The Rise of the Online Bonanza

Gone are the days of leisurely strolls down local main streets for Small Business Saturday. In today’s fast-paced, internet-centric world, online small businesses are capturing the day with innovative strategies, creating a virtual shopping frenzy that rivals any physical shopping district.

Flash Sales Frenzy: A New Kind of Rush

Imagine the buzz of a flash sale: hourly deals creating a virtual shopping frenzy. This strategy mirrors in-store doorbusters but in the digital realm, sparking excitement and urgency without the physical lines. It’s about creating an atmosphere of anticipation, with customers ready to snag unbeatable deals.

Virtual Hangouts: Bringing Personalization Online

In a world with limited physical interaction, virtual hangouts have become the new face-to-face. These sessions, from live Q&As to product showcases, build a personal connection with the audience. They add a human element to the digital space, allowing real-time interaction and engagement.

Social Media Blitz: Crafting a Viral Sensation

Social media has become a key battleground for small businesses. Using these platforms, businesses can run contests, share customer stories, and broadcast their unique value propositions, aiming to create compelling content that turns viewers into loyal customers and advocates.

E-Commerce Excellence: Prepping for the Surge

A robust e-commerce platform is crucial for online Small Business Saturday success. This means ensuring the digital storefront can handle increased traffic seamlessly. Technical optimization is vital to prevent crashes, while a smooth, intuitive user journey can effectively turn browsers into buyers.

Email Excitement: Building Anticipation

Email marketing is a potent tool, often underrated. By sending teasers and exclusive previews, small businesses can create a VIP experience for their customers, fostering a sense of exclusivity and anticipation, and nurturing a deeper relationship.

Crafting an Inclusive Digital Experience

As Small Business Saturday evolves, it’s vital for online businesses to ensure their digital spaces are inclusive and accessible to all, including those with disabilities. This commitment to inclusivity broadens the customer base and establishes a responsible presence in the digital marketplace.

The Human Touch in a Digital World

What distinguishes successful online businesses during Small Business Saturday is their ability to infuse the digital experience with a human touch. Personalized interactions, whether through a custom email, a thank-you note, or real-time social media responses, can transform a digital transaction into a memorable shopping experience.

Small Business Saturday: More Than Just a Day

For digital small businesses, Small Business Saturday is an opportunity to showcase their brand, forge lasting customer relationships, and set the tone for the holiday season. It’s a celebration of entrepreneurship and resilience, highlighting the diversity and dynamism of online small businesses.

Conclusion: A Digital Renaissance for Small Businesses

As Small Business Saturday embraces the digital world, it marks a renaissance for small businesses—a shift from traditional to modern, local to global. It’s a testament to the adaptability and creativity of small businesses. In the digital era, the potential for growth and connection is boundless. With the right mix of strategy, technology, and human touch, Small Business Saturday can transcend mere profit, fostering meaningful connections and celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit.

As Small Business Saturday evolves digitally, remember that its core essence remains: celebrating and supporting small business owners’ dreams and efforts, now just a click away.

Preparation: Making a Lasting First Impression

Small Business Saturday is akin to a community’s first date with your business – it’s crucial to make it count. Success starts with ensuring a well-stocked inventory tailored to your clientele. Equally vital is prepping your staff for heightened traffic and customer queries. An informed, responsive team can mean the difference between a missed chance and a sale. And don’t overlook the power of aesthetics: a clean, organized, and festively adorned space invites customers to stay and explore.

Marketing: Crafting a Compelling Message

In our digital era, effective marketing is critical. Use social media to generate excitement about your Small Business Saturday deals. This could range from Instagram stories highlighting new products to Facebook posts about special events. Your aim is to present an irresistible offer. Also, these platforms are perfect for showcasing your business’s personality and values, whether through witty tweets, engaging videos, or eye-catching visuals.

Community Engagement: Stronger Together

Small businesses thrive on community support. Foster this by partnering with nearby businesses for joint promotions, cross-marketing, or community events. Such collaborations benefit all, drawing in customers and introducing them to local shopping options they might have missed. Think of it as the local business community’s Avengers – diverse yet collectively stronger.

Exclusive Offers: The Appeal of Scarcity

Exclusive, limited-time offers for Small Business Saturday can spark excitement and urgency. Think beyond mere discounts – consider special bundles, or unique perks like a complimentary service with purchase or gifts for early birds. These offers should not just lure customers but also enhance their shopping experience, making it memorable and unique.

Storefront Appeal: Your Silent Ambassador

Your storefront is a silent yet potent ambassador, enticing people to venture inside. Invest in eye-catching window displays that reflect your brand’s essence and the festive season’s spirit. Effective lighting, signage, and thematic decorations can transform your storefront into a visual invitation that’s hard to resist. An attractive storefront not only draws attention but also sets expectations for what’s inside.

Conclusion: Beyond a Sales Day

Small Business Saturday is more than a sales spike; it’s a chance for local businesses to showcase their uniqueness, engage with the community, and lay groundwork for sustained growth. By focusing on detailed preparation, strategic marketing, community collaboration, exclusive offers, and a captivating storefront, small businesses can maximize their impact on this pivotal day, turning newcomers into regulars and deepening their community roots.

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co.

1. The Client Has Unrealistic Expectations

Sometimes you’ll meet clients with unrealistic expectations — even when those expectations are incompatible with your products and services. They might demand services that you may not be able to deliver. Trying to keep such clients can often damage your relationship with them, encourage them to spread bad word-of-mouth, and hamper your reputation. Identifying such clients in time can prevent that.

– Andrew Munro, AffiliateWP

s2. They’re Unresponsive

The number one way to tell if a client isn’t right for your business is if they are unresponsive. For client-business relationships to work, mutual understanding, communication, and respect are essential. If a client keeps pushing you aside when you need to clarify something for a project you’re working on for them, it may be time to move on at the end of the assignment.

– Daman Jeet Singh, FunnelKit

3. They Complain During Every Step

An obvious sign that a client isn’t a good fit for your business is when they complain about your work every step of the way. I’ve encountered clients who complain because they think they will get a better price or free work. If they are truly unhappy, try to correct the mistake once or twice, and if that doesn’t work, give them a refund. Catering to toxic clients will not help you grow or succeed.

– Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

4. You’re Unable to Meet Their Needs

One should turn down a client whose expectations are hard to meet. They may not be in the wrong in the situation, and they have the right to expect certain things since they will be paying for the solutions offered. However, you should assess whether it will be possible for you to keep up with those expectations considering your current scale of operations or resources available.

– Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

5. They Exhibit a ‘Blame-Oriented’ Mindset

Watch for a “blame-oriented mindset” in your prospecting and sales conversations. Ask a question like, “What solutions or service providers have you tried before to solve this problem, and why didn’t they work?” Observe if the prospect takes any ownership for past failures or solely blames previous providers. Such an attitude is a clear sign of a lack of accountability and collaboration. Turn down such prospects!

– Devesh Dwivedi, Higher Valuation

6. They Constantly Dismiss Your Advice

Picture this: a client who insists on guiding you through uncharted territory while you hold the compass of expertise. When faced with a client who consistently dismisses your professional advice and insists on going against best practices, it’s time to question the compatibility of your collaboration. Remember: You’re the expert for a reason, and your recommendations should be valued.

– Abhijeet Kaldate, Astra WordPress Theme

7. They Aren’t Engaging in the Project

When a client consistently fails to provide the necessary resources, feedback or engagement required for a successful partnership, it’s time to hit pause. A one-sided relationship will leave you feeling like a solo artist in a duet. Seek clients who actively participate, collaborate and invest in the success of the projects you undertake together.

– Adam Preiser, WPCrafter

8. There Is Value or Goal Misalignment

Turn down clients if their values or goals are not aligned with your business. This can lead to conflicts and dissatisfaction and even damage your reputation. Focus on clients who share similar values and goals to maintain your brand’s integrity and benefit from the work you do for them.

– Nic DeAngelo, Saint Investment – Real Estate Funds

9. They’re Always Adding ‘One More Thing’

You can tell a client is not right for your business, especially if you’re a freelancer, if they keep adding “one more thing” to the project. For instance, if you’re a writer and a client asks you to edit some of their other work “as a friend,” it may be time to end the partnership. This situation will lead to you doing tons of work and extra assignments for free, which was not the arrangement. 

– John Turner, SeedProd LLC

Prospecting is the process of searching for new customers, clients, or business opportunities. It involves researching and contacting potential leads, as well as presenting goods or services to potential buyers. Ultimately, the goal is to turn prospecting possibilities into concrete sales.

The numbers prove that prospecting is a worthwhile process. In a study of 488 buyers by the RAIN Group, 82% accepted meetings with salespeople who reached out proactively. This means early connections with potential leads get your foot in the door — and bring you one step closer to making a sale.

Why Prospecting Matters for B2B sales

Successful prospecting is vital to business-to-business sales. To start with, it allows salespeople to identify and nurture potential customers who are well-suited to the product or service that they’re selling. This can remove some guesswork from the selling process, which is a huge advantage.

