stage. And so those three metrics will determine how you control your sales. And you really do control your sales a lot more than you think. So the very first one is traffic. You really have to have at least 100 web visitors a day. So in a week, I guess you'd be looking for 700, bare minimum. But if you, you have that and your sales are stuck, you're going to want to start ramping up your traffic. The second is conversion rate. How do I get more of those people to buy? The number one thing that will move the needle is get more of them to be returning visitors. So what we always recommend is 30% of your traffic should be returning visitors. Second or third or fourth. They don't have to be buyers, but they have to be returning visitors because they will get your conversion rate up. So you can look at this in Google Analytics, it's super easy to find. So you, you want to do that. And then the third thing is your average order. So your average order value is actually the easiest metric to control. Do you have a cart bump? Can you look at all your products that are your best sellers and add $2 to them? You know, not your whole website, but just add a couple of dollars to those products that you sell all the time. That'll get your average order value. Do you have like, do you have an upgraded shipping option? So if you ship priority, do you have a front of the line shipping option where you maybe add $2 and those orders get pulled and picked? You could say it gets shipped the next business day. That's a really good way to get your average order value up. And so those are the things you track and measure. So traffic conversion rate, average order value and you do it every week and you focus on those things rather than the things that are running through your mind about all the things you're doing wrong. Focus on moving those metrics and that's how you're going to get the sales you want.

Can we talk about your email marketing for a second? Especially today when algorithms are so limiting. I know the one thing that we actually have control over is our list. It's email marketing and it's text marketing. So if you need help building out your email flows or building your list or making sure your text messages are TCPA compliant, which is such a big deal right now, or if you just want to make sure you're making more money from email marketing and text marketing, I have to recommend you guys. My friend Jane Casper is the go to guru that you definitely want to know. Not only has Jane built her own multi, multi million dollar business specializing in footwear, a boutique specializing in footwear, but she's also built out flows for over a thousand e commerce store owners, many of them inside of the boutique hub. She's run over 300 A B tests in the last year alone and she's grown delivery rates and open rates for hundreds of stores. So if you would love to get in touch with Jane, she has specials just for podcast listeners and for hub members. Please reach out to her. It is Glow Group. Glow G L O W Group llcmail.com and we'll definitely put Jane's info in today's show notes. Yeah, that's so good. I always think that only attract number grows. Right. And so often and I'll pick on women specifically. We can get in our heads and tell ourselves a great story about why things are not working and why people don't like us and everything else we dream up at 2am in the middle of our anxiety hour. Right. But when it comes down to it, if we're actually tracking the data, the data doesn't lie. Those numbers don't lie. Like that will tell us how we have actually spent the last week. So I think it's a really good reminder to go back to those basics.

Yeah, just, just make it a habit. Because also where you put your focus is what change where you get your results and so change your focus.

So powerful. That's a great statement. Take, take that to the next level for me. So we've talked about if someone's struggling to, to get what they want out of their business right now, what about somebody who's got a little momentum and they're like, okay, time to, time to have dessert. Let's put some frosting on top of this thing. How can we really grow in scale? Where should that focus be at this point?

So I think that that's where we say to ourselves, okay, and you and I know it's a dirty little secret in our industry, you can have a million do business and have no money.

Amen to that. Yes, I see that way too often.

Right. And you so secretly, you know, all around you, everyone is telling you how successful you are, but secretly you're sitting there adding up how much is on your Visa bill and whether you're going to be able to pay it off and you're feeling like a bit of a failure often at this point. So this is where we have to think about how can we be more strategic? How can we fine tune what we're doing? And it's so much easier, easier once we have the resources to do it. But fine tune what we're doing and pick a few things to scale your business. So what we don't want to do is say I have 700 SKUs in my, in my online store. What we don't want to do is just keep buying more and, and adding to the stockpile of inventory as we grow our sales. What we really want to do is pick out a couple of things and become known for those things. So for example, you could, you could become known for a particular kind of top or you could get some jewelry that is collectible, or you could create a subscription box. But you're going to pick either a product or a category of products and you're just going to scale that. It's really powerful because then it helps you with your messaging. This is the front door to my business. This is where everybody comes and they start buying. So it's really easy for messaging. It's also so much easier for inventory control and it's so much profitable because this is where your turns of inventory will go way up and you'll find that you have more money in the bank and less inventory struggles. And your sales will be, your sales will grow almost feels like, like exponentially because you can scale in an unlimited way. Whereas if you continue to buy of this top and 24 of these leggings and you keep running out of them, but you're sending traffic to sold out products, that's where, that's where it's scaling is so expensive that most people end up failing.

