It's Been Rough

I'm not going to lie, the past few days of sales on Lori's Shopify Store have been a little... rough.

The Facebook Ads have been a little rough too, but I'm not going to switch up my Facebook Ads strategy because of a few rough days.

We've had sales every day, but they've just been a little slower than they were for the first 7-14 days of January.

We've noticed a slight drop in our retailer sales, too (Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc).

Are we worried?

No. Although, the one REALLY bad day we had, I was starting to get a little concerned, but things picked up the next day.

Why are we not worried?

Because this happens every January.

It's the roughest month of the year for most businesses, especially when you're selling something that is a nice-to-have product such as books, rather than an essential, such as food.

People are strapped for cash after Christmas and are waiting for their next payday, so they're cutting back a little.

You might be wondering what I've been doing with the Ads and the store during this time.

Honestly, it's business as usual, but with less spend.

Some days I've reduced our Facebook Ads budget, other days I've increased it, but more often than not, I've just let the budget coast (i.e. I haven't increased or decreased spend).

I'm continuing to work on my craft as an advertiser, researching our customers, reviewing our own and others' Ads, and creating and testing new Ads.

With Lori's store itself, I've been tweaking things here and there with the product pages and the email flows, but again, that's something I'm working on consistently.

We've also been strategizing about plans for the store moving forward.

So, the main takeaway I want to share with you today is not to panic when you see a slow sales day.

You are going to experience ups and downs at the best of times.

The problem with the slow times though, is that the downs feel like BIG downs, and it can be hard to see past them.

Hard as it may be some days, look at your data over an extended period of time, not the day-to-day.

And in January particularly, expect things to be slow and at times, a little painful.

Resist the temptation to meddle with Ads particularly.

Let them run as normal, but perhaps just dial down your budget, and don't feel you need to scale as aggressively as you normally would.

There's zero shame in reducing budgets.

Take it steady and stick it out.

One things I wouldn't recommend doing though, unless you really need to, is turn off your Ads altogether.

It will be harder to get them going again and you'll lose all the momentum you've built.

Things always start to pick up towards the end of January or beginning of February.

Hold your nerve, and enjoy the journey.

To Your Success

– Matt