Do you have any idea what Social Networking sites are? Did you know that they aren’t just for leisure and are now accounted an essential online marketing tool by various Internet marketing experts (just like good ecommerce statistic). And just like with a store, a healthy “client base” is also crucial in social networking.

The Lowdown On Social Networking

Social networking websites are a team of online communities of Internet users. These users are gotten together by common interests – sports, products, hobbies, religion, etc. – and form groups to talk about these common interests. Some of these sites have become so intensely prominent that Internet marketers have grown to discover the major of social networking as a marketing tool.

In mid-June 2009, computer maker Dell declared that it earned $3 million in revenue from using Twitter, a popular micro-blogging facility. It took 18 months to make the first million but only six to earn the rest.

It Takes Time, Not Money

The importance of social networking sites is evident in survey results presented by Ad-ology Research. The ecommerce shopping cart system indicate that 25% of the small businesses surveyed would increase marketing spending on social networking sites. But the beauty of social networking is that you do not need lots of money to get the results you would like to have. You just have some time to build a community following or a fan base.

So How Do I Use It?

Social networking sites can drive traffic to your store as well as elevate sales. The thing is, it takes a bit of time to garner a sizable following (more than a year) but as Dell found out, it can be worth the wait. A large number of companies use Twitter, Facebook and even Flicker in tandem to persuasively encourage their products.

Twitter is a micro-blogging site that only grants a limited number of characters (140) in its update box. A relatively large number of companies splurge this facility to post the sale of a particular item to better effect. Emails, messages and calls come in almost on the spot after an update is made. A direct link to the product page is usually placed at the end of the message.

Tip: You may want to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl to help befitting your URL into the update box.

Facebook demands no further introduction. You can link your Twitter account to your Facebook account and have your Facebook status automatically update when you update your Twitter status. You can put product details (videos as well as photos) on Facebook and link them back to your store or product pages.

You can also consists of discount codes on both Twitter and Facebook for your “followers”. If you are the owner of a web store selling health or sports products, you could include useful bait links such as those that lead to BMI calculators, calorie estimators or running speed calculators – all of which should be located at your site.

Flicker is an online photo management and sharing application. You can upload your product photos to Flicker and don’t forget to make full use of the tag boxes, description and title. You can even place invitations in the photos themselves to help drive traffic to your site.

Once you’ve got your online shopping cart setup the way you want it and you’ve accomplished your SEO groundwork, get started out on this method. It does take some time for a respectable following to snowball but if you are in it for the long term, then it is definitely worth it. The ecommerce shopping cart system don’t lie.

So you’ve signed up for an ecommerce shopping carts software system and you’ve got a store running. You also have a healthy pool of loyal customers and everything seems peachy. Sales are perfect..but they can always be better.

A relatively large number of merchants don’t usually think about the obvious when trying to improve sales figures. Always start with the resources you have because they are most probably free, familiar, and do not require much effort.

Statistics have proven that people have a tendency to buy more from a store they have previously purchased from. As matter of fact, merchants can raise their sales by as much as 30% by concentrating on existing customers alone. This is not to say that you should abandon all efforts of getting new customers. Targeting existing customers is merely another avenue to raise sales.

So what can you do to raise your sales figures with what you already have? A typical ecommerce shopping cart providers usually provides ecommerce solution shopping cart software that comprises a few helpful selling functions. A lot of merchants overlook these functions because they do not understand the possible impact they might have on their sales. Of course an ecommerce shopping cart software system provider will not have covered these features if they didn’t think it would be useful to their merchants.

So what should you do?

Cross-Sell

Amazon are experts at this. To mere mortals, it may not make much sense to cross-sell, for example, a DVD to someone who has just bought a bar of soap but evidently it makes a lot of sense to Amazon. Who are we to argue? The point is, cross-selling items stimulate impulse buying from customers. It tries to milk the “Since I’m already here, I might as well buy this too” frame of mind. It probably helps to pitch customers products that are related to what they already have in their shopping carts, though. Try to provide cross-sell items that could be useful in combination with whatever your target customers are showing interest in.

Up-Sell

Up-selling is a bit of a challenge as it demands persuading a buyer to purchase items which are sometimes more expensive than the item they’ve just bought or are interested in, in order to render the sale more profitable. These items are typically from the same product category and include upgrades, add-ons or non-tangible items like insurance, service packages, apps, or extended warranties. Merchants usually provide the argument that purchasing the items suggested at this juncture will cost less than if a customer buys them separately.

