In this video I’m gonna give you seven secrets to starting a successful online store. Let’s get into all seven of the secrets right away so the first one is to Niche Down. This is the number one mistake I see so many beginners make I’ll talk about more I’ll talk about all these later in this video the number one niche down number two Create a Tribe you want to create a group of people that love your brand that would not mean not literally die for your brand but would do whatever it takes to promote your brand number three Influencers. It’s  at the time of their recording this video it’s the new age there’s influencers on Instagram social media all over the place this is the way to sell products currently next up is YouTube. You’re watching a YouTube video right now not only is YouTube great for interesting content fun stuff but it’s also great for getting your brand out there getting your online store and your personality out there because that’s what people want to buy they want to buy you they want to buy from your online store and you’re an individual they’re not trying to buy from this giant company if they wanted to do that they’d go to some other website so YouTube number four number five product listing ads aka Google Shopping this is the best period this is the best way to spend your advertising dollars in my opinion Pierre I mean there may be a few small little things but for scalability this is the way that I get most of my traffic to my website most of my sales come from product listing ads highly recommend this one we’ll talk about more later in this video number six this is the best tip and since this is a YouTube video I got to keep that secret so you have to wait till we get to number  to get this but this tip in my opinion is the most important thing and you’re currently probably doing it but maybe not doing it as much as you should be number seven email marketing this one you’re probably doing to some degree you’re probably not doing it as well as you could be and I’ll give you a bunch of tips on how to improve it so let’s start with:

1. Niching Down – like i said so many beginning entrepreneurs online store owners everything make a mistake and they don’t niche down enough you really want to niche it down as much as possible. It’s not enough to say your niche is women 35 to 50 that’s a whole broad a little bit better is saying mom’s 35 to 50 still way too broad a little bit better upper-class mom’s 35 to 50 still too broad you want to get so specific that it’s almost ridiculous I want to say something like upper-class vegan yoga moms 35 to 50 who buy from Lululemon who own a pair of Lululemon pants that’s specific in fact I’d even take it one step farther and create an avatar now I’m not talking about that old movie I guess it’s not that old but that movie Avatar I’m talking about create a persona create a person create sue and say hey sue is my ideal customer she is the number one customer I’d like to have in my company every time you create an Instagram post a Pinterest app you think about Sue would Sue like this and if Sue wouldn’t like it don’t do it and now you can create a few different avatars you can create one that represents a few different types of people within your brand for instance my dance clothing company we have one Avatar that is a dance studio owner another avatar that’s a dance mom and another one that would be a dance teacher and all three of them have slightly different personalities we’re trying to target each one of them differently when we’re doing Instagram ads or Pinterest ads but creating an avatar will really help your online marketing methods designing your website literally everything you do. So the next up in a related tangent is

 

2. Create a Tribe – what you want to do and to take this even a step further is create your thousand true fans now this is an old Kevin Kelly article I believe and he said if you could get a thousand people that just love you love your brand love who you are your product whatever it is and are willing to give you $100 once a year just $100 and think about that that’s not that crazy there’s people that I follow that I would give $100 for everything that they do so let’s say you’ve had a thousand people that would each give you $100 you could easily make $100, a year so you want to do is think of who would your thousand true friend fans be would they be vegan yoga moms and if so keep that in the back your head and what this ends up doing is it ends up creating this group that would literally get a tattoo of your product on their shoulder now this is just a temporary tattoo but this is one of my companies this is performance and nut butter it’s a company that I have we make a nut butter product obviously a macadamia coconut cashew nut butter product and this is one of the people that I sent them a free jar a long time ago and they love the product so much they paid to get a temporary tattoo made put on their shoulder and go run a race so thank you for that that was awesome and like it’s people like that that make having a business so amazing and you better bet he is at the Spartan Race telling other people about Performance Nut Butter I mean if he likes it enough to put a tattoo on his shoulder he likes it enough to talk about it and spread the message you want to get fans like that so if you’re interested in this kind of thing I got two books to recommend to you the first is Primal Branding very important it talks a lot about how you can create a brand that people really want to stand behind and one of the points I’ll just pick out from the book is you need to have an us-versus-them mentality your product is not for everyone in fact you want to say anybody that likes this kind of a thing is our enemy and that creates this primal tribal nature so let me give you an example of this with Performance Nut Butter if you like sugar and candy and all junk food you are the enemy like you get away from us it’s disgusting I’m sorry for anyone watching this but that’s the mentality of the brand is we’re a healthy food we’re about performance if you’re lazy sitting on the couch eating candy bars you’re the ops you’re not one of us you need to create that polarity right there that’s why certain presidents win and they’re able to they’re able to polarize audiences if everybody likes you then nobody loves you you want to be someone that someone is willing to stand on the rooftops and shout about that also means people are probably going to hate your brand enough about that Tribes is another great book I’ll let you read both these books it’s all about how to create Tribes obviously so the next up

