The main thing to think about when you’re starting an on-line business with little or no marketing capital is that you can still effectively advertise and effectively compete.
You have great products and a good supply of inventory with which to start your on-line business. You have a terrific website with which to promote and sell your line of products. Customer can easily navigate through the pages and you’ve mastered expediting the order process. The competition is fierce, but you’ve found your niche and you feel confident that you can make your on-line business succeed. This is the chance for which you’ve been waiting and working – you are going to succeed as an on-line entrepreneur!
The main thing to think about when you’re starting an on-line business with little or no marketing capital is that you can still effectively advertise and effectively compete. You’ll need to do your research, acquire a bunch of knowledge about your product and the need it fulfills and, most importantly, you’ll need a lot of Internet savvy.
1. If you don’t have a lot of capital, chances are you don’t have a huge marketing and advertising budget. That’s okay because there are ways around it. If you know about your product, you should think about creating an informative marketing article and submitting it to an online article directory.
A marketing article is an on-line composition which, if well written, can compel customers to go to your website. Using keywords, strategically placed throughout the article, can lead to your article and thus your website ranking high on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This has great potential to increase your business.
2. If you plan on competing with the big internet companies, you’ll have to have to provide something they don’t have. Customer service is a hit-or-miss prospect with very large companies. You’ll need to provide the best customer service out there. You’ve already got a great website and you know the secure order process is designed to flow smoothly.
3. When planning your customer service strategy, you’ll need to plan for the following:
What if the customer has a question they need answered before purchasing? Is your customer service page easy to find? Are you prepared to answer quickly and in a way that will encourage the customer to buy the product, and more importantly, to come back to your site and spread the word?
4. How readily can you ship your order? How much are you planning to charge? Have you thought about the packaging you’ll use and how inexpensively it can be shipped?
5. How efficiently and graciously are you prepared to process a return if the customer decides that the product wasn’t what they needed? A customer who is pleased with the return process, will likely come back to purchase something else.
You may not have to come face-to-face with your customers in your on-line business, but, if you’re going to compete effectively, one method of the most successful e-commerce businesses is their ability to provide the best customer service, from the beginning of the process until the end. You’ll undoubtedly have to work harder than the competition, but this is your life and your passion. Putting in a lot of hard work is a small price to pay for making your dreams come true.
