Hey there! 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 October edition, we’ll cover the following…
(1) Building a Catch Up and Clean Up team
(2) Creating the Monthly Bookkeeping team
(3) SEO content marketing and its results so far
(4) We landed 9 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
October was a busy month and it brought with it new realizations for how we can build EcomBalance and AccountsBalance to hundreds of clients in the next year.
Here are the key updates from October that are most noteworthy:
Update #1: We Started Building a Catch Up and Clean Up Team
One thing we’ve learned over the past year is that most businesses need some form of Catch Up or Clean Up on their bookkeeping when they come to us.
For example, they had someone that was doing their books, but they stopped 3 months ago and they now need those months caught up.
Or they were doing the books themselves and they weren’t properly categorizing everything so they need a new Chart of Accounts and for us to go through the past 6 months of their books to clean them up.
As we’ve taken on more clients, we’ve also realized that it’s very hard for our Staff Bookkeepers to juggle both the Catch Up and Clean Up work and their Monthly bookkeeping clients. This realization has led us to start building a new Catch Up and Clean Up team so that the team can divide and conquer.
The goal is to have a Catch Up and Clean Up team that handles all of that type of work and then the client is handed over to their Monthly Staff Bookkeeper. This should help in a number of ways:
- Catch Up and Clean Up work will be completed faster.
- Our Monthly Bookkeeping team will be able to dedicate more time and focus to their monthly clients.
- We will be able to take on more clients faster than our current pace has been.
Update #2: We Started Building our Monthly Bookkeeping Team
With the new Catch Up and Clean Up team getting built, we were also able to start taking Catch Up and Clean Up projects off of the plates of our Staff Bookkeepers.
This will allow them to focus solely on their monthly bookkeeping clients and give them the best experience possible.
We’re extremely excited about this move as it creates less stress for the entire team and ensures that clients are getting the best possible experience as they work with us and get their books each month.
Update #3: Our SEO and Content Marketing Continued to Thrive
For the past 4 months now, we’ve been publishing 20-30 new SEO keyword focused articles and pages to the EcomBalance website every month.
It’s been working extremely well and we’re continuing to see our search traffic and clients from search going up 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 9 New Clients – Total of 86 Clients
Our goal for 2022 is to reach 100+ clients.
In October, we brought in 9 new clients bringing us to a total of 88 clients.
If we can add even 6 new clients in November and December, we will reach out 100 client goal.
Year to date, we’ve averaged 8 new clients per month so we’re right on track to hit it.
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
Our Org Chart in October stayed relatively the same since September.
The major changes that happened were:
- Hiring another Staff Bookkeeper for the Monthly Bookkeeping Team
- Hiring 3 US Freelancers to help with Catch Up and Clean Up work
- Hiring a Bookkeeping Business Expert to consult us on our growth to 1,000 clients
Here’s where our Org Chart stands today:
Between full time and contract team members, we are 28 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 9 new clients in October 2022. We now have 88 total clients.
Here are stats on how those 9 clients came to be through our lead pipeline:
| # of Visitors to Sign Up Page | 315 |
| # of New Software Sign Ups | 75 |
| # 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
|
12.00% |
|
Conversion Rate on Sign Up Page Visitors
|
2.86% |
| Conversion Rate on Total Traffic | 0.36% |
We saw consistency in leads, sign ups, and new clients in October, but it was a slight slowdown from the all time highs we experienced in September.
