Scaling a direct response dietary supplement business is tricky. Not impossible, but certainly not as easy as all the conference speakers and books say it is. Sadly what’s being taught about growth is far from reality.
What’s being touted as “how to do it right” are downright blatant lies. There are three big lies that I hear over and over again in the direct response marketing world.
Lies that will be exposed right here…
Lie #1 – Just Add More Clicks To Scale
Ask any conversion rate optimization agency and this is the first lie they tell you. We hear it all the time. It’s one that we all want to believe because it sounds so easy and the payoff is so big.
The lie is this… Once you have a funnel working with good front end and halfway decent backend numbers, all you have to do is turn up the traffic faucet.
This lie is further compounded by conversion rate optimization agencies when they tell you. Just add more and more types of traffic sources to your “working” funnel. So if all you had was Facebook traffic working, just add on display networks, YouTube, Instagram, etc. All of them combined will bring in a flood of visitors that will scale your funnel.
I’m sorry to break it to you but, this is a plain and simple lie. The first lie you are told as a direct response marketer in fact. But you can’t just add more clicks and scale.
The dirty little secret is that your numbers will always take a dive when you add more traffic. Even from more of the same source traffic, not to mention other places.
More traffic means a totally different mix of people and behaviors. It doesn’t scale one to one, no matter how much we want to believe this bold face lie.
Here’s what happens when you add more traffic in large volume.
Suddenly your campaign goes off the rails and your earnings per click (EPC) shoots through the roof. This in turn messes up your life time value (LTV) for the next month or so, not to mention fluctuations in your average order value (AOV). A once stable campaign is now all over the place.
There is some hope however. After opening up the traffic volume you can get back to a stable point. But it will take some adjusting and tweaking. Both from a traffic management side of things and also from a conversion optimization perspective. Partly over time and partly from scaling back and dialing in less profitable traffic.
Lie #2 – Increasing Your Conversion Rate Will Increase Your Profit
This is a strange one for a conversion rate optimization agency to openly admit. But we believe in trust, it’s part of our fundamental approach to optimization. We see this lie all the time with most of the conversion rate optimization agencies out there.
The lie is that… If you increase your conversion rate then, you’ll have more buyers, more revenue and more profit. Sometimes, but not often, there is a direct correlation between conversion rate and revenue and even less often profit.
The reason is multifaceted but the fundamental flaw is that most conversion rate optimization agencies are measuring the wrong thing. Conversions and click through rates can’t be deposited into your bank account.
Often times it’s easy to get an increase in conversion rate that does not back out to more money for your funnel.
Many times profits can decrease without you or your conversion rate optimization agency even knowing it. Because they have their eye on conversion rate and not the bottom line.
A prime example is increasing the conversion from one step to the next without understanding what effect that has on an actual sale, further down the funnel.
Another example is a restructuring of an offer that lowers profit margin but increases conversion rate. This can easily happen by testing a better offer that lowers price, offers free shipping or even adds an additional item, possibly a buy one get one free offer. In each case you’ll more than likely have an increase in conversion that may or may not back out to more profit.
The bottom line is that increasing your conversion rate is not the only thing you need to scale. Your conversion rate optimization agency has to keep an eye on profitability to get you where you need to be.
Which brings us to…
Lie #3 – Once You Have a Win You’re All Set
Again, this is one of those lies that we not only want to believe but that also makes sense. Which is why it’s so believable.
Once you have a win, everyone is happy, you have an improvement. Congratulations. And the expectation and lie is that you’ll be reaping the rewards from that win for a long time.
But the truth is, that all test wins are fluid. Over time they all regress back to the mean and for quite good reasons. The exception being, if the win was based on a weak data set. The important part here is statistical power, not just statistical confidence which many CRO case studies cite and many conversion rate optimization agencies will tell you. I won’t get into statistical power here, but will cover it in a future article.
Instead let’s get into the very good reasons why wins don’t last. I want you to understand that test wins can hold for several months or even a year. The length of time depends on several factors. The biggest is the marketplace. If you’re in a very competitive market like weight loss dietary supplements, the competition is fierce. Your hooks, marketing leads, Ad creative and test wins are constantly being knocked off. This leads to the customer seeing the same angles over and over and it quickly gets stale.
The marketplace sophistication increases very quickly and trust erodes. However if you are in a less competitive market or your unique mechanism is very defend-able then your win can hold for much longer.
There is no hard fast rule on how long a win will last, which is why conversion rate optimization is an ongoing process.
Everyone Wants To Scale Their Business
Everyone in the direct response marketing world has heard these lies. And many believe them without question. My hope is that this article exposed you to the truth and at the same time did not scare you into stopping A/B testing all together.
Conversion rate optimization, just like every other part of your business, is a constantly evolving thing. A business is never done. As long as you and your business are learning and getting smarter over time it’s a WIN – WIN. You have to constantly get better. After all, that’s half the fun isn’t it?
There Are Three Funnels Every Health Supplement Business Needs To Build A Multi-Million Dollar Empire…
The problem is most dietary supplement companies only have one funnel. Through our work in the online health space, we’ve had the opportunity to observe hundreds of health businesses. What we’ve uncovered are the three critical funnels that each work together that make the difference between the average supplement company just selling on Amazon and a multi-million dollar health empire and compiled our findings in the book below. Click here to get the ebook delivered right to your email for FREE.