I love that you said that because sometimes I honestly, sometimes I'll have conversations with people that have maybe passed that million dollar mark and they're struggling with exactly what we're saying. Maybe they aren't paying themselves and it appears successful right on the outside but internally they don't want to admit what's not working. And I always go back to that. This is just fine tuning inventory management. It's fine tuning, tuning all that buying strategy and scaling strategy and where we're sending traffic. It's one thing to get on a streak of buying a few great pieces that really got us momentum through a certain period of time, but maintaining that streak and being strategic about that streak, that's a whole nother. And really maximizing the margin and all of that. What else, what else does that person need to think about in terms of just continuing to scale and finding more profit where it's hiding?

Well, I think that probably they. I'm going to go back to product again. That and I'll just give you an example from a client of mine who had a business where she, it was a seven figure business but she had no cash. And so what she chose to do was create some short term subscriptions. And so the good news is when you are at this stage of business you actually have a lot of connections, you have some good supplier relationships, you know already what works in your business, you're not making stuff up, you know what people want. And so this particular client of mine said well you know, it's non traditional for me to do this but. And she actually partnered with some other businesses which was kind of cool but I have this audience, I have this product and so I'm going to create some when just make an event, I'm going to create some excitement around this product and I'm going to have people buy it in a three month subscription. And so she, you know, made it a big event, talked to her email list, went live, did all the things and said this was coming and then she opened up the card to her audience to buy that and sold out right away. And I think it was 400 subscriptions she bought. And so she nailed down like $40,000 worth of sales over the next three months. People bought the subscription and it was shipped out in three in three, you know, three monthly shipments. And once she realized that worked, she was able to repeat it again and again and again. I think we make the mistake of thinking well I've done that, I Can't do that again. But that's not how it goes, right? This is where you identify what works and do it again. And so for anyone who's at that stage and they're listening, start thinking about what works in your business and how you could get creative. Because there's also no rules anymore. Just because traditionally we haven't done things like that, it doesn't mean that we, we can't. The other thing that works really well in at this level is creating a VIP membership, like creating a. It's kind of like flying business class. It's like that where people pay you an annual subscription fee. So it could be, I don't know, a lot of my people would use $50. And so they've now handed over their money and their attention shifts. So if you're a boutique owner that has a lot of people that are selling the same sorts of things as you, this is how you create some loyalty in your business. And so you can set up a VIP membership, you can create VIP pricing on your website. You like, lots of people do this. Like Restoration Hardware and Wayfair is doing it. Like there's all sorts of businesses that are doing this. But what I' seen from our members that do this is that their AOV goes up, you know, their orders, like what customers would normally spend. That goes way up. Sorry, I mean repeatable. Like instead of ordering from you twice a year, all of a sudden I'm ordering, you know, seven times a year because I'm going to go to your store first and I already know I get a discount or I get front of the line shipping or I get a free sample of something with every order. I mean, we get to make the rules on this, but it is very powerful. So those are the two things I.

Would do very good. When you think about all of your most successful clients across any stage, any size of business, is there something you feel like your most successful clients have in common?

That's just an amazing question. It's, it's totally consistency. It's consistency. They are not, they're not chasing shiny objects, they're deciding what they're going to do and they're going to show up and do it every week. And so grab a short list. That would be in my advice, a short list of things that you going to work on and be incredibly consistent. And if I were to think about what those things are, it's tracking and measuring those three metrics, the traffic, the conversion rate, the average order value, track it every week, it would be even Though it, it kills you. Be incredibly consistent on social media and focus on building those audiences. And the third thing would be, you have to build a list. You have to build an email list or a text list or both. And when I think about, even in my own, when I was, you know, wondering how the heck am I going to sell? I had to, you know, a shoe business, how the heck am I going to sell all these shoes? What happened was I got to the place where I knew that in my bricks and mortar business that I collected mailing addresses like physical mail, and that was very, very successful. So I thought, well, I'm just going to wake up every morning focusing on how many emails I can collect every day. And at the end of the year, I had 18,000 emails and I. And that was an incredible source of sales and control in my business. So I would say make sure you're generating leads and it's not the afterthought. It's actually something you bring to the front and make a priority.

I completely agree. And in a world where there's TikTok, shiny videos, shiny objects all over the place, right? And we're so tempted to go spend three hours on making that perfect TikTok, if you, if you change that focus and got really consistent on building your list every day, man, would you be left with such a powerful asset at the end of the year where TikTok is going to be, you know, great for a while, but is that really where you need to spend your focus? So I appreciate that. I think there's a lot of, a lot of fruit there.

I think every time you, you are tempted, say to yourself, is this something I can control? Yes. Can I control this? Because if I can't, I can spend a lot of figuring this out and it can go away tomorrow. But I know I control my email list and so that's the difference. The piece of advice that I would give, give everyone who's listening and I even have to take this advice myself, is remember that it's going to take way longer than you think it is. So you can't do it for a month and say, well, that doesn't work and, you know, go look for something else. Give yourself. Gosh, I think you almost have to give yourself 60 days with anything, don't you? I do not. 60 days, six months.