Prospecting also helps salespeople understand the needs of their target markets. It gives them valuable insight into the buying process, allowing them to better tailor their sales approach and more effectively close deals.

What’s more, new buying preferences have made prospecting even more important than it already was. With more avenues for communication than ever before, businesses demand responsiveness. A recent McKinsey survey of more than 3,500 B2B decision-makers indicates that they expect 24/7 availability across in-person, remote, and self-service engagement modes.

Because prospecting is so important in B2B sales, it’s critical that salespeople adapt to these new preferences. Above all, this means responding to prospecting challenges quickly and decisively.

3 Challenges of Prospecting and How to Solve Them

There are several obstacles that can impede your prospecting efforts. Here are some tactics you can use to overcome three of the most common:

1. Finding qualified leads

The first step of prospecting is also one of its biggest challenges: finding qualified leads. This can be a time-consuming, research-intensive process. It can even be difficult to identify the right type of prospects for your products or services.

This is where your knowledge of your customer base matters. Once you define your ideal customer profile and create a list of leads who most closely match it, you can use targeted marketing tactics such as email campaigns or content marketing to reach them. It’s a tactic that other companies have come to rely on: A recent survey from Content Marketing Institute indicates that 80% of respondents succeeded in creating brand awareness with content marketing.

2. Lack of time

Prospecting takes time and effort. In fact, Crunchbase found that top sellers spend about six hours per week researching prospects. The process pays off, but it may be too time-consuming for some business owners to make use of.

To make the process faster, consider using automation tools. For example, a customer relationship management system or some kind of lead-tracking software might be what you need to speed things up. These solutions streamline the prospecting process and reduce the amount of time you spend researching and contacting leads.

You could also outsource your prospecting. Because outsourcing reduces costs and increases efficiency, it’s a great investment in general. It allows businesses to focus on core responsibilities while third parties handle the tedious tasks of the prospecting process. This reduces overhead costs associated with hiring and training staff and allows businesses to access larger pools of potential customers.

3. Too many leads

A successful prospecting strategy can actually generate too many leads. While this might seem like a good thing, it can quickly become a problem. A mountain of leads can overwhelm salespeople and lead to missed opportunities. Invesp found that, on average, 80% of sales require five follow-up calls to close a deal — far more than an overworked sales team can do for any lead. No one wants to lose out on an opportunity because of a missed call.

Organization is key. Segment leads into different categories and create a specific follow-up plan for each group. This will help with prioritizing efforts and ultimately ensure that no leads are overlooked. Even something simple, such as making a plan for a personalized follow-up, can lead to success: Outreach found that personalized subject lines increase open rates by 22%.

Takeaway

In sales, adapting to market preferences can be a game changer. It’s clear that prospects now want a range of communication options. They know their worth, and they won’t hesitate to walk if they don’t get what they want. This is why anticipating and responding to prospecting challenges is so important. Setbacks don’t have to result in failure — they just take creative solutions.

If you’ve been putting a lot of hard work into your email marketing but not seeing the results you want, then maybe your email deliverability could use some help. I’m going to share the four key factors that will help make sure more of your emails stay out of spam and land in the inbox.

And if you don’t have an email list yet, this will set you up for success right from the start!

The Four Pillars of Email Deliverability

When it comes to email, it’s all about deliverability. You can have the fanciest automations, the best copy, the best upsells, downsells, follow-ups… But if nobody’s getting those emails in their inbox, then it’s all for nothing.

This is where you’re up against the algorithms of the email giants that control more than 50 percent of the world’s inboxes: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. You’ve got to understand what they’re looking for—and play by their rules.

The good news is that it’s not that difficult to stay on the good side of the algorithms. Anyone can avoid the spam folder as long as they follow a few key guidelines.

There are four main pillars of email deliverability, and they form the acronym RACE:

• Reputation
• Authentication
• Content
• Engagement

Pat and email deliverability expert Adrian Savage covered these four pillars in depth in SPI episode 498:

Reputation

In business, as in everything, reputation matters. If you’ve got a lousy reputation, no one’s going to want to listen to you.

When it comes to email marketing, you need to focus on what’s known as your sending reputation.

You see, the big mailbox providers are monitoring the emails you’re sending, and most importantly, how people are reacting to them.

The more they see people marking your emails as spam or ignoring or deleting them, the more they’re going to mark down your sending reputation. And they’re more likely to send your emails right to the spam folder.

That’s the simple version, but it means that everything you do with your email marketing has to be focused on preserving and improving your sending reputation.

How to Improve Your Sending Reputation

So what can you do to improve and maintain your reputation with the big email services?

First, use common sense. If you feel like you’re gaming the system, you probably are—and you’re eventually going to get found out.

A (not so) great example is downloading lists of email addresses from the internet.

The only legitimate way to get ahead now with your email list is to send emails only to people who have specifically asked you to contact them.

If you buy a list and start emailing people who haven’t given you permission, you’re much more likely to get spam complaints, which will hurt your sending reputation.

And what’s the only definition of spam that matters in the eyes of the mailbox providers? Whatever the recipient thinks it is.

There are also businesses out there, like Spamhaus and Cloudmark, that operate email addresses called spam traps. If you send an email to a spam trap address, then you may be added to blocklists that tell the world you’re a low-reputation sender.

If you do decide to buy a list of addresses for some reason, make sure you really trust the person providing the data—it’s much better to control it yourself.

Next, you’ll want to clean your email list regularly. That way, you’ll avoid hitting what’s called a recycled spam trap.

Here’s how that works.

Suppose 10 years ago you had a Hotmail address that you’d stopped using, and Microsoft canceled your account. For the next few months, if anyone tried to email you, they’d receive an error saying the mailbox didn’t exist. But a few months later, Microsoft might reopen that address and repurpose it to catch senders who weren’t looking after the hygiene of their email list.

Send enough emails to spam trap addresses, and you’ll end up on a blocklist.

So, only send emails to people who have said they want to hear from you, and keep your email list clean so you don’t get caught in recycled spam traps.

Authentication

Authentication is the second crucial piece of improving your email deliverability.

It’s all about telling the world that you’re sending legitimate emails.

You’ve probably received spam from someone spoofing an email address that isn’t theirs. It’s relatively easy to spoof an address you don’t own—what’s not so easy is to authenticate one.

Authentication is what sets you apart from the spammers, and there are two steps you need to take to authenticate your email address.

The good thing is, this is usually a one-time thing you do when you’re setting up your email platform.

The two authentication steps involve a couple of acronyms.

Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM)

The first one is domain keys identified mail, or DKIM. This is how you get your email platform to digitally sign every email that you send.

You’ll need to look at your platform to determine how exactly to configure DKIM, because they all do it slightly differently. If you’re stuck, then find someone who can help you, because it is probably the most important single thing that will make the difference between hitting the spam folder and hitting the inbox.

Here’s guidance on setting up DKIM with some of the most popular email service providers (ESPs):

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

The second side of authentication is something called sender policy framework, or SPF.

SPF helps identify which mail servers are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain. This communicates which platforms you trust to send emails on your behalf, which can reduce the incidence of email spoofing—people pretending to send mail as you. Like DKIM, it’s a one-time thing, but crucial.

Doing those two things—setting up your SPF and DKIM settings—is going to make a huge difference in deliverability. And don’t be afraid to seek help if you need it.

Here’s guidance on setting up SPF with the popular ESPs:

Content

In the recent past, it was relatively easy to avoid the spam folder by being careful about the content in your emails: don’t use swear words, don’t mention Viagra, and don’t mention “free.”

Today’s spam filters are much more sophisticated, and the big email providers use a ton of artificial intelligence to figure out what’s junk and what’s legit.

In 2005, you might have gotten away with writing “free” as “fr.e–e” in an email, but today that’s a one-way ticket to the spam folder.

Making it to the inbox in 2022 is a lot more about being authentic with your email content. Here, another acronym comes in handy: WILF, which stands for:

• Words
• Images
• Links
• Frequency

Words

Words are important, obviously. And when it comes to email deliverability, it means writing emails the way you’d have a conversation with someone.

Write like yourself. The more your emails sound like they’ve been coming from you, the more authentic it sounds, the more likely those big sophisticated algorithms are going to recognize it as authentic.

In most cases, shorter is also better. Don’t cut it down at the expense of not getting your message across, but don’t waffle unnecessarily. Because, let’s face it, people’s attention spans are getting shorter.

At the same time, don’t stress too much about content either. There are no hard and fast rules here, and you don’t want to follow a rule at the risk of ruining your message.

You can always send a few test emails and see what happens. Just remember, however, that email has evolved, and no two people have exactly the same email experience anymore. The same email might end up in Spongebob’s inbox and Squidward’s spam folder.

But you can still learn some things by looking at the big picture of what you’re sending over time. If you notice that emails written a certain way are getting delivered more often than others, use that as a data point to guide how to craft your email content going forward.

