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The problem with, “If I Were a Fish” Customer Service

March 25th, 2011

 

Fisherman with a child and his dog

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16230215@N08/3650612859/

I  went to a seminar put on by KSL Wednesday. KSL is a local news website in Utah.  KSL gets over 220M monthly page views, 3.8M of which are unique visitors. It ranks just under CBSNew.com in monthly visits.

KSL has done some very innovate things and decided to pass on some tips to the local market by hosting inexpensive business and marketing seminars. I know my co-worker and I learned a lot about branding during our seminar. I want to pass on an analogy Brett Harward used to further demonstrate the importance of research in deciding how to improve your business.

He began by explaining how you tell a novice fisherman from an expert. There’s one phrase, he related that almost always identifies a novice fisherman from an expert. It’s, “Well if I were a fish–I would eat that.” Said while looking at lures and bait. Much like novice fisherman, the biggest problem most business face is that they make assumptions about their customers or audience. They think, if I were a customer I would want this, or I would buy this.  But the obvious truth is that they’re not the customer, they are the business and they have a very different perspective than their customers who have nothing invested in the business.

He related an experience about a dive he took in a nearby lake to certify for his scuba diving test. He passed the test quickly and had a chance to go spear fishing with a friend. They swam around for awhile and found a huge school of fish.They were ecstatic to see so many huge fish in such a small area! In a frenzy, they each speared their legal limit of fish in about 3 minutes flat.

Well, they were so excited Brett thought he’d go to the top to see where they were so that they could bring some buddies back to the same spot. But when he came up, he was greeted by a group of angry fisherman. They stood up out of their lawn chairs and began yelling at him. He came up only feet from where their fishing lines had been and they assumed he had scarred their fish away. In my experience it’s not uncommon for fishermen to be possessive of their spots, but they were furious with him.

Brett however pointed out the irony of the interaction. These fishermen were angry with him, but a smart fisherman would have said,

“Wait! Don’t go! What’s going on down there? Where are the fish? What are they biting?” They had a great resource at their disposal, but treated him as a threat and lost a great opportunity.

So, what are your customers eating?

What would they like to eat?

How close is what you’re fishing with to what your customers want?

Advice from employees, vendors, customers, and other experts  is priceless. Are there resources at your disposal that you’re not tapping into? What could expert fishermen or scuba divers with perspective teach you? Are their other businessmen or competitors that would be just as willing to help?

I loved the analogy. Now statistics that you get by conducting research aren’t perfect, but learning from the past could save you from having to learn the hard way. I know. I recently learned my lesson as I thought like a novice and assumed that some products I bought at a thrift store would sell well. One of my unwise purchases was an HD set of dvds.

HD was the format before today’s blue-ray dvds. I would have to get a special player or attachment to play these dvds on a computer or my tv. So, who in their right mind would want such a difficult format?Hence, the reason I found them for such a “good deal” at a thrift store. I also bought some name brand jeans to sell, only to find out there was so much competition in the jeans category on eBay that I didn’t stand much of a chance, especially as a seller with a non-existent feedback score.

Do your research. Figure out what your customers want. Test it out and then apply it. Trust me you’ll be so glad you did. Good luck!

Here as interesting online tool that can tell you a little about your and your competitors websites and help you find places online to advertise.  Double Click Marketing by Google.

For more tips about selling online and building your business please follow us on twitter or read our blog.

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Brand Yourself As. . .

March 4th, 2011

Whether you know it or not, you’re being branded. Do you sell the cheapest shoes? Maybe you’re the cheap shoe store. Do you ignore customer complaints? Maybe your the store with terrible customer service. From your actions to your products, down to the way your website looks, judgments are being made by your customers and becoming a part of your online businesses brand.

When something goes wrong and you need a product that will fix it, experts say that generally one to three brands of products will come to a customer’s mind due to perceived value and advertising. If your brand is not one of the three brands to come to mind, you won’t see the loyalty or the sales that will come to those top three brands. This is why it is crucial that your product has a strong brand attached to it. People attribute value, benefits, and prices to brands.

At a speech to Utah State University, VP of Marketing, Rick Haskins, on the CW network talked about the importance of branding. “Trying to be all things to all people will fail, because it is impossible.” That is why it is so important to establish yourself as the best at something in your niche.