Re-Sell

As mentioned earlier, once a person buys from your store, they will most probably shop there again. If the product is a consumable or needs to be consistently replaced (e.g. contact lens cleaners, vitamins, magazines or shaving blades) you can actually make it more convenient for the customer by using the recurring billing/product subscription function. This function allows you to re-sell and re-bill the customer for the same product on a fixed timescale. This saves the customer from having to repeatedly re-order products manually each time they need to replenish their supplies.

All the methods above are not only great for getting revenue from existing customers but also help improve the image of your store by making it seem more customer-friendly (one-time related product purchases and product subscriptions save time and money) as well as help build a long term customer following.

There is a craze working on in the assort product reviews sector. It’s named CPA (Cost Per Action) which lets you make ridiculous quantities of money, non by merchandising another peoples products simply by plainly getting people to try a service FREE or plainly participating their cite and electronic mail (sometimes cheap, sometimes more. Either way you don’t get to “sell” the visitant anything!. CPA platforms get been around a spell, simply when Chris from Assort Picture X came out with the Death of Adsense digital book showing how he makes TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars each calendar month utilizing CPA programs, they went wildly popular. As I said CPA platforms aren’t anything new, they have been around for nearly 10 years. However, a great deal of people who require to gain initiated or make more than cash online weren’t in truth aware of them.

Innovation in the nets marketing has seen recent and efficient paths of establishing cash. More systematic and coherent CPA networks – a variation of nets marketing – offers a cost per activity marketing system where all attempts to promote the ware has equivalent recompense even without the ware being sold.

CPA network’s incomparable have to another nets marketing techniques is its edge in more than coherent gaining, with more than predictable and calculable situations. Unlike assort marketing where the ware essential be traded initial before the assort could gain commission, CPA networks appreciate each little try exerted and pay even the tiniest try the seller exerted. While assort marketing plays with opportunities in establishing the ware dealt, CPA networks is getting paying just by leading the customers where they could perhaps purchase the product.

All attempts in leading nets dealings are extremely appreciated and has equivalent recompense which could range from a buck to 50$ per lead, betting on the rarity, popularity of the product. Advertizer and ware websites merchandising chance growth as come of internet-site visitants increases, thus lead is very lots essential to them.

CPA assures more than humane procedures for earning with its equal recompense to all attempts. The lead is the most essential thing in CPA networks: as the come of visitants growth, the chance of establishing the ware traded besides increases, thus with a proportion of 1 ware traded per 10 visitors, hundreds of visitants per sidereal day could bring lots net profit to the marketer.

For knowledgeable assort marketers who could well drive and see nets traffic, earning net profit is just as easy as establishing blogs over CPA electronic networks. One step higher than assort selling, the cost per activity networks gives more effortless paths to make cash even without establishing products sold; all that matters is to flood the advertiser’s site with potential clients. Amazingly, it does non require assort site subscription; you could exhaust all possible avenues such as friendly electronic networks, adverts and another nets marketing techniques.

A CPA network besides offers an infinite come of niches for marketers to choose, all has professionals and cons, betting on the niche, the seller could foretell the rate of daily revenue. Most hot marketer products has lower CPA rate, compared to unpopular products which ordinarily has more spectacular rate as they are heavier to trade. Sellers get the option of picking out more effortless to trade products where he could make a quick 100 $ for each 100 runs, or less average products where the assort could make 100 $ in pair of runs.

So you’ve signed up for an ecommerce shopping carts software system and you’ve got a store running. You also have a healthy pool of loyal customers and everything seems peachy. Sales are perfect..but they can always be better.

A relatively large number of merchants don’t usually think about the obvious when trying to improve sales figures. Always start with the resources you have because they are most probably free, familiar, and do not require much effort.

Statistics have proven that people usually tend to buy more from a store they have previously purchased from. As matter of fact, merchants can raise their sales by as much as 30% by concentrating on existing customers alone. This is not to say that you should abandon all efforts of getting new customers. Targeting existing customers is merely another avenue to raise sales.

So what can you do to raise your sales figures with what you already have? A typical ecommerce shopping cart providers usually provides ecommerce solution shopping carts software that consists of a few helpful selling functions. A relatively large number of merchants overlook these functions because they do not understand the possible impact they might have on their sales. Needless to say an ecommerce shopping carts software system provider will not have covered these features if they didn’t think it would be useful to their merchants.

So what should you do?

