The online sales dimension refers to a percentage of total sales derives from online sales and the source of that income. It does not reflect offline or non-internet-based sales. Online sales can come from a variety of sources. These include your products, your services, other affiliate programs, an online catalog or advertising. Generally, the higher a company,s online sales, the more likely they are to have multiple streams of online income, The dimension of online sales is often confused with e-commerce. E-commerce is the ability to sell from your website. But you do not necessarily need to have e-commerce enabled site In order to generate sales online.
How to build online sales?
Here are fourteen ingenious ways to train yourself for online sales and kick start your online growth. Lets start.
#1 Give away free Items
This may be free consulting, a free analysis, a free assessment or a free report. Just give things away free. Most of the time people who are online are looking for things that are free. In fact, the assumption is that everything on the internet is free, so you want to provide some of that free information on your website as well. Perhaps you offer a free report as an incentive for them to sign up for your email newsletter.
You may offer half an hour of free consulting when they purchase a specific product.Know that even if you offer the half hour of free consulting, less than 10% of your clients are actually going to use that time.So don’t be afraid to give that time away.
#2 Offer a Coupon
People love to save money. Coupons are a familiar method that does not require any explanation for most people.Your coupon may be an email sent to all your regular subscribers offering them a free report.if they type in the coupons special number.Or, it may be a special discount, a percentage or a dollar amount they will receive by typing in that coupon number.
#3 Use Classified Ads
Classified ads are a good way to draw new business in the offline world. They are just as good in the online world. Many people search through classified ads looking for new information and bargains. Use these classified ads to drive traffic to your web site. There are numerous sites on the Internet that offer free classified ads. It is a way for them to draw visitors to their site, thus increasing their traffic and the ad rates they are able to charge.
While you probably do not want to provide a site for free classified ads, you can take advantage of those that exist. To find them, search for “free classified ads” in your favorite search engine. Classified ads are a great way to test your ad copy. You can create two ads offering the same product with different headlines. Direct each ad to a different page on your site. Then measure the results. After 2-3 weeks. choose the ad with the best response rate, then test that against a new ad. Continue this process until you can achieve predictable results from an ad, regardless of where you use it.
Classified ads also let you test different markets. Try an ad in a site that caters to one of your niche markets and the same ad at another site for another niche. Customize the ads for each niche as needed. You will draw traffic from a wider audience than if you just relied on the search engines.
#4 Offer Samples
Grocery stores caught on to this tactic years ago. In fact. many people ate their way through college weekends with free samples at the store! It works. When you have a good product. the best way to have prospects agree with you is by giving them samples.
How does this work in the online world? The same way it does in the offline world. However, if you’re distributing an electronic product sample. it can be set up to be automatic. Thus, someone can request a “sample” by providing their name and email address and you can either email them the sample via an autoresponder or you can send them to the page where the file can be downloaded.
Even if you’re selling a physical product. you can provide a means for the prospect to sign up for the sample, providing their shipping information. You could offer the sample for the cost of shipping or for a reduced price. Or you could consider the shipping cost as the cost of marketing. Either way. the important thing is to get the sample in the hands of the customer. This technique can be more effective if you follow up with the prospect via email or a phone call.
#5 Write Benefits
When you are writing for the online environment. use benefits instead of features. Since you can’t inquire as to the client’s needs, you have to point out the benefits in the hope you will match your visitors’ needs to the benefits you offer.
For example. “We have high-speed liner is a feature. But “High-speed lines save you time and let you get home earlier” is a benefit. To tell the difference between a feature and a benefit, ask the question “so what?” We have high-speed lines. So what? That lets you get your work finished faster and lets you get home to your family.
We have a lifetime guarantee. So what? You don’t have to worry about anything going wrong at any time.
#6 Use Language Carefully
When you’re writing for online consumption, you don’t have the benefit of verbal feedback or facial clues to see if you are communicating effectively. Instead. you have to be more careful of the language you use. Generally, humor does not work in an online environment, unless you add a <grin> or a cg> or a 🙂 . This will ensure your reader reads the humor as you intended.
However, in more formal online writing, you do not usually use the abbreviations or emoticons (emotional icons such as the sideways happy face) that you do in informal correspondence with friends and clients who you know better. Therefore. using humor is always a gamble.
Likewise, be careful in the use of terms. For example, it is more attractive to mention the investment in your product or service. rather than the price of your service or product. Small wording changes can make a big difference. It is a good practice to have someone outside of your company read the web pages on your site. Since they bring a fresh perspective, they may find phrases and words that you overlooked.
#7 Join Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs provide a way for you to earn a commission by referring someone to another business website. For example. if you belong to the Amazon.com affiliate program, you receive a commission of 5-15% of the stile when someone goes from your site to Amazon to purchase a book. CD or another item.
Look for affiliate programs on merchandise that will be valuable to your clients. For example, if you work with home improvement businesses, you may want to join affiliate programs that offer tools, books on home improvement, plans for remodeling, and other related items. Once you join, you post links leading to the other sitc, using your affiliate ID in the Hyperlink. Then, when someone purchases an item from your link, you receive credit for the sale. The beauty of affiliate programs is that you can offer items that are of value to your customers without having to warehouse the product.ship it, or process the sale. All you are doing is making a referral to another vendor — something you probably do on a regular basis already!
