What’s up? I’m Connor Gillivan. Your friendly EcomBalance and AccountsBalance CMO and Founder.
This is a content series that we release each month sharing insights, updates, and metrics on how EcomBalance is progressing.
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.
Also, if you’re interested in past month’s updates, check out the EcomBalance News section of our blog.
In this month’s November edition, we’ll cover the following…
(1) Optimizing the Catch Up and Clean Up team
(2) EcomBalance Team Meetup in the Philippines
(3) Our SEO marketing results
(4) 7 new clients
(5) What’s coming in 2023
We view every month as an opportunity to learn and grow. We understand that to build a great business, it takes time, mistakes, and hurdles. These updates are a part of sharing that journey with you.
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
November flew by.
Catch Up and Clean Up projects along with monthly bookkeeping for our clients, the first 20 days of the month quickly passed.
Thanksgiving week then hit.
As you’ll see below, we sponsored a meetup for our entire Philippines team. It was awesome!
Here are the key updates from November:
Update #1: We Optimized our Catch Up and Clean Up Team
In October, we started hiring and building a Catch Up and Clean Up team Bookkeepers that specialize in Catch Up and Clean Up projects.
We realized that having our Monthly Bookkeepers handling Catch Up and Clean Up projects wasn’t the best set up.
It created more stress, less efficiency, and was pulling them in too many directions at once.
Lesson learned: Keep people in their lanes of expertise.
In November, we spent time building and optimizing our Catch Up and Clean Up process so that it’s smooth for all parties involved.
We’re happy with where it’s gotten to and we’re continuing to look for more improvements in December.
Big win though!
Update #2: We Sponsored a Meetup for our Philippines Team
Our 10+ team in the Philippines got together outside of Manila in November to celebrate a hard year of work and to get to know one another better as teammates.
EcomBalance sponsored the entire meetup and they had an amazing time brainstorming new ideas for the business, getting to know one another better, sharing laughs, and taking a break from the day to day bookkeeping grind.
We’re SO grateful for the amazing team we’ve brought together in the past year and we’re excited to host more meetups in the Philippines in 2023.
Update #3: SEO Only Works If You’re Consistent
You may have heard me say this before, but SEO only works if you are consistent AND you’re creating high quality content in quantity.
Google wants to see high quality content that truly answers questions for people as they are searching on Google.
At EcomBalance, we’re all about creating high quality articles focused on finances, accounting, bookkeeping, taxes, and managing your financials as an entrepreneur.
Our efforts continue to pay off and we’re seeing 1,000s of unique visitors to the site each month.
Here’s some key highlights from this past month:
- 950+ website visitors from search
- Search traffic turning into paying clients
- we’re ranking in the top 50 results for 130+ keywords on Google
- we’re reaching 60,000+ people each month through search result impressions
- we’re ranking #1 and #2 for top keywords in the industry
If you want to learn more about our SEO strategies, reach out to me at [email protected] and I’ll gladly answer any questions you have and provide you with resources we have on our SEO processes.
Update #4: We Landed 7 New Clients – Total of 93 Clients
Our goal for 2022 is to reach 100+ clients.
In November, we added 7 new clients that we’re very excited to get started with.
In December, we’ll be working hard to add 7+ more so that we hit the 100 client goal that we’ve had since the beginning of the year.
If you know anyone that would be a good fit for EcomBalance or AccountsBalance, please let them know about us or make a direct email introduction to [email protected].
Team Growth
We added a few new team members to our Org Chart in November.
The major changes that happened were:
- Hiring another Staff Bookkeeper for the Monthly Bookkeeping Team
- Hiring 2 more US Bookkeepers to help with Catch Up and Clean Up work
- Hiring another full time Ops Assistant
- Hiring a part time Data Analytics Specialist
Here’s where our Org Chart stands today:
Between full time and contract team members, we are 30 strong. We’re excited to continue adding talented bookkeepers, marketers, and other team members over the next quarter as we continue to expand and grow.
Client Growth
We added 7 new clients in November 2022. We now have 93 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 (SU 2) | n/a |
| # of Pricing Forms Started (SU 3) | n/a |
| # of Pricing Forms Filled (SU 4) | n/a |
| Pricing Form Completion Rate | n/a |
| # of New Clients Added | 9 |
| Conversion Rate on Forms Filled | n/a |
|
Conversion Rate on Software Sign Up
|
10.00% |
|
Conversion Rate on Sign Up Page Visitors
|
2.08% |
| Conversion Rate on Total Traffic | 0.31% |
We saw consistency in leads, sign ups, and new clients in November, but it was a slight slowdown from the all time highs we experienced in October.
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Traffic Stats
Website traffic came down from an all time high in October to 2,252 unique visitors coming to the website.
Below are all of the stats from our Google Analytics account for the month of November:
| Total Users | 2,252 |
| Pages/Session | 1.8 |
| Pageviews | 5,507 |
| Bounce Rate | 68.16% |
| Avg Session Duration | 1:34 |
| Direct | 993 (42.2%) |
| Search | 869 (36.9%) |
| Social | 284 (12.1%) |
| Referral | 194 (8.2%) |
| 11 (.5%) |
Our Q4 goal for website traffic is 3,000 unique visitors per month. We’ll see if we can hit it as we close out 2022!
