Successful marketing means using trends and technologies—what’s popular changes constantly, and you have to stay on top of that to effectively promote yourself on an ongoing basis. One of the biggest web-based trends is online video.

YouTube.com, one of the largest video-marketing vendors, has hundreds of millions of users. YouTube is free; the advantage they provide is that there’s currently no limit to the footage you can upload.

You, as an entrepreneur can use video to achieve far greater impact than you’d have with email or banner ads:

Create infomercials, testimonials, or short product clips.

Use content as a commodity to add value. Viewers will appreciate the education and techniques and come back to you for your expertise.

Videos are easy, and relatively cheap, to produce; they’re a powerful audiovisual tool for spreading the word about your business virally and increasing your exposure.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Despite how easy it is to start a business online, run a retail store, and make money online, the internet is still a very highly competitive place. Unlike a local brick and mortar, you’re competing with all the other brands and businesses online, which can be based just about anywhere in the world.

In order to succeed, you need to build your profile as a professional in your niche of business and prove to customers that you’re the one they should be going to for their needs.

This is called winning over the customer … and it’s everything in terms of doing business online. With so many options online, consumers need your help to find the best retail store online. To do this, you need to focus on answering their questions throughout your content, create pages entirely dedicated to frequently asked questions, offer a contact form, and most importantly, be there and available for them when questions come up. You don’t need to be available by phone necessarily, but just as any retail store, you need to be available as much as possible. Remember, whenever someone asks you a question about a product, it gives you the chance to sell something. Your style depends on how you want to approach your sales and customers — it doesn’t have to be aggressive, yet it doesn’t have to be completely neutral and passive either. Provide the customer with the information and let them know how much it will benefit them to have it. For more on this, check out Every Product Page is a Sales Page.

3 Ways to Win Customers

Here are a few ways you can take this idea to the next level and actually practice with your own retail store online — with time, hard work, and even a little luck, you’ll be increasing your sales before you know it.

1. Organize Your Website — this is where a lot of retailers go wrong. Without a proper website set up to the latest standards online, you’re going to find it more difficult to persuade people to check out your products and become your customers.
2. Provide A Lot of Information — go beyond the manufacturer product description (it’s duplicate content anyway) and create content that provides a lot of information for the potential buyer. This is where you create your pitch and actually persuade the viewer to buy the product from you.
3. Be Transparent and Upfront — Present yourself and your business upfront as much as possible. This has become a major selling point for those shopping online, because it adds a layer of trust.

Where to Win Customers

You can win customers just about everywhere, but perhaps the most common place includes right on your website — this is where most people fail, because they’re not providing what the customer demands upfront, which is excellent customer service and messy website design (read how to clean your retail store online).

Other places where you might be able to win over customers includes any social network in which you’re active, such as Facebook and Twitter, video sharing platforms, such as YouTube, and through your blog.

photo credit: Orin Zebest

For a lot of people, Friday the 13th represents a day of bad luck. As a business owner, however, it represents something completely different … opportunity.

Friday the 13th is an opportunity to reach out to prospective customers and do special in light of the date. Whether that means running a special promotion for that day only or even reminding people to enjoy their Friday the 13th is up to you, but if you let it go by you’re missing out on the opportunity to communicate with potential customers.

Today is just one example though, there are plenty of special dates just like Friday the 13th that bring us together — whether it’s in light of superstition or a national holiday, we unite on certain days with a type of universal understanding. Getting your brand involved with that unity might mean the difference between selling product and not selling product for certain customers, so it’s crucial for business owners to reach out to their community of potential customers every opportunity they get.

Consider keeping a calendar that gives you advanced notice of upcoming holidays or special days, such as Friday the 13th. Paying close attention to what’s on the horizon will give you a chance to prepare a sale, newsletter, or blog content directly related to that date.

Are you doing anything special for your potential customers today? How about in the near future?

photo credit: DaveBleasdale