Yeah, I do, I do. If there, I, if there's a pet peeve I have, it's. I tried that and it didn't work. So don't, don't catch yourself in that Trap, you know, because there's just so many different ways, so many little tweaks. It's about being consistent and trying. I think about the analogy of, like, if you were going to chop down a forest, right, you're not going to run around swinging your ax and just hitting this tree today and that tree tomorrow, and just like, where can I hit my axe today? But it's about hitting one tree and consistently in the same place every single day, the same way. Pretty soon that tree is going to fall, and then you're going to move on to the next tree. So I think about that. With so many social media channels, so many ways to interact with our customer, Pick three that you're good at. Build a plan, batch, create your content, create one video that can be used seven different ways and get really consistent. And then give it time to let it sink in. It's amazing. Yeah, amazing what happens.

The tree analogy isn't really good. It's so visual. But when you think about it, that's what most people do. They do run around through the forest with an axe.

Absolutely.

And eventually they chop their leg off.

Eventually they do chop their leg off. Other than being consistent, is there. So I asked about what are your most successful stores have in common? Do you think there's one greatest mistake you see people making? Again, other than consistency that we've talked about, is there one thing that you're like, oh, no, I see this happening and I want to stop you before that gets started.

Are they focused on the internal rather than the external?

Tell me more about that.

Yeah, so when things go wrong, they look inside to find what it is that's gone wrong with their business. And what I see is nine times out of ten, it's on the outside. And so I tend to say to them, well, I don't think it's what you're doing that is causing this problem. It's what you're not doing that is causing this problem. And. And then we go right back to the. Okay, so let's look at all the things that you want to happen, and it's back to those metrics again. Ashley, do you have enough traffic? Do you. Is your conversion rate? Has your conversion rate dropped? Can you add money to your average order value? And if all those things are good, then it's time for you to probably go outside your comfort zone a little bit and bump up your traffic to the next level. If you have, say, you have 10,000 web visitors a month and your conversion rate is at 2% and your average order value is, I don't know, say $100. And you're happy with that, but you can't get more sales. This is where you have to say, well, I'm going to invest a few thousand dollars this month and I'm going to bump up my traffic to 12,000 and it's going to, and my conversion rate's going to drop, but then I'm going to warm up that audience until I get my conversion rate back up and then do it again. And, and that's a consistent way to grow. But at some point, you're going to have to go to that next level where you say, okay, now I'm going to choose the products that I'm going to scale this thing with.

Yeah, that's helpful, very helpful. Well, Susan, I always appreciate our conversations because I love talking about the data side of this business, this and just real talk. I know that you are no fluff and I really appreciate that about you. So thank you for spending your time with me today. I have one last question for you. And I always ask this question because I just really believe that we're not put on this earth to sell widgets. Right. We're not meant to just be, you know, slinging something to another human being for profit. Right. There's so much more to why we do what we do. And I'm curious because you and I are in a very similar situation where we're here helping other people. So let's fast forward 20 more years down the road, 30 years down the road, and we're looking back at the life that you lived and where you put your energy and your time, your resources, Right. And as you look back at this, what is the thing that you really want people to remember most about who you were and how you lived and what you put into this earth?

That's a great question. I think that actually the reason I do this, you know, I've built and sold several businesses and, and it's not all been amazing or anything. You know, I've had my share of epic disasters, for sure, but what I have over all of this time is that my kids were growing up. I was able to, I had the freedom to make a lot of choices because I was always worked for myself. And so I didn't miss class trips. If somebody was sick, I could take my kids. Dr. And it was that feeling of freedom that I had to earn my own income, feel like I was contributing to the family, but also not feel like I was missing all the things that we as parents don't want to miss. And so if people could remember that I helped them get that. Particularly for women, I mean, we have some, we do have some dudes, but I think particularly for women to freedom to make the choice of how they're going to earn their, their income. That's to me, that's the best thing ever.

Yeah, I love that. Well, Susan, thank you so much. This is so helpful, impactful. I know our audience is going to love it. Thank you for all that you do. I know we've got some goodies we can link up in the show notes for anyone who's wanting to learn more, especially about traffic. We get this question all the time. So, Susan, we're going to link up some of your resources in the show notes and send people your way as well. Thanks for being here with us today.

It was so great. Thanks. I always enjoy talking with another nerdy girl.

I'll take it. I'll be nerdy with you all day long. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you loved it. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a rating and review down below for a chance to be one of our featured listeners each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and how to access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guests, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.

Ra.