Getting 100 customers on board for sale is a major milestone for an aspiring D2C brand. Every new D2C start-up knows what it means to have 1st few sales, that feeling is beyond any other achievement in the path.
From the time a brand is launched, the owners crave their first sale. The notification telling the first sale turns out to be a life-changer for the eCommerce start-up. If you have not been successful in getting your 1st 100 sales yet, then don’t get disappointed!
We have come up with some strategies that can help you to acquire your 1st 100 customers whether you sell on Shopify, Instagram, Amazon, your own store, or any other platform.
Send Free Samples to Influencers
Social media platforms are full of influential bloggers, journalists, and vloggers from a wide range of industries and niches. You just need to check and find the celebrities that influence your particular niche.
Especially those who have large followings (20k to 500k followers) on their social media and loyal audiences on their accounts/websites.
Send them free samples of your products and create an opportunity to influence their audience to trust your products and use them. Ask them to use your product, give it a try, and mention it in their next social media post (video, image, tweets, etc.)
You can also appreciate your influencers and their followers with small free gifts, giveaways, birthday ecard, discount codes on first purchases, etc. This will result in increased traffic and social media followers, along with the genuine approval of industry experts.
Practice Affiliate Marketing
Selling alone can be a difficult task for a start-up, think about sharing your load.
Affiliate your business, let other people market your products and share their part of the traffic with you. Keep track of their marketing efforts by a unique hyperlink (or coupon code) so that when it comes to the return time, you pay them with a percentage of sales generated from their effort.
You can use affiliate marketing and affiliate marketing apps, either way, to increase your brand awareness or increase customer engagement.
Start blogging
Blogging is the best way to showcase whatever you sell, it is a safe practice for every industry and niche.
Every time you publish a blog, any way you are creating awareness among your customers and website visitors about your product. It creates a door to generate more leads to your online store. Also, you get improved search engine rankings that ultimately increase your store traffic and its sales.
Create content pieces that engage your customers, you can choose topics like gift guides, best product lists for the season, etc. Generally, this kind of content gets the most attention and creates a great opportunity to drive search engine traffic, increasing the return of visitors.
Also, in your blogs, you can offer tips, tutorials, and resources about your products and their related lifestyle.
Ask influencers for interview
When we talk about eCommerce brands creating content for their product promotion and advertising, interviewing the influencers is the best content piece you can have.
The interview gives you a win-win situation, as the influencer will get enough exposure from your interview and you will get a great content piece to publish.
Ask the interviewer about their lives and careers, in the industry. Get the followers of influencers what they want to know (taste of their favorite personality), and take their expert advice over the leading products/services.
Strong network on social media
Social media platforms have become great mediums where you can share your industry advice, perform Q&A rounds, advertise/showcase your products, etc. Getting social proof of your brand should be your priority.
You can create an engaging video about your products to bring a few quick sales. Such videos can give you a custom audience that you can target through ads and convert them to purchasing customers.
There are many other ways to get engagement on your social media. Such as:
- Find influencers who would use your product and share their experience about it in their own creative way.
- Find a press of your niche that can assist you in generating buzz for future launches.
- Never miss creating a buzz on your own social media account.
Sell on multiple online channels
Being a D2C start-up it is hard to survive the competition and establish your reach. Don’t rely on your own store for your initial sales, it can take time (you can enjoy them separately as your own website’s first sales).
Start selling your products on multiple channels, you can try these channels to promote your products as well. There exist many omnichannels such as Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, etc. these can bring you an adequate amount of sales in a short span.
Especially, if you are selling with Shopify then it’s easy to integrate services and other eCommerce marketplaces.
Send newsletters
Your customer’s emails can be very beneficial to promote your products. Start sending them newsletters, with the latest launched products, offers, sales, etc. going on your online store.
Newsletters are the perfect way to engage your customers and subscribers to advertise your products. It keeps your business fresh in the minds of your audience.
It can be a regular form of communication with your customer, driving you easy social media engagement with an increase in your followers, website traffic, and bringing extra sales to you.
Ask friends and family
Word-of-mouth marketing is very powerful on its own, which you can’t neglect. Your family and friends should be the first people you target to try your products and write reviews about them on their social handles.
Share your products and website with them through Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or any other social media channels. Ask them to make a purchase.
If your family and friends aren’t interested in your products then you can at least ask them to share the same with their connections and friends over social media. It make you a good chance of getting the first few sales and establishing yourself as a brand.
Optimize your SEO
The content you publish on your website should be full of industry-relevant keywords, creating a way to make your SEO strong. Optimizing SEO ensures that your site ranks on those relevant keywords and will help you bring traffic through searches on Google.
It will rank you better in search engines so when people search for the relevant keyword end up on your online store, creating a good chance of purchase as well.
It also provides you with a bigger opportunity to be discovered by new people every day and make more business from it.
Wrapping Up
When you start your D2C eCommerce business, you’ll not get everything served on your dish. I know that you know this. But seeking a little patience is what first recommended, don’t be in a hurry. Don’t rush! It will make the situation even worse.
Be calm. Sit back and make strategies to pull out more and more sales, every strategy cannot work for you, you have to keep trying for new things. You never know what can work wonders for your business.
To be sure of your planning, understand the social media game better, it’s very influential these days. Find a way out to turn your social media visitors into paying customers. Above are listed many things that you can do to get your first 100 customers or sales right.
Congratulations on your first sales already!