Having an online presence is a great way to take your business to new heights in today’s world. The way businesses operate has changed significantly in the last decade. Advanced technology in the form of 4G and 5G, smart mobile devices, and highly customized software have contributed to this development. While it has brought many advantages in terms of wider customer reach and in-depth data analysis, it has also made the market more competitive. You must stay updated on all online platforms to fully tap into the opportunities and maintain high service delivery. This article will discuss the top ten ways emerging entrepreneurs can benefit from online selling platforms.
Build an online store/website:
The first and foremost thing you should consider doing while stepping into the digital world as an entrepreneur is to build your online business store. Your website is your online store where your customers can visit you and get to know your brand. If you do not provide a destination for your potential customers to land, they will never get to know you. So invest in building your website by choosing the domain name that clearly defines your business and the web host.
Make use of E-commerce platforms:
Renowned E-commerce platforms like Amazon have proved to be quite helpful in promoting businesses around the globe. Amazon offers expertise like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and online advertisements to help companies grow their businesses. However, managing products, strategizing markets and competitors, and handling logistics require professional assistance and collaboration. Online firms like apical ecom provide such integration and automation for Amazon stores. These online platforms provide logistic support to your business and monetization opportunities to generate passive income.
Establish a social media presence:
There are currently 4.74 billion social media users worldwide on different social media platforms, and this number is still growing. This means that your potential customers are already out there; you just need to direct them toward your brand. Establishing a strong social media presence is critical to the success of any business. It’s where you personify your brand to feel real to your potential customers.
Work on lead generation:
Lead generation is an important aspect of digital marketing. Once you decide to tap into the potential of online platforms to sell and grow your brand, you should also pay attention to lead generation. Lead generation is about tracking and sorting through all potential customers who have shown interest in your brand. It can either be by signing up or subscribing to your newsletter. Through this lead, you start interacting with the likely-to-be-converted customers by either sending emails or through remarketing. Therefore, you should pay close attention to maintaining and utilizing those leads, as they are quite useful in the process of online selling.
Use data analytics:
A wide range of data analytics is available to understand customers’ behavior, purchase patterns, and interests. These analytical tools, like Google Analytics, can also help you monitor the performance of your marketing strategies and formulate data-driven strategies. For example, you launch a new online feature on your website and want to get an insight into its prospective performance. For that, you can carry out A/B testing that allows you to assess the probability of its success by running both the older and new versions simultaneously in the prototype. So data analytics helps you save time, money, and effort.
Offer personalization and customization:
You should focus on establishing a point of differentiation in the highly-crowded online market space. Personalization means segmenting your potential customers as per their geographical location, demographics, language, and preferences and then curating your online content and interactions accordingly. Around 74% of online users feel frustrated due to a lack of personalization which usually results in a higher bounce rate.
On the other hand, customization provides flexibility within your product and service offerings as per the need and demands of your customer. For example, a customer may want to choose a different color from your available color palette. You may want to offer your customer this flexibility. However, customization isn’t always possible, depending on the nature of your product. Yet you can make your customer’s experience more special and exciting by incorporating personalization and segmenting customers on their preferences. This will help you offer special offers for each customer segment.
Focus on customer service:
Customer service is very important to ensure customer satisfaction and retention. Online platforms and tools have made it easy for businesses to measure and improve customer satisfaction precisely. For example, you may consider investing in a social media management tool to help you track social listening and engagement i.e. how people are talking about your brand and what their sentiments are towards it. If you identify that a particular product feature isn’t performing well, you may devise a marketing or operational strategy to address customers’ concerns properly. You may change product features or offer special discount offers to agitated customers to counter the negative impression about your brand.
Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Developing an official website isn’t sufficient to expand your business. Unless you are going to invest in SEO, you’re less likely to be noticed by a large audience. A customer who wants to buy shoes searches for them on a search engine, which displays all the relevant results in its database. Now, if you sell shoes, your website may land on later pages among the search results, so the chances that a customer will visit your page are quite low. To improve your ranking in search results so you appear in the top displayed results, you should work on search engine optimization. SEO is a continuous process of analyzing customer search patterns and keywords and crafting your website content accordingly to improve your ranking in search results.
Online advertisements:
Nowadays, companies are spending more on online advertisements than conventional media advertisements like print media or billboards. Ads on social media alone are expected to reach $173 billion in 2022; this figure was $153 billion in 2021, which shows a 13% growth in online social media advertisement. This rising figure shows the expected trend toward online advertisement. Online advertisements, either on social media platforms or on Search Engines like Google search, will help your target audience to know about your brand.
Remarket organic content:
Organic content is the positive content or feedback related to your business available online that is not paid; rather, it is generated through positive personal brand experience. The reliability of organic content is more among the customers as compared to the paid content by the company itself. It helps foster trust and builds a longer relationship with customers. Therefore, utilize the available organic content and remarket it to take the maximum benefit out of it.
Conclusion:
Online selling platforms are diverse and offer different advantages to help you achieve your business goals. The E-commerce sites and social media not only expand the outreach of your business but also provide you with an opportunity to generate passive income through investment and collaboration.
