How can we combine traditional marketing methods with online marketing strategies?

While running a search on “What to Sell Online”, I came across this post by Ray Edwards. Essentially, it highlights steps on what aspiring online marketers should do to find a product or service to sell online.

Product surveys, personal interests and data analysis are some of the methods advocated by Ray. Granted, these are all traditional marketing research techniques commonly utilized by marketing gurus. They are thoroughly effective for either 1) Large corporations with a huge marketing and distribution budget or, 2) Brick and mortar small businesses with customers within an X-mile radius. Ultimately, these are great if you are answering the “What to sell” question.

Now, the “online” factor adds a different dimension to the question. Dynamics change when the internet is put into the equation. Suddenly, the world is your market. Your customers are no longer people within the vicinity of your store. Of course, you could set up online surveys and ask – “what’s your biggest problem when it comes to dog training?”

On the internet however, you do not have the advantage of physical location. The customers who MAY answer your question, may not necessarily purchase from you. There are hundreds or even thousands of online vendors, like yourself, who are selling similar products to your customer. Some may even offer competitive pricing, at times below YOUR purchase price.

“Don’t make any judgments about which of these things might be marketable”

I agree that we shouldn’t make judgments on marketable and non-marketable products. In reality though, many items (tangible and intangible) are marketable over the internet. The difference then is how you make your website and products KNOWN and FOUND by your target customers.

While many websites are created daily, not all of them manage to reach their target markets. The internet has become such a competitive marketplace that everyone is vying for attention.

Setting up a website to sell something WITHOUT using the appropriate traffic generation strategies, would lead to an under-performing business. This is similar to setting up a store in the middle of the no-where, without anyone even knowing that the store exists.

This also means that all your marketing research efforts to identify the ONE or TWO products to sell online would be pretty much in vain, IF you can’t get enough people to know about you. A couple of other important factors would be establishing a differentiator, and your credentials.

So, what should I sell online?

These days, it’s often a challenge for new players to penetrate saturated online markets. Just look at eBay.com – there’s plenty of demand for electronics products, but there are also many of sellers for these items. At the end of the day, it is just a matter of the lowest price, AND how the seller makes known his lower-than-competitor pricing.

Thus, new sellers need to start by looking at smaller niche markets, which are often ignored by the more established sellers. My post on - “How to identify niche items to sell online?” explains exactly how to do this.

Ultimately, there has to be a balance between significant demand for a niche product, and a relatively low level of competition. With this, it would then be easier for an online seller to start by selling to this niche market, without being run down by the big boys.

Once their website or web store is up, it would then be up to the seller to implement the appropriate search engine optimization strategies and traffic generation techniques. These efforts help to create buzz, publicity and awareness amongst the target audience.

Most importantly, people looking for your product need to be able to find you. They also need to know that you are a credible online seller. This leads to our next question -

Do you have to LIKE the product you are selling online?

Ultimately, yes. In a brick and mortar business, we hire sales people to promote our products for us.

In an online business, we either, write our online sales copy, upload a sales video presentation or have an online chat facility as our sales person. To do all this, you need to be familiar with the product or service you are selling. This will truly help in creating the content needed to sell and promote your product online.

Of course, with all the free online references available, it’s easy to get yourself educated on a new product you are selling, but are not necessarily familiar with. This is also why many online sellers sell affiliate products.

These are the online sales agents who sell a product for a commission. The good news is that you won’t have to spend precious time and effort producing a product. This is a great opportunity for you to hone your online marketing skills, and simultaneously test out demand for a specific product which may be similar to yours.

A Final Note:

Market research is necessary in defining what to sell online. More importantly however, small business owners need to identify online demand, competition, and establish online marketing strategies for success in an online venture.