Has your online fashion business ever done 10k in sales in a single month? 5K, 1K a month, even? If you answered no but you’d like to change that, what I’m about to reveal should make you stand up and pay attention and, if you take action, it will change the direction of your business forever.
Firstly, let me level with you and bring a voice of reason to all the hogwash flooding the internet about how “easy it is to start your own online store”.
You know what I’m talking about right?
All those porkies about how you can “get set up and be selling within 24 hours!”.
Pffft. If you’ve spent anytime working on your online fashion business, then you and I both know this is bullshit.
But I haven’t come to be the grim reaper of fashion.
Or, to tell you to shut up shop and go home.
Far from it.
I want to let you know the state your online fashion business is in right now doesn’t have to be permanent. It’s reversible, unlike a lot of things in life.
In the interest of full honesty, I should let you know it won’t be easy.
But at this point there are only two roads to riches you can take. Both have time and financial costs. Period.
The options I’m about to share with you are hard, and that’s why most of you won’t take them. But if you’re one of a handful of fashion entrepreneurs ready to do what others don’t, to get the results that others won’t – I have a hunch you’ll feel relieved you finally have an answer to where you have been going wrong.
The real reason your online fashion business is failing (and you what you can do about it)
Now be warned, I’m going give you a shit sandwich, so open wide
Truth no #1 – You’re not a crap designer.
Maybe you struggle a little to find the balance between being ‘out there’ enough to get noticed, yet commercial enough that people can imagine your designs in their day to day wardrobe — but you’ll get there. So you can stop your bi-monthly bouts of “I’m not good enough- itis”. Nobody cares.
Truth no #2 – You’ve got fabulous communication skills, darling!
Somehow, in a world full of people who don’t stick to their word. People who over promise and under deliver. And some shysters who straight out lie to you, you are one of the elite few who has managed to work out how to get your collection sourced, sampled and made. Bravo.
Truth no#3 – You’re not a tech ignoramus.
You think you are but you’re not. You might have made some ropey hosting or eCommerce platform choices, but you did something. You worked out how to get set up with a working website or, you found someone who could do that for you.This is ENORMOUS.
Yes! your SEO probably sucks. Yes! you have a lame homepage slider, but at least you learned enough to get rid of the freakin’ annoying music that used to play the minute someone landed on your site. This, my friend, is progress.
Truth no# 4- You’re still sharecropping on Etsy and building somebody else’s empire.
I get it! It’s easy, everyone’s heard of them, and you can get ‘set up and selling in minutes’, right. Any experienced Etsy seller will tell you there couldn’t be anything further from the truth. But you know what the worse thing about Etsy is? Even after you struggle to set up your store and work out how to get noticed among 423053850184 other brands – so someone can spend $15 with you – you still don’t own your business. Etsy does. And never forget: what Etsy giveth, Etsy can taketh away.
Truth no#5 – You’re wasting time every day on social media & calling it ‘marketing’!
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube, even. Don’t get me wrong all of these social media platforms help to raise your brand awareness and expose you to people who haven’t otherwise heard of you. But 4-5 hours a day, REALLY! Especially when you haven’t learned how to track and measure how all this time spent ‘marketing’ really impacts your business.
When you look at it like that it sounds ludicrous, right?
Truth no#6 – Nobody knows who the heck you are. That’s why you’re broke.
Yes, your mother, your hubby and your BFF GBFF TGBFFF (got to cover all my bases here) all think your products are the bees knees, but when was the last time any of them cracked open their wallet and spent some money with you? In fact, I bet you’re just givin’ it away to those guys ain’t ya? You’re kind spirited like that.
Truth no#7 – There’s the hard way out and the hard way out. That’s it.
There are no easy remedies to solve the right old pickle you find yourself in, and to be honest, you really don’t have a lot of choices. I wish I had different news for you. If you’re looking for some quick fix where you ‘game the interwebz’ and make money without even trying you’re in for a rough ride, and I’d actually encourage you to stop now.