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SEO Stats
Our SEO stats saw another small jump in November. Below is data pulled from Moz.com.
| Domain Rating | 29 |
| Linking Domains | 237 – all time high |
| Inbound Links | 851 – all time high |
| Ranking Keywords | 138 – all time high |
Our Search Performance stats continued to increase as well coming off all time highs from October. The data below is from Google Search Console and Ahrefs:
| Total clicks | 776 |
| Total Impressions | 56,500 |
| Average CTR | 1.40% |
| Average Position | 47.7 |
| Top Query 1 | ecombalance |
| Top Query 2 |
ecommerce bookkeeping
|
| Top Query 3 | ecommerce bookkeeping services |
| Top Query 4 | ecommerce brokers |
| Top Query 5 | accounting software for amazon sellers |
| Ecommerce bookkeeping | #3 |
|
Ecommerce bookkeeping services
|
#2 |
| Ecommerce bookkeeper | #1 |
| Ecommerce accounting services | #13 |
| Catch up bookkeeping | #14 |
| Shopify bookkeeping | #53 |
| Amazon bookkeeping | #34 |
| Amazon bookkeeper | #12 |
| Ecommerce accountant | Not ranking |
| Shopify accountant | Not ranking |
| Amazon accountant | Not ranking |
| Virtual bookkeeping services | Not ranking |
| Remote bookkeeping services | #15 |
| Online bookkeeping services | Not ranking |
|
Bookkeeping services for small business
|
Not ranking |
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Content Marketing
November was the fifth 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 November, we stayed consistent with past months publishing 20+ new articles on the EcomBalance Blog. We’re seeing consistent growth in our search traffic and we plan to continue to publish 20-30 new pieces each month.
Here’s the content that we published this month:
| Tips to Perfect Your Email Welcome Series |
| 7 Ecommerce Fraud Prevention Tips for Online Sellers |
| How much does it cost to sell on Amazon |
| When is Hiring a Bookkeeper Necessary for A Small Business? |
| Partner Spotlight: Ensure Top Level Logistics Everyday with Ryan Culver from Lessgistics |
| Partner Spotlight: Minimize Risks and Maximize Results with Andy Isom from AMZ with Andy Isom |
| Partner Spotlight: Save Time and Produce Accurate Financials on Autopilot with Daniel Little from Link My Books |
| Partner Spotlight: Develop Strategies That Can Increase Traffic and Conversions with Kamaljit Singh from AMZ One Step |
| Partner Spotlight Interview: Grow Your Brand with Tomás España from YABA |
| EcomBalance vs Xendoo |
| Pilot vs EcomBalance |
| Bench vs EcomBalance |
| 6 Websites to Get Ecommerce Funding For Your Business |
| 5 Best Inventory Management Softwares for your Ecommerce Business |
| Chart of Accounts Template for Your Ecommerce Business |
| 6 Tips to Set Up a Budget For Your Business |
| 5 Steps to Simplify Your BigCommerce Accounting and Bookkeeping |
| How to Read & Interpret a Cash Flow Statement |
| What Is Cost of Goods Sold & How Do You Calculate It? |
| EcomBalance Monthly Update – October 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 | 443 |
| Facebook – New Page Likes | 13 |
| Facebook – Post Reach | 459 |
| Facebook – Post Engagement | 34 |
| LinkedIn – Impressions | 1700 |
| LinkedIn – Reactions | 11 |
| LinkedIn – Comments | 11 |
| LinkedIn – Shares | 6 |
| LinkedIn – Total Followers | 628 |
| LinkedIn – New Followers | 54 |
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Email Marketing Stats
Email marketing continued to be a growing channel for us at EcomBalance. Open rates stayed above 45% and we added 100+ new subscribers in the month again. The following data is from ActiveCampaign:
| # of subscribers | 1,410 |
| # of new subscribers | 113 |
| avg open rate | 45.50% |
| avg click rate | 1.47% |
| conversion rate on site traffic | 5.02% |
Want to be featured in one of our newsletters? Reach out to me at [email protected] and let’s have a chat! We feature one of our partners each week and are always looking to bring value-adding services and tools to our audience’s forefront.
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What’s Next?
With one month left in 2022, we continue to focus on the Q4 Rocks we created as we started the quarter.
These Q4 Rocks are our 90 day focused goals that we work towards as a team.
Here’s our Q4 Rocks:
- Hire a Bookkeeping Automation Consultant – Build internal Clean Up, Catch Up, Monthly Fulfillment processes so we get Catch Up and Clean Up down to 30-45 days to complete. Get Team Leads up to Shelia level for reviewing books.
- Add 25 new clients → Get to 100 total clients
- Build and launch EcomBalance Pricer in Software
- Increase website traffic to 3,000 unique visitors per month
Thank you for all of your support since we started EcomBalance and AccountsBalance. We publish these updates each month in an effort to be as transparent as possible and to help other businesses grow in similar ways.
If there’s anything that piqued your interest, reach out to me at [email protected] and let’s have a chat. Always happy to share marketing and growth hacks that are working for us.
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