Introduction
Sales are the lifeblood of your business. In fact, you don’t have a business without sales. Your first sale is exceptional; it gives you a high and shows you that your idea is working.
I meet some frustrated people who don’t know where to begin to get their first sale online. I also meet successful online entrepreneurs who have taken a longer way than needed to get their first sale.
In this article, I clarify which way you should take to get your first sale as quickly as possible. You will learn about the different marketing channels to use to push traffic to your website and how to convert the visitors into customers.
The article is based on my own experience working with both startups without sales and million dollar websites, and how I have increased sales in both cases.
This article is both for you who already have an offline store but wants to go online and for you who is starting your first or second e-commerce store.
First, I will clarify why you need to sell online; we will look at choosing the right channel for you. After that, we look further into the initial channels and the next wave before we finish with making the first sale and what to do after.
Online shopping is snowballing, and it will, no doubt, stay around for the future. Now I will let you know more reasons why you need to sell online.
Why sell online?
There are plenty of reasons why you should sell online. As mentioned, then online shopping is rapidly growing, and e-commerce stores have seen incredible sustainable growth. Online shopping is also predicted to stay around and will overtake offline shopping at one point.
Added to this, then there are lower startup costs than with an offline shop. You won’t need to buy or rent a store; you can set up your business from your living room. Depending on your goals and how you set up your e-commerce business, you can operate it from anywhere.
With your business’s excellent mobility, you also have a very scalable business model, where you can quickly expand into other product ranges or other markets. It is difficult with an offline store to move it, and you are locked into one location, as it is physical.
An offline shop has to close down at certain times, while an online business is open 24/7/365. As long as your website is live, people can buy from you, and they can come at any time from anywhere, all while you sleep.
One of my favorite advantages of an online shop is the data you get. You can see every person visiting your website and how she/he is behaving on your website. You can use all the data to improve your website and your marketing. Hence, you reach more efficiency.
Last, in most cases, you get better margins than you do offline. You won’t spend as much on overheads, which will pay off on your bottom line. Furthermore, when you receive the customer’s payment, you can immediately reinvest it into your e-commerce business.
I hope these reasons make it straightforward for you that you need to get your business online. But you might not know how to get sales online, which I will cover, but first, you need to choose the right channel.
Choose the right channel for you
The key to getting your early sales is focusing on the right channels from the beginning. If you are unsure about e-commerce marketing channels, then you can read more about them in my article here.
When choosing the right marketing channels for you, you should consider your resources and industry. If you have a sizable marketing budget initially, then the quickest way to make a sale is paid media.
Paid media is quick but also one of the most expensive methods to get your first sale. You are likely to make unprofitable sales, but if you plan to get the customer to return to shop from you again, then paid media can be excellent.
Regardless of industry, you can get paid media to work. It might be that your product is banned from google PPC, but you should be able to find other ways to advertise through paid media.
Affiliates are another way you can get quick sales. Sales through affiliates are often cheaper than paid media, and you will usually only pay when the customer buys from you, also called cost per acquisition (CPA).
Affiliates are best for consumer products but can work in most industries, though a bit more difficult than paid media.
The last way to get a quick sale is through influencers. There can be a significant upfront cost associated with influencers, and they might not convert well in some industries.
I will now dive deeper into these three channels, as they should be where you have your initial focus when starting your e-commerce business.
Channels to pay initial attention
As mentioned above, then there are three main channels to focus on to get some quick sales. The reason why they can create quick sales is simply that you “buy” visitors through them.
Without visitors, you won’t have any sales, as no matter how good your conversion rate or AOV is, you still need the traffic to your website to have orders. You can read more about the basics of e-commerce here.
Even though you “buy” visitors through each of the three channels, they are all different. Paid media is the one there is most similar to buying traffic; this is also why it is called pay per click (PPC), meaning that you pay a small amount for each person clicking your link.
PPC
In PPC, I include google PPC, social media PPC, and other PPC advertising opportunities, such as ad placement on other websites.
Google PPC is the ads popping up when you search in google. They are often on the side of the screen or the first few search results. Google PPC also includes google shopping or PLAs.
Google ads are powerful because people are actively searching for something and are often ready to buy. That people are ready to buy is good for you because they are more likely to convert into customers.
Google PPC is good to begin with because you pay to be on the top of Google. It will take a long time to be displayed on top of Google organically. I will talk about this later.
Social media and other PPC advertising are a bit more challenging to begin with because people don’t actively search for your ads. With people not actively searching for your ads, you need to have very appealing products and images.
With this said, it is not impossible, to begin with, social media PPC, but I would only recommend it if you have a catchy brand; otherwise, I would recommend starting with google PPC.
As mentioned, PPC is one of the most expensive e-commerce marketing channels, but if you don’t have the startup budget to do PPC, then I would recommend focusing on affiliates.
Affiliates
An affiliate is a website that links to other websites and gets paid for this. It is an excellent channel to start with, as you often only have to pay when the customer buys from you as CPA.
Another great aspect of affiliates is that they already have a follower base. Hence, you can expect the visitors to trust you, and you can through the affiliates push offers, which are attractive for the visitors. Where for PPC, you have to “wait” for the customer searching for your product.
