Small is beautiful. eCommerce has broken down the traditional business boundaries of needing a prominent shop on a town’s high street to be successful. Today, you don’t even need to hire a web developer to build and maintain a website that houses your online business. A fast track to selling online without investing much cost is by opening a “shop lot” in an online marketplace or eCommerce platform such as Lazada. These platforms allow you to reach a wider, ready market of buyers who are already hunting for products like yours.
However, once you set up your online store, it can be challenging to turn profits with a minimal initial investment. It may take some time before the big bucks roll in so here are 5 Tips to Build an Efficient eCommerce Business on a Budget:
1. Design Innovative Sales Tactics
Sales is the lifeblood of every business. The last thing you want is nobody purchasing your thoughtfully crafted products. Excess storage means excess cost. Trends for non-perishable products such as fashion and electronics change without notice. While perishables can be tricky to store with some requiring specific temperatures.
The key to boost sales lies in the word itself: Sales deals such as Flash Sales or a limited time only 70% off! All these encourage quicker checkouts or more items added to cart with a higher purchase value.
Some other deals that you can offer include:
- Bundle Deals/ Flexi Combo where you create “buy more save more” promotions that are fantastic in boosting the volume of your store orders. This can be a tiered discount e.g. “Buy 2 get 15% discount, Buy 3 get 30% discount,” free skincare samples with a minimum purchase, or even an irresistible stackable discount e.g. 15% off and a free gift with 3 items purchased.
- Celebration Sales e.g. Happy Women’s Day, Single’s Day on 11.11, and Mother’s Day Special complete with an emotion-evoking message such as “Make mom feel like a Queen.”
2. Utilize social media for marketing and product research
Feedback is king, especially on social media where the masses can determine your brand’s appeal. It is a powerful tool to reach new customers and increase sales. But the most important benefit is gaining insights from customer feedback Here are some tips:
- Be careful and detailed when you respond to comments on your Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok pages.
- Handle negative feedback in a diplomatic manner. Send an apology and free gift or replacement. Most happy customers will leave a good review of how a seller made amends.
- Implement customer suggestions or requests in your next production batch! For instance, blogilates customizes its hoodies, gym bags, and even skort colors based on followers’ feedback. This has proven to be a great hit with a huge success of building a strong community who loves the brand.
3. Automate Targeted Marketing
Marketing is critical to keep your business efficient in the long run. Avoid marketing funds running down the drain by wrong targeting. The Internet is really about highly specialized information, highly specialized targeting – Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO.
Target your brand’s marketing posters, pictures, and videos by taking these simples steps:
- Encourage your loyal customers to become Affiliates
One of the oldest, fool-proof marketing strategies to attract new customers is by word-of-mouth! We are in an age where social media is the place to access the market, with Southern Asia tabulating a staggering 847 million social media users in 2022 itself.
Generating buzz among people who do not know you comes down to relying on specific influencers or fairly influential contacts to spread the word. If you are a Lazada seller, you get to encourage your loyal customers or friends to join LazAffiliates where they can promote a brand that they believe in while earning up to 80% commission!
- Lazada Sponsored Discovery
If you are a Lazada seller, you can select your most popular products and create a Sponsored Discovery campaign. The campaign automates keywords optimized based on real-time trends that you can use in your product description. Next, sponsored discovery then drives traffic and sales to your shop by targeting high intent shoppers who are looking for products like yours.
4. Manage customer enquiries in an efficient manner
Customer satisfaction is the key to a brand that inspires confidence. Business, after all, is profitable socializing. The true joy of selling products is realized when you assist a customer or add value to his or her life.
It is best to quickly address customer enquiries as you also gain a better idea of how people wish to use your products. This contributes to insights in fine-tuning your product descriptions and innovating your product features.
Efficient customer enquiry management allows you to:
- Solve problems quickly and avoid them from happening to your next customer. This can include technical checkout or payment hurdles that curb successful sales.
- Avoid the risk of a bad review. Shoppers who encounter a bad experience, let’s say a faulty product – more often than not attempt to reach out to a seller in chat first and leave a bad review as a last resort.
5. Outsource Administrative Tasks
Last but not least, invest your time, energy, and expertise in actions that directly contribute to product improvement and sales. Delegation and teamwork is key to success. All of us are indeed better than one of us.
Pick out administrative tasks that are not directly productive for business growth and delegate these. Use the formula of X hours of task A = X $$. Try not to personally undertake repetitive tasks requiring long hours, which do not produce much return in time investment.
Hire college students on summer breaks or aspiring fresh graduates who are interested in eCommerce for simple tasks such as packing, stock counting, basic customer service on social media channels, and uploading product pictures.
Intrigued to build a smooth-running online business? Hesitate no more and take the first step towards entrepreneurial success with us today.
