There are just a few businesses that nowadays can afford not to have an online presence to promote or sell their products.
There are just a few businesses that nowadays can afford not to have an online presence to promote or sell their products.
Example of which is the huge impact that Primark suffered during the beginning of Covid 19 pandemic, when they passed from having hundreds of millions of Euros revenue per month, to none, literally 0€. Why? Because they didn’t have eCommerce in parallel to their physical stores.
You can promote your products via multiple channels: social networks such as Facebook or Instagram, marketplaces like Amazon or Ebay, or from your own website. Same as in the offline world, in the online one you should distribute risks among different places, so if the plan A fails, you can jump into the next letter.
Following this we will tell you the main reasons why to promote and sell your products or services online:
REASONS FOR YOUR COMPANY
REASONS FOR YOUR COMPANY
1.- Greater Geographic Reach
1.- Greater Geographic Reach
Your physical business will normally receive visits from clients from your neighborhood or nearby areas, sometimes from nearby cities, but to be honest, beyond these areas it is difficult for them to know you.
With the digital world, you can make your business known to potential customers who typically would not have known you. Moreover, it is not only that they know your name, but also that, thanks to the online channel, they will be able to buy your products beyond your borders.
By reaching a larger geographic area, we will be able to gain greater visibility of our business, and therefore ultimately sell more.
2.- Deeper Customer's knowledge
2.- Deeper Customer's knowledge
In the physical world when a customer walks through the door we don't know much about him... Maybe we don't remember whether or not he has been to our store before, whether he bought or not, if he had bought, what he bought, and so on.
In the online world we can know in great detail information about our visitors: where they come from, what device they are using to visit our website, what products they have bought, which ones they have left in the cart without buying... The possibilities of knowing more about our customers are almost endless.
3.- Customer Loyalty
3.- Customer Loyalty
Thanks to the use of different tools, we can have a better knowledge of who our customers are: what they liked, what they bought, when they bought it, etc.
We can take advantage of all this information to retain them through exclusive and relevant content for them, thank you gifts, personalized discounts or other ideas. The virtual world allows us to have a 1 to 1 relationship with millions of people. Definitely that’s an unfeasible option in the physical world.
4.- Customized Offers
4.- Customized Offers
By knowing both our visitors and customers, we can personalize the offers we make to them to have a greater probability of sale, than if we go blind.
We can make exclusive offers for clients in the London area (in case we are interested for any business reason), to clients who come from a YouTube video, or taking into account other parameters. We can customize the offers based on the deep knowledge of each client, and best of all, we can do it on a large scale.
5.- Time saving
5.- Time saving
Setting up a physical business takes a significant amount of time, there are many aspects to take into account... You have to find a place, fix it, paint it, bring all the material, and a long list of other tasks.
The online world is much faster, we can have a business running digitally in a time that would be practically impossible in the offline one, since a lot of work is not necessary, and other work that is necessary, happens in the "backstage".
6.- Money saving
6.- Money saving
Starting a virtual business is much cheaper than doing it with a physical one. If, for example, you want to rent a place to store your merchandise, with an online business you can do it in less commercial places, which are cheaper, a physical business needs you to be close to the buyer: the rent of these premises is much more expensive.
The start-up is more expensive, no physical business can be started for less than several tens of thousands of euros. However, it is feasible to start an online business with a 5x lower budget.
In the digital business, it is easier to measure everything, and as a consequence to know if our strategies and investments are being productive, which in the end also turns into savings, since physically this aspect (which is so critical) is a lot more complicated to carry out.
7.- Inventory Management
7.- Inventory Management
If we have trusted distributors, we can have part of our inventory in their warehouses, in such a way that when a sale occurs on our website, we order the distributor to ship the product directly to our customer (without having to go through our facilities).
This allows us to have a much larger logistics platform than if we could only store inventory in our own facilities, which is the normal way in the physical world.
8.- Sales 24 hours a day
8.- Sales 24 hours a day
Is there a better feeling than having sold while you were sleeping? Obviously this is a possibility that only the digital world offers.
In the physical world you are not going to have your store open 24 hours. Firstly because at night there will be very few people who take off their pijamas to go shopping, and the second because it would double or triple your personnel costs.
This advantage of being able to sell at any time is undoubtedly a reason of great importance.