#8 Host a Virtual Trade Booth
Participate in an online trade show by renting a “virtual” trade booth. Some of these booths are tied to specific online or face-to-face conferences. Others are ongoing. such as those in an online mall. Often a virtual booth may be included in your exhibit fees if you are exhibiting live at a conference.
When you participate in the show, be sum to create an attractive offer that will get the booth visitor to sign up. For example, offer a free report if they sign up at your booth. Or offer a coupon for the live show if they sign up at your virtual booth. Either way. you will get their email so that you can follow up with them on a long-term basis.
#9 Form Joint Ventures
No site is an island. By recognizing this, you can tap into a more broader audience. For example. if you already have a special report on customer service in the automotive field, you may want to enter into a joint venture with another site that specializes in contractors and do a special report on customer service in the construction field. They can market the report from their site because they have the visitors who are likely to purchase it. They then pay you the agreed-upon fee for that particular report.
Online joint ventures generally involve two experts who agree upon the need for a product and develop a plan for marketing it. It may be sold at both of their sites or just at one site. It may be sold at a new site or offered for sale via an affiliate program. Regardless of the means of distribution. it is important that the terms of payment between the venture -parties” we clear. Look for opportunities where you can take your core expertise and expand it to other areas by establishing joint ventures with other experts.
#10 Offer Gift Certificates
Gift certificates offer double advantages. You give your customers a gift by providing them with an easy way to honor and give to someone else (or keep for themselves!) In return, you get a new Customer.
You can offer gift certificates online as a “product” that customers can purchase. When used, the gift certificate amount is taken off the total order of the merchandise in your online store. However, unless you have a strong following of customers who purchase regularly and you offer a wide variety of products. you are not likely to sell many gift certificates. Instead, consider offering gift certificates as a reward to existing customers. For example, you can reward them with a $10 gift certificate when they refer five new customers to your site. Or you can offer them a certificate for a half-hour of consulting when they purchase one of your products. You can also offer a gift certificate that your customers can pass on to someone else.
When used, the gift certificate can trigger a thank you gift for your customer — making both your new customer and your existing customer happy! Offer an Affiliate Program offer if you have several products or services that you want others to promote for you.
#11 Set up an affiliate program.
An affiliate program) is formal business practice. It requires a software program that provides each affiliate member with a unique referral ID. The software tracks sales for each ID and tells you how much to pay each affiliate at the end of the pay period. In order to set up an affiliate program, you need to decide on the percentage of sales you will pay. how often you will pay commissions, and whether or not you have any other criteria for someone you will want to become one of your affiliates.
You’ll need software to track your affiliate program and commit to the timely payment of your affiliates’ earnings. Finally, to be successful on a long-term basis, you need to provide good information and incentives for your affiliates. There are thousands of affiliate programs on the Internet. Why do they want to promote your products over someone else’s? Provide that information and more! Give them banner ads, graphics. and text ads that are ready to use. Educate them on the ongoing benefits of your products. Offer contests and sales incentives. After all, these affiliates are your online sales force!
#12 Do Things as a Series
You should build a series with any group of articles or products that you produce. Don’t just create one article: create one in a series. Creating a series helps maximize your marketing efforts by reinforcing the entire series each time you market one of the pieces. By creating a series, you create pieces that can be later combined into a whole. For example, 10 individual articles can be combined into a special report. 100 articles can be combined into a book. 1.000 articles can be combined into a series of books! You get the idea!
#13 Think Layers
There are different layers of service, different layers of products, different layers of online sales and different layers of client contact. Begin to think and plan what those layers are. For example. you may answer general email information with an autoresponder within 24 hours and a customized response within 48 hours. That creates the first two layers of response. You may develop a way to flag all requests from existing customers, which you answer within 12 hours. This process creates a third layer of information service.
Do the same thing with your products. for example. You may have some products that are under S20 that are entry-level products. Then you have a group of products under $50, another under $100. then S250 and $500. Look at the different layers of products and make sure that you have a good spread within those different layers in order to provide the most attractive information to your client levels. Repeat the process with your services. Offer some services priced at $200. others at $500 or $1000. Begin to think in layers of information. services. products. and client response times.
#14 Track Results
One of the big fears about doing business on the Internet is that you don’t know what you’re paying for. However. in reality. tracking the results of your online sales activitie is easier than tracking traditional marketing activities. When sending out an email with an offer in it, provide a link to a specific page. Then, given the number of entails you sent and the number of clicks on that page, versus the number of purchases from that page, you can track: Response nit = clicks on page / entails sent Conversion rate = purchases / clicks on page
If you send the same email to two different email lists, send each list to a separate page. You can clone a page easily so that the two pages are identical, with slightly different URI.s. Count the number of page views you receive on each page of your site. That way you know which pages are the most popular and can see what attracts visitors to your site. There are numerous page counter and traffic analysis pages on the Internet. Check first with your web hosting service to see what they include with your web site hosting fees.
#15 Employ the services of a digital marketing agency
Google has a very complicated search algorithm. To stay on the top of your local search results, it,s imminent that your website is optimized to Google standards. To improve visibility and which in turn leads to online sales, you will need to focus on local directories, build a ton of back links,create killer content that engages your readers and post ritually on your social media pages.And it,s more complicated than you think! Use the services of a digital marketing agency like Viralify to help you with the ranking process.
