Connor BrookeOf late, people have increasingly become hooked to online shopping, all thanks to the convenience and door-to-door delivery of the products and services that customers get from different online stores. Earlier online shopping and transactions were limited to bank transactions, movie tickets, flight and train bookings, but today, things have changed radically. There is hardly anything out there that cannot be purchased leisurely sitting at home.
Many appliance businesses have also joined the online store bandwagon and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that their businesses are going from pillar to post. While many appliance businesses that already had physical stores chose to open an online store as well, there also are many new businesses that are relying only on their online appliance stores. In other words, the competition out there is cut throat and surviving and excelling would require nothing short of the best techniques out there for marketing your appliance e-commerce store.
So, here are 4 crucial online marketing tips for such online appliance businesses –
- Keep the Prices Lower than the Rivals to Start Things Off
One of the biggest reasons why online shopping is a runaway hit is the retailers keep the prices of the products extremely affordable, and they succeed in doing so because the online operating cost and maintaining an online appliance store is far lower than owning or maintaining a physical store. So, if you have just started your online appliance business, do not make wrong calculations keeping prices of your products at par with the physical stores. In fact, in order to woe your customers, you will have to keep the prices way below the market rates, and lower than most of the other competitors in the online market to beat the cut-throat competition.
- Branding Your Online Store
You can take it for granted that a popular appliance business, which has been popular all this while through its physical store, is likely to have a definite edge even when it runs an online store in parallel. Now, you might not be capable enough to compete with the physical, store but you can certainly catch up and even outsmart those rivals with right kind of online branding.
Hire a SEO company to promote your website online, increase visibility and generate leads. There are countless ways of branding a website, but they mainly depend upon the niche market that you’re trying to target. Make sure the company you hire, has a long list of satisfied clients; only then can you hope of being satisfied customer by availing their services; otherwise it’d turn out to be an utter waste of time and money.
- Try to Promote Your Best-Selling Products Through Discount Coupons
Promoting your business with online deals and discount coupons can be a great way too. Running promotional campaigns during festive seasons such as Halloween or X-Mas/New Year can also be a great way.
- Paid Advertising for Quicker Leads
While a SEO company and its efforts can take its own sweet time to give results, you can also try out paid advertising for keywords with high search volumes to promote your online store immediately. This is something even you can do on your own, but it’d be better to consult an online ad campaign management firm or even the SEO firm you’ve hired. This would place the website of your company right at the top of the major search engines, which can bring in great traffic and customers to your website within no time, not to mention the branding that you get in the process.
So, follow these 4 tips and see the difference they can make, to your online appliance e-commerce store.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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I know you mean well but lowering your prices is not always possible. You have razor thin margins on commodity brand appliances. The premium brands with better margins do not allow prices lower than MSRP. Dealers that sell below or sell outside of their region will have that brand taken from them. Also shipping cost come from the dealers margins. The key component to selling online is free shipping. To ship a 400lb plus item from the East coast to the west can easily the shipper up to $600.00 when starting out.
Selling a $2000.00 fridge even from Florida to Texas ($165 shipping fee) runs the risk of damage. Most shippers will fight the charge in the mean time the dealer has to ship another $2000.00 fridge that cost $1500.00 to aquire. Many online dealers have gone under dealing with the shipping fees and the damage claims.
Hiring an SEO also comes at a cost. Along with credit card transaction fees and other expenses.
When most online dealers sell an appliance outside their state they currently do not need to charge a sales tax. This discount alone beats the local brick and mortar or the large chain store like Sears, Home Depot or HHGregg.
A great way to set your site apart for others would be to use YouTube for each item you would like to promote. A European site is very successful with their videos. In the states Trevor of EuroStoves uses videos to five his targeted sites an edge.
The SEO agency can get your items listed on Google for a fee. Listing on Google is free but time consuming and frustrating.
What the author advises on works for higher margin cookware and table top accessories. It’s just harder to replicate with large expensive low margin items like appliances.