Thinking your small business needs an e-commerce store? Do you feel its time you own an eCommerce store to match demands or access new audience? MarketinGROW presents Strategic approach to help ease planning and launching your eCommerce site.
But first, Let us assure you, you are on the right track! It’s the 21st century and everything you need is on the internet. Favorite snacks from your childhood or a bridal dress everything is one click away.
Next, you may be looking for an easy e-commerce strategy to help you get started, hence this blog. Before we get started, it’s important keep in mind global audience means global competition. Even if you are not trying to compete with them, the customers may lean towards an outsider’s product due to a variety of reasons like: better website, easier checkout or better online ratings. The perfect eCommerce strategy considers all relevant factors that may directly or indirectly affect your business.
MarketinGrow provides an easy way to keep your existing customers and attract new ones to keep reading to know more.
How to set up an e-commerce site for a small business?
- Pick a niche and Research your market
- Pick a niche product(s)
- Create a brand and business
- Get an online store
- Attract your customers online
- Time to Advertise and marketing
- Post-launch care tips
- Pick a niche and research the market.
First things first, whether you are an online or offline store, you need to know the market. Research if it’s a good model for an e-commerce store and what is your competition like?
Consider the below points as crucial to making a profit on your investment;
- Are you able to warehouse the product?
- Will it be drop shipped or periodic shipping?
- Will the product need a special license?
- Is it easy to market and advertise?
- Are there buyers looking for the product with no good purchase options?
- Who does this product target?
- What are the price and the options your competition offers?
Pick a niche product
Apart from the basic research, it’s also important to start off simple start with few products or a single product scale up when you see the demand rising this helps avoid unnecessary expenses and gauge the market without investing heavily in it. Take for example Kylie’s lip kits the brand started off with a single product and limited Colors and now has spanned into a whole range of skincare and skin products. It’s a classic example of niche product testing.
Create a brand and business
Your brand has to be ready to take on the online scene. At the 11th hour, you can’t afford a copyright issue with the logo or an investment into a brand image that doesn’t match the target audience that you are selling too.
Follow the checklist below to start with;
- Pick a business name
- Register your business
- Get required registrations such as employment ID, tax number, licence and permits.
- Keep a list of suitable vendors ready
- Create a logo
- Create visuals that resonate with your brand image and it’s persona helping your audience relate and engage with your brand.
Get an online store.
The majority of the population today purchases a product after searching for it online and looking for reviews. Notice how bloggers “review” products all the time? That’s because there is a demand by customers to educate themselves before they make a purchase.
Creating an online store is easy. There are multiple websites that let you use a template and choose the URL you think best. Usually, these websites would charge upwards of $100 for basic features and design.
Alternatively, you can opt for Marketingrow’s $45 /m plan that lets you cancel anytime and provides a custom design and SEO content helping you gain better visibility.
Attract customers to your online store
Many small businesses struggle with this. We often get asked “how can i attract customers to an e-commerce store for small business?” or a new venture.
The answer, there is no simple method that will just get you customers over night. But there are some pointers that help your store operate and attract customers-
- Develop keyword driven strategies – if a customer is not able to find your product via a simple search engine search they are most definitely visiting the next best option. Aka your competitors. Pictures, content and the store itself needs to be Search engine friendly so it is easy to track and navigate.
- Have a website– having a website let’s you add more information about your business, engage with customers and over time add more products that they can navigate and shop through. This also helps in making your store rank better and stay more visible online.
- Content marketing- although the goal is to sell, your site needs traffic and for that it needs to have relatively good content that can drive traffic and lead to conversions.
Time for advertising and Marketing.
No online effort is ever complete without Digital marketing. How do you get your product noticed online? How can you get more sales on a e-commerce website? Or how to generate traffic on to your website? Digital marketing answers all of these queries.
Digital marketing helps a business gain popular among its audience and constantly stay visible and in the minds of the public so they are motivated to make a purchase.
Let’s talk about what does digital marketing and it’s strategies offer for e-commerce?
- E-mail marketing – helps create a list of leads and mailing addresses you can can connect and engage with time to time with offers, discounts and new products.
- Social media marketing– through FB ads and engagement over social media your product gathers high visibility to your niche audience. Keep in mind every business is very different and social media offers various platforms to reach them. For example LinkedIn for B2B and Facebook for B2B and B2C.
- Google and online search– google ads, google my business page, reviews on online portals and search engine optimization. May sound overwhelming for a small business owner to do but that is exactly what digital marketing agencies like MarketinGrow provides to its customers, all round optimization for best results.
- Back linking – anything from related sites reviewing or talking about the advantages of your product and services to listing it on pages that already has good traffic is a good start. Back linking basically does this for your business.
Feeling ready?
Now that you know how to get started with an e-commerce site. What are you waiting for? Alternatively, you can get in touch with us or book an appointment. All you have to do is have an idea of what your website and brand persona is so we have a clear idea of the persona and it’s target audience. Leave everything else up to us from research to marketing we will do it for you.
Also check out lite.marketingrow.com to buy your website and have it up and running in less than a few weeks time!
