Can more ad spend save a 7-figure business with quickly-shrinking revenue?
Can more dollars channeled into search engine optimization?
Can more, better, and bigger marketing initiatives that get the brand in front of…
More eyes
More people
More potential customers
…?
Answer: no.
Well, yes. (You’re about to see how in a sec.)
But only if those eyes, people, and potential customers are landing on a brand that actually leaves them ready to buy.
Which wasn’t what was happening for my 7-figure client in the e-commerce space.
They were spending thousands of dollars a month on ads.
Doing monthly big sales in a bid to drum up interest. (Which worked…er…sometimes.)
Hesitating on raising the price of their product despite rising manufacturing costs — because they were worried about running off the market they did already have.
They were also convinced that all they needed was more: more people, more organic traffic, more price cuts to get their revenue back squarely in the growth stage.
Spoiler alert:
That’s not what they needed. That’s not what they needed at all.
Once upon a time, a 7-figure company meets a strategist…
“Will this give us more organic traffic?”
When this company brought me on to do their positioning / website copywriting overhaul, that’s the first thing they asked.
And immediately I responded:
“That’s the wrong question.”
(Do I blame them for not knowing the *right* question? Absolutely not! Because they have one million things to focus on in their business. And figuring out where the conversions are going sidewise? That’s my job.)
You see:
This company had gone from ~18,000 organic traffic visits in summer 2023 to about ~80,000 in the summer of 2024.
(Yes, I was part of the SEO blog campaigns that helped them get there…but that’s a story for another day.)
Their organic traffic numbers were higher than they’d ever been.
But their revenue?
Month by month, they were seeing thousands of dollars less in revenue than they had seen the year before.
And they were frustrated.
Because in theory:
More ad spend + more organic traffic should equal more sales.
But in this case?
It just meant more money out and less money in.
Because here’s the thing:
Having more eyeballs on your brand doesn’t mean diddly squat if you’re not converting.
This brand didn’t have an attention problem. Or an SEO problem. Or an attraction problem.
They had a conversion problem. And a messaging problem. And now a revenue problem.
And the question they should have been asking?
It was this:
How do we get the eyeballs we already do have to actually convert?
The wo(man) with the conversion plan:
It started with research (as all good marketing initiatives do).
Hundreds of buyer reviews.
Thousands of competitor reviews.
Some deep stalking of alternative products in the market and who and how and in what ways people were talking about my client as a brand.
From this research, I built out two key pieces. Ones that would go on to be the biggest drivers of the year-over-year growth they were about to see:
1). A map of differentiation: that boiled down the product’s unique value in the market into clear terms. While accounting for the objections, buyer hesitancies, and deepest benefits that were leading people to buy or not buy in a saturated market.
2). A map of identification: designed to make perfect-fit customers feel seen (aka: make them identify deeply with the brand) from their first moment of engagement. Through strategic brand voice design, narrative brand storytelling, and messaging hierarchy.
What became clear pretty quickly:
This company had a legitimately customer-loved product that had been successfully operating for a long time off referrals.
But as they started looking toward the next stage of growth, they were pushing the limits on what kind of revenue their referral network could reasonably win for them.
It wasn’t a challenge to convince referred buyers to click “add to cart.” But it was near impossible for new-to-the-brand buyers to understand:
- Why the product was worth the higher price point (as compared to other products in market)
- Whether its cult following was actually justified
- Whether certain of its best features — the natural ingredients! the hand-crafted elements! — were a savvy selling scheme or a legitimate need-it-now product feature
- How it would benefit their life (through true use cases, not marketing trickery)
So I got to work: with website copywriting that put strategy into practice.
The results?
In the first business quarter since the strategic overhaul, this 7-figure e-commerce client has stopped losing money: and started rocking 31% year-over-year revenue growth.
In March: their year-over-year growth was 64%.
In April: it was 46%
In May: it was 62%.
For a 7-figure company.
Growing conversions (and revenue) through clarity: that’s what I do.
Send out the bat signal (aka: slide into my inbox) so we can do that for you too.
