So, you have decided to venture into your own E Commerce business. Welcome to the world of possibilities. There are more opportunities than even before in this area. However, you also need to know in this sea, there are giant sharks. Large E Commerce companies with huge marketing budgets and often predatory tactics can reduce your profit margin in a straightforward way to causing your venture to shut down at the extreme.
Here are a few ways, your small or medium size E Commerce venture can compete against these sharks in the E Commerce world.
Planning
E Commerce startups often underestimate the importance of planning. You are stepping in a place where there are giant sharks waiting to eat you for lunch. You need to be able to find out how you are going to out compete. You need to do thorough research about their marketing and their strategies. It is similar to guerilla marketing tactics where you are the nimble task force fighting a mighty army. Planning at the strategic level as to what things you would compete upon (like offering/ price / customer experience) and then at the tactical level such as what steps would you take to make your offering better w.r.t. to your large competitors. It needs careful considers and market research.
Local flavor
Your large competitor is stretched thin. The segment they are in needs to be profitable enough for them to give you competition. They will find it difficult to conduct operation in every local segment. You may leverage your knowledge of area, local product, local language to create a strong offering that your competitor simply cannot match without devoting substantial resources to achieve similar results.
Strong niche
Your enemies i.e., the giants of E Commerce are often stretched. They have cost structures and often optimize for sales and cost. It is impossible for physical reasons for them to focus on every segment of the market and yet win profitably. That is where you can shine. You can determine the areas where you are strong. It could be your price because of sourcing, or it could be quality of your product or patents that you hold.
If you perform well and deliver value, it will be difficult for the large competitors to dislodge you.
Personal Connections to the shoppers
E Commerce giants provide services that are automated. One needs to go through multiple levels of chatbots conversations, and AI provided answers which causes dissatisfaction. On your website on the other hand, you can provide a work phone and /or a WhatsApp number for rapid answers to your customer’s questions. You customers may like such levels of personalization.
A thank you note to the buyers and if possible, a call asking them about their satisfaction of the product is how you build a long-term relationship with them.
Your personal story
If there is a business, there is a story. Is there a story for your business, a customer can instantly connect with and identify with?
For example, often stories talk about how founders struggled through their life experiences and then stepped up to provide you the best of the breed solutions. A personal story helps a customer relate to their own experiences of struggles.
You need to make sure that you have genuine reasons behind your story as your honesty will be rewarded with free advertisement and sales later.
Unique marketing techniques
Giant e commerce companies use billboards, big festivals and big ad spends to attract eyeballs because they have big budgets to spend.
To counter, you can go low cost, high impact tactics such as surprise gifts, detailed content videos for example tutorials/ how to use your products. You may utilize humor to craft engagement that suits your product line and not cater to whole market that your large competitor needs to cater to.
Leveraging social media to the maximum
Social media is easy and cheap medium to get famous. Create and share posts and ask your friends and family to share them on their timelines. It instantly builds up the trust without need to spend additional money. You can also create product pages and share helpful content and updates. You can create group where you can share your expertise and even others can chime in too with their opinions. Keep an eye open for the feedback and respond personally and constructively.
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