Images and Links

Here’s where things get even more interesting. To include images or not include images in your emails? And what about links? One? None? Many?

First, remember that there are exceptions to every rule. But in general—and testing bears this out—the more images you’ve got in an email, the more likely it’s headed to the junk folder. And the same goes for the number of links.

One of the quickest ways for an email to be viewed as a promotion by Google is if it has a graphical banner at the top, because that makes it look like a promo. So just cut to the chase with your message.

If you need images in the middle of the email to reinforce or illustrate things, that’s a different story. But only include them if they’re going to actually add value, not just for the sake of it. If you can manage three or fewer images in total, perfect.

It’s the same with links: the more you use, the more your email looks like a promotion. One of the biggest mistakes people make is using a bunch of little social media icons in their email signature. Before you know it, you’ve got five additional images with links in your email, you’re in the promotions tab.

When it comes to links, also be careful about linking to websites you don’t control. You can’t always be certain whether the domain you’re linking to has a good domain reputation or not. It’s much better to only link to content that you’re in control of—like the stuff on your own website.

Frequency

Finally, there’s frequency. The more frequently you send emails to the people who want to receive them, the better you’re going to do. In the good old days, it was sufficient to send an email newsletter out once a month, but these days, mailbox providers are looking for consistency and engagement (which we’ll talk about in a second).

The more frequently you send emails to the people that want to read them, the better it’s going to look for your engagement. If you’re sending out an email three times a week, then you’re a lot more likely to reach more of your audience more quickly than if you’re sending one email a month.

That doesn’t mean you need to send an email every day—if you can, then great, if you’ve got enough to talk about—but the more frequently you can share some really cool value, the more people are going to love you, and more importantly, the more the mailbox providers will love you as well.

Engagement

While authentication is something you set up once and pretty much forget, engagement is something you need to pay attention to on an ongoing basis.

By engagement we’re talking about, are people reading your emails? Are they opening them? Are they clicking the links? Are they actually reading them properly? Or are they just deleting it without reading?

One of the worst ways to hurt your engagement is when you send something out, it lands in the spam folder, and no one rescues it.

When someone signs up to your email list for the first time, that may be the only chance you’ve got to keep your emails out of their spam folder. So direct them to a thank-you page that instructs them to check the spam folder for your first email and move it to their inbox if need be. If they don’t, they may never see another email from you in their inbox again.

That’s the most important thing.

The other is maximizing the number of people engaging by improving your open rates. Here’s where it’s important to clean your email list regularly, so you’re only sending email to the people who are likely to read it.

It can be scary to clean your email list regularly—because it means deleting people from your list—but it’s absolutely a great thing to do for your email engagement, and for the health of your email list.

Why? It will show Google and Microsoft and Yahoo! that what you’re sending is of greater interest to your subscribers. The higher they see your open rate, the more likely they are to increase your domain reputation. The better your reputation, guess what? The next email you send is more likely to land in the inbox. It’s a virtuous cycle.

More Email Marketing Resources

If you’re just getting started building your email list, the best time to start thinking about and implementing these email deliverability best practices is now.

And if you’ve had a list for a while and things have gotten stagnant, the best time to start is… also now.

If you need more support with your email marketing, you’re in the right place! Here are a few more resources to help you build an audience and create more revenue with a robust email marketing practice:

Sales has always had lonely moments. However, when the pandemic sent salespeople home to Zoom, the loneliness became palpable. This is becoming a costly problem.

Many of the changes to the sales profession are no longer temporary. Our clients are reporting that a portion of buyers are permanently working from home. Sales organizations are hiring more remote employees and video calls are the expected norm.

In an agenda-driven video sales call, the social elements (handshakes, shared coffee, etc.) that once humanized the sales interaction have been stripped away. Without these emotionally engaging elements, and without a bullpen of colleagues to buoy their spirits, sales jobs are increasingly becoming transactional and lonely roles.

As one seller put it, “Before, I was busy all the time, and some of it was fun. Now, I’m on Zoom just trying to stay awake. I’m realizing I need more social interactions, but at the end of the day, I’m too exhausted to make the effort.”

Left unaddressed, salesperson loneliness can become a costly problem. Recent research conducted by one of us (Dr. Good) reveals that loneliness goes beyond just a hit to morale — it has begun to impact salesperson behavior with customers, leading to an erosion of revenue, margin, and market reputation. Dr. Good’s data was gathered from two studies that surveyed more than 250 B2B and B2C salespeople from a variety of industries, as well as follow-up qualitative interviews, performance data, and observations of more than a dozen sales teams. Findings revealed that salesperson loneliness is causing three problematic behaviors that ultimately create a cycle of poor performance:

1. Social awkwardness

When social skills aren’t routinely practiced, they deteriorate like any other muscle. Sellers in the studies were frequently observed misreading social signals and misjudging the importance of key details in exchanges with customers. While not surprising — all of us are a little awkward these days — sellers play a particularly heavy price for missing social cues. Buyers are less likely to engage, and the trust required for relationship building doesn’t happen.

Further compounding this problem is the fact that sellers may be coming into a sales interaction moments after having been rejected by a previous customer. Without the buffer of peers in close proximately to help them reset, this could increase the potential for a confidence deficit, contributing to even more initial awkwardness on the next call. An awkward start has a chilling effect on customer engagement and can derail or, at the very least stall, what could have been a successful sales process.

2. Loss of focus on customer needs

Sellers who are overeager for social connection don’t listen deeply during the needs assessment phase of the sales process. The data revealed that these lonely sellers were more likely to forget critical customer information.

In a virtual environment, the visual cues that make each customer distinctive and memorable are often absent. When each customer is just another tiny box on your same computer, in the same room, talking about the same things, they bleed together. This lack of distinction makes what happened (and what the customer said) harder to remember. As one seller told us, “I’m on with 20 customers a day, and every call feels the same.”

We also saw evidence that because they don’t have enough meaningful social connections outside their job, sellers can wind up treating the customer as a confidante, someone they share with, rather than someone whose needs should be the organizing element of the conversation. 

Without a clear understanding of customer-specific needs and goals, sellers are unable to create a compelling or differentiated story about their solution. This impaired memory early in the process winds up hobbling them when they try to close.

3. Conspicuous overspending on customers

Nowhere was the direct cost of salesperson loneliness more readily apparent than their expense account. Dr. Good’s studies showed that salesperson loneliness was directly connected to increased spending on customers. It’s not hard to understand why someone who’s lonely would want to buy their clients gifts and meals, or why they might want to reduce the price to maintain a client friendship. These actions usually generate a warm response from customers, and what lonely person doesn’t want to generate a more positive emotional reaction from the people they spend time with?

However warm it might feel in the moment, this “sweethearting” did not improve salesperson performance in either of the two studies Dr. Good conducted. While buyers may have been grateful, and sellers may have gotten the dopamine high of a positive social interaction, this conspicuous overspending did not create additional revenue. It was a cost with no return on investment.

In the current social-starved environment, many sellers are over-indexing on the old adage, “people buy from people they like.” In an effort to be liked, salespeople have forgotten that the true purpose of sales: to improve life for customers.

How Managers Can Help Lonely Salespeople

As humans, we’re hardwired to seek meaningful connection. The challenge for sellers (and their managers) is two-fold: the shift to virtual created a huge interpersonal void for salespeople whose time had previously been filled with human interaction. Second, when salespeople try to mitigate their loneliness, their coping behaviors play out with customers, which has a direct impact on the organization’s financial health and reputation.

The three above behaviors create a dangerous cycle that erodes competitive differentiation, eats away at the margin, and results in costly turnover in the sales role. With the virtual world of selling unlikely to fully revert, it is crucial that leaders proactively mitigate this problem. Here are eight strategies to break this cycle:

Create situations that encourage non-competing.

When every sales meeting feels like Shark Tank, with coworkers pitted against each other, it reinforces the loneliness. Go beyond the usual sales reporting meetings and give your salespeople regular opportunities to be together without an agenda or contest. Something as simple as a weekly 15-minute “Share your favorite TV binge” huddle gives sellers a way to connect with coworkers rather than thrusting their loneliness on unsuspecting customers.

Activate a sense of shared purpose.

Sales loneliness magnifies when sellers feel that they’re nothing more than a lone wolf quota filler. You can help counter this feeling by regularly reinforcing a sense of higher purpose. Make a practice of discussing how your organization’s solutions make a difference to customers, and how each member of the team contributes. This reminds sellers that their jobs have meaning and that they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

Design a structure for peer-to-peer support.

Hold regular peer meetings in which sellers brainstorm together to help improve each other’s skills. For example, you can ask people for their favorite questions to ask during discovery or how to open new conversations without awkwardness. Putting sellers in a situation where they’re sharing best practices creates a support structure they can draw upon during times of challenge and change.

Do some brain training.

