Small but successful e-commerce business - how to take it to the next level? | Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace

9 years ago

Howdy,

One possibility to consider for the distribution of product with minimal upfront costs would be to consider bringing on a few retailers. I'm thinking more brick and mortar type businesses who might be interested in your product line.

Ideally you would like to be able to set your prices to where you are not cutting yourself out of profits you see now. So you would most be looking for upscale type boutiques as an example shop particularly in larger cities too who can absorb higher 'wholesale' costs. Though you are still retailing to them. Yes, you might have to cut your cost some, but it only costs time to find out if you merely pick up the phone and start a conversation with shop owners.

What you don't want would be shop owners who would turn around a retail via the same channels you are using yourself. Keep the relationship non compete, with enough shops selling your products you may even be one day able to stop retailing yourself entirely.

You would be spending some time finding shop owners around the country. Call 'em up and just ask if they would be interested in more info, not obligation. If they say yes, get their mailing info and then send them a catalog, retailer agreement and whatever other info you deem necessary to help them decide. Follow up with another phone one you know their package arrived, answer questions and sign them up.

It works. It just takes work.

Doug

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JohnnyRingo

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Doug

Howdy,

One possibility to consider for the distribution of product with minimal upfront costs would be to consider bringing on a few retailers. I'm thinking more brick and mortar type businesses who might be interested in your product line.

Ideally you would like to be able to set your prices to where you are not cutting yourself out of profits you see now. So you would most be looking for upscale type boutiques as an example shop particularly in larger cities too who can absorb higher 'wholesale' costs. Though you are still retailing to them. Yes, you might have to cut your cost some, but it only costs time to find out if you merely pick up the phone and start a conversation with shop owners.

What you don't want would be shop owners who would turn around a retail via the same channels you are using yourself. Keep the relationship non compete, with enough shops selling your products you may even be one day able to stop retailing yourself entirely.

You would be spending some time finding shop owners around the country. Call 'em up and just ask if they would be interested in more info, not obligation. If they say yes, get their mailing info and then send them a catalog, retailer agreement and whatever other info you deem necessary to help them decide. Follow up with another phone one you know their package arrived, answer questions and sign them up.

It works. It just takes work.

Doug

Doug, thanks for your input. This is a route we are beginning to head down, having recently got our first stockist. I agree that, provided we can maintain a decent margin and stay on top of production, this is a great way to expand.

However, we also really want to push website sales, as they have, by far, the best margin for us. Hence the desire to increase traffic, somehow...

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Doug 9 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnnyRingo

However, we also really want to push website sales, as they have, by far, the best margin for us. Hence the desire to increase traffic, somehow...

Since you ship a physical product, and you may already do this, consider including with the packing receipt a catalog/brochure with various offers/discounts, and point back to your website. Encourage the buyer to share the catalog with others - this is one way to increase traffic from proven buyers. You could include a Rewards program of sorts, meaning X number of referrals from the buyer provides Y discount for the buyer.

Another idea, and maybe you do this too, have your website printed on the outside of your packaging, and include a call to action. It's a great way to bring awareness to your websites existence, even if you just hand write that call to action.

And, maybe set up a 'secret' page on your site design with offers/promotions just for previous buyers. Making those prior customers aware of this page is as simple as a nice direct mail piece, or email. Though I personally like the direct mail nature as it goes hand in hand with the personal touch your business offers.

It's true these are not the Internet marketing way of doing marketing, I know - yet they work to get eyeballs on your website, and that's the goal. If you view your website as an everlasting catalog, one with minimal print costs as well, you can stay traditional in marketing with the flare of modern.

One more concept, here in my hometown there is a mom and pop coffee shop with great atmosphere. They allow local artists to sell their 'stuff' all around the shop. It's hanging on walls, a few displays here and there, and even brochures taped to the wall right inside the front entry. Does your location have similar type stores/shops? Your custom made items would fit well in this coffee shop I speak of, maybe there is something similar near you.

Doug
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JakeStatler

9 years ago

One thing you may want to seriously consider is some type of retargeting or referral program. If you don't have one set up already, you should have an email auto-responder set up where you can retarget old visitors and even clients when you come out with new products.

People who have already bought from you and enjoy your products are usually your highest converting customers.

Also, you could set up some type of referral program where you give discounts on bags to those who refer friends to your site to make purchases. This second method may require some more time and possibly some type of third party platform to set up, so you may want to start with an email auto-responder..

It sounds like you're doing well! keep it up

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JohnnyRingo

9 years ago

Originally Posted by JakeStatler

...you should have an email auto-responder set up where you can retarget old visitors and even clients when you come out with new products.

People who have already bought from you and enjoy your products are usually your highest converting customers.

Thanks!

When you say an email auto-responder, is that a series of emails that are automatically sent to old visitors/customers after a certain period of inactivity?