I mean, you have the store… the stock… don’t you want the strategy?
Truth no# 8 – You have a magnificently large traffic problem
Let me start off by saying that doesn’t make you special, in fact, it puts you slap bang in the same boat as 90% of people starting an online fashion business.
If you’re wondering what I mean by ‘traffic’ then let me explain, by traffic I simply mean this: you don’t get enough visitors to your website per day. Yes, there’s you 8 or 9 times each day, but that doesn’t count.
You already know the outcome of having a traffic problem.
- You do everything you can, but still no sales come in.
- You start to feel unsure of yourself, like you must be missing something important that everyone else knows.
- Then there are the fiscal concerns, like “how much frickin’ longer can I keep plowing everything I have into this business without really getting anything back out?”.
Sounds familiar, I imagine? and maybe you’re thinking to yourself “where do I go from here Stacey. I get it, I’ve got a traffic problem, but what next?”.
Well like I mentioned earlier, there are only two ways out.
Both routes each have their pros and cons, that’s why I personally prefer a nifty combo of both tactics, maybe you can see why.
Paying to drive traffic to your site.
Pros:
You’re able to turn on a flood of highly targeted traffic – because you know Facebook knows everything about errrybody – and depending on the strength of your campaigns and the size of your budget, there’s a crap tonne of money to be made
Cons:
Getting started with Facebook paid ads equals one thing: losing money – at least to start with. It’s impossible to make money with Facebook without lots of trial and error. Don’t believe me? go try it out haphazardly for yourself and let me know how that works out for you. Profitable Facebook marketing takes time to master, but it’s a learnable skill.
Equally, if you’ve got more money than time you could hire a pro to come in and get your campaigns set up and optimised for you. Images, copy, daily ad spend, ad groups, and all the other stuff that makes you feel like pulling your hair out.
There are some FB marketing veterans out there who can make that platform rain money, but I warn you, the good Facebook guys don’t come cheap. They don’t have to.
Then there’s earned traffic, also called content marketing.
Content marketing simply means you create content (a variety of mediums is better) that appeals to your target audience. This content should exist on both your website and other peoples websites, and you use this content to drive traffic to your website. Oh, and apparently you have to write epic shit.
Again, ‘epic content’ creation is a skill that takes time to learn, but here’s the thing… it’s never about creating what you want to write about, it’s about creating what your ideal customer wants to read about. Confused you with that one, ha.
So what’s it gonna be mogul?
The paid traffic way? Or the earned traffic way? If you chose earned traffic, but you have no idea where to start with content marketing, and you think you are your business would benefit from putting together a focused content marketing an outreach strategy designed to drive traffic, then you’ll love my traffic power hour strategy session.
In just 60 minutes you’ll discover the following:
1. How to come up with content ideas for the next 3 months (ideas already proven to be popular and get likes, shares, clicks and comments)
2. How to plan, create and promote your content in a way that gets results (creating content is pointless if no-ones seeing it!)
3. How to build links to your content so you improve your SEO rankings, come up naturally in Google search, and, of course, drive more sales.
I offer 4 discounted sessions a month to moguls who have less than 50 unique visitors per day to their website and who are making less than $500 a month in their business Why? Well I think you need to see results before you start investing seriously in a marketing coach to help you grow your online boutique, that way, you’ll actually be able to afford them!
WARNING: These discounted sessions go quickly, so if you’re interested I’d suggest you contact me now.
Wanna know what my clients have to say about working with me before you dive on in? Check out just one of their testimonials here. If you want more, just look around this site, there are no shortage of them.
Maybe you’re not quite ready to go down the 1-2-1 support route yet? I totally get that, I’d encourage you to join the other moguls discussing all things fashion marketing and eCommerce in the Fashion Fast Lane (my private FREE Facebook group for fashion entrepreneurs). Click the link above to request access.
Convinced there’s a different reason your online fashion business is failing?
I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Or, if you’re a successful fashion entrepreneur and you have found different strategies to drive traffic and sales to your store, I’d love it if you’d share some with us.
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