Grow Your Online Business and Customers

We're going to learn how to increase our online sales and how to get loyal customers to continue to buy our products and also bring in referrals. So first of all, let's talk about owning a business online. 

I'm very sure you've heard people making sales on the internet, through social media, and online stores. Yeah, there are lots of information out there and it can be very overwhelming to see what is and what is not. So I'll talk about five tips on how to grow your business. 

And fortunately, I owned a side hustle on social media, it was on Instagram. I sold bags and shoes. These tips helped me and I'm very sure it can help a lot of businesses too online. 

So, the first one is to get to know your customers. 

There are some questions we need to ask ourselves to know who our customers are, to know where to get or where to locate our target audience. 

So you ask yourself how old are they? And most times the age rage determines what social media channels they are on, and whatever those people do also determines what medium you use and the language you use to speak with them to talk about your products. So getting to know your customer or your target audience, will help you choose the right medium. Some businesses run on multiple mediums, and that’s like social media or online stores, but you should be very careful not to spread yourself too thin. You should choose the medium your target audience is, and then you can go from there to other platforms. This helps you to be updated also on trends that you can use for your businesses and for your products. Knowing who your likely customers are, helps you to effectively serve them. You also need to know what they watch, what they read, it helps you to improve your products, it helps you to also improve how you run your businesses because I'm very sure that you are not going to be the only one selling that particular product so you should know how to speak to your target audience. 

The second one is meaningful content, and you also ask yourself that what would your customers like or, which you can also take a cue from. From the pictures that are most liked on your social media handles, or you ask yourself when you notice that people continually ask for more information about the products, you might like to do a live video or just a recorded video on your social media page just to enlighten the customers or your followers on what your product can do and how it works. 

Then you should also take clear pictures. There are a lot of apps that can help you with some good photography, most especially if is um Instagram or even Facebook, you need a picture it doesn't need to be packed with all sorts. Sometimes even clear and simple pictures speak a lot, it just needs to be clear, it needs to appear nice and you should also make your videos clear. And sometimes if you are going to promote it, you should try to make it a little bit short, within the range where people will see what your product does. It doesn't need to be a five or ten minutes video, you can just go straight to the point. So you should also talk about um how your product works. Posting meaningful content about your products will help you to help you a lot, it isn't just about selling all the time, sometimes you have to tell stories you have to talk about your products without saying come and buy every time. So you just need to know what's what really works for you. But I've also used going live on social media channels, as an Instagrammer and it helped the customers to see what the product is like, and then it helped them to synthesize the real color of the product, and I'm very sure it'll increase engagement on your social media channel. 

The third tip is to focus on a niche. During the growing period of your business, you should focus on a niche. It doesn't mean you shouldn't upsell later on, but you should pick one first. For example, I started with bags, and later on, I moved on to shoes because some people were asking me for shoes. And it wasn't just because people were asking for shoes, I needed to know the amount of people who also be interested in shoes, so that it's not I'll just buy and then I won't get anyone to sell to. So focus on a niche. I wasn't selling bags, shoes, clothes, accessories一 like different kinds of things. Because sometimes when you when it's time for you to market it, you ask yourself okay, which one do I want to sell most? Which one do I want to push more? So start from somewhere and then you go into it. 

The fourth one is show off customer reviews. Customer reviews are really great. It reduces anxiety or doubt an intended customer has, and that is good customer reviews. Be sure to also review negative feedback, you're not selling to yourself, you're selling to people rather, and good customer reviews is as a result of product satisfaction. Your customer relationship should be great. You should be able to answer questions for the intending customers in a polite manner, not in a rude way. Some vendors are very, they get offended when an intended customer asks a lot of questions, and sometimes they are because they are not sure if they want to buy or not. If it's just a waste of time, but the customer may not buy, but they may refer someone to you. Just because of the way you treated them, that is if they had good feedback or answer, but if it's a rude one or if it's a rude episode, well it might end up bad. 

So your customer relationship has to be very good. You need to speak well so that you get good customer reviews, it's not just in the product, it's also like I said it's also about a customer relationship. So this helped me a lot. I answered questions and sometimes even the buying process may take up to two or three days, and you just have to follow because you don't know if the person will buy or not, and most likely if the person buys and is a happy customer, the person would surely refer other people to your business. 

The fifth one is Advertise. When I started, because I took it as a side hustle, I just did it like something on the side. I decided I didn't really talk about it. And talking about your business um exposes you to more clientele, or should I say to more intending buyers, so you don't even have to spend a penny first. You can advertise on your WhatsApp status, you can talk about it, you can ask your friends to share it for you. Then you can also do paid ads on social media channels. You can also get an Instagram influencer. And we also notice that giveaway sometimes works. The giveaway should not be almost every time, but you can also do giveaways for your loyal customers actually for customers from you, it makes them happy and it's a kind of a loyalty reward so when giving to strangers also remember your customers. Remember people who have bought from you, this is a way to also advertise. And the good thing about it is that the Corpreneur store has a feature that can help you send texts and emails to your customers directly. This will keep them posted on new stock. So, these tips really helped me when I ran my business on Instagram and I hope you find these tips helpful too also for your business. Thank you for reading.