Launching a new business is often as exciting as it is terrifying. With an e-commerce business, some of the uncertainty is taken out because you need less of an infrastructure to get started.
There are also a ton of tools and resources that make the initial setup less intimidating. But no matter how prepared you think you are, some things don’t become apparent until after you start the business. Here are four of them.
Your competition is an important asset
A few months into launching your business, you’ll stop seeing your competitors as a liability and start seeing them as an asset, and the reason is simple. They tell you everything you need to start doing, and everything you need to stop doing.
To most e-commerce businesses, competitors are a little like testing grounds. You can watch them and immediately pick up what to do and what not to do. Even more importantly, you learn about the latest developments and technologies in your industry.
It would take you months and thousands of dollars to pick up these lessons otherwise. The sooner you start looking to your competitors, the sooner you can scale up your business.
Branding is not as important as you may think
A lot of emphasis is placed on branding for new businesses. You hear people talk about the importance of logos, consistent colors, voice, tone, and all that. And for the most part, these factors are important.
Your brand makes you immediately recognizable with recurring customers, and as you grow, you start to reap massive benefits from that consistent tone and voice that you’ve created. But what no one tells you is that it takes a while to build a brand that actually generates returns.
In the short term, you’ll be more occupied with stuff like marketing, ensuring that your supply chain runs smoothly, and other technical stuff like virtual terminal credit card processing in your business. And in the early stages, that’s where your attention should be.
SEO equals revenue
When you get into a highly competitive field like e-commerce, you’ll quickly realize that your biggest asset is getting people to visit your website. You try any and every strategy possible to make that happen, and few strategies are more effective than SEO.
Investing in SEO should and will rapidly become a top priority for you because the higher you rank on search engines’ SERP, the higher the chances that traffic will turn to leads which then turns into revenue.
Even if visitors don’t immediately buy, you can place cookies on their computer, and combined with targeted ads, get your sale eventually.
Advertising is a continuous process
Speaking of advertising, you’ll also immediately realize that your advertising efforts can never stop. You have to keep finding new ways to reach your audience, whether that’s via Facebook Ads or Google Ads.
You’ll also quickly become an expert in these fields, and will be able to differentiate effective strategies from flashy ones that don’t do anything. Or you may do what many people do and outsource that aspect of their business.
But one thing is for sure, your business will constantly run ads that are constantly evolving and refining their approach.
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