In the previous article, we learned what the no-stock mode is and how to promote it. Maybe the pale text can only give you a general understanding. It is still hard to understand when you put it into life. In the content of the issue, we will focus on Mark, understand his experience and learn his methods, which can also allow us to experience the charm of the no-stock mode more vividly.
But first, I have to introduce Mark. He is actually an entrepreneur with some management experience. He has studied hotel and catering management in Paris and Switzerland. In less than a year, the average monthly sales exceeded $60,000, and he even boosted sales by $178,000 in the short three months from October to December, yes, yes Dollar! ! ! He doesn\’t have the mechanical work of 996, just constant experimentation and marketing every day has brought him an objective income, as well as a comfortable life.
Next, let\’s get into the topic. The following will be from a first-person perspective and ask you how he managed his website so successfully through self-questioning and self-answering.
1.How to Choose A Niche for Your Store
I often hear people say \”this is a good niche\” and it always confuses me because there is no good or bad niche.
Without a saturated market space, even the most in-demand niche won\’t work for retailers who don\’t make the effort to market and build solid stores.
My rule of thumb when choosing a niche is: interest comes first. But most people ignore their own preferences and think that it is not helpful to start a shop, but I found that passion is the biggest motivating factor before any business is successful, so if you choose a ignorant Niche, you may not get the input you deserve.
Plus, when you start with something you already love, you already know all the parts of the industry, which is an advantage over starting a business from scratch.
After considering all of these, I looked at my hobbies and hobbies. I found that cats and dogs are what my heart desires compared to hotel management. Product trends for dog lovers, so after some research, I chose dog-centric products as the theme for my store.
I\’ve done a lot of research in this area: from checking Amazon and other popular sites to see how popular a niche is, to how much revenue a niche has generated over the past few years.
To research a niche market, I usually do the following:
Google key keywords, see the major companies selling products Check the traffic they generate Search for relevant information globally Check online the amount of revenue a niche generates each year Check the profitability of your niche
There\’s a lot of traffic, and the category seems to make a reasonable profit. Once I\’ve thoroughly researched the niche, I\’ve settled on everything dog related.
2.How to Target Your andience
In fact, this step goes hand-in-hand with the first, a simple Google search that takes me to a competitor\’s store, where I can look at the reviews left by viewers and find out who is most attracted to a niche. Researching my competitors allows me to avoid the mistakes they make and make my store more perfect.
In addition, I am a shit shoveling officer myself, so I clearly know whose sales plans and products are more in line with the shit shoveling officer\’s requirements, and know what is the most troublesome and what is most needed to serve the \”master\”. Combining Google trends and common sense, I derive the lifestyles, personality traits and attitudes of people who are likely to buy my product.
The truth is, it doesn\’t take a lot of data to reach the right audience. As a result, my main customer base is from the US or Europe, aged 21-65, who regularly follow the cute pet account on instagram and shop on PetSmart. This is a good start, more will be tried over time.
3. How to Choose Potential Products
First of all, try to avoid products that are highly duplicated on big platforms such as AliExpress and Amazon. Choosing duplicate products will not benefit you at all. In addition, you must avoid low-quality products. Selling such products is harmful to others.
I need a Chinese fulfillment agent who can help me source and ship products, then I will find products material from adspy, Desers, aliexpress.
Plus, I\’ve found products that can be customized. By looking at the customer reviews of my competitors, I found that they prefer products with personality, and a great way to add personality is to offer customization so their items are unique, and I also have to choose a supplier I can trust, Then I looked on Spocket for products that local suppliers could offer to add to my store. For the number of products in the mall, 20-50 products are enough.
4. How to Bulid Store
Shopify is a must-have for website builders when starting out, it\’s easy to use, and it\’s fast. After picking the theme over and over again, I settled on the Brooklyn theme and set about designing the store. People usually spend a lot of time designing and perfecting the look of their store. But the truth is, as an e-commerce business, your store needs to look professional and trustworthy, but not overly high-end, which creates an unnecessary sense of distance and luxury that makes the page look luxurious. In the end, the feeling can only be discouraged.
Your website needs to load within 3 seconds, it\’s very important!
Therefore, I spent some time building a website that includes all the elements, and the home page is the one that most affects the first impression on the website. Next, let’s introduce the main points of building the home page.
The homepage is the first impression people have of your store, so this part is very important! I\’ve always been interested in design, so that\’s the exciting part.
A lot of people list products on their e-commerce store: it\’s not a store, it\’s an accumulation of products.