Haskins went on to talk about the first time CW auditioned women for “America’s Next Top Model.”  Few could handle a runway walk or talk about their reasons for applying. Now, applicants can walk the walk and talk the talk, declaring themselves as “the smart one,” “the fun one,” or “the one who is going to win.” Young people who grew up watching reality television get the concept of self-branding, Haskins said. ( Nancy Van Valkenburg)

What should your company be branded as? Look at your strengths as a company and the benefits you can offer. If you don’t plan on competing on price, something else should set you apart. Quality or speed of delivery may be your strengths. Find them and stick to your guns.

Your brand should dictate all your company does. Your brand should seep into the way your business is run. When it does your customers will have no trouble identifying what you stand for and what they can expect to receive.

Branding

Redbox's Ingenious Branding

Redbox is a great example of extensive branding. Convenience is one of Redbox’s most important benefits. They position their products in convenient locations like grocery and retail stores, gas stations, and pharmacies. Considering customers are always present in these locations, picking up a movie is that much easier. It’s just one less stop they have to make.

They continue to make the movie rental process easier by listening to their customers and participating in social media. For example, “Consumer requests for a more convenient return program, for instance, spurred Redbox to launch its ‘rent and return anywhere’ program.” Refusing to stop at that, they’ve encouraged online registrations that reserve your video and let you know which Redbox location has the dvd you want to rent. This eliminates the disappointment of arriving at a location and finding out that none are available.

The very design and vending system of Redbox screams convenience. The movies are easy to find and quick to rent, and their kiosks are easy to identify in stark red. They even incorporate their brand onto the dvd cases that are encased in simple packaging with clear directions on how to return the dvd. Ingenious! The branding is incorporated into everything!

What benefit does your company, or you as a seller, want to be known for? What will resonate with your customers? How should you portray the benefit? The answers are different for every business. However, a strong brand adds value, trust, and eventually profit to any business. Think of all the value a strong brand could add to your business.

For more tips about selling online and building your business, please follow us on twitter: @gogodropship or visit our blog.

If you’d like to sell well-known brands, consider drop shipping with GoGo Dropship. With millions of brands to choose from you’re sure to find something that interests you.

http://adage.com/article/print-edition/redbox-america-s-hottest-brands-2010/147056/

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How do I Know What to Sell on eBay?

February 16th, 2011
Ebay

Ebay

How do I Know What to Sell on eBay?

This is a fair question. There are some guides for potential sellers, but the truth is that a little creativity and a lot of research are what will really help a seller do well on eBay. Ebay Pulse is a guide that will give you an overall idea, but remember that many of these products are within markets that are already over-run with sellers. Categories like electronics and phones have so much competition, it’s almost impossible for a new seller to compete. So how can you compete?

Find a Niche Market

Niche markets are the key. Are you involved in social media? What topics are trending? Justin Bieber  has been a popular topic as of late. Could you sell a product based on a celebrity or news? You bet.

I  had a professor suggest that his students sell shirts with funny slogans about the latest celebrity scandals. By watching what key words are popular on Google, he said we’d know what kind of shirts to sell. Looking at current trends and news may inspire you. Just remember that in this type of business, you have to know when to stop selling. You don’t want your product to be old news.

Stay Ahead of the Game

Trending products can be the same way so don’t wait until you see that an item is gaining popularity in retail stores to move forward with it. Why? 1. Retailers will be hard to compete with because they buy in bulk and can get lower prices than the average seller. 2.The fad will be ready to end and you’ll get stuck with unsold merchandise. You have to stay ahead of the game.

So much of success is timing, luck, price, and/or innovation. You really have to nail one or two of these categories to be successful. If your product is creative enough or sought after enough, you’ll never have a problem selling it. However, you may have just as much luck selling something as common as a hot dog by selling it at the right time or for the right price.

My alma mater allows the business program to sell items on campus as part of their entrepreneur curriculum every semester. For some students, it’s their most dreaded semester.  For others, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity they’ll never forget.  Some of them included things like stick-on covers for laptops and cell phones, and wood plaques with etched poems, photos, and pictures on them.  But some of the most profitable businesses included a hot dog stand, a sunglasses booth, and a garbage service.

Make Your Product Successful Using Timing, Price, or Innovation

The hot dog stand offered a cheap, accessible meal to the students on campus. The sunglasses booth offered a seasonal item in high demand, at the right time, and benefited from the great weather on campus.  The garbage collectors heard that girls struggled to take their garbage all the way across the parking lot to their dumpsters. They offered an innovative convenience which was simply taking out the garbage for them at the right price.  Because their overhead minimal and there was no other competition, outperformed every other student-run business.  They didn’t  become millionaires from it by any means, but sometimes half the battle is succeeding at something small.

