We started the year that was 2020 with bright eyes and extra bushy tails.
We had plans coming out of our ears. Jan and Feb were great. We onboarded a couple of kick-ass retail clients with Shopify stores and well known brands on their sites – just the ticket. Just the thing that we love.
The stage was set. Then the C19 talk started and as we got more nervous we took the decision to work from home. After that, Boris dropped the bombshell.
We have a big screen in our office which has all the clients’ targets on display. ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) for the ecommerce clients and CPL (Cost Per Lead) for the lead generation clients. It’s on a traffic light system based on where people are to target.
Now this screen is usually a nice hue of green and amber with a couple of reds thrown in with ‘must try harder’ notes against them. The day after Boris’ announcement this screen turned RED. We sat, head in hands, filled with doom and dread. We said, “it’s over”, “we’ll never get through this”, etc. Get a grip of yourself BFBC!
Then the phone calls started. Some clients panicked and wanted to pause PPC spend or shelf SEO projects until they had more certainty. We took the most natural stance for our agency and just made everything as easy as possible for our clients. We paused with no financial barriers for any client who wanted to.
After the doom calls came the exciting ones. We work with some very ambitious, smart and crafty (not dafty) clients. We had a set of those beautiful ecommerce beasties who saw the opportunity to get one up on the competitors as said competitors panicked. These guys went for it. Raised budgets, started bidding more aggressively on competitors, moved to extra platforms and I have to say – they cleaned up like Mrs. Hinch on an episode of Hoarder SOS.
We saw revenue go through the roof.
More £££s, bigger baskets, customers returning like boomerangs! People were working from home or furloughed and not spending on anything except food and drink so why not treat yourself to a new watch or designer T Shirt? We saw April build momentum but take off was May! BOOM!
Our ecommerce clients were smashing it out the park and, by May, the guys who wobbled at the start found confidence in the ‘new normal’ and started returning to the fold.
By now we were functioning quite nicely from home and getting inbound enquiries from a range of businesses who knew they had to up their online game. We knew people were looking for agency support so decided to up our own game too and take that busman’s holiday to fully overhaul our own website. We had to send the absolute best message to the new trench of ecommerce bright young things popping up (thanks Team Marvel). We advised clients to get Klarna, Laybuy and Clearpay so their shoppers could split the payments. Every client we see take up one of these payment options gets an uplift in sales. You could learn from the masters (boohoo) and have all 3!!
A lot of improving ecommerce online sales is about removing barriers. Just look at the Amazon checkout on your Amazon app – ‘Swipe to buy now’. Just slide your gorgeous thumb over this perfect, beautiful gold strip and you’re a winner baby. If people want to split the cost in 3 or pay over the next 6 weeks, just make it happen. It’ll cost you 3% on a sale you weren’t going to get. A friend of ours once drunkenly said, “What’s half of f&%£ all? F&*% all”.
So, before I digress, 2020 – F&£$. It’s been emotional.
If you own an ecommerce store and want a graph like the ones above, give us a call, email, whatsapp, MSN Messenger, Myspace, letter through the post or come and knock on us and ask Jennifer (BFBC Mam) if we can come out to play. We’d love to hear from you.