 

3. Influencers – and this is the age of social influencers our brains are wired they’re wired to listen to leaders that’s just where humans for primates that’s part of what it is now the interesting thing about the internet is these leaders these thought leaders are down on Instagram they’re now on Twitter they’re now on all these locations and using influence or marketing is a great way to leverage that you can either send free products and ask people to post about it or you can do paid influence or marketing both are great options be careful when paying people a lot of people will try to jack up the prices I’d say start off sending out free products to people definitely message them first and see if they’re willing to do a post in exchange it’s a great way to get the word out there and to be honest if they’re not willing to do it for free it might not be the best place to start you can definitely make a lot of money doing paid but I’d say get your feet wet with just a free product.

 

4. YouTube – and I think this is very powerful in fact it’s so powerful you’re watching a YouTube video right now and I’m willing to bet you trust me a little bit more than if you were just reading an article when you just read an article there’s no personality behind it once again we’re primates our brains are wired to listen to people to listen to the way they talk and say hey I trust that person or I don’t and there’s some people watching this video that don’t trust me but a lot of people are probably realizing that I’m spending my free time making free content and they’re going to listen to me same is true for your brand your company whatever your website is maybe you have a website where you sell peanut butter that’s an example I’ve been using recently and with your website you have YouTube videos where you talk about the best peanut butters and you have reviews of peanut butters you’re able to get trust and when you say oh my gosh “this is the best peanut butter I’ve ever had you guys need to buy it by the way you can buy it down below here’s a link” they’re gonna buy it from you because they’ve listened to you they like you they would rather give you their money than some big brands somewhere else so YouTube is a great way not only to create some trust but also to like build an-all-around brand it also is a great way to get content marketing it’s so much easier to rank a YouTube video high up in YouTube than it is an article high up in Google YouTube I believe last I checked is the number two most popular search engine it goes Google, YouTube, and then Bing and you know who uses Bing anymore right so more people are using YouTube being almost as many people are searching for things on YouTube as they are on Google and the interesting thing is there is like one one-thousandth as many YouTube videos is there our blog articles so it’s so much easier to rank and all you need is a halfway decent camera and some decent audio you don’t even need that you could probably just use your phone not gonna belabor this point too much but it builds trust and you can make a statement you can also get a lot of easy traffic to your website so.

 

5. Product Listing Ads – Google Shopping ads if you have the money you have a little bit of a budget to spend I would start here at least at this point in my life I would start here it depends on what your product is but just to let you know so Google Shopping is right here if you search for something in Google and you see all the different items that come up with price tags underneath that that is Google Shopping and why is this so powerful you might be wondering well it’s so powerful because it shows a picture of the item so someone knows before they click what they’re clicking on and it shows a price so once again someone knows this is about how much it’s gonna cost and on top of that if someone’s clicking on that it’s because they’re ready to buy a product or they’re much more willing to buy a product as opposed to a text ad just a regular AdWords text ad which people might be interested in more information so I believe I have yellow dance pants searched for right here now if I do a text ad someone might just be interested in learning more about what types of yellow dance pants are they might not have that buyer intent. With a product listing ads there’s a much higher buyer intent because the price because the image they picked up your image out of all five of the other images so product listing ads are very powerful next up and this is I think the most important tip and you may already know this to some degree but I just want to reiterate this to you so important.