The less saturated your market the better.  But then you’ll have to create a need for your product. You’ll need to advertise your product extensively to create awareness. But if competition already exists, don’t worry. Let them open the door of awareness and you can enter the market as another, perhaps, better option.

So what technique will help your product succeed? Will it be timing, price, innovation, or pure luck? While we all hope for a little luck, why not make a plan and stick to it? You can’t generally compete on all of these levels, so why not pick one or two and concentrate on competing on those levels.

There’s a rule of thumb in advertising that I’ll call the “Business Triangle.” Each corner of the triangle represent three things. 1. Price 2. Quality 3. Speed. Like the principles above, you can’t have all three without at least one corner of the triangle suffering. If you pick speed and price, quality will generally suffer. If you pick price and quality, the speed will be affected. Think about this and use this to market your products. If you take more time because you are looking to deliver quality to your customer, advertise this on your website. Pick two of these qualities and apply the principles to your products and your website.

Lastly, if you want to be innovative, be innovative.  Retail chains like Walmart do well because they offer everyday items, but there is something to be said of the smaller company that offers unique, handmade, or one-of-a-kind items.  There is value in it.  Take Etsy for example.  They have become a popular website for this very reason.  So although there is plenty of thinking and products to offer “inside the box,” don’t be afraid to venture outside of it.

So as a recap, remember:

1. Do your research

2. Find your niche

3. Let timing, price, and/or innovation work for you

4. Find a market that isn’t over-saturated

5. Pick two areas of the business triangle in which to compete

6. If you’re going for innovation, consider the value of a one-of-a-kind product

Be fair to yourself and sell a product that can be successful. By doing your research and taking into account these tips, you can build yourself a profitable business on eBay. Good luck, but then again, with the right product you won’t need it.

Want to get more tips for having a successful online business? Visit us on Twitter: @gogodropship or read other posts on our blog.

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Is Online Selling Your Hobby or Business? Why it matters

January 19th, 2011

Are your online selling endeavors a hobby or a source of income? Why does this matter? The truth is that on your taxes it can make all the difference in the world.

The IRS has a website dedicated entirely to the subject. So what do they say is the difference? The following questions provided by the IRS website should give you some idea of how they determine if a venture is a hobby or business.

  • Does the time and effort put into the activity indicate an intention to make a profit?
  • Do you depend on income from the activity?
  • If there are losses, are they due to circumstances beyond your control or did they occur in the start-up phase of the business?
  • Have you changed methods of operation to improve profitability?
  • Do you have the knowledge needed to carry on the activity as a successful business?
  • Have you made a profit in similar activities in the past?
  • Does the activity make a profit in some years?
  • Do you expect to make a profit in the future from the appreciation of assets used in the activity?
  • Did your venture make a profit in at least three of the last five tax years, including the current year?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, you probably have a business. Congratulations, that means you can claim expenses on your taxes that a hobbyist can’t. You see the losses from a hobby can’t be used to “offset other income.”

The big difference is that there are numerous tax deductions for new business owners. Many sellers deduct costs of transportation they use when shipping an item or the costs of their home as a business. The point is, if you don’t have a business you won’t get all the advantages of a business.

Don’t over pay when you could be getting small business deductions. If you are a business, keep records like a business and enjoy the benefits of bigger tax refunds. The extra money your get back could make all the difference.

For more information visit:

1. IRS Clarifications about online selling:

2.An Ebay Workshop on the differences:

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SEO: a Crucial Tool for any Business

January 17th, 2011

The internet is a powerful tool, but because so much information exists on the internet, it is imperative that a new business thinks about how their product will be seen. Traditional advertising called for space in newspapers, on billboards, tv, etc. But online, what drives the buyer to the internet’s ad space is search engines.

Setting up a website without paying attention to how it will be found by your customers, is like paying for space on an expensive billboard and then finding out it’s been blocked from view by a newly built skyscraper. The skyscraper is like all of the information competing for your customer’s attention. Customers may want to see your billboard, but with a building in the way, it’s impossible! Because you can’t move the skyscraper, you’ll have to advertise in other perhaps smaller, more visible locations to help people find your business.

As you set up your website remember that keywords related to the products you sell, should be the pillars of your website creation. Put keywords in everything from your domain to the text on your site. Help customers find your product.