Listening skills were the most obvious (and potentially detrimental) thing to decline for reps experiencing loneliness. Reverse this trend by running a quick training drill for your sales team where they practice listening and responding to each other describing personal things like weekend plans or how they’ve arranged their workspace. Improving their listening skills in lower-stakes social settings, where there’s not a deal at risk, will help them do the same in front of customers.

Make sure your sales team is crystal clear on your value proposition.

When a rep has confidence in the value proposition they’re offering to customers, they’re less likely to discount or “sweetheart.” Without this solid base, a rep is more likely to feel like they are risking the personal connection by offering a price that may be perceived as too high or overspend on the customer to mitigate negative feelings.

Set spending guidelines and model appropriate gifts.

When spending guidelines are vague, it diverts attention from the true objective of the sale, which is to improve life for customers. Show your sellers exactly what appropriate and effective spending looks like. Perhaps it’s giving customers a helpful book about an issue they’re facing or providing a coffee gift card for them to use in your meeting. Demonstrate to your team that your solution combined with their own expertise is enough; you don’t need elaborate gifts to make connections.

Encourage your salespeople to schedule small breaks between client calls.

Tell your salespeople, “Give yourself five minutes between calls to review the notes, have a glass of water and remind yourself how we improve life for these customers.” This will increase their confidence in their offering and give them a chance to shake off what may have been an unsuccessful past call.  Grounding themselves in the value of their offering helps them start more strategically and curbs the impulse to overshare.

Encourage friendships outside of work.

Your customers don’t need another friend, but your salespeople probably do. But to have friends, you have to be a friend. Truly caring leaders would be wise to encourage salespeople to seek opportunities to pursue friendship outside of work. While friendship may seem like a touchy-feely topic inappropriate for leadership commentary, the research tells us that a salesperson’s lack of friends can be quite costly. Given the high stakes, it’s a problem worth addressing.

Salespeople are no different than the rest of us. When they’re lonely, they become more awkward, they tend to overshare, and they try to connect in using whatever means they have at their disposal. The above strategies can help mitigate salesperson loneliness, and ensure that your team is approaching customers with calm confidence. 

Amazon’s marketplace is as lucrative as it is crowded.

To profit as a seller, you have to stand out against over two million merchants. But if you do grab buyers’ attention, you’re bound to make sales since so many shoppers flock to Amazon. According to Seller App, a good conversion rate for Amazon sellers is between 10 – 15 percent, depending on the type of products listed.

The key to reaching Amazon shoppers is maximizing your listings’ visibility. There are so many products on the marketplace, and buyers don’t have the time or patience to sift through every single one. Make it easy for buyers to find your products, and you’ll be on track to win greater sales.

To boost your listings’ visibility, we’ll highlight nine key ways to drive external traffic outside of Amazon and internal traffic within the marketplace to your products. Using these strategies will lead buyers to your listings, so they can make their way down your sales funnel and become a customer.

What visibility means for Amazon listings

For products in your own online store, promotion is straightforward. You spread product awareness outside of your store through ads and other marketing efforts to drive traffic back to your listing pages.

Amazon listings are more complicated. They require both external and internal promotion. And with so much competition in the marketplace, sellers have to craft their listings to be highly visible on Amazon’s website, not just outside of it.

External promotion

External promotion for Amazon listing involves using outside channels to drive traffic back to your listing. It allows you to hook shoppers who aren’t already on Amazon to check out your listing.

Here are a few examples of external promotion methods for Amazon listings:

• Social media: Create ads and connect with influencers to spread awareness of your Amazon products and link back to your listings on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
• SEO: Include keywords your target buyers are Googling to have them rank high in search engine results.
• Getting backlinks: Find opportunities to link to your Amazon listings — such as publishing blog posts — to increase your items’ visibility and drive external traffic to your products.

With external promotion, you can make your listings stand out to shoppers outside of Amazon and maximize your sales.

Internal promotion

Internal promotion on Amazon helps you get more eyes on your merchandise. The process involves you paying the marketplace to present sponsored ads for your products, which are higher in search results.

Say you’re an Amazon merchant and you want to sell women’s sunglasses. You won’t be the only merchant selling the accessory on the marketplace. As shown below, there are over 20,000 other listings offering “sunglasses for women.”

Sunglasses aren’t an exception — Amazon, across all products, is saturated with merchants. To beat the competition, you have to find ways to increase your product listing’s visibility on the marketplace.

Here are two examples of internally promoting your Amazon products:

1. Win the Buy Box. When sellers share a single listing on Amazon because they all sell the same product, there’s always a Buy Box — the first highlighted price option.

Winning the Buy Box means prime visibility, so it’s a key way of attracting buyers on Amazon. Amazon considers a multitude of factors to pick the Buy Box seller — mainly price, but also others like credibility, seller rating, and shipping type. For Mrs. Jessie’s Quick Curls, the hair product company themselves won the Buy Box. As you can see below, they are the seller boldly listed on the upper righthand corner. Competing sellers are listed on the lower right corner — receiving less attention.

2. Rank high on Amazon product search results. Most buyers won’t move past the first page of search results, so getting a high ranking is a critical way to reach shoppers. You can boost your product rankings on Amazon by applying our promotion tactics below.

According to Amazon Seller Central, the marketplace search engine considers text match, price, availability, selection, and sales history to rank listings. These internal promotion tactics ensure shoppers can easily find your listing in Amazon’s crowded marketplace and make a purchase.

9 ways to promote your Amazon listings

An ideal Amazon promotion plan has a mix of tactics — including internal and external methods. You have to understand both marketplace policies — Buy Box winning and search rankings — to maximize sales. Also, look at ways to drive outside traffic to your listing. In this guide, we’ve outlined nine strategies for driving traffic from inside and outside of Amazon to your listing.

Let’s dive in.

1. Optimize your listings with SEO

Search engine optimization attracts a wide range of buyers to your listing. Both shoppers who are already on Amazon and those who are using other sites can find your listing when you include popular keywords. With these additions, search engines — both Amazon’s and others — determine that your listing is a relevant result and rank it higher.

Two key tools identify the keywords your shoppers are searching for most frequently.

1. Google Keyword Planner: This free tool indicates the monthly search volume of keywords on Google’s search engine. Since Amazon listings can rank on Google, this tool is especially helpful.
2. Scope: This is a keyword tool specifically geared for Amazon. It allows you to track keywords’ monthly volume, ranking position over time, estimated sales, and more.

You can learn more about other SEO tools for finding keywords using this guide.

Once you’ve collected your keywords, place them throughout your listing, such as in the title and description. Detecting these popular keywords, search engines will recognize your listing as a relevant result for your buyers’ searches and rank it higher.

2. Buy Sponsored Product ads

Even with SEO, there’s no guarantee your Amazon listing will be placed higher in search results. The marketplace’s engine considers other factors for ranking — selling history, price, and more — so SEO alone doesn’t necessarily lead to higher rankings.

To gain more control over their listings’ visibility, Amazon sellers can pay for the marketplace to sponsor their products and place them higher in search results.

Sellers only pay when shoppers click on their ad, so the payoff with Amazon promotion is guaranteed. Your listings’ visibility is increased, so shoppers on Amazon can easily find your product and potentially make a purchase.

3. Share listings on social media

The average person spends nearly 2.5 hours per day on social media platforms. Given this popularity, sharing your Amazon listings on social media through your business’ accounts is a powerful way of getting your products in front of more buyers.

Since your followers expect to receive value from your posts, it’s best to avoid creating posts on your account that are basically ads for your listings. Instead, it’s better to share your listing in more subtle ways that are still helpful to your followers.

Here are three ideas:

• Use a social media promo code. Merchants with a Professional Selling account on Amazon can create a promotion link to share through social media about a discount they’re offering. Unlike a traditional ad, sharing a promo code gives users value by helping them save money. For more details on setting up this promo code, check out Amazon’s guide.
• Share content that includes your listing link. Post an informative, helpful blog post or video that includes a link to your Amazon listing on LinkedIn, such as a how-to video or listicle. It’s a great way to indirectly promote your products through social media.
• Host a contest or giveaway. Announce on Facebook or Instagram that any user who posts your Amazon listing in their story will be entered for a chance to win a prize. This reward will motivate users to share your listing and spread the word about your Amazon products.

By creating exciting and relevant content on social, you can promote your Amazon listings in a way that feels natural rather than invasive.

4. Run competitor analyses

For internal visibility on Amazon, your listings need to stay ahead of competitors’ products. In buyers’ searches, your products will fall behind competitors’ items in rankings if you aren’t monitoring how those listings are engaging shoppers.

To keep your listings high in Amazon’s search rankings, here are three factors to monitor in competitors’ listings:

1. Price. You want to keep your listings’ prices at or lower than competitors’. Not only because shoppers are looking for the best deals, but you also want to win the Buy Box if you’re sharing a listing with other sellers. Plus, Amazon highly prioritizes price in choosing the box winner.
2. Images. When Amazon shoppers are browsing through search results, they’re not only looking at price — they’re also checking out images. Visuals can be a very persuasive factor in encouraging purchases, so make sure your listing has higher quality images than competing items.
3. Text. If your listing currently isn’t ranking high for your product keywords, it might be because the listing text isn’t considered relevant by Amazon’s search engine. Analyze the text of the current top-ranking listings for potentially relevant keywords you can include to boost your product.

