How to Make Your First Sale: A Marketing Checklist for New Entrepreneurs

so you've just launched your online store and in today's video i'm going to show you how you can make your first sale the truth is you won't be able to attract your first customer if you don't drive traffic to your store that's why in this video i'm going to walk you through the ultimate marketing checklist so you can drive highly targeted traffic to your store start making money and grow your online business [Music] welcome back to learn with shopify i'm your host michelle i've worked with over 100 small businesses and getting them started with their shopify stores and making sales making sales is all about marketing so today we're going to go over five strategies on how you can drive more traffic to your website it's definitely a milestone getting your first customers that aren't your friends or family early sales from targeted marketing tactics are a milestone in every entrepreneur's career sometimes we stand in our own way though it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to tweak everything on your store to get it perfect you might think you're improving by nitpicking your brand colors going back and forth on font choices and overthinking your prices but what you're actually doing is you're building a business behind closed doors real improvement only happens when you expose your brand to an audience you can't know that you're genuinely making improvements until you look at the hard data as to how your audience is interacting with your brand instead you should be investing that energy into the most important activity getting people to your store once you start driving traffic to your store you'll get real data to be able to answer your questions for example you'll be able to gauge if there's any interest in your products if your pricing is too high and if people can relate to your brand try to detach from overthinking the minutia if your site is already launched i'm going to challenge you to focus exclusively on getting people to your site over the next 30 days download the free calendar in the description box below to keep you on track with your marketing for the next 30 days make sure you're set up with google analytics before we do any of these steps that way you could see what's working and what's not working first let's get warmed up with some low-hanging fruit here are some free easy ways that you can start getting traffic to your store consider offering a discount code to entice people to come to your store and then market it on social media this jewelry brand offered a 25 credit and posted it on linkedin where people had to fill out a survey and give their email addresses in order to redeem the credit if surveys are a part of your lead strategy take this opportunity to collect important information to be able to improve your business so for example you can ask do you prefer gold jewelry or silver jewelry or you can ask do you feel comfortable with shopping for jewelry online if you haven't done this already add your store url to your social profiles you'll want to include this for your business and your personal profiles like instagram and facebook even if your audience size is smaller you'll still want to do this to increase the opportunities that someone can land on your website market to your personal network you likely already have some people in your network that would be interested in your product and that's why it's so common for entrepreneurs to get their first few sales from people they already know you can post on your social channels but i highly recommend sending personalized messages to people in your network that reflect your target audience and would be interested in your product offering even if they don't buy they're still the perfect candidates to support you by introducing your business to their network and giving you honest feedback join online communities don't underestimate the value of dropping a link to your store in the right place find niche audiences in forums like reddit threads facebook groups linkedin groups and shopify's own community each of these channels is an opportunity to reach people who have organized themselves around specific interests that are related to your product make sure you adopt a give before you take mentality and that you're adding value and engaging in genuine conversation with these communities after you've built up a reputation and created authentic connections then you can drop a link to your store and share any discount codes with paid advertising you need to spend money to make money the best way to get targeted traffic quickly is through paid ads the good news is that you can spend as little or as much money as you want and in some instances you can start with a budget as low as 10 you should choose your advertising channel based on who you're targeting if you're marketing globally do some research as to which advertising channels are popular in different parts of the world but in today's video we're going to be talking about facebook instagram pinterest and google ads according to pew research facebook is one of the most popular social networks with the most diverse user base in terms of age gender ethnicity and income you can create facebook ads to target job title marital status and interest to name a few expert facebook advertisers usually focus very heavily on interest targeting interest targeting is where the magic happens on facebook because you can target a very niche audience i would recommend this for store owners who have a very clear idea of who their ideal customer is and what they like a store that sells t-shirts with cat means for example might target people that are interested in cats memes and gift shops united by blue uses facebook advertising to promote their eco-friendly products in this instance they can target people who are interested in sustainability and are engaged online shoppers this is an example of a carousel ad where they promote their different collections make sure you're checking out our facebook ads for beginners video to get started instagram is good for marketing to a millennial audience according to smart insights instagram has one of the most engaged user bases amongst social networks with instagram ads you can drive traffic by showing up in people's feeds or stories for example beauty brand folene uses instagram ads to promote their free samples and you can see that this ad has been viewed more than 3 600 times brandlesscoffee uses instagram ads that focus on the coffee's costs and features here they use a video ad to drive sales i would recommend instagram ads for fitness food fashion and any verticals with strong visuals if you have high quality enticing photography and you want to market to millennials this might be the right platform for you pinterest is an underappreciated channel it's also the one with the most clearly defined user base according to pinterest most of its users are female