Another thing to remember is that content is king. Putting keywords on your site without posting good content won’t get your products sold. It will only make visitors angry when they visit. Good, relevant information will help build your brand and help you getting higher rankings on Google.

Taking on SEO may feel like a daunting task, but start small. Here are a few articles on SEO and starting an online businesses, that I found helpful.

Here are a few articles that have great tips about basic SEO:

http://webprojectscebu.com/blog/

http://www.2createawebsite.com/money/product.html

For more tips on SEO and starting an new business add us on twitter: @gogodropship

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BREAK POINT TWO

March 8th, 2010

Orders are easy; you get the money, you give some of it to your supplier, the supplier handles the rest. It is very simple, very straightforward. Analytic reporting and analyzing is something that is our personal responsibility as the website owner. No one is going to twist our arm and make us do anything, like a supplier would for a delinquent payment, yet this is something far more important to the success of your business.

Always Keep a Log

Always Keep a Log

The way in which you log is not as important as it is that you are logging your results. Be it in a spreadsheet that you will track results, or in a notepad, the important thing is you find something that works for you. The spreadsheet is the ‘normal’ answer, but if you’re not comfortable with it, don’t use it! Write by hand if that’s better for you, write it in a simple word processing document. This has to be something that is easy for you, or you are going to think of excuses not to do it.

A lot of marketing is going to boil down to running PPC campaigns, changing text on your homepage, and a host of other seemingly small, similar things. If we do not take the time to analyze what our efforts are actually doing, then there is no point in doing it. We cannot throw money or time into a machine, and expect results. We have to see in what areas our advertising is succeeding, and where it is failing, and change things accordingly. There are no hard or fast answers that can be given; your market is unique, and you have to work within it to be successful.

But with a little bit of extra planning, and weekly due diligence, we’ll be able to take full advantage of all that advertising gives us. Running a business is work, but if we take that little extra effort day to day, we’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results!

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Wal Mart Already Did It

March 3rd, 2010

One of the most common problems people come up against when starting a website is immediately trying to stack themselves side by side with a retail giant like Wal Mart. Why bother trying to sell my item? Someone can just go buy it at a big store for half my cost anyway.

And you know what, they’re right. If you’re trying to offer something to your customers online that they can buy at a big chain store that’s ten minutes away, why are they going to wait a few days for it to ship? You’re not going to compete if you’re trying to go toe to toe with a bruiser like that. They don’t have decades of experience and billions of dollars in their corner doing nothing.

Instead, we want to consider what strengths we have as a dropship site that a large-scale store would not. Our primary advantage lies in that we are not carrying any inventory ourselves. An inventory choice made by a brick and mortar store is weighed carefully. They have to purchase in high enough volume that they can reasonably meet the demand for the item. If the item isn’t guaranteed to do at least moderately well, they can stand to lose a pretty penny if it doesn’t move.

Brick and mortar stores have to choose the safer path. They’re choosing what will appeal most broadly. They cannot afford to take a chance on a strange product line that would only appeal to true experts. As a dropship site we can.

We are not buying our items in massive quantities all at once. If a product line we have to offer tanks and doesn’t sell, its a hop, skip and a delete button away from being gone. We’re not going to have to liquidate the item to get precious floor space. When we want it gone, it’s gone.

We are much more free to experiment; we can try items that might not be universally popular, but will gather a dedicated following. We can offer a wide variety of similar items without having to worry they’re too similar. We’re giving a depth of options that many stores just cannot compare to.

So when someone asks why you want to sell linens when someone can just grab a quick set from Wal Mart, remind them confidently that while basic cloth and Superman patterns are great, there’s a wide world out there that the discerning buyer is going to look for, and they’re more often than not going to find their mega stores wanting.

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You’re Selling WHAT?

March 1st, 2010

Chances are very good that you’ve been asked that broad question at many junctures as you’ve started your business and built your empire online. You might have a stock response to the question: You go into a short little blurb about what your research determined, laughingly saying, “I KNOW that sounds weird, but the numbers work, I swear!”, and noting slyly at the end that you’ve noticed that you have just the thing that they’ve needed all along without ever even realizing it! At the end of the conversation, if they have a good handle on what it is you’re selling there, you feel like you’ve done your job.

The concept is simple, but often it does not translate fully into the smaller aspects of the principle. We want to convey well to our visitors, or our friends what the site is about, when it comes down to describing what it is we’re selling to our prospective buyers.