 

6. Keep learning whatever you do keep learning it’s this this is what’s going to separate you from your competitors the fact that you’re watching this YouTube video the fact that you’re excited to learn about e-commerce this is the difference between I mean really us and the animals in a lot of ways but this is the difference between you and anyone else out there that’s not being successful if you continue to watch YouTube videos like this you continue to read articles podcasts I do have a Podcast will put the link down below you’re gonna learn so much more you’re gonna find out tips that you never would have found out before you’re gonna have ideas and thoughts so number six this is a secret that really shouldn’t be a secret keep learning read research there’s podcasts there’s YouTube videos there’s articles there’s courses I do have courses I’ll put a link down below and up here I have a starter course and a Facebook Ads course currently whatever you do paying for knowledge is probably the best ROI on your money when you spend a dollar on knowledge you’ll easily get back $10 or hundred dollars so anyways number six keep learning.

 

7. Email Marketing – and you’re probably doing email marketing wrong at least to some degree so let me give you some tips really quickly
8. Segments – you should be segmenting your list and you know what it’s really easy to say this I know it’s hard to do it I’ve only recently started doing it and it’s already paid off and very happy I’m doing it so here’s some segments

a.)  New Emails so anytime someone signs up for your lead magnet or signs up on your website but hasn’t purchased yet you put them in one bucket and the goal of that bucket is to sell them so maybe you have a discount ladder maybe you say hey I saw you just signed up here is your free DIY guide or here’s your free checklist then you wait a few days let them know about your products and then you say hey here’s a 10% off coupon if they don’t buy that maybe you wait a few days tell them here’s a 15% off coupon wait a few days and if they still don’t buy maybe you stop there or you send them a 20% off coupon if they still haven’t purchased anything you walk away but this will get some people that are unfamiliar with your brand purchasing from you and making them into customers which is the

b.) Customers – so this is someone that’s purchased from you but maybe hasn’t we’re done a repeat purchase yet you want to treat them different they’re already know about your brand they’re already well aware of what your company stands for they like your product hopefully and the key is trying to get them to come back and reorder it’s so much easier to get a customer to come back and reorder than it is to get someone you’ve never purchased from you before to try to place an order that’s scary people don’t like scary situations and buying and putting your credit card online is a little bit scary once someone’s already jumped off that cliff once and they know that it’s safe they’re more likely to do it again there realize oh this is a good experience the last segment we had is

 

c.) VIPs – these are people that either spent a lot of money with your company or they make repeat after repeat purchase so you want to treat them different if maybe they spent $250 last time with you want to send them special emails you want to reach out and say hey you haven’t purchased again in three months or six months whatever your buying cycle is what can we do to get you back in here maybe send them coupons maybe it’s just sending them a handwritten letter or a handwritten email the next thing I want to talk about here is

2. Abandoned Cart a lot of people don’t do this very simple when someone goes to your website and they start to purchase and they get distracted but maybe they have a phone call or one of a hundred things send them abandoned cart email and you can send them just one email saying hey by the way I saw that you forgot this or you could send them a coupon a lot of people will send abandoned cart email just saying hey I know you forgot about this maybe you should come back and then if they still haven’t purchased the next day doing a five or ten percent off coupon and so on and so on until they finally purchased so that is all seven of my tips right there make sure if you haven’t yet you get the online store success pack which includes marketing ideas and a checklist for starting your online business a bunch of really cool stuff in there on top of that if you haven’t yet click that subscribe button down below I have a ton more videos like this already and a ton more coming out that you’ll get for free just by clicking subscribed right here in YouTube if you have any questions any comments anything I can help you out with I literally answer you can look I literally answer every single comment on YouTube so if you have any questions put it down below and have a special little bonus here like this video I usually don’t ask for likes but please like this video once it reaches likes I’ll do part two and I have some really cool ecommerce secrets that I want I can’t wait till part two so like this video and thank you so much for watching this I hope this was helpful how a great day.

Starting an online store is hard and in this video I want to share with you my top 7 ecommerce secrets. To watch the video click here or scroll down to see a quick overview of the list.

1. Niche Down
2. Create a Tribe
3. Influencers
4. YouTube
5. Product Listing Ads/ Google Shopping
6. THE BEST TIP (you need to watch to see this tip)
7. Email Marketing