As a new consultant with a direct sales company or an owner of a new online business, it’s easy to get caught up in the details of your business; branding, fonts, colors, overthinking your pricing, and other details as you build your brand. While all of that can be adjusted, the quicker you focus on how to get your first sale, the quicker you’ll start seeing success. Planning how to get your first sale unintentionally gets put on the back burner.
Putting your products or items in front of people as quickly as possible will help you gauge interest along with getting a feel for how your prices are set. Now, if you’re a direct seller, you don’t get a choice on how to price your products, but what you can do is decide what value they bring so you can market to that.
In order to get your first sale, you have to ramp up your marketing efforts and start driving traffic to your online store or replicated site as quickly as possible. Once you start driving traffic to your site, you can then make adjustments to branding and messaging; but the first step is getting your product in front of potential customers.
Leverage free traffic sources
The first sources of traffic to leverage are the free ones. Think of your social media channels, community groups you’re engaged in, or any other online communities. Sharing your website link manually will help with search engine recognition which is crucial to getting recognized in searches.
Make sure your store URL is added to your personal profile on Facebook or add it to your link builder. This way when you engage in Facebook groups, those that stalk your personal profile to see what you’re about will stumble upon your website or shopping link right away. It’s the best non-spammy way to share what you sell.
Oh! And another thing, when you’re engaging in these communities, don’t spam your link or audience with repetitive, low value engagement or graphics. That will only turn people away from you. Instead, look to provide value with a “contribute more than you get” mindset. People will gravitate to those that provide valuable information and insight before diving in for the sale.
The FRANK list
The next approach you can take to get your first sale is to use the FRANKs approach. This is a fundamental step in building your potential business contact list as you continue to grow your business. These will be critical contacts as you are building your strategy on how to sell your product. Here are the components of FRANK:
- Friends
- Relatives
- Acquaintances
- Neighbors
- Kid contacts
Many social sellers get their first few sales from personal connections and often those are the best sales. Personal connections often tell their friends and it creates more connections and more word of mouth advertising for you. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t end up getting sales from your FRANK list. Keep following up and providing value where you can with your contacts so when they are ready to buy, they know you’re there.
Join online communities
Being active and contributing valuable insight in online communities will attract more people to you and your website. Find niche communities with prospects that fit your ideal customer or communities where you can be an industry expert. The earlier you can identify these groups, the quicker you can look like a subject matter expert and gain credibility by answering and asking questions. Be sure to check group rules before posting any business links or self-promotion. Remember, give more than you get.
In fact, if you’re a direct seller, online marketer, or a creator come join our Direct Creatives Marketplace! We love collaboration!
Pinterest Marketing
Pinterest is one of the most often misunderstood social platforms and that’s because of it’s clearly defined user base. While it can be one big gigantic search engine, most users are female and most of them create an imaginary life through pins; think home decor, fashion, recipes, artwork, and design. If your base fits any of those niches, then you’re in luck. Pinning original content for users with eye catching graphics and links back to your shopping site have incredible life on the internet. A rich pin on Pinterest can live for 6 months or more, while a rich tweet on Twitter is just mere seconds.
Some pins generate sales, but more importantly they generate traffic to your site. Through Pinterest tracking tools, you can track users to your site and capture them to use for paid advertising later.
Create strategic partnerships & affiliates
Partnerships and affiliates can be great ways to get your products or items in front of a broader audience. They don’t have to be large partners or affiliates; think of people who may have an audience the same size or a little larger than yours.
Parter with other direct sellers to set up guest speaker slots where you each can talk about your industry. For example, if you sell makeup and your partner sells food, you can talk about makeup trends in her group and she can talk about meal planning to your community. Or if you’re a creator, you can talk about how to DIY party invitations with a graphics program.
Identifying affiliates is another way you can create a broader audience. Offer free or a discount on your product to your affiliate in exchange for their review and sharing with their community. Micro-influencers are typically the best; they are looking for ways to provide value to their community just as much as you are looking to grow your community.
Sponsor an event or workshop
Sponsorships come at all cost levels. The smaller the event, the smaller the cost. And generally, as a sponsor, you don’t necessarily have to foot the bill for everything. Use your strategic partners and network to help generate the monetary costs while you take the lead as the overall sponsor. Simply getting your name out there is often enough to drive traffic to you and your website.
Hosting a workshop so attendees can experience your products is another way to get closer to your first sale. There are various ways to deliver your workshop; via Zoom, Facebook Live, or you can drip market via pre-recorded videos to your email list.
Driving traffic to your online site and to you as a business owner is all about connecting people to what you sell. There are so many opportunities to market your product and the landscape is ever changing. There is no one-size-fits-all type of strategy; the only way to find what works for you is to try it, evaluate, then try again. The important thing is to get your online store out there and start building your online presence.
How long did your first sale take? Would using these strategies above have resulted in a different outcome?