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Traffic Stats
Website traffic hit an all time high in October with 2,527 unique visitors coming to the website. We also saw all time highs for our Direct and Search traffic. Below are all of the stats from our Google Analytics account for the month of September.
| Total Users | 2,527 – all time high |
| Pages/Session | 2.06 |
| Pageviews | 7,487 – all time high |
| Bounce Rate | 64.04% |
| Avg Session Duration | 2:08 |
| Direct | 1133 (42.9%) – all time high |
| Search | 952 (36%) – all time high |
| Social | 270 (10.2%) |
| Referral | 263 (10%) |
| 18 (0.2%) |
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 jump in October. All of our key stats hit all time highs again. Two months in a row. Below is data pulled from Moz.com.
| Domain Rating | 29 – all time high |
| Linking Domains | 216 – all time high |
| Inbound Links | 772 – all time high |
| Ranking Keywords | 134 – all time high |
Our Search Performance stats continued to increase as well coming off all time highs from September. The data below is from Google Search Console and Ahrefs:
| Total clicks | 895 – all time high |
| Total Impressions | 61,700 – all time high |
| Average CTR | 1.50% |
| Average Position | 51.9 |
| 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 | #2 |
|
Ecommerce bookkeeping services
|
#1 |
| Ecommerce bookkeeper | #1 |
| Ecommerce accounting services | #11 |
| Catch up bookkeeping | #16 |
| Shopify bookkeeping | #27 – jump from #70 in September |
| Amazon bookkeeping | #36 |
| Amazon bookkeeper | #21 |
| Ecommerce accountant | Not ranking |
| Shopify accountant | Not ranking |
| Amazon accountant | Not ranking |
| Virtual bookkeeping services | Not ranking |
| Remote bookkeeping services | #12 |
| Online bookkeeping services | Not ranking |
|
Bookkeeping services for small business
|
Not ranking |
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Content Marketing
October was the fourth 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 October, we stayed consistent with August and September 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:
| 5 Things To Know When Considering Ecommerce Funding |
| 5 Ecommerce Marketing Channels You May Be Missing Out On. |
| The 3 best ways to make more profit without increasing prices |
| 6 Ways Video Marketing Can Grow Your Amazon Business |
| Partner Spotlight: Helping people Realize Their Greatest Potential with Catherine B. Roy from LHM International |
| Partner Spotlight: Keeping your Accounts Healthy and Resolving Issues Quickly with Richard Connorton from Seller Candy |
| Partner Spotlight: One-Stop E-commerce End-to-End Fulfillment Solution with Seth Rubin from Soapbox |
| Partner Spotlight: Discover, Compare and Connect Payment Services with Nick Dunse from Shuttle Global |
| 6 Best Accounting Software Picks for Ecommerce Companies |
| The Top 11 Online Bookkeeping Services For Growing Businesses |
| What Is Profit First Accounting? Definitions, How Tos, and Examples |
| What Is Catch Up Bookkeeping? How It Works & Examples |
| What are Assets, Liabilities, and Equity? |
| The Ultimate Guide to Etsy Accounting and Bookkeeping |
| 4 Examples of Profit and Loss Statements for Small Businesses |
| 11 Best Shopify Accounting Software Tools for Sellers |
| Shopify Bookkeeping | 5 Steps to Complete Your Shopify Books Each Month |
| EcomBalance Monthly Update – September 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 | 432 |
| Facebook – New Page Likes | 32 |
| Facebook – Post Reach | 273 |
| Facebook – Post Engagement | 36 |
| LinkedIn – Impressions | 1700 |
| LinkedIn – Reactions | 9 |
| LinkedIn – Comments | 3 |
| LinkedIn – Shares | 6 |
| LinkedIn – Total Followers | 573 |
| LinkedIn – New Followers | 50 |
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Email Marketing Stats
Email marketing continued to be a thriving channel for us at EcomBalance. Open rates stayed above 45% and we added the most new subscribers in 1 month. The following data is from ActiveCampaign:
| # of subscribers | 1,297 |
| # of new subscribers | 183 – all time high |
| avg open rate | 45.00% |
| avg click rate | 2.61% |
| conversion rate on site traffic | 7.24% |
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 two months left in 2022, we’re hyper focused on the Q4 Rocks that we set out to complete at the start of the quarter. We’re on pace and should be able to accomplish all of them by the end of the year.
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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