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- May 19, 2015
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You're putting the cart before the horse. I actively do influencer marketing etc but you cant do it with a single product and no brand... Here's a reality check that I hope helps you understand more.
1. Review the need your filling, yes you may have competitors in the same niche but are you better? are you actually providing something that is different than everyone else to the market. If you are not, liquidate your inventory, take the lessons you've learned and start another brand.
2. If you can address the issue and fill a need you MUST have a paid traffic source to build your business. Whether its FBA, FB ads, or Google Ads, you can't scale a business effectively (like the way you are describing) without paid traffic. Influencer marketing doesnt count because you cant reinvest profits at a known rate for a predictable ROI.
* This is where I see alot of people fail and was why I failed because I was scared to spend money and didnt have a method of achieving growth otherwise. Spend the money.
3. Once you have a predictable paid traffic source that can scale that is when you can reinvest those profits and test with influencers. I pay influencers a flat rate each month and they post my products and represent my brand and in turn I get spikes in sales, social proof, and brand recognition/following.
4. You're going to need a 30%+ margin because at scale you will need to pay for overhead like warehousing, utilities, process improvements, employees etc not to mention the volatility that can be experienced with ad spend on various platforms. On top of that if you are building a brand and releasing new products the profits need to be reinvested.
5. To point 4, you probably can expect to not pay yourself a liveable wage for years. I'm 3 years into my business and I still do not pay myself anything over what is required by law and to get to where you're describing it will be a few more years at the current growth rate. I work a day job that gives me flexibility and allows me to live on that while I build it.
If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Initially, I thought that’s how you build a brand through influencer marketing. There are too many examples of single product influencer marketing though. I don’t think that is the variable. Example are watch brands. Most of the time all they have are just a watch and promote it through influencer marketing. Since I have determined a loss already, It’s hard for me to justify spending ad dollars on this product. Hopefully the development of my new product will be better and use the traffic I am going to generate for that to sell them.
Just from reading the initial post, you have a product problem. The influencers and marketing etc is a push not a pull. Is your product simply a clothing line with your logo on? Why would anybody want to wear that? What problem does it solve? What value does it provide?
No the product is not just a logo slap on. Design difference and function difference. Problem? It’s the same problem that all clothing/fashion solves, people like different designs. As time goes on, I have seen multiple brands just become successful selling just like you said. A printed at shirt with their logo. They are selling it for 70...
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