Online Advertising would require a few basic steps to start with and the Seller would need to get ready for the same as it would be bit different than Offline Advertising.
Let’s have a brief look on few of the Steps that you can take for Online Advertising as a Seller prior to selling Online
Step 1 – Define Your Customer
Defining your customer is as important as naming your products or naming your business. You can define your Customer by just answering basic questions
- Who is your Customer? Male, Female, Children or does it include everyone
- What kind of product is your customer interested in? New, Old, Used etc.
- What kind of discounts your customers will be interested in while doing Online purchases? Percentage type, ‘Buy some get some free’ type, Rental usage etc.
- What is the type of budget that your Customers are having? Low, Medium, High
- What kind of education and technology understanding does your Customers have?
- What kind of benefits they would get if they prefer to View your Online Store and then order rather than Visiting your Store physically?
- What kind of profile is your customer having? Are they doing further Business or are Wholesale distributors or doing related business post buying your items on sale or are they just Retail Buyers?
- What could be their Income group as per observation? High Income group buyers would not go for cheaper items and Low Income group buyers would prefer good quality products at low cost.
- When your Customers buy products from you, are those mostly for themselves or are they also looking for gifting them further?
- How many Customers are Tech savvy and would prefer online shopping at your store?
Step 2 – Create your approach
Once you know your Customer then we can start working on the approach that should be taken. Time to now answer the above Questions.
- Who is your Customer? Male, Female, Children or does it include everyone
- Depending on the answer, your items you post online should be more beneficial to that particular category
- What kind of product is your customer interested in? New, Old, Used etc.
- In case your customers are the ones looking for only New Items then posting Old, Used items won’t give much benefit to them.
- Posting new products at a good pricing would definitely make them visit your store daily
- What kind of discounts your customers will be interested in while doing Online purchases? Percentage type, ‘Buy some get some free’ type, Rental usage etc.
- Who does not love discounts, but that should not mean that a seller has to give all at throw away prices.
- Keep discounting offers very competitive and give them some additional benefits if they order through Online store
- What is the type of budget that your Customers are having? Low, Medium, High
- Your product listing can cater to all kind of budget customers but in case more buyers are interested in Low and Medium budget category then posting High Cost items will not bring any regular visitors
- What kind of education and technology understanding does your Customers have?
- Though educational background and Technology understanding is not much of a criteria of a buyer to do online business but there are items or listings that cannot be useful for a common man or those that do not understand technology much. For Example, A high tech Microwave with all sort of functions might not be quite attractive for someone who would need to have a simple Microwave without any complicated features and does the basic job.
- What kind of benefits they would get if they prefer to View your Online Store and order rather than Visiting your store physically?
- Visiting a store physically does not look much convenient as compared to viewing Online and then call and discuss or order over phone/mobile, negotiate and maybe visit the store only for pickup or request a delivery.
- In cases of Wholesale products someone might be looking for say, 50 kg of rice and once they view online, that my neighbouring seller is having that item, they can negotiate and get it delivered and close the deal.
- What kind of profile is your customer having? Are they doing further Business related to your items on sale or are they Retail Buyers?
- If you are doing a Wholesale business and cater to customers who are having their own store, then selling 1 or 2 retail items would surely not make much sense
- What could be their Income group as per observation? High Income group buyers would not go for cheaper items and Low Income group buyers would prefer good quality products at low cost.
- Keep high cost items only if your customers are interested in buying those.
- If mostly your customers are looking for good items at good cost or discounts then those kind of listings should be more on your Online store
- When your Customers buy products from you, are those mostly for themselves or are they also looking for gifting them further?
- Do you need to list multiple items that the buyers can gift, i.e. are those only Gifting items or are they the daily usage type items.
- How many Customers are Tech savvy and would prefer online shopping at your store?
- Tech savvy customers love to do online shopping, discuss over call and request delivery or plan to pick up from your store.
- During your daily discussion and visitors you are the one who can decide on this and plan your store setup accordingly.
Step 3 – Updating, Optimizing Ads on Your Online Store
Once you have the list of items that you can put across for Online sale the next step is to prioritize Ads which as per your store are the most asked for, or most utilized on Daily basis, or is mostly in demand.
Take the required membership from the Site for Online listing and publish your products, or you can open an Online Store and then list all your items in that Store
Move to your second list of item and remember, once you start seeing the responses on your online Ad, you can always go back and expand your promotion or decide to keep less of those items listed.
Keep your Online Ads always updated to reflect latest products and latest discounts.
Step 4 – Advertise your Online Ad Listing or Store
- In the last stage, all your Ads are Listed, All items in the Store are available and visible for the buyers to view and purchase.
- So the next stage is how do you let them know your Online Store presence and product listings.
- To make your sellers aware, display your Online store details at your physical Store, publish it on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. account.
- Get an Online Store QR Code and display it on your counter so that one can just visit the site it directly from the mobile browser.
- If there are Mobile apps available on Google Play or Apple Store, advertise their QR codes to have them downloaded and they can log in to the App or Online store.
- Feel free to help them do the free Registration and guide them on how to go to the store so they can check daily on your items for sale.
- Online store works best when you only focus on specific high demand items or offers or items with discounts.
- Discount are very effective marketing tool. This also increases your store visitors and getting more offers on your listings. Use them effectively.
- Fill out every field in your online Ad, adding photos, describing the item clearly, mentioning all the offers, discounts on the listing
- It’s also important to make sure your information in all of your listings is consistent with the actual product.
- Buyers can lose trust if Incorrect detailing is there
Step 5 – Responding, Tracking and Monitoring your ads
- Everything is now in place, Ads listed, Online stores is up and running but now comes the most important part that will give results to all the efforts that you have done in the above steps.
- Once your Listings/Ads are there, as a Seller you would need to Monitor the views and Respond to all Online queries to turn all potential buyers into Actual buyers.
- Daily tracking of your Ads, updating, adding, removing listed Products as per demand, Monitoring and Responding to all the Queries will define your Online selling success so do pay attention to your online listing or store and how it is progressing.
- In case there are reviews for your Store or Listing do review and respond to them. Good Reviews help building online markets very effectively.
Here, Wishing you all the best and Happy Online Selling.
MIDASRAY 