Direct selling has proven to be an effective business model for many small-time entrepreneurs. It offers them a convenient way to earn supplemental income without spending much on capital while maintaining a semi-flexible schedule. This is simply because when you start selling your products directly to customers online, you don’t necessarily have to have a mediator, as well as the need to rent a space to put up a physical store. When done right, this can be a truly beneficial endeavor. If you’re planning to start your own online business, below are several things you should consider.
Identify Your Audience
Understanding your audience is key to having a better relationship with them.
When creating an online store, the people you reach through your posts become your potential customers. It will help you cater them more if you observe certain trends and patterns such as their age, gender, occupation, which income bracket they fall into, and so on. Knowing which demographic they belong will help you plan your marketing strategy accordingly.
If you can, try to get feedback from your customers. This approach has helped countless businesses, whether they operate online or offline. Customer feedback matters; make sure you have a way to hear from them.
Communicate Your Brand Identity
Having a clear brand identity helps your potential customers find you.
After getting to know your customers, you’ll be better equipped to formulate your tone of voice and shape how you present your branding. Every time you create promotions or messages to send to many, ensure it aligns with your brands’ identity and tone of voice.
Having a clear and coherent tone of voice is important because it’s what your potential customers see or hear when they see your ads or when they visit your page or website. Using the right tone of voice could also be an effective way to relay your core values as a business. This has become more important, especially nowadays when consumers have become more aware and conscious of the impacts of their consumption.
Nowadays, consumers resonate more with brands that are eco-conscious and cruelty-free, and they pay more attention to the ethics involved in the production. If your brand is promoting something good, be loud about it so your consumers can support you too.
Lastly, maintain the same tone of voice when answering queries or concerns in your direct messages. You can use automated chatbots such as the one Page 365 offers but make sure to customize them first, so they sound more accommodating and suitable for your brand. Efficiency is great but make sure your social media promotions won’t end up sounding like Facebook spam or anything that will just end up irritating your customers.
Maximize Each Platform that You Use
Explore each platform to find free features to help you grow your following and sales
Using various platforms to maximize your reach and visibility is great. However, being present on every known social media isn’t enough if you’re going to keep all of your accounts stagnant. Remeber that every social media platform is different; they offer different tools and ways for you to engage with your customers. Make sure to master using each platform so you can utilize it the best way you can to grow your business.
When it comes to page quality, Facebook probably offers the best combination of features for the general audience. You can post more types of media, and you can post videos or images and compile them into albums. If case you have a physical store, you can make it easy for your customers to find you by adding a location as well as your business hours and contact details. You can use the platform to receive inquiries from your customers, too, very easily, especially if you use an efficient order management system such as Page 365. It helps you respond to your customers in a very timely manner with the help of its automated chatbot. Aside from that, it also offers other various features which you can use to boost your presence and efficiency on other platforms.
Learn from Your Competition
Having competition isn’t all that bad, especially in business. Having other people sell or provide the same products or services as you could mean that there might be a huge demand for what you offer. Instead of drowning in the competition, differentiate yourself and find a way to do business better by simply observing which areas you can copy or which areas you can do better. It goes without saying that you must consider the state of your own business too. Not everything works the same way for everyone, so when you’re gathering inspiration, do so with caution.
Observing how competitors deal with their own customers can also provide you with a better insight into how to treat your own customers better. Chances are you probably share the same demographic or niche. You might want to check which of their posts got the most engagement and which ones did poorly.
Keep Track of Your Own Data and Store Trends
Keep track of your data and trends to evaluate how well you’re doing.
While it’s good to see how your competition and market are doing, don’t make the mistake of forgetting to observe your store activity as well. Revisit old earlier posts and see which ones are doing good and which ones aren’t getting as much engagement as you liked. Try to figure out the reason why some of your posts did poorly. This will help you decide if you need to change up your content or the way it’s delivered.
If you notice one particular post gaining a lot of traction, create more of that. Continue to learn as you go. The same thing goes for the email campaigns that you run too. Find out which ones did well and which ones did not. Don’t be afraid to try retargeting the same emails, too but do so strategically. You can wait for a certain period to pass before sending in another promotional message or an email. If you want to retarget customers, you don’t necessarily have to spam messenger or their emails to get their attention. In fact, this might even do the opposite, so be mindful of it.