More and more companies are following the path of online sales, as there are more and more consumers shopping online. But how to sell online? Digital consumer behaviour is constantly changing. Let’s understand several factors to boost your online sales.
The sales process
To succeed with online sales, it is essential to understand how the sales process works. It consists of three steps that align the customer’s buying process.
- Pre sale
- Sale
- After sales
1 – Pre sale
This is the time to plan the sale. For this, it is necessary to question certain points:
- Who is the target audience?
- What are the customer’s problems?
- How can the product or service address these issues?
- How to make the customer value your solution?
- What are the best channels to use to get the message across?
- How much?
- Who are the competitors?
These and other points are essential to get the first stage of the process right. Knowing the customer is one of the most important, because if you reach the right customer, it eases the next step. To get to know the customer, you have to go beyond demographics. It is necessary to know the behaviour, goals and needs, which language is used, etc.
2 – Sale
Being the ideal customer defined, you will define the strategies to advertise your product or service. You can opt for paid advertising, such as on social networks, Google Adwords, email marketing, etc. Otherwise, you can get customers to find your business by searching for solutions in search engines or social networks, through SEO and marketing and content (blogs, eBooks, webinars, etc.).
At this stage, you must also analyze the payment methods and how the product or service will reach your customer.
3 – After sales
After you sell the product or service, you may never consider the process completed. On the contrary! The after-sales stage is as important as the others, as it helps customer loyalty. Thus, he will conduct other purchases and recommend your company to acquaintances.
Therefore, it is essential to have a good customer service. After the sale, contact the customer via email or phone to request product or service feedback and support any questions that may arise.
The three pillars of online sales
- Authority
- Confidence
- Strategy
1 – Authority
The authority in the online sales universe is basically: to become a leader, to be respected and to gain space in the niche market in which the company is inserted.
To convey trust and credibility, you must show that you know what you are talking about. This can be through materials that are easily accessible to the audience, which help in solving problems.
Create a blog
The blog is a great tool for establishing authority as it allows you to deliver content to the audience. For this, you must have two factors in mind:
- Relevance: content must match the interests of the audience
- Frequency: Quality content should be frequently updated.
Each new page indicates that the site is always active and frequently updated. So Google tracks these changes and rewards your efforts by better ranking pages in search results.
No need to update every day. If you publish once or twice a week it is already a strategy that can bring good results.
Videos
In the online sales world, videos are the form of content that engenders more engagement with the audience. Unlike blogging, videos are more dynamic and therefore increase empathy with the audience.
In addition, the video comes to solve another problem, which is the lack of time. People want to withhold information as quickly as possible, to decide whether they want to make the purchase or not.
It should be noted that Google highlights videos in user searches.
Free quality content
You can be blog posts, as already mentioned, eBooks, infographics, videos tutorials and other formats. On the one hand, by offering rich and quality free material, it will educate customers and nurture the relationship with them. On the other hand, it will make them more willing to buy.
2 – Trust
Trust has to do with how customers see the brand as well as the authority. It takes a lot of time and effort to be won and therefore, to ensure credibility, it is necessary to:
Be accessible
As people cannot try the product before buying online, it is normal to have doubts. For this, it is crucial that the sales team is accessible from the first contact, either by email, telephone, social networks, etc.
Deliver the promised
Nobody likes to buy a product over the internet and then, when you receive it, see that it is not anything as expected. The idea is to be honest in the ads and deliver to the customer what they are really promising. Acting ethically avoids negative comments from people, who mirror the word to acquaintances, or even lawsuits for misleading propaganda.
Click here to see purchases that have gone bad online.
Use customer testimonials
Customer testimonials are proof of how your products or services work. In addition, the opinion of other people can be decisive for the acquisition of a product or not, especially when it comes to online sales.
3 – Strategy
There are many strategies to build a lasting relationship with the audience. However, you need to know when and how to put them into practice to stimulate online sales. We’ve selected some strategies you can use.
Google Adwords
Adwords displays ads based on the keywords used in users’ searches. It’s a great targeting tool, since the ad will be shown to anyone who has an interest in the product.
Another plus is that you only pay when someone clicks on the link. If the ad is simply shown and there are no clicks, it does not pay.
Facebook Ads
This tool allows you to target your audience according to age, gender, interests, behavior, location, etc.
Even if users do not click on the ad, it’s still visibility, which increases efficiency and engagement.
Copywriting
This has to do with the attractive description of their products, to encourage users to make a buying decision. It may have a very appealing design site, but copywriting counts more for a conversion to take place.
Email marketing
Not using Email Marketing can make losing business opportunities. This strategy is very useful for strengthening the relationship with customers.
SEO
SEO helps a lot in ranking in search engines and costs nothing but time and effort.
You need to know good SEO practices to optimize content. If you work well on specific keywords, it increases the likelihood that the user will find the company online while looking for certain terms.
Creating landing pages
In online sales, you can use your site to get closer to the audience, capture leads, and therefore find new customers.
So you can create an ebook, infographic, newsletter or registration to capture leads. See the Easymail landing page example.
If you have questions, you can contact us and we will help you in creating your landing page!
In conclusion…
Now you are more prepared to negotiate your product and reach out to your customers.
Get to know your customer so that you can understand the buying process and therefore define the tactics to use in your buying process.
So start leveraging your online sales now!