The ups and downs of inbound customer acquisition

This week I’ve been drowning in emails. In a good way.

About a year ago I shifted my content marketing to focus more on Shopify.

I’ve always done a lot of writing and emailing. Those strategies have always paid off for me.

But it takes time before they accelerate to a noticeable level.

Now, a year later, I’m getting swamped with emails from store owners needing help or wanting to talk about something happening with their store.

It’s a great feeling and where I want to be.

But it wasn’t like this all the time. There were months where I was producing quality writing and advice but nothing was happening.

It was difficult, emotionally to keep doing something that felt like it wasn’t working.

I had one card in my favor though, I’ve been though this before and knew there was going to be 6-12 months of very little results before everything would start happening.

Yesterday I felt overwhelmed at it all and then I remembered how I felt back when I got started. That’s when I realized that this problem, this full inbox of potential customers, was exactly what I wanted.

I just needed to have my little pity party and then got back to work.

If you’re at a point where it feels like you’re grinding away at your business but nothing much is happening, have patience. If you can make it though this grind, that’s a barrier that can protect you from competitors who can’t hang in there.

Another area with this feeling is SEO, especially organic SEO.

Every day I write to store owners who just bought JSON-LD for SEO and they want to know how fast Google will show rich snippets for their store. The ones who are going to be successful understand that now that the app is installed, they just have to hurry up and wait for Google. The ones who persist will be rewarded.