Finding ways to make your listing outshine competitors on Amazon will increase your product rank in the marketplace’s search results.

5. Partner with influencers

Just like products in an online store, Amazon listings can gain significant traffic through influencer marketing. When prominent individuals in your industry stand behind your product and link to your listing, it sends a message to communities of your key buyers that your listing is worth checking out.

To promote your listing through influencer marketing, start by coming up with a list of key individuals in your sector with a large base of social media followers. Brainstorm this list by considering your own personal network or use an influencer platform like Influence.co.

Once you have a list going, check out this guide to learn about the best ways to reach out to influencers and measure results once they share your Amazon listings.

6. Maintain strong product ratings

First impressions matter when you’re on a marketplace as competitive as Amazon. Buyers are browsing through thousands of products, so they won’t settle for items that seem to be low-quality.

A clear way to give shoppers a positive first impression of your Amazon listings is to maintain high-star ratings. When buyers are browsing through Amazon search results, the star ratings are visible for each product.

Along with the price, these star ratings are a major factor in whether shoppers decide to click on your listings. They can’t see your products in person, so this feedback from other buyers is especially meaningful to shoppers trying to make a purchase.

Here are three tips for maintaining high-star ratings on all of your Amazon listings:

1. Describe your item exactly as it is in your listing. False product details and images may boost sales initially, but ultimately they only hurt your Amazon business. Buyers who receive a product that’s totally different from the listing are bound to leave a low rating in disappointment.
2. Provide excellent customer service. If you don’t handle customer requests properly, such as shipping an item late or not being prompt in completing a return, you’ll upset buyers. Avoid receiving a low product rating by delivering the item as expected and promptly resolving issues.
3. Reach out to disappointed buyers. When a customer leaves a poor rating, reach out to the buyer to see if you can still resolve their issue. If you can fix their problem, they do have the power to edit their review. And if they do, it’ll improve your product’s overall score.

Ratings are a key way for buyers to quickly assess your Amazon products. Make sure your items’ scores stay high to keep buyers interested in your listing.

7. Maintain strong shipping performance

Shipping, at first, might seem totally unrelated to promoting your products. But on Amazon, your shipping performance is a key factor in your listings’ visibility.

Amazon wants to keep shoppers happy, so they discourage poor shipping practices by making shipping a factor in winning the Buy Box and ranking high on Amazon’s search rankings. With consistent shipping issues, you’re less likely to win the Box or to rank high in search.

Instead of hurting your visibility, use these three tips to maintain a strong shipping performance on Amazon:

1. Regularly check your shipping performance metrics. In Amazon Seller Central, you can monitor key shipping performance metrics — like on-time delivery rates — to ensure you’re consistently offering great shipping and pleasing customers.
2. Use Amazon FBA. By signing up for Fulfillment by Amazon, sellers no longer have to worry about providing great shipping as the marketplace handles fulfilling your orders. If there are any complaints about your shipping from buyers, the marketplace will remove the rating since they are responsible for shipping issues.
3. Use inventory management software. Adopting an inventory management program, like GoDaddy Marketplaces, keeps you on track so you can avoid understocking and being unable to complete orders. GoDaddy Marketplaces monitors when your stock is low across channels so you always know when to reorder.

Always provide good shipping, and you’ll increase your potential to rank higher in search results and at winning the Buy Box. With this visibility, Amazon shoppers can easily find your products.

8. Monitor your seller rating

Like shipping performance, your overall seller rating on Amazon also impacts your chances of winning the Buy Box and ranking high in Amazon’s search results.

Punishing low-rated sellers with less visibility is a measure to keep Amazon shoppers happy and sustain the marketplace. It ensures buyers are working with merchants who have a positive record and can provide great service.

To keep your listings visible on Amazon, follow these three tips to maintain a high seller rating:

1. Monitor your seller rating. On Seller Central, you can view the factors that contribute to your overall seller ratings — such as Perfect Order Percentage and Late Response Rate — and determine which ones need to be improved to increase it.
2. Be prompt in customer service. Set a daily reminder to resolve customer issues and respond to customer messages. The quicker you give buyers attention, the more impressed they’ll be with your service.
3. Determine whether negative feedback could be removed. Amazon has clear guidelines for providing feedback. Review this post to determine whether any of your negative feedback from buyers should be removed.

Overall, make an effort to keep your seller rating as high as possible. You’ll help your listings stay visible through the Buy Box and Amazon search results.

9. Launch a Lightning Deal

Beyond convenience, many shoppers come to Amazon for the marketplace’s low prices. With this interest, a primary way of attracting Amazon shoppers to your listing is by launching a Lightning Deal.

Lightning Deals are time-based, marked-down products buyers can find in Amazon’s Today’s Deals section. They draw a lot of attention and sales from Amazon’s shoppers not only because they appreciate discounts but also because their limited time frame motivates buyers to make a purchase.

Sellers have to pay a fee, and Amazon has to approve Lightning Deals before they’re launched.

Here are three of the key guidelines sellers need to meet for their Lightning Deals to be approved:

1. Lightning Deals run for four to twelve hours.
2. Lightning Deals can only run once in a seven-day period.
3. You should have your proposed quantity for the deal available at least seven days before the deal is expected to launch.

To learn more about Lightning Deal guidelines and setting them up, review this guide. With Lightning Deals, more buyers will come across your listings in the Today’s Deals section — driven to purchase within the limited promotion time frame.

Play with promotion to boost Amazon sales

Promoting Amazon products is unlike traditional marketing for a single store where you’re mainly focused on driving external traffic. You also have to find ways to increase your listings’ visibility internally on Amazon. The marketplace is competitive, so you have to find innovative ways to make products stand out against other sellers’ items.

To simplify promotion on Amazon, make the most of the nine key strategies here for boosting your listings’ visibility inside and outside of the marketplace. Experiment with these different methods, and track your results to see which ones lead to greater sales. The more you test these tactics, the better equipped you’ll be to win the attention of Amazon buyers — leading you to stay ahead of competitors.

Multichannel retail is subject to the butterfly effect, where whatever happens on one channel can affect your efforts in others. Small changes in channel strategy quickly spiral into struggles to maintain inventory, marketing efforts, customer service, and consumer feedback.

Knowing how to address challenges for your multichannel retail business will ensure you run a tight ship. Create strategies for each moving part, engage with your industry’s community online, and gather support and feedback where needed to help your business run more seamlessly and generate more revenue.

1. Overstocking and understocking inventory without a game plan

In the U.S. out-of-stock rates for online merchandising are much higher than the out-of-stock rates for one-stop shops. And the cost of inventory mismanagement — overstocks, understocks, and preventable returns — is nearly $2 trillion.

Having a solid inventory management strategy in place is essential for your multichannel retail business.

Customers will move on rather than wait if a product isn’t in stock or “will arrive in 3 weeks.” A solid inventory strategy can build credibility for your brand.

Inventory management is often thought of as the most challenging aspect of multichannel retailing. Each channel functions on its own, so change on one platform doesn’t translate to the next.

For example, let’s say you have a collection of candles on your multichannel retail shop, Amazon, and Etsy. Your most popular scent, in particular, sells out but only marks as out-of-stock on your boutique site — neglecting the third parties. Now you’ll have to reach out to the buyers who purchased the missing candles. Let them know that the item is unavailable or will take an extended time to restock. Either option doesn’t look good for your brand or business.

A situation like this is avoidable with the right planning and strategy. And as a result, you’ll build your reputation and lower the cost of inventory mismanagement.

Inventory solution: Follow a 4-step process that steers clear of overstocking and understocking

A strategy will keep your inventory, logistics, and distribution functions in sync, to meet customer expectations across all retail platforms.

1. Use a system for inventory management: As a multichannel retailer with a solid system in place, you’ll have a more accurate view of products moving through the supply chain. An inventory system aims to verify items match with barcodes and product tags to avoid discounts. The codes and tags offer accuracy — ensuring your stock level in the warehouse matches what you have in your digital system.
2. Gather accurate data: Precision is crucial when it comes to collecting information for your inventory count to avoid running into untimely restocking. When looking at what’s physically in the warehouse, on paper, and in the inventory system, ensure the numbers are the same across all three areas.
3. Dig into customer needs: From looking into trending topics (like what’s hot for the holidays), get clarity and dig into what’s intriguing to your audience. What are your competitors selling that you can add your own flair to in order to make it better? Stay ahead of the game to ensure you are the first business your target audience turns to. Knowing what is popular in the market will let you know what to buy more of to avoid understocking, as well as what to buy less of to avoid overstocking.
4. Outsource a logistics supplier: While you have the option to invest in individuals and systems to get the perfect amount of stock, choose to outsource a logistics supplier instead. They already have the assets, knowledge, and experience to ensure your stock levels are tight.

