Hello, hello! Thanks for your interest in EcomBalance and what’s been happening in the past month.
This is a content series that we release each month sharing insights, updates, and metrics on how EcomBalance is growing.
We share the wins, the roadblocks, and the frustrations that we’re having as we scale EcomBalance towards our ultimate vision of helping 1,000+ companies within the first 3 years in business.
If you’re reading this series for the first time, EcomBalance officially launched in January of 2022 and we’ve been growing quickly.
If you’re interested, you can read about how we decided to start EcomBalance here: We interviewed 100+ business owners about bookkeeping and here’s what we found.
In this month’s August edition, we’ll cover the following…
(1) How we’re developing internal Training Programs
(2) How we’re getting time back for our Financial Controller
(3) How we continue to publish 20+ articles per month
(4) How we’re converting more leads to clients
(5) What our goals are for September
We view every month as another step towards our ultimate vision. We learn from the mishaps, celebrate the wins, and analyze the data so we know how we can keep growing in the future.
Thanks for being a part of what we’re building at EcomBalance. If there’s something else you’d like to see in these monthly updates, let us know and we’ll consider adding it.
Best,
Connor Gillivan
CMO, Co-founder
Overall Updates
The dog days of summer are behind us! As a team, we took some time off to recoup after a long first half of the year, but we also continued to make strides forward.
Update #1: We Started Developing Training Programs
We realized that it was time for us to put together a more formal Training Program for new hires and for our Team Leaders. We now have a multi-day New Hire Training Program where all new hires learn about the business, the industry, how we handle bookkeeping, and more. We’re still working on specific bookkeeping trainings, but we’ve gotten it to a great place.
On top of that, we’ve started a Team Leader Training Program that will further groom our Team Leads into leadership and management experts. We’re taking the lessons we’ve learned from the past 10 years of leading and managing teams and pouring it into our Team Leads so they feel confident running their team and helping us grow the company.
Update #2: We’re Getting Time Back for our Financial Controller
Time is the most important resource when it comes to scaling a startup. We’ve experienced it ourselves and we’re seeing it with our Financial Controller, Shelia. When she’s bogged down with client work, she can’t build new processes and systems. When she can’t build, it hurts the rest of the team. So, what are we doing? We’re putting her time on a pedestal and making sure that she has afternoons throughout the week to work off of Slack on building.
Update #3: We’re Continuing to Up our SEO Game
SEO and search engine traffic is one of our leading traffic generation strategies and it’s a long term investment for lead generation and client acquisition. We’re already starting to see clients come from our SEO efforts and we’re keeping our foot on the pedal. In August, we published another 20+ articles targeting low competition, high volume keywords. As you’ll see below, our SEO rankings and Search Performance metrics continue to improve month over month.
Update #4: We’re Converting More Leads to Clients
At the end of August, we had a call with an industry expert who has experience building a 7 figure bookkeeping business. One piece of advice he offered was getting pricing delivered and getting on the phone with leads as quickly as possible. When business owners are looking for a solution to their bookkeeping needs, you need to act fast, give them clear pricing, and answer their questions. Otherwise, they’ll find someone else that can deliver faster.
As we start September, we’re making a dedicated effort to get pricing quotes out within 1 business day and to get on the phone with leads as quickly as possible to start developing the relationship.
Team Growth
The team continued to grow in August as we added another new team member. We’re now at 7 full time Staff Bookkeepers, 3 Team Leaders, our Financial Controller, and a supporting team for Marketing, Add On Services, Software Development, Integration, and Sales.
Client Growth
We added 7 new clients in August 2022. We now have 65 total clients.
Here are stats on how those 7 clients came to be through our lead pipeline:
| # of Visitors to Sign Up Page | 336 |
| # of New Software Sign Ups | 70 |
| # of Pricing Forms Viewed | 123 |
| # of Pricing Forms Started | 69 |
| # of Pricing Forms Filled | 38 |
| Pricing Form Completion Rate | 55.10% |
| # of New Clients Added | 7 |
| Conversion Rate on Forms Filled | 18.42% |
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Conversion Rate on Software Sign Up
|
10.00% |
|
Conversion Rate on Sign Up Page Visitors
|
2.08% |
| Conversion Rate on Total Traffic | 0.32% |
In August, we saw overall increases on the majority of our Lead Pipeline metrics. As we continue to increase the number of leads signing up and filling our our Pricing form, we’re continuing to see strong conversion rates of leads becoming clients. We expect that conversion rate to go up even more in the next few months as we further improve our Sign Up and Pricing experience.
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Traffic Stats
Website traffic hit an all time high in August bringing in 2,182 unique visitors to the EcomBalance website. Our Partner Program, Affiliate Program, SEO efforts, Podcast Interviews, and Word of Mouth continue to be our main traffic drivers. Below are stats from our Google Analytics account for the month of August.
| Total Users | 2,182 |
| Pages/Session | 2.01 |
| Pageviews | 6,456 |
| Bounce Rate | 62.90% |
| Avg Session Duration | 1:54 |
| Direct | 892 (39.2%) |
| Search | 691 (30.3%) |
| Social | 383 (16.8%) |
| Referral | 295 (13%) |
| 10 (0.4%) | |
| Video | 0 |
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SEO Stats
Our SEO stats saw a big jump in August as well. Domain Rating up from 24 to 26. Linking Domains up to 145 and Inbound Links with a big jump to 475. Below is data pulled from Moz.com.
