Finally after nit-picking over tiny details and improving the look and feel of your eCommerce website, it’s ready for the world. Now, here’s the thing. A perfectly designed website, though a fundamental pre-requisite, wouldn’t guarantee you sales unless you promote it.
Let’s face it — no matter how good your product is or even if it’s well-priced getting your first sale isn’t easy. So, as the owner of a new online store, you might have a lot of things in your head to promote your website and create brand awareness. While doing so, it’s easy to fall into the trap of spending big money without getting anything in return.
So, here’s what you can do to make your first online sale without spending much. Later, you can figure out what works best for your business and build upon that by spending money thriftily on that strategy.
Involve your friends and relatives
When your store is live, get the word out to your friends and family members. They are the ones who are likely to buy because they know you.
For example, if you’re selling fashion accessories, you can ask your relatives and young friends to check out your collection. If they like it, they will buy without having a second thought. Later, you can ask them to give a shout-out on social media platforms.
Doing so will help you get at least one hundred eyeballs to your store. This could be more or less. You can promote your products on WhatsApp groups. You can ask your friends and families to share the same to their contact list. This way you can get a considerable amount of traffic to your store and generate some awareness about your brand.
Colleges/Campus Events
What better way to promote your products to 18-25-year-old group than going to colleges. If your product resonates well with this age group then you can go out to your college and give a guest lecture or create a campus event and distribute freebies.
Start doing by going to your college first as you are likely to have networks. If you receive a good response, you can start continue doing so for similar colleges. This will not only help you achieve your first sale but also generate word of mouth to thousands of potential customers.
Sell on Amazon and Flipkart
There’s no doubt that Amazon and Flipkart are the gateway drugs to getting sales on day one when your store goes live. Get your products out in front of millions of customers by selling on marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart. There are more than 100 million active customers on Flipkart and Amazon. As you receive orders on a daily basis, more and more customers will get to know your brand.
The trap here is to rely completely on these marketplaces for sales and not build your brand. Keep doing both to get the best of both the worlds.
Distribute Flyers
Out-dated and counter-intuitive, yet the cheapest and most effective way to get traffic is to distribute flyers to your targeted audience. Traditionally, these flyers are sent along with the newspaper. They are inexpensive and will get you a lot of traffic and get the word out about your business.
You can start by getting about 1000 flyers printed, and ask the newspaper vendor to tuck it inside and distribute. Ensure you choose the right newspaper based on your target audience. You can choose an English national newspaper as they are likely to be read by internet savvy customers who are open to buying from small businesses.
Print ads: local magazines and pamphlets
In the world of online marketing offline marketing is getting undervalued with every passing day. These days, most marketers and advertisers have switched to online advertising, which means the demand for print ads have dropped, along with the rates. Print ads are cheaper than they were a decade ago, so now is the best time to spread the word about your eCommerce business through pamphlets and local magazines.
Take advantage of this opportunity to create brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and achieve your first sales within a modest marketing budget.
Collaborate with influencer on Instagram
Social media influence is the next big thing on platforms like Instagram. Go to Instagram, and search for the posts with a keyword related to your niche. You’ll find many influencers promoting products and services.
Since you’re testing this strategy, at first, an influencer having around 20-30K followers is the one you should collaborate with. Before collaboration probe into influencer posts’ engagement ratio. There are a lot of influencers who have fake followers and therefore, they don’t have good engagement ratio. Usually an influencer with 30K followers should get around 3K likes and 30 comments.
It’s time to grow
Post implementing these ways, not only you’re getting your first sale but also figuring out what works best for you. Chances are you might win tens of sales. The number of sales is equal to the number of happy customers. These customers will generate word of mouth and will help you get more sales. Don’t stop here. Exploring, failing, and improving are the only ways you can grow and build a sustainable business. So, get your store out and about because it’s time to grow.