An Actual Step-By-Step Plan to Setting + Reaching Your Crazy-Big Revenue Goals
Raise your hand if you’ve ever written down “I want to earn [insert $ amount here] from my Etsy shop this quarter,” and then realized that you have absolutely NO idea how to actually make that happen.
Yup, I see you ;)
So many success coaches out there will tell you to visualize your goal or “manifest” the money you want to make, but have you noticed there's extremely limited information out there about how to actually make those goals happen?
Yeah, not so many people seem to talk about that ;)
Why?
Well, because it's a bit un-glamorous.
It's easy to get caught up in the glitzy dreams of dollar signs, but it's a lot harder to actually do the work and make those dollars happen.
Maybe you've got a quarterly (or yearly!) revenue goal right now.
But I want you to answer this honestly: Do you have a step-by-step plan of how you're actually going to achieve it?
If you're reading this, then probably not. And that's totally okay! That's why I'm here to help :)
Luckily, there’s a lot less “luck” than you think involved in actually reaching your revenue goals—it just takes a bit of strategizing, execution (the hardest part!), and then evaluation.
And guess what? In this blog post I’m going to walk you through exactly that! #heckyes
So let's get started!
Step 1: Decide on a quarterly business goal
First things first-- you actually have to have a goal in mind (duh).
But I don't mean this as a "I want to grow my business this quarter," type of goal-- because what does that REALLY mean? Are you hoping to grow your traffic? Your conversion rate? Your profit margin? Your brand awareness?
Now you may be saying “Yes! I want all of those!” but I’m going to stop you right there—because by focusing on allllllllllll the things, you're already sabotaging your success. #letsbehonest
In fact, that lack of focus probably has A LOT to do with why you're not making the $$$ now-- because you're trying to do too many things all at once-- and doing a pretty crappy job at all of them.
So instead of running circles around your business trying to do #allthethings, I want you to use each quarter to focus on ONE GOAL. That’s right—just one goal every 3 months. This doesn’t mean the rest of your goals aren’t important—it just means that you’re going to focus the bulk of your efforts on making this one goal come to realization. And then next quarter, you can switch it up to a different goal.
So for the purpose of this blog post, I'm going to use an example goal of growing my Etsy shop traffic.
Now I want you to notice that the goal I listed above is better than just "grow my business" as a goal, but it's still not great.
And that's because there’s no measurable outcome attached to it—and that measurable outcome is very important to actually achieving your goal because it leaves little "wiggle room" for interpretation.
Because if you say "I want to grow my business," you could get 10 more followers/day and even though you could consider that a win, it probably isn't going to do a lot for your bottom line.
And is that helpful for your overall business growth? NO.
But if you said something like "I want to grow my business from 5,000 to 30,000 views/month," then you've now got a measurable outcome and it will be a yes/no outcome on whether you achieve it or not.
So take whatever goal you wrote above and now quantify it and turn it into a measurable outcome.
Example: I want grow my Etsy shop traffic to 30,000 views/month
And there you have it—your quarterly business goal.
Step 2: Brainstorm ways to get there
As anyone knows, putting your goal out into the universe is great, but you need to have a plan on how you’re actually going to get there (hint: wishful thinking is not the answer I'm looking for here ;).
This is usually one of the harder parts for Etsy shop owners because there are--literally-- so many things that they could be doing at any given moment that it's hard to know where to start.
So they do a little of all of it. Try a few things out, don't see immediate results, give up, and try something new.
Over and over and over and over again.
Ringing any bells?? ;)
Here's my two cents about that: If you implement random strategies with random effectiveness, you're only ever going to make random sales.
No matter what goal you set for yourself in Step 1, "randomness" is not the answer.
So let's get deliberate.
I'm now going to make a list of things that I could possibly do that would help me reach my goal.
But I don't want this to be any old list-- because putting things down like "post more on Instagram!" is vague and ineffective. Something like "post 4x/week on Instagram" would be a much better goal.
But better yet-- write down ideas that are targeted towards an ideal customer you have in mind.
So in my recurring example, I made a goal to increase my traffic to 30,000 views/month. Now let's say that the product I sell is travel-inspired art prints (always trying to come up with new ideas besides baby headbands, ha ha!). Here is a list I've brainstormed of different strategies I could do to help increase my views and get me up to 30,000 views/month:
Get an article/product featured in an online travel website
Interact + comment on travel forums
Create a daily pinning schedule customized to my target market and stick to it
Create blog content that features items from my shop + links to them
Create product roundup blog posts featuring my items
Include direct links to my shop in all my social media profiles
Run targeted FB ads to lookalike audiences
Host a social sharing contest/giveaway
Launch a new product line
etc.
This list will be long. It SHOULD be long because I want you to list down alllllll the ideas you have and just brain dump it all out on paper. Plan on listing AT LEAST 10 ideas in this step of the exercise. You won't have to act on all of them-- but you do need to get them all out there on paper.
Now you may be saying, "But I don't actually know what strategies will bring me 30,000 views/month!" and that's totally normal. We're not addressing that just yet. Right now we're just putting all of our ideas out there. Every single one.
