Is it time to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the internet and promote your business products?
Are you still hesitating and wondering if it will finally help you so that you can increase your sales?
What is certain is that an organized strategy is needed as the internet has been booming lately and the pandemic has contributed to this to a large extent.
Below there are 6 steps that, if you pay attention to, will help you achieve the expected results.
1st Step – Consumer Behavior
First of all, we suggest you find the target group you are addressing. Then think about what his buying habits and needs are and in general all his behavior over the course of a year.
Consumer behaviors differ according to gender, age, geographical location and other factors that are good to observe and exploit accordingly.
A good idea is, if you have a physical store, to collect through a questionnaire the preferences of some of your customers and take advantage of them for your online store. A question that your questionnaire will include can be:
“Which products would you buy or not buy through our new eShop?”
In this way you will have an important statistical data about the products you will have available in your e-shop. Some products may be inherently difficult to sell and you may not need to include them.
Summing up on consumer behavior, here is a brief summary of what to look out for:
Α. The behavior of the consumer in your physical store if you have one or from another promotional source that you may have developed before even building your e-Shop such as through Social Media.
Β. Which products have the highest sales and if your customers prefer branded products
C. Completing questionnaires at regular intervals. It’s good to have a stat in every season. In addition, it is good to group the customer questionnaires based on age, gender, profession, region and maybe even marital status (e.g. new parents, single, etc.)
2nd Step – Competitive Analysis
It is certain that you have as stimulus and motivation the success of some of your competitors by observing the number of sales they send through couriers. You also learn about their performance from your common suppliers.
However, with these data alone, you cannot have a correct assessment. You certainly cannot evaluate the effectiveness of your competitors from this data.
It is good to observe more in-depth features to see if you can follow these rhythms and trends of the market.
More specifically:
Α. How big are your competitors in terms of financials? For example, is Plaisio and Kotsovolos your competitor? Maybe some smaller businesses?
Β. What are the profit margins, price/earnings spread and cost trends? Are they satisfied with their efficiency and market position? We then estimate that their strategy will not change easily.
C. What promotional actions do they carry out and with what advertising budget? You can see the spent budget approximately.
D. What is their position in the market and how many years have they been online.
Ε. What are your competitors’ strengths? For example, same day delivery, good prices, creating promotional incentives, free shipping, etc.
3rd Step – Strategy Plan
The Strategy plan is the step in which we set the goals.
You have compared all the detectable elements of the 2 steps above and with a realistic approach you plan the goals that will meet your business needs.
This can be done from your perspective with or without the help of a skilled Digital Marketer and will be the key to success or failure. Every business activity anyway includes the element of risk.
You know it and it shouldn’t stand in the way of your climbing the internet.
You are more ready than ever as at this point you know the following:
The point that should be given special importance is the duration of the project. It is good to set long-term goals, at least one year, so that you can see various factors that can positively or negatively affect performance.
In this way you also prepare for various factors that affect the market such as covid, seasonal etc.
In addition, you should ask yourself why you should display the products of your business on the Internet and with what results you will be satisfied.
If you know what the realistic goals would be for your startup, you can set them. Otherwise, try not to let the whole activity take you out of budget, to the point where you can’t cope for the first 1-2 years.
4th Step – E-shop Building
In this task you start with the creation of the online store. You are now moving from important theory to practice.
First of all, it is important to find the company you will work with. Once you have made a few appointments with Digital Marketing Agencies, choose the team that you think will contribute the most to your goals and meet your business needs.
The team you choose will suggest the tools and methods to fully cover your needs both in construction & maintenance, but also in the promotion of your products.
The following actions are the ones you primarily need regarding your e-shop:
Marketing techniques that can be applied are many. Many are the possibilities offered by today’s online stores. The question is what do you need as a business to achieve a good ratio of income and expenses.
5th Step – E-shop Support
We continue with the 5th and last step. All the above steps are important to get started, but to develop your business activity you need this step.
So what you need are the following:
We hope the above steps helped. We look forward to your feedback and if you need any help we will be happy to contact you.
Are you still hesitating and wondering if it will finally help you so that you can increase your sales?
What is certain is that an organized strategy is needed as the internet has been booming lately and the pandemic has contributed to this to a large extent.
Below there are 6 steps that, if you pay attention to, will help you achieve the expected results.
1st Step – Consumer Behavior
First of all, we suggest you find the target group you are addressing. Then think about what his buying habits and needs are and in general all his behavior over the course of a year.
Consumer behaviors differ according to gender, age, geographical location and other factors that are good to observe and exploit accordingly.
A good idea is, if you have a physical store, to collect through a questionnaire the preferences of some of your customers and take advantage of them for your online store. A question that your questionnaire will include can be:
“Which products would you buy or not buy through our new eShop?”