2. Delivering consistent marketing and messaging across multiple social platforms

For high engagement, brand messaging for your business needs to be the same across all social media platforms as a multichannel retailer and marketplaces. Your target audience will have a crystal-clear understanding of who they’re engaging with.

But many brands overextend themselves. Only 9% of marketers consistently engage with customers across multiple channels. Rather than remaining consistent on a few channels, they open themselves to more avenues and then struggle to maintain conversations with their audiences on each.

But whichever marketplaces your products are on, make sure your most active social media platforms are visible and accessible. Customers and potential buyers should have quick and easy access to your social channels to see what you, your brand, and your products are all about.

As a starting point to increasing customer engagement and connecting with customers, focus on one or two channels where customers engage most. Whoever follows you on those likely has an interest in your products or has already made purchases and is ready for more.

Marketing solution: Create space on social media through 3 customer-engaging tactics

1. Get creative: Create polls on Instagram that provide knowledge about your brand, product history, plus different channels you sell on. What you share will be mini teaching moments for your followers to connect in a more meaningful way.
2. Be interactive: Ask product-related questions in Facebook groups, on Instagram stories, or whenever you receive the most engagement. You’ll gather different perspectives from your audience to later apply to the type of products you sell.
3. Use customer feedback: Social proof is everything. And with 92.4% of customers relying on online reviews to determine their future purchases, you’ll want to showcase the positive customer reviews to make your business shine. The firsthand, genuine remarks are what will attract future buyers to hop on the train to buy from you too.

3. Focusing too closely on your product instead of customer service

You can quickly lose a potential customer before they “walk through the door” if you’re giving too much attention to your products and not enough to them.

According to Bain & Company, a customer is four times more likely to do business with a competing brand if a problem they incur with your brand is service-related rather than price-related.

Also, Salesforce’s customer service facts found that you can boost revenue by improving customer service efforts. They say that an excellent customer experience is essential for building relationships with customers. And 67% of people say they’d gladly pay extra to get it.

With the perfect team and the help of automation in place, you’ll have high satisfaction results from customers.

Customer service solution: Scale your team and use automation

Scale your team by having a point person handle customer inquiries. While the person in this position should have a strong background in customer service, allow them to lean on automation when traffic increases. The mechanization will heighten the chance of solid interactions and experiences.

Your customer support representatives should carve out time daily to cater to the needs of consumers. So, hire people who are big on genuinely interacting with customers.

For customers to immediately reach out, ensure your contact details are accessible. All information should be the same on each platform to ensure all customer questions and inquiries go to the same email address, phone number, or social media channel for direct messages.

Automation can come into play by implementing automated responses. A simple — “Thank you so much for reaching out! You will receive a response from a team member within the next 12 hours” — goes a long way, rather than leaving customers in the dark.

4. Evaluating your market without listening to customers

It’s easier to collect complex data than evaluate qualitative feedback or notice subtle signs. And subtle signs can be given to you if you ask customers for them.

Only one out of every 26 customers is likely to give feedback about their complaints. The rest of them take their business elsewhere. But you can increase the pool of customer feedback by letting customers know that you’re here to listen and make a difference.

Evaluating your market by tuning into customer feedback will help you guide your marketing efforts and increase customer satisfaction — which will determine if you meet their expectations.

Listening solution: Offer surveys to get clarity on customer needs

Because people now have shorter attention spans than goldfish, you need to offer quick and simple survey questions that get to the point and draw their attention, so you get the feedback you need. The more feedback you get from your target audience, the better you can cater to their needs.

For instance, let say you run a multichannel retail business that sells protein vitamins and supplements. Your newest protein powder claims to boost energy and metabolism faster than competing brands.

Rather than relying solely on market and sales data as a determining factor of success, personally reach out to customers for feedback.

Send out a blast email or text message, asking a few questions to buyers of the new supplement. Ask them about the pros and cons, as well as ways you may be able to improve the product. Overall, the goal is to show customers that you hear them — considering their recommendations and applying them to future products.

Optimize your multichannel retail business for consistency

Optimizing for consistency across each channel minimizes the chances of small changes turning into big problems. In turn, optimizing maximizes the chances of multichannel retail success. Focusing on enhancements is especially crucial if your business is booming and you’re working on expanding to new channels.

Bring your channels closer together by using a marketing dashboard for optimization. You’ll keep a closer eye on all moving parts of your operations, ensuring everything flows as perfectly as possible. And, of course, having a proper system running will help you stay competitive with cost and customer retention.

Etsy is the home for original, handcrafted, or vintage products sold by regular people. Selling on Etsy is a great idea — it’s the sixth-largest online marketplace in the world, with over 46 million users. Putting your product on Etsy thrusts it into the limelight, practically guaranteeing eyes on your listing from across the globe. But do you know how to sell on Etsy?

Now is a great time to begin selling on Etsy because people are excited to support small businesses. There has been a lot of media focus on the effect of the pandemic on small businesses, and the community’s support could be a great launching point for a new Etsy shop.

Whether you’re looking for a part-time gig or intend to make Etsy your full-time job, we can help guide you through the process of how to sell on Etsy, setting up your Etsy store and selling your first product in just 10 steps.

Step 1: Create your brand

Before you log on to Etsy, take a day to create your brand — the name of your shop, your logo, and your brand’s personality.

Choose a unique and eye-catching name

Choosing your store name can be tricky, but it’s one of the most important aspects of the setup process.

Your store name should evoke a feeling that you want to be associated with your store and products.

Keep in mind what the primary draw of your Etsy store is when choosing a moniker. If it’s handcrafted, organic or vintage, try to include that in your brand name.

Before deciding on a name, be sure you search Etsy and/or Google for similar names, and make sure it’s not taken or potentially confusing to customers who might run into a different shop with a similar name. At the same time, you don’t want your name to be so generic that it won’t ever turn up during a search.

In addition to evoking a feeling and providing some information about your product, the name of your store should be unique and memorable but also legible and sensible so it’s easy to find.

Maeven Vintage is a great example of a shop name that works. “Vintage” is useful — it describes the products being sold. And “Maeven” is a unique form of “Maven,” which literally means “expert or connoisseur” and adds a dash of elegance and panache.

Invest in logo design

Similarly, your logo should be simple and clear, but also captivating and memorable. This is when it’s best to contact a designer on Fiverr or another gig website who can help come up with a professionally designed logo.

The logo is the first image associated with your brand and is an important first impression. It is your first communication to the customer about your brand.

We’ll call out Maeven again, because, hey, we’re here. That is a clean, simple logo that oozes “vintage art deco,” with a feeling of sharpness and speed that evokes modern design.

The way the words seem to be fading also suggests a memory, but the crisp lines suggest that the memory has been well preserved.

Related: How to design a logo in 12 steps — A DIY guide

Create a communication strategy

You’ll want to decide in advance what your brand’s voice is. Don’t get too deep into the weeds here, but make a plan for how you plan to communicate with customers, and keep it consistent.

When you communicate directly with customers, you will, of course, want to be professional, but Etsy thrives on the personal touch, so keeping some of your personality in communications with customers is important.

The first way to do that is through your messages or emails with customers: answer their questions in a timely manner. Take the time to thank them for their question or purchase, and ask if they’re satisfied with the product.

Many Etsy sellers also include a thank-you card or small thank-you “gift,” such as a sample product — one that a customer might later buy in full-size — when they send their products.

Step 2: Create your Etsy account

On day two, once your brand is in order, it’s time to make your Etsy account and start setting up your Etsy store.

Set up your account

We recommend using a desktop or laptop to initially create your Etsy store. After the store is made, it can be managed via Etsy’s app later on.

To set up a shop, you will need an Etsy account. If you’ve purchased from Etsy in the past, you can use that same account and just click “Sell with Etsy” near the top middle-right of any page.

If you do not yet have an Etsy account, you will need to create one. Simply go to Etsy.com, click “Sign In” at the top-right corner of the screen, and click “Register” in the new pop-up. From there, follow the prompts to enter your email and new password, then confirm your account.

Fill out your Etsy profile

Once your Etsy account/store is created, you can start incorporating personality by creating an opening announcement and filling out some info in your profile.

Your opening announcement should include your shop banner and logo. This will make a clear statement to customers and fellow retailers about what your shop/brand is about.

Your profile allows you to add a lot of personality: you should include a nice photo of yourself, along with an engaging story. How did your business get started? What inspired you to create/find these unique products? You may also include a video to reach customers, explaining how your product is made. People love passion — share yours.

This is a great time to include information on the unique process of product creation or to outline details such as ingredients being organic or practices focusing on sustainability. The information you include in your profile when you create your Etsy account will help customers and the Etsy community learn more about you and your business.

Step 3: Study the Etsy policies relevant to your store

Opening a store of any kind, online or otherwise, comes with its own set of rules and regulations. Familiarize yourself with Etsy’s policies to better understand how your shop works, how you get paid, and how your store is protected.

