Are you excited about football? We now know that the two teams on February 2nd will be the San Francisco 49s and Kansas City Chiefs — pleasing 28 million folks in Northern California and the Midwest. That’s about 8% of the US population or about 8% of the US population. But 95% of the country seems to just be happy that it’s NOT the New England Patriots. But no matter who wins, eCommerce merchants should care.
Which brings us to this week’s top stories.
Super-Sales Bowl
We mentioned this a few weeks ago, but here’s the latest data. The National Retail Federation tracks these things and they are projecting that folks will spend a record amount this year to prepare for the big game. And we’re not just talking about nacho cheese dip and team jerseys. It’s serving dishes, decorations, new TVs, sound systems, BBQ tools, and a lot more. It’s one of the biggest retail spending holidays of the year in person AND online.
Understanding the Marketing Funnel
Entrepreneurship is hard. Marketing is the hardest part. We all tend to think in terms of a compartmentalized series of tasks — email campaign, social media posts, content, retargeting ads, etc. But when these items are interlaced and working together to build a marketing funnel their potential is realized. Our partners at Privy put up a nice post that walks through the process, so give it a look.
Speaking of Funnels ….
Once you have your marketing funnel working, you need to capture sales as the visitors start filtering in. If that last step in the customer’s journey came from social media, you’re going to want that Shopify landing page optimized for that traffic. And our partners at Shogun wrote up a blog post talking about just that.
The Rise of eCommerce … and Shopify
The accountants are still adding up the total numbers for Q4, but 2019 was another banner year for eCommerce. I’ve heard a few folks start to say that the disruption of the internet is past. But as powerful a force as it is, online sales still account for less than 11% of retail no matter how you slice it. And Shopify has just 1.7% of all online stores. So both eCommerce and Shopify have a lot of room to run.
Shopify Will Send You Money for Nothing … What?
When I heard about this, I didn’t know what to think at first. Shopify is “loaning” money to start-up merchants. At first, you think that there’s got to be a catch. But it is one of the most unique loan arrangements I’ve ever seen. It works like this …. If you are a new merchant opening a store, Shopify will “loan” you $200 in seed capital. No credit checks. If you start getting sales, Shopify will take loan payments from your online sales. If you don’t, they won’t. So you only pay the money back if you generate sales. Check it out.
Latest Discounts Available on Lead Plus
Lead Plus offers a ton of value, including great discounts on Shopify stuff. Here are the three latest discounts for Lead Plus members:
- 20% off ANY Cloud Search plan for Life!
- 20% off ANY TaskHusky Marketing Task!
- 30% off FLEX Theme by Out of the Sandbox!
Check out all the Lead Plus discounts here — and more are on the way. Remember that membership is only $99 per year and includes everything you see here.
All that football talk has got me craving nachos.
Happy Selling,
Zachary