How to Sell Anything Online: The Ultimate Marketing Playbook to Grow Your Online Business

My seven business beliefs

In my ten years of business, I've developed a set of beliefs that I live by. They have been created, not only based on my experience, but also on the hundreds of businesses that I've analysed and mentored. Here are my top seven.

1. Be everywhere, all at once, at any given point in time, in the cheapest way possible

Wherever your target market is hanging out, I want you to be there. If they're scrolling through Instagram, your stories should be active. If they are in a Facebook group, they should see your brand name mentioned. If they are searching for an answer on Google, your brand should appear with the solution. If they are relaxing at home, you need to knock on their front door. Okay, I exaggerate, but I think you get it.

Start with the cheapest marketing levers, such as search engine optimisation (SEO) and organic content creation, and then amplify your visibility with paid marketing. I'll show you all the marketing levers you need so you can be everywhere.

2. There are no magic spells

There is no business success that cannot be explained. From Culture King's $600 million business valuation to The Oodie making $1 million in one day to Showpo scaling to a $100 million business, I can pinpoint the exact strategies that made them grow. There is no magic involved.

They each used a few key marketing strategies to scale, but their winning tactic was knowing which ones to use at the right time with the budget they had available.

There is nothing these brands did that isn't in this book.

3. Don't work for every sale

Rich people don't make money by working more hours. They place their money into wealth-generating investments that do the work for them.

Similarly, in business, you should not be relying on working more to get more sales. If you only rely on organic Instagram content to generate every sale, you will tire yourself out. Your business will not be scalable or sustainable.

You must have consistent paid advertising spend, SEO and email flows working in the background to make sure that any sales you make from the extra work you put in is a bonus.

4. Build relationships

For years, I thought that networking meant attending events and awkwardly finding people to talk to in the hopes of finding good business friends. I went to many such events early on, and always came away disappointed and frustrated. It was all small talk and no substance.

One day, I had a brand owner, Claire, reach out to me on Instagram. We had always spoken to each other via direct messages, and we always engaged with each other's social posts. Claire's message read, ‘I've finally gone full time in my business, and I have time to meet up during the day. I would love to do coffee with you soon.’

I jumped at the chance to meet another business owner in person, so I agreed. The next week, we met at a cafe and spoke for hours about business and marketing and life. I told her some of the issues I was having, and she suggested some solutions. I did the same for her. It was the first time I felt like a friend understood my business.

We took a selfie and posted it to Instagram and, very quickly, another business owner reached out and said, ‘I didn't realise you were in Sydney. I would love to have a coffee.’

I started to build relationships and a network of people who were aligned with me. We helped each other out and learnt from each other. Six years after that initial coffee date, we are all still friends. We share ideas, news, trends, problems and business advice. This is my network.

But my network doesn't stop there. Over the years, I've pushed myself to reach out to people who I want to build a relationship with — founders, experts, marketers and people in the e-commerce industry. And most of the time, it worked. It's not about asking them for a favour — it's simply connecting with people who align with you.

These incredible people have pushed me forward in my business and have even helped pull me out of some challenging situations. I want you to start figuring out who you want in your network and reach out to them.

5. Stop giving a fuck

We care too much about everything. We care too much about what our parents say and what our friends think. We care too much about how many likes we receive or how many people unsubscribed from our email campaigns. We care too much about what our audience thinks of our grey hairs when we talk to the camera. We care so much that it affects our behaviour and stifles our creativity.

When you realise that no one notices — let alone cares about — those things, you will be able to create and grow without the fear of judgement.

6. Have a brag book

You will achieve so much this year, but many of these achievements come and go and we forget what we did.

Keep a note on your phone called ‘Brag Book’ and document every single thing that you achieve this year. Take screenshots, copy and paste reviews, take photos and upload everything into your brag book.

At the end of the year, you can look back on it and feel proud. But the best part is you can use your brag book to gather talking points. Inevitably, you will be asked to be on a podcast, on a panel or answer a written Q&A about your business journey. This brag book will help you remember every winning strategy so you can provide valuable answers.

7. Be delusional

Lady Gaga once famously spoke about an ex who told her she would never succeed, and she replied: ‘Someday, when we're not together, you won't be able to order a cup of coffee at the fucking deli without hearing or seeing me.’

That's how I want you to think about yourself. You are the best at what you do, and you will succeed. Any problems you face are solvable. Facing them and solving them will only make you a better business owner.

You have an iconic brand, you are an iconic founder and you are made to do iconic shit.

A business is easy to start, but difficult to grow

A friend of mine wanted to start a business selling cooling eye masks. She had already done the sampling process and ordered 300 units from her Alibaba manufacturer. I told her to spend two days setting up her Shopify store, taking photos of the product, creating a product page, creating her first email flows and planning out her social media posts. And that's exactly what she did.

She also planned a big launch of her product by booking a paid influencer with a large following, directed people from her personal social accounts to her new brand account, and hyped up the launch on TikTok. She spent weeks planning the launch and she did a fantastic job. In fact, on the day of the launch she sold 120 of the 300 units. Her friends, family, her TikTok audience and the influencer's audience opened their wallets and bought her eye masks.

The launch was a big success, especially for someone who had never had a business before. I spoke to her on the phone, and I remember the excitement in her voice. She even spoke to me about her next product idea: a warming eye mask.

The next day, the sales momentum slowed a little, but she still sold another 40 eye masks.

Two days after launch, do you know how many she sold? None.

The day after that? Also none.

In the two weeks after launch, she had sold three additional eye masks.

When I spoke to her again, I told her, ‘You can't simply rely on a big launch to make consistent sales. You need a different marketing approach to constantly find a new audience and to make more sales.’

