Biggest keys to watch when scaling from $1M to $3-$5M?

There is quite a bit of information available online about eCommerce conversions rates. According to a ton of sources, average visitor-to-sale conversion rates vary from 1-3%. This does not mean the Furniture conversions will be the same. The bigger problem is that visitor-to-sale conversions are not a good data point to use to measure or tune your eCommerce business. All business have some unique friction factors that will affect your final conversion rate. It's very important to understand each of these factors and how to overcome them. The best way to measure and optimize is to take a conversion funnel approach. Once you have defined your funnel you can optimize each conversion rate to better the total effect. For example: Top of the funnel: - All web site visitors, 100,000 / month First conversion: View a product page, 50% of all visitors Second Conversion: Add to Cart, 10% of people who view products Final Conversion: Complete Checkout, 80% of people who put items in a cart In this example we see that only 10% of people who actually view products put them in to a cart, but 80% of those people purchase. If you can figure out why visitors are not adding items to their cart and fix the issue to increase the conversion rate, revenue should increase significantly because of the high checkout rate. You can use free tools like Google Analytics to give you a wealth of information about your site visitor and their behavior or there are some great paid tools as well.

Anyone who calls themselves something fancy like that is probably one of the 99% in the industry that have no idea what they are doing and will make you hemorrhage money. Find a MARKETER with a proven track record and use them to build an empire. If you don't want an empire and, instead, want to make your friends jealous by bragging about "new hires," then hire a "growth hacker" or "assistant of hardcore development" or "rad visualization chairman" or whatever other stupid position all these failing startups get caught on.

Retention - if you build something people want/use AND come back and use often, then you can usually figure out a business model to make it work (if there's a big enough market).

Hello, I myself do not have much hands on experience with growth hacking , but I can offer some thoughts on the subject. I'm not quite sure what you're looking for in terms of your question though? Are you looking for ideas or methods for growth using the growth hacker mentality for local brick and mortar businesses? Are you looking to bring these brick and mortar businesses online and increasing their lead captures? If I were to take a local photography service and try to increase growth in a local area there would be a couple of things I would focus on when it comes to growth hacking. The first thing I would look at is the actual product that is being offered. Then I would see if I could use the product itself to increase growth for itself. Make sense? What is the product of the photographer? I would think that the product would be the photos produced. So I would then figure out how I could use the photos to increase the photo shoots done with my photography studio. One way to do this may be to offer some sort of deal to people that share the photos on social media and get their friends and family to sign up. If I were the photographer I would tell my customers that if their friends and family like and comment on my Facebook page about their photos I would give their friends and family a free 8x10 photo on their first shoot. If 10 of their friends sign up for a shoot I would then give my original customer some sort of thank you in the form of free prints or something similar that makes sense for the business. Use the product to market itself. Another thing I would be looking at is the distribution of my product. In the local scene I feel that online directories, live events, local media, and forming business partnerships are critical. If I were a local photographer I would be at as many local events as possible taking photos. I would then place these photos online where they could be viewed and purchased. I do offer consulting in the area of local marketing and would love to chat with you in more detail about what you are looking to achieve. Schedule a time to talk. I'm sure we can come up with some great actionable ideas that can help with lead generation.

People hate calls. People hate emails. People hate mail. Do you really want your first impression to be that of an interloper and a pusher? Then again, most recipients aren't event going to look at what you send them. What is your niche? Office managers for private family healthcare providers in Peoria? Athletics department directors for NAIA schools? Sales managers at wholesale car dealers that make over $180 million per year in gross revenue? Know your niche and define your buyer (and it better be the CIO or VP). Is your buyer female or male? Older, middle age, or younger? What about her or his college education? What does he drive? Where does he live? Where does he eat his lunch and get his coffee in the morning? What does he read? Etc. Go to your buyer. Find congregations of your buyer. Professional associations. Conferences. Meet-ups. Trade shows. Offer to do free presentations--not on your product but on best practices or trends you observe in the industry. Make your presentation about solving problems your buyers deal with every day. Write blogs or columns for media they read. Again, focus on what they need/want to read. You will have a hard time keeping enough business cards in stock and click-throughs from your byline. This is a true "targeted outreach campaign." Don't waste your money and time with anything less than this. You're going to do great. Please let me know if you'd like to talk about it more!