Sometime back I had written a post on "How to sell your products online" and a lot of people asked me if there was anything else
they could do after that, to further increase sales. As I had mentioned at the
end of the post "There is a lot more that can be done to further increase
sales, but then, that would be a topic by itself ." So here is the
first one on the next steps to increase sales of your products online.
First let me begin by saying that the basics covered in my
last post are not a onetime activity. In fact it is a continuous activity. Hence
this is the first step to further increase sales.
Use Analytics. Marketplaces such as Amazon, provide
analytics on your listings. Use those. Continuously monitor page views, clicks
and sales of one's products and modify the Product Title, Images, Description,
Keywords, and price based on what's working and what's not. Take the learning
from one similar product and apply it to another. If something is not working
try something different and again observe the data. Keep analyzing data, keep a
track of changes made and progress and keep fine tuning till you have a winner. How?
Think like a customer while analyzing the data. Start by
asking "is my product visible in search?" If not then tweak the
Keywords and title. If Yes but clicks are less, then modify the Image, Title OR
Price or all three. If Clicks are good and so are the page views of the Product
detail page but sales are low, then check and work on the description, features
and price. Keep an eye on the competition while doing these. Who are you
competing against, how are their images, do they describe the product better?
or are the cheaper? Follow the same process for products that may have sold
well earlier but may not be selling well now. Also check customer reviews. Has
someone written a negative review of your product? why? what can you do about
it?
The reason this comes as a first step to increasing online
sales is that this is basic. First sell to customers who are searching as they
have the highest intent to buy. Then look at doing things to attract other customers.
It's like having a shop in a mall. If your location, sign board, display and
pricing are not enticing customers who are already at the mall, to buy, then it
does not make too much sense in trying to get customers who are outside to the
mall. Does it?
There are also a lot of tools available online to manage
your listings, inventory, customer feedback and response & sales and get
better data to help you increase sales. If your product categories and items
are multiple and/or you sell on multiple platforms then these tools can really
help you manage your process, your time and pricing strategy better and thus
increase sales. So do look at them and choose what suits your current and
future needs the best.
Once you have set
systems in place to list products and then analyse data to tweak your listings
then look at the next steps. Key ones here would be Social Media presence,
Blogs, and online advertising, in that order. Let's start with Social media.
What Social media to choose and what to do there would
depend upon your target audience, your products and what you want to achieve.
The objective here is to increase sales so that is sorted. However, whether to
use Facebook, or Twitter or Instagram or Google plus or Pinterest and what you
do there will depend on your target audience - where they frequent? what they
do there? and your products. My post "Does Social media Work" covers
most of the basics for making social media work. So do refer to that. But keep
in mind that social media is for engagement so don't sell too hard. Which means
please do not just post your title of the product with the image and price and
a link to where they can buy it from. Here talk about your product category, its advantage
to the user, its uniqueness, similar products or items, the people behind it,
etc etc. Engagement is the key. Think what a prospective customer would be interested
in and engage with them on that. Here the fact that you are selling xyz product
is secondary. The user and their interest comes first. Engage with them and
then also let them know that if they are interested in buying they could so from
xyz place. Also this is place to talk to your users to gauge their interests
and concerns. This is the place to get feedback and act upon the same. This is
the place to offer discounts, hold contests and build a community of current
and prospective customers. And if you do this well sales will happen.
You may want to build a social media community from scratch
over a period of time organically or if you have the budgets you could use
social media advertising to ramp up fast. Which advertising options to use on a
particular social media channel would again depend on what you are doing there.
You may want to promote your posts or just build likes (FB) to your channel
depending upon your short term or long term goals. My suggestion always is to
first go the organic route and use your own networks to propagate the page, see
what kind of posts and activity drives your desired goal and then decide on how
to spend your money and do what to further your goals. Social media channels
too, provide analytics on how your page is doing and what is working and what
is not. use that data to tweak your posts and activity. Remember social media
does take time to do it well so don't expect a jump in sales immediately. Work
at it, analyze, tweak, change, see what others are doing, talk to your audience
and you will see an impact over a period of time.
Blogs and online advertising come next. But will cover
these in another post. So get started on using analytics to increase sales and
start you social media channel pages. If you have questions or want to know something
in more detail or just share your experiences, please feel free to comment
below.
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