Many people want to start a business. Some of them try and think of a business idea for months or years, and when they finally have an idea, they spend another few months procrastinating about it, then another few months making the website and then more months planning the launch. They invest time and energy into the beginning stages and get excited at launch because they receive their first few orders.

But what they don't realise is that they've just completed one of the easiest things in business. The part that comes next — the consistent sales and subsequent growth — is incredibly difficult.

The reason for this is because business owners need to do everything in their business. From website creation to social media posting, to email marketing, to accounting, to product planning, to customer service, to multi-channel content creation — they usually have to do this with little or no help.

Business owners know they need to have a clear strategy in place to continuously bring in new customers as well as keep current customers happy. But there is also an overwhelming amount of information available online. It's confusing and exhausting to sift through it all and find what works.

A lot of business owners also see other brands ‘blow up overnight’ and get disheartened. They wonder how those other brands magically became successful.

What they don't realise is that there is no secret sauce, luck or magical fairy dust that grows a brand. In fact, there are a finite number of marketing strategies (or levers) that any brand has access to. The successful brands just know which marketing levers to use at the right time, and some know how to use each lever better than other brands.

This is exactly what this book will teach you. You will learn about the importance of the marketing funnel and its three main parts: top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom of funnel. You will also learn that each part targets a specific group of people with key marketing strategies designed to push people from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. By the end of the book, you will know how to capture a new audience and turn them into a customer. But, the customer journey doesn't simply end there. This book has detailed and actionable tips on how to provide those customers with an incredible experience and, ultimately, create brand advocates and loyal fans.

While this book is about implementing marketing strategies, it actually serves a much bigger purpose — to give you more time to do the things you want! It will help you automate your marketing so that you can make consistent revenue without working for every single sale, and will give structure to your weeks so that you are able to work on your marketing with clear goals.

The ultimate goal of this book is to alleviate the stress of not knowing how to grow your business. You will not only be able to implement strategies for growth, but will also be able to simplify your workflow so you can feel excited about the brand you are building.

PART I

The 5 core pillars of business

Businesses come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from their product or service offerings to their audience and their branding. However, every business must have a solid foundation in order to not only grow, but grow profitably.

There are five things in common that all businesses must have:

Competitive advantage

Cash

Protectable intellectual property (IP)

Digital assets

Consistency.

These are your core pillars because they strengthen the foundation of your entire business. The marketing strategies in this book will only work if you build your core pillars from now.

CHAPTER 1

Craft a distinct competitive advantage

There are rarely any products that consumers cannot buy from another business, and usually they have the same features/benefits and the same price. Even if you are the first to market with an incredible product, your lead can be lost within months. In fact, another business may even create a slightly better version of the product than yours. Having a good product is not enough to give you a competitive advantage.

When I ask business owners what their competitive advantage is, I'm met with these common responses:

My products actually work.

When a customer tries my product for the first time, they fall in love with it.

My products make people feel good.

I use the best-quality ingredients.

My response is always, ‘But what if another brand creates the same product as you with the same materials or ingredients? Why would customers choose you over your competitors?’

Most of the time, they don't have an answer.

If you focus solely on your product's features and benefits, you open yourself up to the risk of duplication — another brand could introduce the exact same product at the exact same price. And when that happens, you will be compared purely on price. That is a position you don't want to be in.

Rather than focus on product, I want you to focus on brand uniqueness and recognisability. The idea is that, no matter who creates a product similar to yours, customers will always choose your brand. Brand uniqueness and recognisability are about making your brand easily identifiable by consumers. Much of the time, it has little to do with your product itself, and has more to do with your brand colours, slogans, personality, customer experience and founder.

Brand recognisability is a long-term strategy and cannot be easily taken away. It is your true competitive advantage.

Let's look at a few examples of this:

Peter Alexander: The sleepwear king

Many brands sell sleepwear, but no sleepwear brand has more recognisability than Peter Alexander. From the dog logo to the smell of its stores, buying from it is an experience.

Competitive advantage includes its:

famous gift packaging

brand colours and logo

store experience.

Go-To Skincare: founder-driven following

Go-To Skincare is one of Australia's most loved brands because of its brand personality, which is a reflection of its founder, Zoë Foster Blake. While the skincare is good, there are many brands that sell similar formulations; however, the brand has retained a cult-like following for many years.

Competitive advantage includes its:

founder

witty and fun brand personality, which feeds into all aspects of their marketing

famous peach branding

product innovation, including the release of a kids' line, men's line and brand collaborations.

Hero Packaging: Making sustainability fun

Yes, I am including my own company in this list as, while it is a relatively small player in the world of e-commerce, it has become the go-to packaging store for over 65 000 businesses within five years. While the products do have competitors, it has created a loyal fan base who keep returning.

Competitive advantage includes its:

bright branding colours and fresh take on the boring packaging industry

founder (me): I showcase my authority in the sustainability space through keynotes, panels and content marketing

Instagrammable products, like an influencer-designed compostable mailer and millennial pink printers.

I want you to think about your business and assess your competitive advantage. Think about what you would like your competitive advantage to be. Write it down and brainstorm what steps you need to take to achieve it.

CHAPTER 2

Master your cashflow

About two years ago, I met with a high-growth ventures company for Hero Packaging. The goal of any high-growth ventures team is to help fast-growing companies get their finances in order to, ultimately, sell the business. I felt excited because Hero Packaging had been growing incredibly fast and I wanted to keep that momentum going. I opened up Zoom on my computer (Sydney was in lockdown at the time) and I met its head of finance and an account manager. After our introductions, the first question they asked was, ‘What is your cash runway?’

I had absolutely no idea what the term ‘cash runway’ was and when I asked them to clarify, the head of finance said, ‘If your business didn't make a single dollar from this point onwards, how long would the cash in your bank last to pay all your fixed