Without enormous marketing budgets, small start-ups and home businesses often rely on personal networks to get the ball rolling. Until they have a customer base, they sell to everyone they know and hope the word spreads. Online marketplaces can offer start-ups a good way to boost sales, but only when supported by strong word of mouth; fortunately social networks and other community websites now offer the perfect opportunity to generate interest and gain customers.
Turn your fans into marketers
Facebook realised early on that whilst it’s all very well for online businesses to sell to their fans, it’s ultimately the friends of those fans that will expand a customer base and increase sales. Instead of just selling one-to-one, why not encourage and incentivise your network of customers to reach out to their own networks to earn better prices or better product bundles? The more people who come together to shop, the better the deal gets for everyone.
Reward your biggest fan marketers
As a small start-up business, your biggest fans are your biggest allies – and most effective marketers. Instead of discounting across-the-board to earn attention, why not simply reward the customers who do the most to help you get noticed - be that the most shares on social networks, the most new customers referred your way or the best written product reviews on your website?
Make it exciting
Instead of making all your products permanently available, day-in day-out, why not borrow a trick from the retail giants' playbook and turn your product sales into exciting, live events? Offer something irresistible or unique for a short period of time or to a small number of people, stimulating huge amounts of buzz (especially within social media) without exposing your ongoing margins.
Listen to what people want – and act accordingly
Why not reach out to your audience of existing and potential customers and ask them what products they’d like to buy from you – and even what they’d be prepared to pay? One of the great advantages of being a nimble small business is that you can ask your customers questions, listen to their needs and react incredibly quickly. Giving people what they want means that they’ve already got “skin in the game” before you even put the product on sale. Conversion rates are, accordingly, out of this world.
By Gideon Lask, Founder and CEO of Buyapowa.
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