13 min read

Looking for an Ecommerce Mentor?

If you’ve got everything figured out, this blog post isn’t for you. Keep doing your thang. But if you’re like most of us mere mortals who aren’t experts at everything, let’s roll!

By Foti Panagiotakopoulos

Founder at GrowthMentor
30 Sep 2022
13 min

Mentorship

Table of Content

It’s easy to get sucked into the trap of consuming content created by self-proclaimed gurus.

You know, the ones that seem to have all the answers.

The ones with the secret “easy” path to 6-7 figures in eCommerce.

It’s this temptation that derails many first time entrepreneurs.

The truth is that there is no secret.

Ecommerce success ultimately boils down to having all your affairs in order:

Great product
Great service
Great positioning
Great marketing

Getting good at all of the skills needed to fulfill the above takes time, hard work, and a little bit of luck.

And that journey’s totally unique for everyone.

That’s where having a mentor can come in super useful.

eCommerce mentors > Fake gurus

An eCommerce mentor is someone with a “been there done that” experience that genuinely wants to help you succeed.

If you win, they win.

A true eCommerce mentor will never blow smoke in your face to get you to buy their $497 course.

A true eCommerce mentor has noble intentions:

To help you reduce the chance of making stupid (avoidable) mistakes
To guide you towards the resources you’ll need to learn what matters for you.
To spot blind spots in your strategy and give you a friendly heads up.
To be the mentor they wish they had when they were in your shoes.

How to find an eCommerce mentor

The traditional way

Traditionally, finding an eCommerce mentor’s been a bit of a pain.

It usually goes a little like this:

Do your homework, find someone you admire that’s got a verifiable track record of success in eCommerce, and reach out
Give first, do something nice to catch their attention and win their respect
After rapport’s been built, ask them for advice.

While this sounds great in theory, it’s time-consuming and honestly, kind of awkward.

The newer efficient way

Signup to GrowthMentor
Filter eCommerce mentors by expertise, company, language, and price
Book a call with them for a remote mentorship session

Here’s a video showing how to book a call with a growth mentor.

Great, so you’ve found your eCommerce mentor.

What kind of questions should you ask?

Questions to ask an eCommerce mentor

It depends on what stage you’re in, what your challenges are, and what your goals are.

If you’ve already got initial traction and are doing between $10-20k/month in online sales, then speaking to an eCommerce mentor that specializes in scaling different marketing channels might be a good idea.

Again, every case is completely unique, but a general rule of thumb is to enter every mentorship session with a clear idea of what is the specific challenge you’d like clarity on and also what the desired outcome of the call is for you.

Here are a few questions mentees on GrowthMentor have asked their mentors:

How is an eCommerce growth team structured?
What’s an efficient way to rank, test, and report on experiments?
Is there any software, systems or workflows you think are essential for an eCommerce organization?
How should I approach validating an eCommerce business before launching it?
When is the right time to start advertising on Facebook and Google?
What are some tips for creating an SEO strategy that actually leads to conversions and not just traffic
Can we look over my landing page together on screen share and you let me know if I’m missing any low-lying fruit in terms of conversion rate optimization?

Get some inspiration with these 47 questions based on real-life questions asked by the GrowthMentor community.

Featured eCommerce mentors

Below are just a few eCommerce mentors on the GrowthMentor platform with extensive hands-on experience scaling eCommerce companies.

Click into their profiles to learn more about them. Don’t forget to check out their reviews as it’ll give you a rough idea of what other mentees are booking their time to talk about.

Oh yea, one more thing. They are all super friendly and grounded. Think of the mentors on GrowthMentor as the antithesis to your traditional Youtube “Guru” types we all love to make fun of.

John Ostrowski

eCommerce experience: Growth analyst at Planet of the Vapes

What John can mentor you in

Customer Success

Use psychology principles to reduce your customer’s uncertainties. Help them to believe that your solution was the right choice. Customer Success is crucial to Confirmation, the last level of the CRO funnel that generates advocates and social proof. Focusing on CS means increased lifetime value, higher returning visitors, and higher purchase rates.

Design / UX

Become user-centric with a deeper understanding of your user journey. Design and UX overlap in many areas with CRO, I’m not proficient with specific Design tools, however, count on my experience for discovering unknow frictions and cortisol spikes by auditing UX with page teardowns and performing user testing for qualitative inputs.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

I help leaders to step up their conversion strategy, making sure it’s aligned to acquisition and retention strategies. Together, we will clarify and prioritize a roadmap of actions, pulling the right levers for boosting conversions. From Specialist to a Head position in a very dynamic agency environment, I’ve experienced from hands-on execution to experimentation management across all different marketing resources (creative, front-end development, copywriting).

