November 22, 2012 by akhilendra
Sales Strategy- How To Sell Online
Do you search “How to Make Money Online” or “How to Sell Online”?
Or
Do you have an offline business and want to sell online.
Or
Do you want to set up an online store and start selling?
Or
Are you into affiliate marketing and struggling to sell online?
If your answer to questions above is “Yes”, then you are not alone.
How to sell online
Internet has become the fact of life and if you are not online, then you don’t exist at all.
So whether you are a small business, blogger, housewife or a student, having something which can help you in making some more money without putting too much of efforts, is a great idea.
Now it doesn’t mean that anybody and everybody can make money online but if others can do, then you too can do it.
But you need to pay attention to details and do what it takes to be successful.
If you are a small business or a blogger, then the only way forward for you to work on it and improve your chances of making sales.
So, if you want to make money online from affiliate marketing or selling your own product, then you cannot live in denial. You need to take actions. You often prepare a lot but when it comes to implementing what we have prepared or learned, you fail to do so.
But this also improves the success chances of those who do it because most of the people around are not actively implementing their sales strategy. So it leaves a lot of money on table if you can claim it by taking steps in a logical order.
Step 1 – Target Niche
Most of the people who want to make money online tend to target anybody and everybody and while doing this, they not only lose focus but also, potential customers. So target a niche based upon your business.
If you are blogger than example of niche for you could be weight loss, internet marketing and relationships.
For small businesses, you need to target a specific segment of customers so your niche based store could book store, gadget store or apparel store.
Targeting a specific niche can yield great results so focus on niche selection.
How to select a niche for you;
- Your expertise
- Infrastructure
- Competition in the niche
- Size of consumer base in the targeted niche
Step 2 – Use Correct Tools
There is no business which is free, so if you aim to make money online without any investment then I will suggest you to stop wasting your time (Time is money).
If you are interested in setting up a successful online business, then you need to invest in correct tools, Period.
Basic tools required to set up a good online store or money making blog in order to convince your visitors to purchase from you are;
- Good webhost
- Good website design
- Fast and user friendly site
- Payment options for online stores
This part is crucial for your business. If your site is down or design is not attractive then chances of making sales are dismal.
These are not expenses, these are investment.
Every business require investment so if you are not comfortable with it, then better target jobs rather than your own business (part time or full time).
Useful readings;
- 25 top wordpress themes for blogs and online stores
- Improve your website performance
- Top wordpress plugins
- Best wordpress ecommerce plugin
Step 3- Reach out to your customers
Unless until your site is discovered, no matter what you do remains worthless. Traffic is the key to your blog or eCommerce site. There are many ways of getting traffic but broadly speaking, web traffic sources can be classified into;
- Search engine traffic
- Referral traffic including traffic from social media sites
- Paid traffic
- Direct traffic
Direct traffic is the last because it requires you to correctly follow step # 2 along with seo and social media marketing. Seo and smm require some time, investment and strategy to succeed.
Useful readings for free traffic
If you are a blogger then search engine optimization along with social media marketing is the best combination for you.
If you are a online store owner, then I will suggest you to start blogging. Blogging is a great way of brand endorsement and engaging with your customers. It will earn you their trust resulting in improved sales figures.
You should also focus on list building because your own list is the best source of free and laser targeted traffic.
So if you are just starting up, then you could find it hard to generate traffic for your store.
Paid traffic could be a great way of get the ball rolling.
But you need to carefully design your paid advertising campaign or else you may end up losing your shirt.
Useful readings
- Cheap and best Paid traffic sources
- How to setup your adwords campaign
- How To set up email marketing campaign
Step 4- Problem-Solution Pairing
People may look to purchase things when;
- They need something to solve a problem.
- They aspire for something.
- Hobby
One of the biggest driving factors behind purchase action of a consumer is “need”.
People need something to solve a problem; you just have to come up with the appropriate solution. It is not that simple, but also, not very complex.
That’s why I talked about the step # 2. If your user is having good experience and they trust you, making a sale is just a consequence of that.
Always remember, it is extremely difficult to make direct sales but when you engage visitors, earn their trust, sales become a ‘logical next step’.
For example, if you are a blogger or internet marketer who is targeting weight loss niche. If you try to sell something directly, it will be extremely difficult for you to convince your visitors to buy from you but if you talk about the general issues related to obesity along with the benefits of losing weight then your engagement with your visitors will be at much higher level.
So in that case, when you put something to sell, it will easily picked by them.
Similarly if you are online store owner and blogs about the general trends and related topics based upon your niche, it will be easier for you to make sales.
So you should focus on;
- Problem faced by the people in your targeted niche
- Provide solution without pushing any products
- the larger message rather just pushing something.
Step 5- Tracking and Monitoring
Tracking and monitoring is the last but not the least step in making sales online. You can use free tools like google analytics, google webmasters, Bing webmasters and statcounter to track and monitor your campaigns.
You should carefully monitor the;
- Keywords driving traffic to your blog or online store
- Time spend by them on your site
- Visitors navigation pattern
- Exit pattern
- Demographics
Useful reading
The best way to build sales or any other kind of strategy is to brainstorm and discuss that. So don’t forget to leave your question, comments and share it with your friends.
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