You don’t plan for retirement by sinking all your money into a single stock. You don’t get super fit by working on a single muscle group. Selling is no different. Smart ecommerce sellers are turning to multi-channel retailing to sell diversify their income and serving a large customer segment. That way, if Amazon suddenly changes the rules or suspends your account, your business survives.
Anyone can set up multiple accounts, upload inventory files and create product listings on different platforms. But, if you want to succeed you can’t afford to use a one size fits all approach. If you want to sell on multiple channels there are a couple of things you can do to stay competitive.
1. Make Inventory Management Your Top Priority
Your inventory is a physical representation of your assets. It’s the heart of your business. Selling on more channels means that you need a central system that can keep track of sales in real-time. The last thing you want is to list an item on Amazon, only to find out you sold everything out through your listing on eBay and the next shipment isn’t due for another few weeks. This road leads to negative reviews, loss of confidence and potential suspension!
Using a robust multi-channel inventory management software will allow you to manage all your inventory through a single interface. This way, you can focus on increasing sales and creating a better customer experience.
2. Devise a Custom Strategy for Each Channel
You don’t use the same marketing strategy on Twitter and Facebook. The same rule applies to omnichannel selling. If you want to maximize sales through Amazon, Walmart and your own website, you need to dig deep into the analytics and understand how your customers interact with each platform.
If you are just starting out, you may be tempted to jump on all the channels at once. More listings mean more sales, right? The reality is more complicated than that. Start with one channel at a time. Optimize your listings and create a marketing and sales strategy that aligns with your overarching goals.
Let’s say you start out selling on Amazon. Dive into the research and optimize the entire process first. Create a marketing strategy that gives your listings their best shot. Compete for the Buy Box and drive organic and/or paid traffic to your products. Once you’ve built a process and analysed the results, move to the next channel. This gives you time to integrate each channel into your overall sales strategy, creating a cohesive customer experience across the board.
3. Customer Experience is the New Frontier
The Multichannel Digital marketing report found that 46% of organizations deliver a poor customer experience. As a result, potential customers abandon their carts and move to other channels.
As more businesses move into the online space and compete for your customer’s attention, sellers that create a stellar customer experience will come to the forefront. Amazon is a master at winning customer loyalty.
Amazon’s A to Z policy, Prime membership, free shipping over $25, hassle-free returns and easy to use interface come together to make the customer feel at ease. They know that Amazon is reliable and if something goes wrong, it will get fixed. You need to create a similarly stellar experience across all your channels.
Always deliver on your promises. If a product gets damaged or doesn’t meet your customer’s expectations, fix it. Offer a returns policy that doesn’t scare people from buying. AllBirds, an e-commerce shoe seller, have a 30 day no question asked returns policy. Customers can try the shoes out in the real world and return them. The company’s sheer confidence in the product and simplicity of their policy enhances the customer experience and sets them apart. Outline your policies and then apply them to all the channels you sell on.
Discover eight ways to improve your ecommerce customer service.
4. Build a Repeatable, Semi-Automated Process
A great sales process is cyclical: it’s a series of repeatable steps that get improved during each cycle. Research and purchase product. Create and optimize listing. Market and sell product. Analyse the metrics. Rinse and repeat. If you want to successfully sell across multiple channels, you need to create a process that can be semi-automated.
Use software tools to take care of the boring grunt work like creating orders for your approval when you run low on stock. Use powerful analytics software to gather data so you can interpret what’s working and what isn’t. Consider repricing software to help you stay competitive and in line for the buy box. Get a CRM that helps you create quality nurturing campaigns for buyers that visit your own site or social media pages. A streamlined process makes it easy to keep track of what’s going on and scale and grow your omnichannel business.
Final Thoughts
Selling on multiple channels has many benefits. Selling on a marketplace like Amazon helps you get your foot in the door. Expanding into other marketplaces and building your own website helps you grow, reach more people and diversify your income source. Your multichannel selling and marketing strategies should work together, supporting each other and paving your way to success.