Etsy charges per listing

Etsy sets a fee of $.20 per listing when the listing is created, regardless of whether the product sells.

But that’s not the end of it: listings for most products expire after four months. Etsy does provide an auto-renew feature that enables sellers to easily keep their listings active longer than four months.

Once the four months is up, you will automatically be charged the $.20 to renew your listing. This is a helpful way to keep track of inventory without having to recreate listings.

You do not have to pay a listing fee if you are editing a preexisting listing. There are slightly different rules for creating a private listing for certain types of products, but this limits your customer exposure on Etsy.

Reviews can make or break your shop

Reviews are very important on Etsy. They determine not only whether or not a customer will choose your shop over similar shops but also how many eyes Etsy will put on your shop.

Etsy employs a five-star rating system that customers can use once their product is marked as “delivered.”

Now, here’s the rub: reviews expire after 100 calendar days. This is done by Etsy to provide up-to-date quality information for new customers, but it also means you can’t rest on your laurels. Consider adding “please review your experience” or a similar message at the end of all of your customer communication and confirmation emails.

Ensuring that customer service and shipping are hassle-free will help manage the kind of bad reviews that are focused on the process rather than on the product itself. It is helpful to include up-to-date shipping information in your listings and purchases so that people who feel their item arrived late don’t leave a negative review.

You can see their reviews by going into the “Shop Manager,” clicking the name of the shop in “Sales Channels,” and then clicking on “Reviews.” You can also find your rating there. A high rating not only adds to your shop’s authority but also determines whether or not you have access to Etsy’s Seller Protection Policy.

Etsy’s seller protection policy helps resolve disputes

Etsy does have a seller protection policy, which most shops will qualify for and which requires no outside application policy. In order to qualify for the seller protection policy, your shop must be in good standing and use basic features, such as Etsypay.

The protection policy allows for the seller to receive help from Etsy corporate if there is a case that needs to be resolved. This generally means helping to mediate disputes between buyers and sellers over product quality concerns, shipping issues, chargebacks, and other payment disagreements.

Step 4: Visit the Etsy forums

Creating and managing an online store can be a lonely business — take advantage of the Etsy community to learn from the pros and maybe create a network of helpful contacts.

Forums are a great way to get questions answered, especially for an Etsy newbie. Forums can include almost anything, from latest trends with your products to expert tips from sellers. The Etsy forum community is diverse and knowledgeable; exploring forums when you create your shop will undoubtedly lead you to some useful information.

Be sure to contact other sellers for cross-promotion. The sellers you choose to cross-promote should provide something similar to your product, but one that you do not provide yourself.

For instance, if your Etsy shop includes antiques from the Depression period, but a customer is looking for something mid-century modern, it would be great to link a fellow antique dealer who specializes in mid-mod. They can cross-promote your shop as well, which will lead to a wider buyer base for both of you. You can use Etsy Teams to meet similar sellers.

Step 5: Take a crash course in SEO to perfect your copy

Your next step is to spend a day learning about SEO — search engine optimization. The text on your website — also called copy — is crawled by Google, which then uses that information to guide users toward or away from your site. Making your copy as search-engine-friendly as possible is paramount.

You don’t have time to become an SEO expert in a day, but a few quick lessons can help Google (and future customers) find your Etsy store.

Find your keywords

One of the most basic principles of SEO is to find a useful, descriptive keyword that people are proved to be searching for.

If you’re selling furniture, keywords to look for might be “couch,” “reclining chair,” or “end table.” For custom jewelry, it might be “crystals,” “homemade jewelry,” or (surprise) “custom jewelry.”

There are free tools that can help you do a little keyword research beforehand. Wordtracker, Google Trends and Keyword Generator can tell you whether people are searching for your terms, and even how hard it might be to grab Google’s attention with your own products.

Plug some keywords about your product into these research tools and see what they turn up. Then, you can adjust your writing accordingly, adding those keywords into all of your product descriptions and marketing material.

Don’t be afraid to brag about your expertise

Another principle of SEO is called “EAT,” or “Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.”

In your product copy, your store description, and your marketing, you need to at least touch on all three pillars. It wouldn’t be unwise to start a blog as well, with personal or product-related topics that sneakily improve your shop and brand’s SEO.

You should showcase your expertise — why are you selling or making this product and why should we care? Authority is a little tougher when you’re starting out; this is basically a measurement of your clout, your established credentials, or how beloved your brand or product is. You’ll be working on that. Third is Trustworthiness; this is where reviews and testimonials come in.

Some high-quality pictures can at least showcase how expertly made or sourced your product is, which can help with all three pillars.

Day 6: Take high-quality product photos

A product photo provides shoppers with a first impression, so make it a good one. Most visitors to your shop will look at the product image before they read anything but the name. We have a few basic tips to help you get the most out of basic lighting and even just a camera phone for photography.

Invest in lighting

It is helpful for pictures to look consistent (same lighting/background) and even include matching labels to look professional.

Early-morning light or even outdoor light helps showcase products, but you can also purchase a ring light so that you can create listings indoors at any time.

Listing photos should be well-lit and clear. Avoid shadows or blurriness. If you’re using a camera phone, be sure to adjust your settings to avoid things like flash or panoramic views. Flash will generally wash a product out, flattening all details and making it look two-dimensional. In fact, when lighting any product, try to light it from multiple angles to soften hard shadows, to help the product stand out from the background, and to make it appear more three-dimensional.

In addition, you can purchase lighting and backdrop equipment for a reasonable price if you prefer a clean white background and professional-looking lighting.

Up your photography game

Your phone’s camera will work fine if you have decent lighting and a little patience, but you can improve your photography dramatically with a few reasonably priced accessories. There are several lenses you can purchase for a camera phone, depending on the look you want for your product listing. Moment, Olloclip, and Nelomo make excellent and affordable lenses that snap right onto your current phone.

If you want to provide clarity on the size of your product, you can include a photo “to scale” with something the consumer can reference, like a quarter. So if you’re selling lip balm in one-ounce tins, including a quarter next to the tin in the listing picture will help the customer get a good idea of how much product your listing includes.

If you don’t want to become an expert on product photography, you can also hire an expert to touch up your basic photos for minimal costs. They can be found pretty easily on sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer. This will ensure a professional look without as much work on your part.

Step 7: Create your listings

On the seventh day, you won’t be resting. Instead, you’ll be doing one of the most important steps — creating the listings for selling on Etsy.

To create a listing, you must have a photo, choose a price, describe your product, and determine shipping details. Sign on to your account, click “Shop Manager” and then “Listings” to start adding your product listings.

If you have more than one product photo, you must choose a thumbnail photo, which will be the photo that appears when customers search for your product.

Price your product

Research Etsy and Google to see what other sellers are asking for products similar to yours, and then gauge yours accordingly. You may want to offer special pricing or introductory sale pricing to get your shop more traffic at first.

Name, categorize and describe your product

First, give your listing a title — the name of your product. Then, choose the appropriate category — just begin typing your category (“women’s shoes” or “custom jewelry”) and the box will suggest relevant categories.

Describe your product

This is another opportunity for your personality to show and to describe any details for the products that buyers might find helpful. For instance, if you’re selling plants, are the plants rooted, or are they cuttings? This transparency increases the likelihood customers will trust your shop.

Set up shipping

This is available in the “Settings” section under “Shop Manager” and then “Shipping.” There are lots of options based on size and weight and international versus domestic. If you have questions about which type of shipping would work best for your shop, it’s a great time to consult forums and ask fellow Etsy sellers.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

There are lots of tools available to help your listings go further or to help you handle the more complex aspects of listing, such as Etsy’s taxonomic structure. Services like Sellbrite offer multiple listing platforms (googleshop +etsy) or listings integrated with other apps specific to your business.

Step 8: Download the Etsy mobile app

The Etsy mobile app isn’t just for buyers — you can manage your entire store from a phone or tablet.

Go to the App Store or Google Play on your device, and download the Etsy mobile app for free.

Sign in to your seller account; from there, you can manage listings, reviews, and orders, as well as increase your social media presence for your shop.

The mobile app allows for notifications so that you can respond to buyers or questions instantly, ensuring that you have solid customer service at your shop. Fast response time to customer questions will also boost your good standing.

Step 9: Launch your shop

It’s time for you to officially launch your Etsy shop — to send your new child into kindergarten and hope they make friends.

If your profile and listings are ready to go, and you’re happy with how everything looks, it’s time to open your shop. To make your shop “live,” simply sign in to your seller account and click “Open Your Shop.” A successful launch is not only based on having all of your ducks in a row but also usually includes some social media and marketing. Be sure that those campaigns are in place to create a buzz and help customers find your shop.

Opening your shop means you are live and ready to sell your wares. Customers can contact or buy once the shop is open, so make sure you are opening at a time when you’re ready to take on the commitment of regular customers.