Step 3: Pick 3-5 strategies to focus on
Once you’ve got a very specific list of ideas on how you could possibly increase your traffic up to 30,000 views/month (for this example, at least!), it’s time narrow down your list and pick 3-5 strategies to actually implement.
How do you know which ones to pick?
Well, there's where it gets a bit tricky...
If you’re an active marketer of your shop, you probably know what strategies already work for your shop—and that’s great! Use that knowledge to DO MORE of the things that are working and scale the growth of your business. This is hands-down the FASTEST way to reach your goals.
If you’ve never done a lick of marketing in your life, I want you to pick 3 marketing strategies from your list and try them out. And I don’t just mean for 2-3 days and then give up—no, I want you to commit to them for the entire quarter. You NEED those month-to-month statistics to evaluate what’s working.
To help with this, you're going to want to assign certain numbers to each of these strategies.
So, for example, let's say I picked the following tasks:
Host a social sharing contest/giveaway w/brand reps
Launch a new product line
Interact + comment on travel forums
Create product roundup blog posts featuring my items
Because my goal is to reach 30,000 views/month, I need to ballpark where those numbers are actually coming from (because they obviously have to come from somewhere!).
Host a social sharing contest/giveaway w/brand reps (10,000 monthly views)
Launch a new product line (10,000 monthly views)
Interact + comment on travel forums (2,000 monthly views)
Create product roundup blog posts featuring my items (8,000 monthly views)
Now, if this is your first time doing this, you won't know what those exact numbers are. THAT'S OKAY. The reason why we're doing this is not so much to try and guess the effectiveness of our marketing strategies as it is to make sure that you've picked strategies that are actually reasonable for achieving that goal.
Step 4: Create an editorial calendar
Now that you have a few marketing strategies you’ll be focusing on in the next few months, it’s time to map everything out on a calendar to keep you on track. Remember—there’s nothing that can derail a shop faster than willy-nilly marketing without intention. If you’re going to put all the time and effort into planning out your revenue and marketing your shop, I want you to make sure it’s worth your time!
So take the different marketing strategies you’ll be utilizing and break them down one step further. If you’ve chosen the strategies:
Host a social sharing contest/giveaway
Launch a new product line
Interact + comment on travel forums
Create product roundup blog posts featuring my items
…you now need to schedule in their execution.
For example, “Host a social sharing contest/giveaway” may mean that you need to:
Decide on a contest prize
Set up a contest landing page + email collection form
Make a list of possible brand reps to help spread the word
Install social sharing buttons
Create a social media campaign
Write out a follow-up email sequence
etc. etc.
Each of those steps needs to be scheduled into your editorial calendar on the appropriate timeline to keep you on track for reaching your goal (you can use an online management program like Asana for this or even Google Calendar).
You're going to do this step-by-step breakdown for each of the strategies on your list to create an EXACT plan of how you’re going to accomplish things and aren’t working off vagueness ;)
Step 5: Execute
The hardest step of the whole process, ha ha! Execution is the make it or break it part of your strategy. Because while you can plan marketing strategy circles around your competitors, if you aren’t actually doing the work and executing (curse that blasted research and development stage!), you’re never going to make any progress.
..So get to work! Start implementing the tasks you've written out on your editorial calendar, giving yourself plenty of time to do so (hint: hustling the day of usually isn't the best approach to making this successful...sharing personal experience, here ;)
Step 6: Evaluate and review
Once you’ve neared the end of the quarter and have poured your little heart into reaching your quarterly goal, it’s time to evaluate and review the past 3 months (and not just because they might have been the longest 3 months of your life ;).
First things first—did you reach your goal? Did you come close? Give yourself credit for however far you’ve come since you started—even if you didn’t quite reach your goal.
Now it’s time to sit down and figure out what worked out well (yay!), what was a total flop (sigh…), and what you are going to do differently next quarter. I recommend writing this down in a notebook or a Google doc that you can look back whenever you need to.
While you're evaluating and reflecting, if you’ve found out that one of your strategies worked REALLY well at driving traffic, then I want you to DO MORE OF THAT. If it didn't work? Feel free to ditch it (seriously).
So maybe creating product roundup posts on our blog worked out really well at driving traffic. Awesome! Do more of those!
But maybe hosting a contest/giveaway flopped hard and your ego is still a little bruised. It sucks, but now you know what NOT to do and can either ditch that idea completely or give it a (smarter!) makeover based off of what you learned and try again.
The most important thing is that once you’ve found something that works for you and your audience, KEEP DOING IT. Remember—you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every single time. That’s why you’ll see businesses host the same promotion every single year, or become a regular collaborator with a specific blog—they’ve found what works for them and they’re going to continue doing it.
That first year of business? It’s all about experimenting. Are you going to fail? Yup, almost certainly (and if you don’t ever fail, please share your secrets!). But stop looking at failure as a sign to give up—it’s not. It’s a chance to learn a lesson and approach things differently the next time.
So get to work—start planning out your quarterly goals and execution and see where you end up 3 months from now.
And be sure to keep me posted :)
xoxo, Morgan