Cross-Sell

Amazon are experts at this. To mere mortals, it may not make much sense to cross-sell, for example, a DVD to someone who has just bought a bar of soap but apparently it makes a lot of sense to Amazon. Who are we to argue? The final point is, cross-selling items boost impulse buying from customers. It tries to milk the “Since I’m already here, I might as well buy this too” frame of mind. It probably helps to pitch customers products that are related to what they already have in their shopping carts, though. Try to contribute cross-sell items that could be useful in combination with whatever your target customers are showing interest in.

Up-Sell

Up-selling is a bit of a challenge as it demands persuading a buyer to purchase items which are sometimes more expensive than the item they’ve just bought or are interested in, in order to render the sale more profitable. These items are typically from the same product category and consist of upgrades, add-ons or non-tangible items like service packages, apps, insurance, or extended warranties. Merchants usually present the argument that purchasing the items suggested at this juncture will cost less than if a customer buys them separately.

Re-Sell

As mentioned earlier, once a person buys from your store, they will possibly shop there again. If the product is a consumable or needs to be consistently replaced (e.g. contact lens cleaners, vitamins, magazines or shaving blades) you can actually make it more relatively simple for the customer by using the recurring billing/product subscription function. This function allows you to re-sell and re-bill the customer for the same product on a fixed timescale. This saves the customer from having to repeatedly re-order products manually each time they need to replenish their supplies.

All the methods above are not only perfect for getting revenue from existing customers but also help improve the image of your store by making it seem more customer-friendly (one-time related product purchases and product subscriptions save time and money) as well as help build a long term customer following.

We’ve been posting a lot of articles lately on techniques to increase sales with the useful tools offered with some of the ecommerce solutions software in the market. We’ve done so because the holiday seasons are just a few months away and we want our merchants to make the best of this shopping season. We’ve touched on cross-selling and up-selling in earlier posts and we will take it a step further here.

There are quite a few things that even the best ecommerce solution or free shopping cart software can’t help you do. It’s because there’s a lot of psychology pertaining in getting a customer to purchase a product, let alone buy or spend more than they originally planned to. Sadly, web hosting shopping cart hasn’t reached such an advanced state…yet.

Cross-selling and up-selling are great ways to show people to more products they might be interested in but had not thought of. However, getting them to actually consider purchasing those products is a whole other matter. The way you go about win over them is very vital. In order to get customers to buy cross-sell and up-sell products, you have to choose your words properly.

Here are a few suggestions:

Add A Personal Touch

Try to personalize your product suggestions as much as possible. Don’t just utilize “We recommend.” But instead, try using “We think you might like this/these.” This gives a much warmer feel. This phrase works perfect with up-sell items or items which are related (same category).

Generate A Need

Instead of making outright suggestions, why not put it in a distinct way by actually asking the buyer if he or she needs something. If a person has just bought a digital SLR for instance, you could ask, “Do you need batteries?” or “Would you want this camera bag for your gear?”. This method is perfect for products with lots of accessories. This is why guys go into DIY stores searching to get a $5 screwdriver but come out with $200 worth of power tools and equipment which will be borrowed by neighbors and never returned. Mind you, have you noticed how fast food outlets cross-sell? As soon as you order a soda and a burger, you’ll automatically be asked, “Would you like some fries with that?” If you agree, the ever-helpful staff will then try to up-sell the product, “Why don’t you try our large fries? It’s just 20 cents more.” Even if 3 out of 10 customers opt for the fries, regardless of size, that’s already an increase in revenue.

Everyone Wants A Bargain

No one loves to pay retail. If you want someone to buy something (extra) you need to make it worth their while. You need to express the value of the deal to them. Basically let them know exactly how much they will be saving and emphasize what a great deal this is. And it pays to consider your figures wisely here. For instance, given a choice between “Save $1.99″ and “Save 30%”, which do you think would have a bigger impact?

Tell Them The Sky Is Falling

People usually react to urgency. Place some sort of limit or a condition to the items you cross-sell or up-sell. “Available at this price for 15 minutes only” or “Hurry! Last 5 units left” are just some examples of this. Some view cart and checkout pages even employ the use of countdown clocks to emphasize the urgency. This method is excellent for items that are low in stock or end life products.

Curiosity Killed The Cat, But Not The Sale

I read somewhere that you should persuade and not inform when attempting to sell. However, Amazon has started utilizing analytic as part of its up-selling function for some of its products. Lets just say you select item A to purchase. Amazon will list that item along with a few more similar items and state the percentage of people who bought them. Normally, you’d find that most people bought products that cost more than the product you chosen. Basically, yours would be the only one not to hit 2 digits percentage-wise. You would then start to have doubts about buying product A and start browsing through all the other costlier alternatives. Genius, huh?