John went out of his way to help me brainstorm my problem. Leveraging his professional expertise and out-of-the-box thinking he inspired me to see the challenge differently. In our session we came up with 3 ideas and actionable steps to explore them. I’m super-pumped to get working on this now!
Kirill Eremenko

View Growthmentor Profile

Nicolas Moulin

eCommerce experience: Online business manager at Brava Fabrics

What Nicolas can mentor you in

Conversion Rate Optimisation

I specialize in the conversion rate for ecommerce, especially DTC products. I can assess you in any kind of CMS but I do work on a daily basis on Shopify. We will review your customer journey and decide what elements of the web can be improved in order to increase the conversion.

Email Marketing

I currently work with Klaviyo, which I believe is one of the best email marketing platform for its support and user-friendly approach. We will think together what flows we can build, how to segment and structure them, as well as what messages to include in each flow.

PPC Strategies

I have managed accounts with more than 300k € per month of spend in various platform, such as Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Pinterest, and more. I can audit your account to understand how your campaigns are structured and build a funnel according to your audience and goals. I can also assess you on the creative side, to find the best ad possible to run.

Nicholas well prepared the meeting in advance, looking through the design and notes I’ve send him. He is well advanced within the sustainable ecommerce space, which made his experience applicable to our business case. He provided solid advice on our current position and where to move next. I would describe him as calm, collected and very helpful. Definitely I’d recommend him.
David Kellerman

View Growthmentor Profile

David Hoos

eCommerce experience: Led marketing at The Good, an eCommerce conversion rate optimization consulting firm

What David can mentor you in

Design / UX

Our firm has worked with hundreds of ecommerce stores and I can provide feedback on the site usability changes that could help improve your engagement and sales.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

I’ve spent the last three years at a conversion rate optimization firm and am very familiar with the rules, processes, and benefits that CRO has for many businesses.

Content Marketing

I have deep expertise in content marketing from the SEO side to the content strategy and editorial side. In my view, it is essential to develop a unique voice to really make content work effectively for you.

What mentees are saying

David was a font of approachable SEO knowledge! Prior to meeting with David I did a fair amount of online research, which left me a little confused as to the best way to approach an SEO / Content Marketing plan, but David was able to break down it for me into easy to understand chunks, with some really actionable steps and examples. Thanks David!
Harri Thomas

View Growthmentor Profile

George Kapernaros

eCommerce experience: 200+ Product Launches, E-Commerce Agency Owner, Conversion Content Lead @ Kilo.health, Ex Marketing Director @ Divbrands.io

What George can mentor you in

Copywriting

I’ve successfully sold tons of physical and digital e-commerce products (200+ product launches). Some multi-million campaigns included. I’ve produced all sorts of short and long-form conversion content, including ads, sales pages, advertorials, sales videos, email campaigns, automation, and more. I’m 100% in touch with what works right now. I’m lucky enough to lead a conversion content team whose ad testing budget is bigger than most companies’ total marketing budget.

Email marketing

I run a boutique email marketing agency that works exclusively with e-commerce companies. We’ve produced great results for companies that were just starting all the way to huge behemoths with millions of subscribers. Contact me if you’d like to skip the email learning curve. I’ll happily share what I know about email campaigns, automation, and growing your list.

A sharp ecommerce marketer with great copywriting skills. This combination makes George all the more effective.

Maruti Agarwal, CEO at ShopAgain

View Growthmentor Profile

Joanna Delaney

eCommerce experience: Responsible for the global performance marketing strategy and execution of all paid channels across for one of Inditex Group’s e-commerce brands. Manage multi-million Euro marketing spend.

How Joanna can mentor you in

Mindset Coaching

Mindset is key to success. In business it’s one thing to understand the logical business things like sales, marketing, advertising, etc, but another key element is mindset. And it is this element which is the key to success.

Social Media

There’s a huge opportunity in social right now due to the attention and time people give this channel. I can help you to use organic social media to substantially grow and nurture your community and then monetise them. An always-on approach, with fantastic copywriting and content is key to winning here.

PPC Strategies

I have experience managing global multi-million ad spend budgets across different verticals and channels. Including Facebook, Instagram, Google, Bing, Apple Search, DV360, Criteo, YouTube, Spotify and more. I also have experience using FB management platforms such as Smartly. With years of experience running ads with high budgets, it’s safe to say I have tried and tested everything. I can help you to optimise your paid campaigns and improve your return on investment.

Growth Hacking

I can help you to identify ways to accelerate your businesses growth. I’ll share my insights and knowledge to so you can execute proven best practices. Together we can also hypothesise ideas to test, in the most cost effective way.

Joanna was fantastic! She asked great questions and gave direct feedback on ways to improve. She shared some of the stuff that worked for her & her company which inspired me with some new ideas. Hope to have another session soon!
Sibi Murugesan

View Growthmentor Profile