This is how I create the home page:
I started by inserting an HD image from the homepage of a free image site like Unsplash – this is the first thing people see when they land on the site, so it has to be relevant to my niche and attractive.
I then added a small tagline and a CTA button to that image that would take the visitor directly to the product.
5. Create Your Brand Logo
This piece requires a lot of reference to your own products. The logo must be able to know at a glance what you are doing and what it is about, and finally convey some of your feelings, such as warmth, moving, and sunshine. This is a very fun process.
Colors: My audience is from different genders and age groups, I chose yellow because it represents happiness and optimism, while dark brown represents earthiness. On top of that, I made heavy use of whitespace. This seems like a store that fits my mind: healthy and tidy.
Name: The name can convey what you want. I chose to use \”Puppy Love\”.
Fonts: I ditched the detailed swashes for fonts that were easy to read and did exactly what I wanted for a clean white rustic feel.
Logo: The logo is something I simply made in Canva, and while the logo is an important part of the overall branding package and should be unique, it doesn\’t make sense to spend a lot of money for a new business.
Product Description: During my research, I came across a number of e-commerce stores that are just copy-pasted product descriptions from a supplier\’s store (usually AliExpress), which means that product pages are often cluttered with irrelevant information , Online shopping requires product descriptions to be clear and concise.
For product descriptions, I have a guideline of my own:
You must be able to prove that your product is worth buying and will make a big difference in the customer\’s life and show them why your product is better than the competition.
6. How to Running Marketing Plan
My marketing plan has three main elements: Facebook, Instagram and email marketing. Once my store was ready, I had to increase brand awareness first because no one knew about my store in the first place.
Three things I\’ve learned from Facebook and Instagram ads are:
• Determining your audience multiple times – usually if the ad seems to be failing, change the content of the ad, the form of the ad first, but the problem can also be in defining the target audience, I test individually across all audience variables Gender and interests, which reassures me that this is my main customer group.
• Product selection is a top priority – some products do really well only on instagram, but others get crazy traffic on Facebook. Analyze the advantages of the two platforms and place your product advertisements in a targeted manner. If a product can only bring in sporadic sales after a month, and your spending and income on this product have not reached a balance, then you can give it up, try other new products, and find your own new continent.
• Talk less and do more – it\’s a mistake to focus only on planning ads, and if one doesn\’t work, it\’s a waste of time to recreate it. I created 4-5 ad sets for each product with different audiences and ran them, getting data quickly and adjusting my plan daily based on the results.
Here are some points to consider when placing ads:
Campaign Objectives: If you\’re advertising an e-commerce store on Facebook, your motivation is naturally the desire to get orders. Therefore, I chose conversion traffic as my ad objective.
Audience: In the segment I\’ve chosen, I don\’t need to categorize the audience by gender. My products are mainly sold to the US and Canada, but also to customers in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
My audience is most likely to know PetSmart and Petco, as both brands are top brands in pet supplies. I put these and other common interests together.
Slots: I\’m targeting mobile devices, mostly to browse Facebook on my phone. I don\’t need to put ads or instant articles in the spare space, avoid putting the cart before the horse, and focus on the point. Of course, occasionally throwing some touching ads into your own ads can also arouse empathy from your customers, thereby increasing pageviews.
7. Advertising
Instagram users are younger, so I follow the trends of young people in my field, similar products are doing well on Instagram, while Facebook caters to the needs of middle-aged people. With email marketing, I send my email list 2-3 emails a week: a fun newsletter and a selection of cute dog videos and tweets.
You can also provide value through community forums like Quora or by posting on Pinterest, which can greatly increase brand awareness.
One more thing not to forget, you need to budget for your advertising costs.
My ad daily budget is $3 so I only spend $84 a month which is my savings and I can afford it. I decided to spend $100 on each product. After doing a lot of product research, I test 3 products every week and I choose the lowest cost bidding strategy for efficiency. As volatile as it can be, I\’d rather choose this method than a target cost bid strategy for the simple reason that it costs more per event.
Any success is the sum of all the tiny efforts you put into it: from design and development to marketing and sales, if people\’s \”no inventory model success stories\” claim a revolutionary trick can get you there in a second, they may be lying. These success stories are often used to deceive people.
My biggest problem is the lack of knowledge, I am like a blind man, groping the world of e-commerce every day. I try new things every day, test new ideas and make up my mind to do them.
I don\’t know how long it will take, and I won\’t deny it\’s difficult. But it is possible.
You may be starting your own journey like him, making countless mistakes along the way, but you too can be a successful one by admitting yourself and correcting it.