When you open an online store, the first thing that you need to focus on is marketing. If you want to increase sales of your products and services, you need to let people know about your presence on the market. How you market your business determines how much money you will earn.
The more you market, the more the sales are likely to roll in. A marketing strategy might be different from that of a brick-and-mortar store. Just identifying your target audience is not enough to increase sales. You need to identify what your audience is looking for and how you can perform better than your competitors.
Many of you fund their ecommerce store with secured business loans in the UK. This is why it becomes more essential to have a robust marketing strategy. Strong marketing can lead to increased sales and thus increased profits. Once you have enough money coming in, you will be able to pay off the debt quickly. Here is how you increase sales from your online store.
Make a strategy that works
To increase sales, you must have a good marketing strategy. Many entrepreneurs find it extremely hard, although it should not be. There are mainly three types of marketing: SEO paid and platform. You can choose anyone or a mix of them.
- Search engine optimisation (SEO)
SEO is a smart way to optimise your online presence. You will have to target keywords that your users can use to search your products and services. A rule of thumb says that you choose high volume keywords with less competition.
This will improve your chances of being at the top of the search results. SEO can lead to organic traffic, and Google gives a high rank to such sites than those that use paid marketing campaigns to get traffic. However, it can take a lot of time to build organic traffic.
To get high traffic to your ecommerce store, you need to persistently make an effort to stick to the top three search results. Search engine optimisation does not just mean creating on-page and off-page content. You need to understand your users' shopping behaviour, identify their needs, and then create an impactful content marketing strategy.
- Paid marketing
Paid marketing like sponsored posts on social media sites and paid results in Google search can boost your visibility. When people surfing for any other products come to know about your products and services through online ads, they will likely show interest in them.
If they click it, they will land your website. However, many of them will click the running ad out of curiosity. They may not have any interest in buying your product. Paid marketing generally increases the traffic to your website. This will, further, lead to increased organic traffic. However, one of the drawbacks of paid marketing is you will have to pay some money upfront. In case of a lack of budget, you can fund your marketing campaigns with unsecured self employed loans.
- Platform marketing
Platform marketing is an entirely different type of marketing; it does not just involve social networking sites but also marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, payment platforms like PayPal and Visa, and operating systems like Apple Store.
Whichever platform you choose for marketing your products, you will have to create a store and list all of your products on that platform. Here the purpose is to improve your search terms, so more and more people see your products. This will lead to increased sales.
Find the right product niche
Once you have decided on a marketing strategy, the next step is to choose the right product niche. Do not make an impetuous decision. If the niche you choose does not have sufficient demand, you will not be able to grow your business.
When it comes to marketing, you often tend to choose the one that is unique and different from your competitors. There are a lot of companies selling toothbrushes. Do you think the top-rated company will make a unique or a toothbrush like never-seen-before?
It has to be easy to use and durable. If people have given many reviews about your product, you do not need to sweat your blood to make your product unique. Further, there is no sort of thing like this exist. Various companies manufacture soaps. They all use the same essential criteria. The only difference is found in their PH levels.
Decide the price carefully
The price for your product should be neither too low nor too high. If it is too low, you will have to exert yourself to sell a myriad of items to achieve your revenue target, or if it is too high, you will lose them to your competitors. Selling tens of thousands of products is not easy at all, even though you have a reputation on the market.
A rule of thumb says that the price should be moderate. It does not keep you from creating enough revenues, nor does it make it difficult for people to buy the product from you. If prices are too high, the user will ask you to justify it. Even though you are offering fantastic quality, people may not be able to believe it. Try to set the price for all of your products smartly.
Make sure your product has demand
If your product has no demand, you will end up shutting down your business before getting it off the ground. Do online research to find out whether the product you have chosen has sufficient demand or not. For instance, check Google AdWords to see the number of searches on a particular keyword.
If searches are not over 1,000, your business may not survive. Check social media sites too. If people are not talking about the product you are planning to sell, or there is almost nil competition, you may have to drop the idea of pursuing it.
If you are running an ecommerce store, you will have to find out your product's niche, the demand for your products, set the right pricing strategy, and choose the correct marketing method and platform.