and hootsuite cites that many of those users have disposable income plus you can drive a significant amount of traffic using both free and paid efforts using pinterest is like scrapbooking it's used to plan events and curate wardrobes so keep that in mind when you're advertising this ad from third love bra company uses a tall image which is the preferred format for pinterest users will click on the ad then they'll be taken to a landing page where they can browse the product further from promoted pins to buyable pins pinterest has so many tools to make marketing easy so make sure that you're not overlooking pinterest as a way to start making sales the first thing many people do when they're wanting to buy something is they'll look it up on google google ads show your website at the top of the results page when customers use a relevant search term google ads offer a few different options you have text ads and shopping ads shopping ads show your product photo and price in an e-commerce format do keyword research to see how many people are searching for the terms that you would want to advertise with many people find google ads intimidating because of the complex interface so consider hiring a shopify expert if you want to seize the opportunity but would rather hand it off i would recommend this for trending products local businesses and products and services that have a high search volume but low competition to get started with google ads make sure that you're checking out our video on google ads for beginners outreach and partnerships is important for every business because messaging about your brand won't be as effective if it's only coming from you collaborating helps build trust and awareness amongst consumers the following collaboration tactics help drive traffic and produce content so essentially you're killing two birds with one stone remember when you pitch to create these relationships you have to constantly ask yourself what's in it for them if it were the other way around would it be an enticing offer remember that collaborations only work when it's mutually beneficial publishers are always on the lookout for fresh content and good stories to tell a solid pitch based on a good story or an interesting product can potentially land you a spot on a blog or a publication look for publications that overlap with your niche so that you're marketing to your ideal customer here are some ways that you can partner up write and submit a guest post to share your expertise on a topic remember to use your author bio to describe and link to your business ask for a product review give your product to a blogger for free in exchange for a review pitch a new story if your brand story is compelling use this as a hook for an interview style piece whichever tactic you choose your pitch needs to be interesting both to the writer and their audience consider publications based on fit first and the size of the readership second this tactic is recommended for entrepreneurs who have an interesting backstory and a unique product offering that bloggers haven't yet seen before it's also good for entrepreneurs who have niche expertise and are willing to share it partnerships can be a great way to get your product in front of someone else's customers the key here is to look for like-minded non-competitive brands that already attract the kind of customers you're looking for it can take some time and luck to find and create these opportunities but once you have a roster of past partnerships you'll have built credibility within the industry try running a contest with your product as a prize you can get other brands involved to tap into one another's audiences package product samples with your partner's orders and vice versa for example you can pack a sample of drink mix with your partner's water bottle orders create a product with an influencer or a complimentary brand this brand is a serial collaborator and has worked with celebrities like adriana lima to launch sunglass lines gift your product to an influencer within your niche in exchange for a feed or a story post time and time again influencers with a loyal following and strong engagement have shown to have high roi for small businesses once you've implemented your strategy it's important to take a step back to see what's worked and what hasn't this 30 day challenge is meant to be an exercise in creating a feedback loop where you expose your store to traffic set a performance benchmark and then work to improve it you'll then diagnose the problems with your store by looking at your shopify and your google analytics as well as listening to any feedback that you've gotten from actively promoting your store there are a number of reasons as to why people might not be buying from you and you can make informed guesses based on how your traffic behaves here are common examples of how you can use data to make changes if you have a high bounce rate that is people coming to your site and then leaving immediately that might mean you have low quality traffic or your site takes too long to load if none of your visitors have added products to their cart it might just mean you haven't achieved the right market fit in which case you'll have to find the right niche and try different products if you have a lot of abandoned carts during checkout you might want to reconsider your shipping costs based on these learnings you can start testing your marketing tactics from there do your second round of marketing and see if there were any improvements in these results you need to get out there to grow driving traffic is all about connecting the dots between your brand and your buyer and that's partly what makes marketing so overwhelming there's just an infinite amount of opportunity out there however there's no one-size-fits-all approach to this exploring trying failing and improving is the only way to find out what works for you so get your store out there because that's the only way to grow what fees are you in with your store have you just launched are you planning on launching drop a link to your store's url in the comments below and i'll be sure to check it out make sure you're subscribed to learn with shopify so you can learn a new skill every week to turn your business idea into a reality thanks so much for watching please subscribe if you haven't already and i will see you in the next one you

Channel: Learn With Shopify

Views: 293,915

Keywords: learn with shopify, business tutorials, shopify store, ecommerce business, how to make money on shopify, shopify tutorial, shopify tutorial for beginners, how to make your first sale on shopify, how to make your first sale online, shopify tutorial for beginners 2020 - how to create a profitable shopify store from scratch, make money online 2020, how to make your first sale, make your first sale, Marketing Checklist, marketing 101, how to start a business online

Id: e5XraLAiWyc

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020