When you’re talking to your friend about that great thing that you have to offer, or even that great thing that you’ve just purchased, do you do so in very brief sentences, or do you try and talk it up a bit, helping to convey just how great it was that you made the purchase? When my brother gets that fancy new iPhone, he doesn’t tell me “Yeah, its an Apple iPhone, new in box.”. He regales me with its awesome features. He can check his email with it anywhere; talk about convenient! He has an app that tracks how often he does this or does that. He is a happy customer; he is confident in his decision. Of course he’s going to try and share that enthusiasm with me, in the hopes maybe I’ll get one too!

The same is true for us online. What we’re presenting our buyers with is a chance to get something that is going to fast become indispensable. We’re not selling a simple item, we’re selling something that is going to make your life better just having picked it up. We want to convey that in our descriptions.

In an online world where overt advertisement is often frowned upon, a product description is our one place to flout that rule. People are looking to the description to sell the item to them. If it’s boring, or if it’s not descriptive, they’re not going to be sold on it. We want to make sure whenever we’re given an opportunity to really sell our item to our customer we take full advantage of it. If we present our item as mundane or hardly out of the ordinary, our buyers are going to feel the same… and so are our sales!

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Break Point One

February 25th, 2010

First and foremost, you’ve got to have the tools for the job. We’ve touched on this before, but repetition, as they say, is part of remembering, so we’re going to shine the spotlight here again: You are going to want Google Analytics. Now, let’s be fair. Google Analytics is the grand daddy of them all, but the corollary to this rule is You Want Some Sort of Tracking Program.

If you decide on Google Analytics, that’s great. If you’re a Piwik guy, a Chartbeat gal, a Mint man, or any combination thereof of the existing alternatives to Analytics, you’re also fine. The main point is we want to make sure we’re tracking what is happening to the site. You’re also going to want to get familiar with the terminology. If words like “Click Through Rate” or “Bounce Rate” sounds like gibberish, and their corresponding acronyms “CTR” or “BR” are also like Greek to you, you’re going to want to fix that.

Without familiarity with your program, the results that you’re seeing are widely irrelevant. If you’re sorting through gibberish, it could be the best information in the world, but it wouldn’t mean anything. As a quick cheat sheet, here are two terms to remember:

Click-Through-Rate (CTR): CTR is used as a measurement of the success of your marketing campaign. In simple terms, if you have an add that is posted in 100 places, and 25 people actually click on the link and go through, you have a 25% click through rate. But this is a bit of an oversimplification, as this applies primarily to banners you have “out there” in cyberspace.

A more accurate description of CTR would be “number of clicks” divided by “number of impressions”. An “impression” is simply a single appearance of an advertisement appearing on a web page.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is a term used to describe the trend of a person visiting your site, with the intention of tracking where it is that people are ‘bouncing’, or leaving the site. The formula used to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page divided by the Total Number of Visits.

But all of this is just information if we do nothing with it. The second aspect of properly watching your site lies in recording. This may sound like an obvious statement, but it is very easy to ‘not remember’ to track down your latest change, or this day’s or this week’s report. It is in recording that the most amount of self-discipline is required, and can in fact be one of the most difficult parts of managing your website.

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I’ll Be Watching You

February 23rd, 2010

Always Watching

Always Watching

In the immortal words of Sting (and The Police), every breath your site takes, every move it makes, you need to be watching it. It may sound silly, but every minor change that you make to our website can have drastic effects on your website and the traffic which you receive, so it is very important that you’re watching your site diligently, and determining what is doing what. Is your new PPC campaign flourishing, or is it dead in the water? Are people grooving on that new logo you’ve got there, or is it having them running scared? If we’re not paying attention to this, we’re wasting time, and we’re losing money… both in costs we’re paying out, and in revenue we’re not capturing! There are a few key points to being vigilant, which we are going to go through this week!

As an overview, there are two main points which we will be focusing on: First and foremost, we’re going to walk through what exactly it means to ‘track’ what we’re doing. Secondly, and equally as important, we’re going to talk about ways to record what all of that means.

A lot of website tracking and ‘maintenance’ is not something that anyone is going to ‘force’ us to do; the responsibility falls on us to take care of our site, and make sure that what we’re working on and what we’re doing to market it is having any effect, be it positive or negative. We’re not going to have someone pushing us to keep following through with these steps, and they may seem mundane, but proper, diligent review of our site on a week to week or day to day basis is going to make the difference between a site that is doing well, and a site that is struggling to get off of the ground!

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