| Domain Rating | 26 |
| Linking Domains | 145 |
| Inbound Links | 475 |
| Ranking Keywords | 48 |
Our Search Performance stats continued to increase as well. You’ll also see that we started tracking for our position on specific keywords so we can keep working towards ranking higher. The data below is from Google Search Console and Ahrefs:
| Total clicks | 694 |
| Total Impressions | 47,100 |
| Average CTR | 1.50% |
| Average Position | 47.9 |
| Top Query 1 | ecombalance |
| Top Query 2 |
ecommerce bookkeeping
|
| Top Query 3 |
ecommerce bookkeeping services
|
| Top Query 4 |
finance meeting agenda
|
| Top Query 5 |
ecommerce bookkeeper
|
| Ecommerce bookkeeping | #3 |
|
Ecommerce bookkeeping services
|
#2 |
| Ecommerce bookkeeper | #1 |
| Ecommerce accounting services | #9 |
| Catch up bookkeeping | #13 |
| Shopify bookkeeping | #42 |
| Amazon bookkeeping | #33 |
| Amazon bookkeeper | #25 |
| Ecommerce accountant | Not ranking |
| Shopify accountant | Not ranking |
| Amazon accountant | Not ranking |
| Virtual bookkeeping services | Not ranking |
| Remote bookkeeping services | #11 |
| Online bookkeeping services | Not ranking |
|
Bookkeeping services for small business
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#96 |
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Content Marketing
August was the second month that we’re going all in on our content marketing efforts. As some of you may have seen in my LinkedIn and Facebook posts, we’re running a new SEO test I’m calling the Quality Quantity Effect.
The hypothesis is that we will see a significant increase in organic traffic within 6-9 months if we consistently publish 30+ new pieces of content targeted at industry keywords that have low competition and high monthly search volumes…without focusing on building any backlinks.
In August, we stayed consistent with July published 20+ new articles on the EcomBalance Blog.
Here’s the content that we published this month:
| Ben Donovan – What Is A Fractional CFO? A Guide For Business Owners |
| Fatos Fatin – Amazon Listing Optimisation: How to Sell More on Amazon, More Profitably |
| Emilie Margin – 10 bookkeeping and accounting tips to grow your Amazon FBA business |
| Partner Spotlight: Predict the Perfect Price for Every Product with Chad Rubin from Profasee |
| Partner Spotlight: Getting Your Product in Front of People Without Costing You an Arm and a Leg with Alina Vlaic from AZRank |
| Partner Spotlight: Grow Surrounded by Like Minded Sellers with Carlos Alvarez from Wizards of Ecom |
| Partner Spotlight: Determine the Best Possible Value for Your Business with Ben Leonard from Ecom Brokers |
| Partner Spotlight: Predict What the Performance of an Ad will be Before it Even Runs with Ganesh from AiHello |
| The 5 Best Accounting Software Tools for Small Businesses in 2022 |
| The 5 Best Online Payroll Software for Small Businesses |
| What Is a Full Charge Bookkeeper? How Do You Find One? |
| Quickbooks Online Explained: A Beginner’s Guide |
| What is BPO Accounting? Pros, Cons, & Costs |
| How to Calculate and Understand Straight Line Depreciation |
| Bookkeeping Basics for Ecommerce, Agency, and Software Business Owners |
| 6 Quickbooks Tips for Amazon Sellers |
| Cash Flow Management: A Guide for Online Business Owners |
| How to Handle Shopify Sales Tax for your Online Store |
| EcomBalance Monthly Update – July 2022 |
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Social Media Stats
Facebook and LinkedIn are our two main channels that we’re growing and utilizing to communicate with our audience. If you haven’t followed us yet, please give us a like and a follow!
Follow Us on LinkedIn & Like Us on Facebook
The following data is from Facebook and LinkedIn Analytics:
| Facebook – Total Page Likes | 385 |
| Facebook – New Page Likes | 34 |
| Facebook – Post Reach | 237 |
| Facebook – Post Engagement | 51 |
| LinkedIn – Impressions | 1482 |
| LinkedIn – Reactions | 42 |
| LinkedIn – Comments | 8 |
| LinkedIn – Shares | 16 |
| LinkedIn – Total Followers | 470 |
| LinkedIn – New Followers | 151 |
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Email Marketing Stats
Open rates were the best we’ve ever seen in August. Thanks for your support. We’ll keep bringing the fire! The following data is from ActiveCampaign:
| # of subscribers | 962 |
| # of new subscribers | 161 |
| avg open rate | 41.33% |
| avg click rate | 2.21% |
| conversion rate on site traffic | 7.38% |
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What’s Next?
Q3 is moving along quickly. Before we know it, we’ll be in Q4 and charging towards the end of the year. We have a lot that we want to still accomplish.
Here’s a reminder of our core Q3 goals:
– Hitting deadlines for our 65+ clients
– Reaching 75-80 clients by the end of September
– Improving our Client Portal and Affiliate Portal experience
– Increasing our advertising, SEO, content marketing, and sales efforts
– Further developing relationships with our 150+ industry partners
– Helping our team to continue to learn and grow through training
– Continuing to develop the internal EcomBalance company culture
– Implementing a new Sign Up and Pricing experience for leads
– Launching the AccountsBalance brand catering to agencies, SAAS, and online companies
– Hiring an Automation Specialist to help us automate some of the bookkeeping work
These months are flying by! Thanks for all of your support as we’ve gotten EcomBalance off the ground and into the skies this year.
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