Thanks

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OnlineStoreHelp

9 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnnyRingo

For the last 2 years I have run a small but successful online product business. We design and sell leather satchels, weekend bags, gym bags, travel wallets and device cases (ipad, kindle etc). We started on eBay but now also sell on Amazon and directly through own own website.

My wife and I run the business as a side gig to our full time jobs and really enjoy it. As the product range has grown sales have continued to increase. Sales are generated through being listed on eBay and Amazon, plus through the fairly small amount of traffic our website generates. At an estimate, website sales are maybe 25-30% of our turnover.

Our website was built through the e-commerce platform SupaDupa Start your own Online Store - SupaDupa. I really like the clean design, but it has very little written content on the home page (none of the templates really allow for more written content). I think this might be holding us back from ranking better on Google. We rank between 50th to nowhere for our keywords.

I would love some input from you guys as to what you would do to take the business to the next level.

In summary we have:

good products we know people like
great professional product photography
decent profit margins
current marketing spend = $0
limited social media engagement (some FB and Twitter followers but irregular updates from us)
no idea about marketing!!

Our ideas are:

Facebook ads
Google AdWords
Sending our products to bloggers
Getting more product reviews from key websites
Move to a new e-commerce platform (probably Shopify) that will allow a blog on the home page so we can hopefully rank better on Google

Where would you focus your attentions? Given we have full time jobs, we don't have masses of time for writing blog posts and articles, but we are passionate about our little business, so we are happy to do it if it will be an efficient use of our time.

Sorry for the long post. I've been a long time lurker on these amazing forums and just wanted to reach out to some of the incredibly experienced marketers on here and get some much needed advice.

All thoughts/feedback welcome.

Cheers

JR

The only issue I see with your web platform right now is the transaction fee (which I am seeing more and more) and they fact they are not mobile optimized. Check your analytics and you can see how many are coming in via mobile. Their themes "show" on mobile but you can't read anything.

As for marketing, I see you missing one huge one. Email Marketing. There is a lot you can do with email marketing to get those return customers and prospects interested. Free shipping code when they sign up is the easiest way. Start with Mailchimp as it is free to start and pretty much integrates with every cart out there that is worth its salt. I actually did a post on this for Shopify if you want to read.

BigCommerce also has a blog section as well so its not just shopify. What I like about them is you can do a blog on channel, or even feed it via rss if you wanted to do it in blogspot or wordpress.

You also didn't mention video. This serves two purposes. Everygreen content that can direct traffic from youtube and other social video channels, but also, video helps your product descriptions convert. It is way better than even 100 pictures as you can actually show how everything is being used. Show the build quality, etc. And with the proper lighting and a decent microphone, you can do this with your smartphone to start.

So the two things I would start with are email marketing and video. Once you have those down, then you can get into more complicated or time consuming things such as blogging, affiliate programs and the like. But get those low hanging fruit first.

On another note, mind if I PM you with a product that might be great for your store?

Thanks

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Seofor5

9 years ago

Well, the question you need to answer for yourself is whether you would like to do this full time eventually or not.

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jaypadm

9 years ago

You can try referral marketing as well.

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jbsmith

9 years ago

Congrats Johnny on building the business to the point you have now.

I would do a couple of things in parallel -

1. As you say - consider moving to a more substantial e-commerce platform such as Shopify, make sure it allows for affiliate program

2. If you are not yet on Pintrest, then you definitely want to begin building up Pintrest Boards around your designer products - pintrest is one of the best platforms today for driving traffic through visuals which seems to serve your type of business very well

3. You can also build up your Facebook presence, again using a good mix of images and video which work on FB better today when mixed with text posts. You can also try ads including dark post ads

4. Finally - yes build up some videos on Youtube around your different products as Youtube can be huge source of traffic and leads as well

Jeff

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tudexo 9 years ago

I second Jeff. I'd like to add that there are some services out there that help you get accepted into high traffic Pinterest boards. Of course you can and should create your own boards, but it takes time for other members to find you and join your boards. Look for invitation services into existing high traffic boards. You'll find some on this forum too. This one thing can drastically improve your bottomline right away.
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iAmNameLess

9 years ago

Okay can you share your sales distribution?

What % is done through Ebay, % through Amazon and % through the website?

The theme is kind of crap for an ecommerce site in my opinion. I saw someone suggest shopify and yeah if you have to go with a service like that due to lack of technical knowledge then do it. My recommendation would be Magento but Shopify is okay enough.

I'd probably stay away from adwords until you can learn more about it or else you will lose your ass, but you could do some retargeting. SEO, yeah you should try learning and doing a bit here and there but the truth is it is hard to justify the cost per acquisition for and ecommerce site with the amount of time/money invested into SEO.

Facebooks ads could be a good place to start for you.... General ads along with retargeting would probably be profitable for you.

Do you have any customer retention program with coupon codes set up? If not, consider that.

Are you email marketing to existing customers?