In January, I set a goal for my toys online store I just started: get one sale by the end of the month.
On March 8th, I got my first online order and since then I’ve had 10 more.
Here's how I got there:
First, I set up a survey to find out which social media and e-commerce platforms my customers are using. I got 0 response.
I created stores on the most popular e-commerce platforms in the country (Indonesia), Tokopedia and Shopee along with Facebook and Instagram business accounts.
Our biggest competitors aren't online (we are a toy importer), so I looked at smaller toy sellers and thinking about how I can differentiate my brand since I’m going to enter that market. I also checked other wholesale industries for advertising and branding inspirations.
After compiling different examples, I started to create my brand identity. I came up with a logo and also templates for all social media and e-commerce platforms posts.
I wanted to do advertising and promotions to increase brand awareness as we were just starting out, so I brainstormed some ideas for it.
Some more planning.. (strategist vibez)
I don’t like doing things when I’m unclear about the reason and the direction that I’m going. My next steps was to refine the company’s value proposition to avoid getting into price war. I decided to focus on customer service while having an innovative products.
Since I’ve tried selling online before, I knew that posting everyday wasn’t going to be sustainable especially with limited human resources. Seeing how much work I needed to get done, I decided to hold off the advertising until there are at least 50 products on the stores.
Execution!
To kick things off, I started by posting 4 items per day, with 1 item per day on social media. Initially, there were no traction, with some posts racking up 0 views.
I tweaked my strategy as I learned more about the platforms’ algorithm. For example, with Shopee I had to research different keywords so my products will appear on top and people are actually searching for it, instead of just naming the product according to internal database.
When I reached around 20 products, customers started to reach out and ask questions although they weren’t buying. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I reached my goal.
Sure enough, an order came in a few days later!