Modern selling strategies

Due to constantly an increasing competition online, there is talk about burnout of old proven marketing strategies and the need to look for new ones in approach to the customer. This article aims to show two relatively new concepts in the approach to e-commerce.

Previous strategies were most often based on e-mail marketing and banner ads. Their biggest disadvantage is relatively high costs, while at the same time less and less effective. Users who are flooded with a huge amount of spam every day and hundreds of banners almost automatically divert attention from this type of intrusive practices. There is a growing lack of time, combined with commercials on the radio, television, leaflets, billboards or the press. Consumers’ organism, in a way defending against the flood of information, developed a selective perception, treating the content viewed in a selective manner. As a result, the effectiveness of, for example, mailing advertising dropped to almost 1%. This means that one in 100 people will decide to take action, provided that the marketing campaign is prepared at least in a proper manner. When comparing the huge costs associated with this type of action, it turns out that this type of marketing becomes unprofitable. It is said that 50% of the cost of advertising is wasted – in my opinion, it can be much more.

Surprisingly it is the internet that could be a solution to ineffective marketing strategies. One of the solutions that could visibly increase sales, in the long run, is creating a company blog. By generation usable and valuable content we can get to a bigger amount of viewers interested in that topic. Such a way of thinking has many benefits. First of all, it makes it possible to better control the costs – even a small one-person online store can have a blog and share knowledge of the owner regarding a specific business.

Imagine a situation where we tell the user about a recently discovered coffee – its taste, aroma, a universal way of brewing. It would be very hard for that coffee passionate not to buy that coffee and taste it. That’s how more or less you can shape a new selling strategy in small online stores. It’s biggest disadvantage is the time it takes – preparing hundreds of articles takes a lot of work. Contrary to traditional forms of advertising the effect we will receive will not be visible for a moment, it will be increasing with every year. Surely it is not a quick strategy, but in the long run, it builds groups of passionates returning to your site which is way better than any other advertisement can do. 

Another way to increase the traffic on the website is quite controversial – Facebook. I would like to discourage you from using paid advertisements, as that portal is meant mainly for people to have a moment to themselves and relax and not shop. However, it is a good idea for example for selling tickets. An instance of that could be arranging a contest in which in order to win you need to bring the highest amount of new users to the site. 

This type of games can attract a significant number of new potential customers interested in the topic. However, one should avoid the situation in which we start giving out mugs or keychains, omitting a large marketing cost – in addition to the mugs themselves need to provide them if the reward does not create emotional ties with the subject and it should be assumed that the people will not be interested in the actual purchases in the future (in the earlier example, we were attracting people actually going to concerts and using tickets).

I am also often asked if there are any tools that can cause a visible increase in sales. It is also good to use additional tools suitable for the Polish market, such as the integration of the Allegro store and price comparison websites. I recommend Ceneo from the comparators because, despite high costs, it generates the most traffic. In the case of operating on foreign markets, for example, the German basis is also integration with eBay. If you use a marketing tool such as Facebook, it is a good solution to integrate the publication of articles appearing on the shop blog with a Facebook timeline, so that the publication of articles takes place automatically. Anyone aspiring to become a major online store should also consider being present on the Opineo website. The basis for effective actions and building a competitive advantage is the full automation of the above processes, otherwise, we will spend hours, for example, on copying descriptions to listed online auctions. I also invite you to share your thoughts on effective marketing tools in the comments on the article or on the forum’s website.