In this way you will have an important statistical data about the products you will have available in your e-shop. Some products may be inherently difficult to sell and you may not need to include them.
Summing up on consumer behavior, here is a brief summary of what to look out for:
Α. The behavior of the consumer in your physical store if you have one or from another promotional source that you may have developed before even building your e-Shop such as through Social Media.
Β. Which products have the highest sales and if your customers prefer branded products
C. Completing questionnaires at regular intervals. It’s good to have a stat in every season. In addition, it is good to group the customer questionnaires based on age, gender, profession, region and maybe even marital status (e.g. new parents, single, etc.)
2nd Step – Competitive Analysis
It is certain that you have as stimulus and motivation the success of some of your competitors by observing the number of sales they send through couriers. You also learn about their performance from your common suppliers.
However, with these data alone, you cannot have a correct assessment. You certainly cannot evaluate the effectiveness of your competitors from this data.
It is good to observe more in-depth features to see if you can follow these rhythms and trends of the market.
More specifically:
Α. How big are your competitors in terms of financials? For example, is Plaisio and Kotsovolos your competitor? Maybe some smaller businesses?
Β. What are the profit margins, price/earnings spread and cost trends? Are they satisfied with their efficiency and market position? We then estimate that their strategy will not change easily.
C. What promotional actions do they carry out and with what advertising budget? You can see the spent budget approximately.
D. What is their position in the market and how many years have they been online.
Ε. What are your competitors’ strengths? For example, same day delivery, good prices, creating promotional incentives, free shipping, etc.
3rd Step – Strategy Plan
The Strategy plan is the step in which we set the goals.
You have compared all the detectable elements of the 2 steps above and with a realistic approach you plan the goals that will meet your business needs.
This can be done from your perspective with or without the help of a skilled Digital Marketer and will be the key to success or failure. Every business activity anyway includes the element of risk.
You know it and it shouldn’t stand in the way of your climbing the internet.
You are more ready than ever as at this point you know the following:
- 1. Market trends
- 2. Consumer needs
- 3. Conduct of competitors
- Business expectations
The point that should be given special importance is the duration of the project. It is good to set long-term goals, at least one year, so that you can see various factors that can positively or negatively affect performance.
In this way you also prepare for various factors that affect the market such as covid, seasonal etc.
In addition, you should ask yourself why you should display the products of your business on the Internet and with what results you will be satisfied.
If you know what the realistic goals would be for your startup, you can set them. Otherwise, try not to let the whole activity take you out of budget, to the point where you can’t cope for the first 1-2 years.
4th Step – E-shop Building
In this task you start with the creation of the online store. You are now moving from important theory to practice.
First of all, it is important to find the company you will work with. Once you have made a few appointments with Digital Marketing Agencies, choose the team that you think will contribute the most to your goals and meet your business needs.
The team you choose will suggest the tools and methods to fully cover your needs both in construction & maintenance, but also in the promotion of your products.
The following actions are the ones you primarily need regarding your e-shop:
- 1. Registration of a suitable domain name
- 2. Reliable e-shop hosting
- 3. Creating a logo, if you don’t have one or renewing the existing one
- 4. Charming and unique design of the e-shop
- 5. Choice of CMS (e-shop management system)
- 6. E-shop Development
- 7. Interface with a bank, flexible payment methods (cash on delivery, bank deposit, cash on delivery, PayPal, etc.)
- 8. Photography of products
- 9. Full product description
- 10. Product management & processing, import, stocks, etc
- 11. Commercial management through ERP
- 12. Technical support e-shop
- 13.Google Ads Campaigns
- 14.Social Media Marketing
- 15. SEO
- 16. Email Marketing
- 17. Viber Marketing
- 18. Market Places such as Skroutz, Bestprice, etc.
- 19. Update stocks and products through a bridge with your suppliers.
Marketing techniques that can be applied are many. Many are the possibilities offered by today’s online stores. The question is what do you need as a business to achieve a good ratio of income and expenses.
5th Step – E-shop Support
We continue with the 5th and last step. All the above steps are important to get started, but to develop your business activity you need this step.
So what you need are the following:
- 1. Sufficient staff to manage online sales, customers and products.
- 2. The Digital Marketing Agency that will undertake the technical and advertising support of the e-shop.
- 3. Advertising budget
- 4. Skilled person to photograph the products if needed
- 5. Time to find new partnerships in sourcing products or negotiating existing ones
- 6. A mechanism for computerizing customers, sales and suppliers to calculate income and expenses
We hope the above steps helped. We look forward to your feedback and if you need any help we will be happy to contact you.