9.- Compatible with your offline business
9.- Compatible with your offline business
The best thing about being in "both worlds" is that you don't have to choose between one or the other. You can be present in the online channel (and it is highly recommended that you do), while maintaining your traditional business.
Obviously, you have to try to have a presence in those channels where you add value to your customers, and avoid "being to be" in a social network.
In the physical world we would not go to a conference if we are not interested in the content or the people who attend. The same thing happens in the digital world, we have to choose where we can contribute and extract value.
10.- Scalability
10.- Scalability
Imagine for a moment that you want to multiply your sales by 10 in your traditional business, you would need to hire many people to attract so many customers to your store, and then to be able to make the sale itself, you will probably need to expand the store - which is not simple, as well as hiring extra commercials to close sales.
In the online world it is much easier to stretch our resources and grow our business. This does not mean that you will be able to serve millions of customers with 2 people, Amazon, king of ecommerce, has hundreds of thousands of workers for good reasons. But we are going to be much more efficient when it comes to scaling the business.
11.- New Business Models
11.- New Business Models
Can you imagine being able to sell your product before having it available? Or can you imagine that your clients contract a monthly subscription of a package of your products?
These are just some of the possibilities that the virtual world offers us, and that combining it with other resources can help us complement our unique differential proposal for customers.
12.- Partnerships
12.- Partnerships
Related to the previous point, we can take advantage of our online channels to experiment with new market niches.Imagine that you have a women's fashion store, how do I know if apart from buying dresses, my clients would be interested in buying bedding? In the physical world, you would have to invest money to buy that bedding before you can put it up for sale.
In the online world, you can make an alliance as an affiliate of a third party, or do dropshipping type reselling, and with this quickly see if your audience would be interested in buying that product from you.
13.- Testing ground
13.- Testing ground
In the traditional (physical) way of doing business, to do an experiment, you usually have to make a financial investment before conducting any tests.
In the digital world, thanks to alliances and new technologies, we can carry out market tests in an agile and economical way, even without making economic investments beyond the time invested.
For example, if I want to know if my clients would be willing to buy a new product niche different from the one we already offer, it would be enough to do an online survey and we will obtain preliminary conclusions in less than 24 hours, since that survey could reach hundreds of people quickly.
REASONS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS
REASONS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS
14.- Momentum
14.- Momentum
People are used to buying online. Even our parents or grandparents now shop online through their children or grandchildren. Formerly this was unthinkable, our elders did not trust to put their debit card on a website - it did not seem safe to them.
After almost two decades since the internet is generalized in the world, and almost a decade since the explosion of ecommerce and smartphones, we all feel calm about carrying out purchases online, culturally it is already normal.
15.- Availability
15.- Availability
If work absorbs your customers a lot of time, it is normal that they prefer not to have to conform to the opening hours of your business to carry out their purchases, since their time is limited.
Buying online eliminates many barriers, since our clients will be able to buy from us from anywhere and at any time.
16.- Comfort
16.- Comfort
Apart from the convenience of shopping when you are available, and not the other way around... Buying online has another great advantage, shopping without the sales agent pressure, which sometimes is stressful for us as customers.
It is not the same to enter a business and feel overwhelmed by the mere fact of looking at the products (and that you feel the seller's breath on your neck), that you have all the time you need to carry out your purchase without stress, it is certainly much more comfortable.
17.- Informed purchased decision
17.- Informed purchased decision
In line with the previous point, by buying without stress, we can invest more time in studying the values of each product and each business.
We can read comparisons on blogs, watch videos on YouTube, talk with friends about what they think of our future purchase, and so on. Ultimately, your customers (generally speaking) will have a much better idea of what they need and why they buy your product.
18.- Security
18.- Security
When buying online, our customers will reduce physical contact with us, in such a way that both we and they will have less exposure to third parties, which is a great way to reduce the chances of contagion of diseases (such as Covid 19).
CONCLUSIONS
CONCLUSIONS
As you have seen, these are 18 compelling reasons to have an online presence for your business. If you have any comments or questions about the above, we invite you to contact us.
Finally, if you are ready to make the leap to having your own website / online store, and you need help to get started, get in touch with ECShops. Our team of experts will advise you based on your business and its needs.