Affiliates are split into two main categories, voucher sites and content affiliates. Each category suits different product types.
In my experience, voucher sites are best for fast-moving consumer goods, where the customer already knows a lot about the product and only wants a discount. Content affiliates are good at explaining more about your product.
Content affiliates are often bloggers who can make comparisons or write a review of your product. They can also make tutorials about how to use the product.
I recommend using content affiliates more than voucher sites, as content affiliates can help build your brand. However, content affiliates can be higher maintenance than voucher sites. The good news is that you can use both at the same time.
Another form for affiliates is influencers. I have split them out because you often pay them differently than regular affiliates.
Influencers
Unlike regular affiliates, you often pay influencers upfront before you know how well the promotion will perform. Many influencers are bloggers, either with their own website or a big social media account.
It is not easy, to begin with, influencers, because if you don’t have the right product, you might not sell a lot, and you will have to pay before getting to know.
With that said, then influencers can help you build your brand. Influencers have created a lot of trust with their followers, and when they promote your product, the trust is transferred.
Though if it is a widely available product, they might buy it somewhere else than from you, and you are essentially paying for someone else’s marketing.
I recommend that you test paid media and regular affiliates before you try out influencers. Though getting influencers right can turn your brand golden, but it is very few who get there.
Whether you use content affiliates or influencers, you need to make sure they align with your brand and that their audience is right for your product. Finding the right audience is the key to success with these two types of marketing.
I am sure you can make your first sale through either one of these three marketing channels. As mentioned, then I would recommend starting with google PPC, this way can begin to drive you some cash flow early, and then you can build on that.
When you have started getting regular orders, you can begin to focus on the next marketing wave, which I will go through now.
Channels for next wave
If you don’t have money in your marketing budget, then there are other channels you can use, but you won’t get quick sales this way. You could look at Social media and google organic. I see these channels more as the next wave when the customer has shopped from you at least once.
The good thing about all these channels is that they are free, though they might take a lot of time to build. Hence, it will probably be a month or three before you have your first sale. Delay sales can be costly as you have stock in your warehouse, tying up cash.
For these reasons, I still recommend using one of the paid options first. Though you have to have the below channels ready for when you have made your first sale, this will extend the customer lifetime value.
Social media
Social media is a good channel for the next wave of marketing after the first sale. You can build a community on social platforms to get customer feedback and communicate with your customers.
Though it can be challenging to start out with social media, as you won’t have a follower base, it will take some time to see sales through social media.
With that said, then you must be on the social platforms. Your social media strategy shouldn’t be around discounts, but around how you can build a community, which can become long-lasting customers.
When you have long-lasting customers, you will be able to spend more on PPC, as the cost will be saved when you have bagged the customers.
Another channel you need a strategy for is the organic channel, which long-term will save money on acquiring customers.
Organic search
You have probably heard about the concept of search engine optimization or SEO. SEO is the way you can rank organically in Google search, and this means you can be on the first page of google without paying for it.
I talked about being on the top of google in PPC, but you can be on top without paying if your web page ranks high enough on google. The problem is just that it most likely takes a long time before you rank high enough. Hence, I still recommend PPC to score quick sales.
With that said, then you still need to spend time on improving your SEO and google ranking. Over time you will begin to appear for different search words and phrases in Google; this will help you get “free” traffic.
I recommend that you find an excellent webinar about SEO. Here is a free course giving a good overview of SEO: https://stupidsimpleseo.co/free-seo-starter-pack/
If you don’t feel like SEO is for you, then I recommend that you hire someone who can take care of it for you, either an employee or an agency.
The last channel you need to fix as the next wave is the email channel.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to get your first sale through email, as it requires you to have an email database. However, it is a vital channel to get your customers to return and shop again. You can read more about customer retention in my article here.
For email, you need to use it to communicate with your customers. It is a channel there can build your brand and strengthen the customer’s loyalty to you.
You need to have both manual and automated emails. The manual emails need to add value to the customers and make them want to recommend you to friends and family.
The automated emails need to remind the customer about products left in the shopping cart and recommend related products.
You can read more about email and the other marketing channels in my post about e-commerce marketing channels.
Using one of the first three channels presented above, I am sure you will make your first sale within one week. With PPC, it can be within hours, though it might take some time to optimize itself.
Conclusion
Making your first sale online is not difficult, but the quickest ways are paid. It would be best if you are ready to spend a little upfront to get the best results; otherwise, you might be out of business before you get started.
First, you need to decide on the marketing budget available. If enough is available, then you should begin with google PPC. If less budget is available, then you need to start with affiliates.
Influencers are an option, but it is not recommended over the two other options unless you already know or have the right contacts.
You need to begin with one channel, and then you build further to cover the other channels when you have had a few sales.
Simultaneously, you need to build your free channels and focus on SEO and email with you setting up paid marketing. However, you need social media as well to build a community amongst your customers.
Congratulations, now you should be ready to have your first order.
Last, I want to ask you on what channel do you place your bet? Write it in the comments below.