How to Sell a Product Online?
Did you know that back in 2020, social media-generated sales drove over $475 revenue, and some estimations say that in 2028 this number will go as high as 3 trillion USD?
Knowing that it’s no surprise that many small businesses are jumping on social e-commerce, especially if the present generation of consumers is fueling the trend well. Selling products online may be the ace in the hole once you’re in full swing. However, you’ll have to do some research at an early stage. There has to be an e-commerce strategy. Otherwise, you will never determine your customers to buy your product.
Why don’t we look at some ways to sell a product online? At the end, when you think about how to start a business online, knowing how to sell your product is quintessential.
1. Decide what to sell
Perhaps the most important thing is to decide what you want to sell. The basis of 70% to 80% of online success has a good product that sells well. The secret to retail success is learning what to sell and what not.
But how do we know that a product can make money by selling? Well, some factors serve as criteria for anything you decide to add to your inventory:
Profit margins
After paying the expenses, it is necessary to end up with some money. Briefly, the profit margin measures your company’s earnings, and it tells you how well your company is handling its finances.
Premium quality
If you want a higher profit margin, you need a higher quality. Premium quality is the best possible route to increase your profit margins. Your target audience has to be those with unlimited resources. For example, let’s compare Dacia with Mercedes. It is crystal clear that a person who buys a Dacia car has limited resources, while one who purchases a Mercedes has a different level of budget, one higher. Thus, emphasizing higher quality products can increase your profit margins.
Niche products
Every item that appeals to a limited number of customers is a niche product. In many cases, there are unique, peculiar, or handmade products. Several advantages of selling niche products include less competition, increased profit margin, and promotional expenses.
Hungry as a bear market
Finding a hungry market can take some time, but your profit margins will boost once you spot it. Google Trends can be a helpful tool to provide you access to a largely unfiltered sample of actual research requests made to Google.
2. Conduct market research
Collecting information about your target market can be time-consuming but strictly necessary. Market research not only investigates several areas of the market and answers various questions about the state of an industry.
Market research provides insight into a wide range of things, such as what’s trending in your industry, influences purchases and conversions among your target audience, and attitudes about costs for a specific product or service.
Furthermore, it can be qualitative or quantitative, depending on your purpose. You might ask yourself what’s the difference between these two types. While qualitative research is concerned with public opinion and determines customer motivation through close observation, quantitative analysis is concerned with data like surveys, questionnaires, and polling methods.
However, comprehensive market research involves quantitative and qualitative methods because they offer valuable perspectives to generate actionable insights. It also plays a crucial role in implementing business strategy; it is so important to combine them to gather more in-depth intel.
3. Brand your business
One of the most effective ways to gain customers’ trust is by branding your business. The public should easily recognize your products or services and clearly understand the value that your goods can add to their lives. Thus, it is imperative to create an exciting and out-of-this-world brand.
Undoubtedly, your brand is directly proportional to your prestige, and it can reflect the connection between your business and your current or future customers. The way people perceive a company’s name, story, logo, or even marketing campaigns influences the brand’s success. In other words, people buy not only the product but also the lifestyle that the product represents.
But what exactly involves, in a nutshell, building your brand?
- Getting a logo;
- Jotting down your brand messaging;
- Finding your “voice”;
- Integrating your brand;
- Staying true to your brand.
Building a solid brand can transform your business into a successful competitor, and it is the most significant thing you can do for your new or existing business.
4. Promote your product
There seem to be infinite options for promoting your new product or service. Figuring where to get started and which promotion methods will give you the best results can be difficult. However, what works and what does not depends on your industry, offerings, and audience, so let’s look at some methods.
Google My Business
Having a Google My Business account can save you time and money. Firstly, you can create a “What’s new” or an “Offer” post via Google My Business posts.
A kind reminder: Google My Business posts expire every seven days. Don’t forget to repost it.
Furthermore, you can upload photos of your new product/service to your Business Profile and easily promote them. Get the most out of Google My Business.
Social media contests
An excellent way to retrieve organic post reach is through social media contests. You can connect with customers and bring in more followers and prospects for your business. The most important thing is to announce the content across your marketing channels.
Blog posting
You want to get the word out about your new offering, and you can do it via a blog post. A blog post can promote new products or services and engage customers. It is an excellent method to go deep inside all the details, characteristics, and benefits. You can share the link to the blog post via your social media platforms or even your email.
Share customer reviews
A real boost to your business is gaining credibility and social proof. Sharing customer reviews demonstrate that your company cares about its customers and values all feedback. As a result, your rank can improve, bringing you more customers.
Social media ads
According to Forbes Magazine, social media ads allow you to hyper-target specific users, build an audience database and directly track your return on investment. Let’s take into consideration Facebook ads. With more than 1 billion active users, Facebook advertising is the perfect tool to promote your products/services. Hence, it helps you attract the right customers and help you showcase your product to potential customers at the proper time.
5. Grist for the mill app
Every local should do their best to improve their customer relationship: by diversifying and facilitating order placement, product delivery, receiving and analyzing feedback, and loyalty actions to provide quality products and services.
A mobile app provides more value to your customers and can strengthen your brand. But you have to choose with whom you want to collaborate to develop your mobile app. Some mobile service providers don’t create a personalized mobile app, which can wear you down.
However, a mobile app service offers the development of a personalized mobile application and a panel for managing customers, orders, deliveries, and marketing and loyalty campaigns. The only thing is that this service aims at restaurants and pizzerias. It is the perfect solution because it allows efficient management of online orders, deliveries, marketing, and customer loyalty campaigns.
The mobile apps are specially designed to represent your company’s brand with a unique design. Maybe you’ve already asked what’s the name of this service. Well, let me break it down for you: TapTasty. Its mission is to offer a complete, intuitive solution, but at the same time at an affordable price.
If you have a restaurant or pizzeria, why don’t you give it a shot?
Wrap-up
Selling a product online can take some time until you develop the right strategy. It’s not everybody’s power to enter such an extremely competitive market. Still, once you do it and take advantage of all methods, your business will grow and become essential for your customers.