With Amazon dominating eCommerce, transforming your eCommerce startup into a major company can be challenging, but you can do it. Here’s how.
The story of Amazon can serve as an inspiration for all of us. How did one man turn a little online book store into the empire of commerce it is today? It’s a stunning transformation.
Luckily, there’s a lot of lessons to be learned that can be utilized in your own eCommerce startup. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, you can transform your little operation into a thriving business. All it takes is knowing the right steps to take.
How do you get started? Read on and we’ll walk you through what you need to know.
Establish Your Target Audience
Many first time eCommerce sellers make one big mistake right out of the gate: they fail to identify who they are actually selling to. Let’s face it, there are just too many people out there for you to properly be able to market to all of them.
You don’t want to market to all of them, you instead want to hit a niche few that will be more engaged with your service and products.
To use a broad example: if you were selling woman’s clothing, why would you waste your time trying to market your product to retired men? It just doesn’t make any sense. While that may sound ludicrous, you’d be surprised to hear how many people do this in some form of another online.
You’re going to have limited resources when it comes to getting the word out about your business, and so you’re going to want to use those resources wisely. Narrowing in on who you can impact the most will set you up for success in the long run.
Utilize Affiliate Marketing
You might not have access to the audience you need upfront. It takes time to build a chain of supporters, of course. Luckily, there are likely many other businesses and blogs out there that have a similar audience to the one you are trying to reach.
These businesses and writers might be open to the idea of affiliate marketing. This is where they plug your business or your products somewhere on their webpage so that their customers click over to check you out.
If you make a sale based on someone’s click from this other website, you will then give them a small cut of the sale. This is what incentivizes them to add your link to their own website. It’s easy to be exposed to a much larger audience in this fashion.
There are also many programs available that can make running an affiliate marketing program easy. These are easy to integrate into your website and will help to track where various sales are coming from.
The fact that you only have to pay an affiliate when they get you a successful sale is a huge benefit to a small business in its early days. This is a form of marketing where you only owe money when said marketing is successful. That’s an incredible tool to utilize.
Ensure Your Customer Service Is Great
Nothing can sink a new online business faster than poor customer service. The year is 2020, and people expect immediate assistance with their problems, especially online.
Yes, focusing as much of your attention as possible on sales is important. But you won’t be able to hit actual growth until you can ensure your customers will come back and will tell their friends. In order to that, you’ll need to do more than offer a great product. You’ll need to make them feel taken care of.
Great customer service can help to foster brand loyalty that can be extremely valuable.
How best can you help your online customers? If possible, you should offer as many different forms of assistance as you can. Provide an e-mail, a phone, and maybe even live chat functionality if you can get it set up.
If running this extent of service is too much for you alone, you could always outsource eCommerce customer service to another provider. This could keep your customers happy and allow you to focus fully on the product and sales side of your company.
Open Yourself Up To The World
The power of the internet is the ability to connect with people on the totally opposite side of the globe. Yes, opening yourself up to international orders can involve a bit more work in the short-run. But the long term benefits can be hard to beat.
If possible, you should definitely consider setting yourself up to accept international orders. The numbers in this case just make sense: why limit the potential audience who might be interested in what you have to offer?
If it’s too hard to cover some of the costs, you can always greatly raise the price for international offers. You can have the buyers cover shipping, packaging, and more. Yes, this might turn some away, but you never know who might be out there and what money they are willing to spend.
If you open yourself to the whole globe, you can see growth in your new business a lot quicker.
Expanding an eCommerce Startup
If you’re running an eCommerce startup, you’ve probably got expansion on your mind. But how can you move out of your bedroom and across the whole world? The above information can help guide you in the right direction. Soon, you can be on the minds of consumers everywhere.
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