Step 10: Market your Etsy shop everywhere

And now, the real selling starts — selling your brand, selling your products, and, most importantly, selling yourself. Now it’s time to channel your inner Don Draper and get to marketing.

There are many easy, effective ways to promote your shop on social media.

Share your best products on social media

If you’re looking to employ social media marketing yourself, you’ll want to choose some of your most impressive products as well as a create a brief description of your shop to share on social media. Most of the keywords you chose for your SEO campaign can be used as a hashtag on Instagram.

Consider buying ads

Social media marketing can consist of buying ads and setting up a campaign with social media providers or services. Facebook ads and Twitter ads are extremely easy to set up, and you can set any level of budget (per day or per click) you want to make sure you don’t get surprised with a huge bill.

Join the community

There are also lots of communities on social media for small-business owners. Find one based on your area, product, or socioeconomic background to link up with other businesses. Look for hashtags related to your product or industry, and peruse them for frequent posters.

Use video on social media

And of course, don’t neglect the power of video on social media. Consider creating videos for your most striking products — even five-second clips with some dynamic editing and fun music.

Launching your shop isn’t the end

In just 10 steps, you can learn all of the basics of selling on Etsy, creating your brand, and launching both your store and your marketing campaign.

What happens next is up to you (and a little bit of fate). You never know until you try. Your Etsy shop could be the seed of an ecommerce empire. Good luck in the days ahead.

The rest of your journey is up to you.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) offers an excellent opportunity to make money online. When done well, SEO can be a good source of passive or recurring income.

However, like any other business, starting an SEO business can be overwhelming, especially if you lack the right skills. Luckily, you have come to this post. Here we look at how you can develop a recurring income stream as an SEO expert.

Let’s get started!

Why SEO is a great way to make income

People looking to make money online have many options. Some popular ways to make money online include creating and growing an engaging website, building an e-commerce store, selling online courses, selling affiliate products and services, selling eBooks, etc.

However, starting any of these businesses is only the beginning—you need to attract traffic and generate leads to make money. This is where SEO comes in.

That said, you can make good revenue if you set up SEO as a service. The best thing about an SEO business is that it can be a great source of recurring revenue. After all, businesses require SEO services consistently to maintain their rankings on search engines and make sales.

Back to our question: Is SEO a great way to make income online? Yes, you can earn good revenue by setting SEO as a service. Types of SEO that can help make passive or recurring income include:

• Affiliate SEO – Affiliate SEO involves optimizing an affiliate website for SEO to increase traffic, generate leads, and make sales
• Client SEO – Client SEO involves providing SEO services to businesses and getting paid for them
• LeadGen SEO – LeadGen SEO involves improving a website’s ranking for individual web pages in search results (SERPs) to increase leads and revenue
• Rank and Rent SEO – The rank-and-rent model involves building a website, improving its rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs), and later renting it out

Steps to setting up SEO as a service

Here’s a practical guide to help set up your SEO service successfully:

Educate yourself on standard SEO practices

The first step to building a good SEO service is to learn SEO. People who skip this step end up with a half-baked venture and many unhappy clients. As such, you must take your time to learn SEO in detail before you set up your SEO business.

Some of the things to remember when learning SEO include:

• The goal of SEO
• Keyword research
• On-page and off-page optimization (know the difference)
• Identify user experience (UX) signals
• Creating SEO-friendly content
• Generating trusted, quality backlinks

The best part is that there are many online resources to help understand SEO best practices. Also, you don’t have to master everything to start offering SEO services. Once you understand the basics, you can start offering the services on your way to becoming an expert.

Create a website showcasing your service options

Learning SEO guides is only the beginning; you need hands-on experience. And what better way to gain SEO experience than try it on your own website? Ideally, creating your website allows you to apply what you’ve learned instead of using your clients’ websites as a testing ground.

Your business website need not be complicated—a simple but attractive website will do the trick. Also, create and post SEO content on your website to address common customer pain points.

Adding testimonials to your website is also an excellent way to showcase your expertise. However, it is unlikely you’ll have them if your business is new, so don’t let that stand in your way. Use tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics to analyze the results of your new site.

Outsource or in-house?

When creating your SEO service, you have two options: Building a team of in-house experts or working with established SEO experts outside your organization. Building an in-house team means establishing your expertise and training other staff members on matters of SEO. On the other hand, you can outsource the work to SEO experts.

Project management

SEO isn’t a one-off project. That means you need to continuously optimize your work to maintain rankings. To achieve this, you need to learn project management skills to manage tasks and your team.

Project management involves two crucial categories: Planning and fulfillment.

Planning

Planning forms the foundation of your SEO service. It involves research, evaluation, and strategy. In other words, planning helps get a clear direction of how to build your SEO campaigns.

Some of the critical things to include in your planning include competitive analysis, keyword research, content evaluation, and website audit.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment involves plan execution. More specifically, fulfillment involves implementing a well-thought strategy to get the most out of your SEO efforts. This can be delivering what you promised to clients or getting more revenue from your SEO business.

Some important tools to help in SEO project management include:

• Slack
• Basecamp
• Teamwork
• Asana
• Zapier

Find the right SEO tools

Now find a set of SEO tools to help in the process. Luckily, there are free tools to help streamline your workflow and get more time to do other important tasks.

These tools include:

• Google Search Console – helps understand how crawlers are navigating your site and which keywords could help drive more organic traffic
• Google Analytics – helps analyze site performance and traffic sources
• Google my Business – feeds Google with crucial information like physical location, operating hours, and phone number

Other tools you may want to include in your arsenal include:

How the Hub can help you manage your projects

The Hub by GoDaddy Pro collects an array of pro-level tools in one intuitive and easy-to-use dashboard. It’s an integrated site-, client- and project-management platform that allows you to streamline otherwise time-consuming tasks.

For example, The Hub lets you run bulk updates for numerous websites at once. Users report saving an average of three hours each month for every client website they manage with The Hub. The platform also allows easier client collaboration via shared shopping features and account delegation.

Create your pricing model

There’s nothing as embarrassing as when prospects ask how much your SEO costs but can’t provide a good answer. While there’s not a single answer to this question, knowing the value of SEO will help give your prospects a more convincing answer.

To avoid confusion regarding pricing, we recommend you think about your pricing structure in the development stages. That said, here are three common pricing structures for SEO companies:

• Fixed: You may want to use this pricing structure in projects that involve various SEO work—keyword research, SEO consulting services, on-page optimization, web design services, etc.
• Hourly: This pricing structure is ideal for simple tasks such as website audits and keyword research
• Retainer: Once you’re established, you can put your clients on a retainer basis, depending on their budgets

SEO pricing goes beyond the SEO service cost; it presents your capability and the value your SEO services provide to clients. Research your competitors and prospects before quoting a price for your SEO services.

Market your SEO services

No one will trust your SEO services if you don’t have a robust digital presence. That’s why you need to improve your website SEO to show clients that you are good at what you say.

However, SEO is not the only way to market your SEO services. That said, here are ways to boost your online presence:

Inbound practices

Inbound marketing is a great way to improve your online presence and attract SEO clients. Inbound practices involve different strategies that can help attract leads, including SEO, content marketing, social media, etc.

Automated social media

Businesses spend significant hours on social media per week. As such, you can ramp up your inbound efforts using social media. However, when using social media for your inbound services, you need to:

• Create your message according to user intent and the platform
• Join related social media groups such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit groups to get ideas of what your audience is talking about
• Be human

Reviews

If you have great reviews, include them on your website for your prospects to see. Create great relationships with professionals and ask them to review your SEO company. Positive reviews will show that you’re reliable and adhere to great work ethics.

Relevant listings

Setting up your SEO service on Google My Business, Yelp, and other relevant listings can help improve your online presence. However, make sure that your business information is consistent across these sites, including your business name, address, and phone number.

Document everything

Testing systems is one thing; make sure you document all your findings. Consider gathering positive reviews and creating case studies that will help showcase your SEO services. Always make a list of your clients’ goals anytime you sign up a new client and document their progress. Some of the crucial things to conclude in your case study include:

• The problem – what problem did the client want to be solved?
• The solution – what solution did you propose?
• The results – did the solution you offered provide the desired results?
• Testimonials – what’s the client’s experience working with you?

Scale your SEO business

Building a profitable SEO business won’t happen overnight. It requires a lot of time, effort, dedication, and testing various processes. As such, you may want to wait until when your business is generating significant income before scaling your business.

Of course, you can hire freelancers in your early stages, especially when things start gaining momentum. However, don’t hire full-time employees until when the business has enough revenue to sustain them.

That said, we recommend standardizing your offering or productizing your services if you want to scale your business. This way, it’ll become easier to deliver services to clients and hire more staff.

Wrapping up

Like any other business, starting an SEO business can be overwhelming and confusing. However, if you are willing to learn and do the hard work, you can create a successful SEO business that will give recurring income.

While there are many ways to build a successful SEO business, the above steps will help set up a successful SEO service.