The truth about selling
In order to develop and market your product effectively, it is crucial to understand the reason behind someone’s interest in purchasing it. Most often, people decide to make a purchase based on the following factors.
- People buy benefits, not products. People want to know what your product will do and how it will help them.
- People want to buy, and they want the “permission” to act. Understanding people’s motivations will help you better target and market to them.
- People like to buy from someone they trust, so how you prospect and treat your customer is essential in how they perceive you and your product.
- People want the satisfaction of a deal. You don’t need to cut the price of your initial product. Still, upselling to include a higher margin product at a reduced price, especially if you use a strategy of a deadline or exclusive offer to make it more attractive to act. The incentive of urgency is critical here.
Benefits of selling online
The primary obstacle faced by any business is ensuring that its operations and expenses do not outweigh the revenue generated or having the ability to spend less than what is earned.
Before making your first sale, having a traditional bricks-and-mortar store entails incurring a multitude of expenses. These expenses consist of renting the store space, acquiring insurance, paying business taxes and obtaining licenses, purchasing necessary merchandise, hiring labor for setup and sales assistance, covering utility bills, and implementing advertising strategies, among various other costs.
It should come as no surprise that over 50% of traditional shops fail within five years, considering all the expenses incurred before making the first sale. For this reason alone, online selling is appealing to new startups. By eliminating all the overhead costs, online selling becomes more popular than in-person, but it’s not the only advantage of online selling as there are numerous benefits.
Selling online offers advantages such as reduced costs, improved reach to a wider range of potential customers, and the flexibility to work from any location and at any time.
In addition to that, there are other advantages to selling products or services online.
- Always Open: With an online store, you can be open 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, to receive orders. That means that even while you sleep, someone can access your store and purchase what they may need. Even though you’re open 24-hours a day, you don’t need to provide labor to handle those orders. You can do those during your regularly scheduled office hours.
- Worldwide Reach: With an online business, you have access to shoppers from all around the world, giving you and your products access to a broader target of potential sales that you wouldn’t get with traditional in-person shopping.
- Decentralized Work: With an online business, you can set up the process to allow you to work from wherever you choose, whether at home, at the park, in a cafe, wherever you can have cell or WiFi access you can set up your office.
- Choose Your Own Adventure: As a kid, there were these books called “choose your own adventure” where the story began, and as soon as a conflict arose, you have prompted a series of options on how to overcome the obstacle. An online business is much like those stories. You can choose your adventure and path for how best to improve your sales.
- Sell Your Dreams: With an online business, you can choose what you want to sell, from crafts made around the house, old collections of comic books, a digital product that solves a problem, or personalized meals for neighbors that are delivered to their doors.
- Just Get Started: Online businesses have a much lower cost to get started and make them more profitable once you get started.
Online selling tips for beginners
1. Create a strategy map
To succeed, it is essential to create a strategy map outlining the desired type of business, the necessary steps to attract customers, receive their orders, fulfill the orders, ship them, and ensure future sales growth for your products.
A strategy map depicts your organization and the procedures for discovering, cultivating, and satisfying orders from your customers.
2. Type of business model
After starting to develop your online business strategy, the following step involves determining the most effective approach to attain those goals. It is important to note that selling digital products online differs from selling physical products which require inventory management, and each method comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
By selecting the appropriate product to sell, you will be able to effectively manage the necessary logistical aspects for making it a reality.
If you’re selling a physical book, you need to consider various steps in order to make a profit. First, having a publisher with an inventory of the book is essential. Additionally, you will have to account for packaging and shipping costs. All these factors contribute to the increase in expenses before reaching any profit.
3. Work around a strategy
One of the most common mistakes people make when starting any type of internet business is failing to structure the business based on a strategy. To prevent this, the first step is to create a company strategy that will guide you in implementing the necessary actions for achieving success.
If you were in the cell phone sales industry, the common approach would involve extensively using various social media platforms and investing money in promotions, with the expectation of enticing customers to buy your product.
Although this approach may work for some individuals, it is not typically a feasible strategy for extended periods. For those who engage in online selling yet lack the means to consistently market or devote countless hours to social media platforms, what options do they have?
To maintain the same effectiveness as your current technique, you should devise an alternative approach. One possibility, for instance, is generating video content for YouTube and subsequently distributing it among others.
An additional benefit is that once your movie is published, you can receive views at any time of day or night without any additional effort (although continuous work is required if you want to expand your channel). Another advantage is that as your channel becomes more popular, you have the potential to generate income through Google advertisements.
4. Do it on the right platform
Do you have any plans regarding the place where you intend to sell your products or offer your services? Are you considering selling your items on a website or using social media as a platform?
When contemplating advice for online selling in the Philippines, it is crucial to choose the most suitable platform for your intended audience. Given that a large majority of Filipinos use social media every day, social media serves as an excellent platform for the Philippines.
You have the option to join groups and promote live videos, which can help you sell specific items. However, it is crucial to ensure that your actions align with your target demographic. For instance, if you are selling luxury watches, it might be more advantageous to have a well-designed and secure website with visible contact details for your company, rather than randomly posting a Facebook live video.
In the Philippines, it is crucial to carefully choose the most suitable online selling platform for your specific target audience due to the various options available.
5. Learn your way around online things
To succeed as a novice seller in the Philippines, it is essential to familiarize oneself with every aspect of the digital realm. This approach is not only recommended to beginners but also to experienced sellers, as it can differentiate them and bring success. Educating oneself on methods to increase online sales is crucial.
The speed of technology consistently improves every year, and the same applies to the world of online selling.
Last year, Google announced that their search volume had slightly decreased, marking the first decline in over 12 years for the company. During the same week, it was discovered that YouTube is the second most widely used search engine globally, positioned just below Google and Bing.
How does this benefit you? Online vendors can take advantage of this because the way we seek information, including where to purchase products, is evolving. To ensure your success as an online vendor in the Philippines in the coming years, you need to reach out to your customers in the places where they are currently spending their time.
6. Be a part of the community
For newcomers in the Philippines, the subsequent tip in online selling is to form partnerships with fellow community members.
When it comes to selling, it is important to remember that word of mouth is highly significant, especially in the Philippines. Even if your target audience is in a different country, word of mouth remains just as popular as online forums and reviews.
How can you grow your online selling enterprise by collaborating with the community? When you can offer something to the community and receive a better reward, you have achieved the perfect balance. A common instance of this is a referral program, where you give a small commission to a referral agent or affiliate marketer for every lead or sale they bring in.
7. Open up many payment options
To effectively sell online in the Philippines, it is advisable to offer customers a range of payment options. Gcash has become a popular choice for some Filipinos for making payments instead of using cash. By providing a payment solution that caters to their needs, other customers are also likely to opt for that specific online banking method, thus eliminating another obstacle in the purchasing process.
If you are a seller who caters to local customers (specifically Filipinos residing in the same locality), it is crucial to have access to local payment methods. The previous piece of advice we shared regarding choosing the right platform is related to payment options. This is because certain platforms can bargain for a reduced commission rate when working with specific payment providers.
