Promoting your shop and advertising
Getting your shop setup is quick and easy and now you need to let everyone now you are open for business in your new shop.
Engage with your potential customers on Social Media
It is essential if you are to build a loyal customer base to engage with your audience, preferably on as many social media platforms as possible, but watch results and prioritise the platforms that bring results. A good way of checking is to issue different offer coupons to your contacts on each of your social media accounts and see which is most popular. Remember it takes time to build a following so do not give up after a couple of months, give your self at least a year to grow a loyal customer base.
Encourage your customers to follow you on Veiled Market.
If your customers follow you then when you launch a new product they will be alerted by email automatically. Great for visibility and sales so a win all round
Give your customers special discount coupons
Coupons objective is to increase sales, grow your customer base. Making your customers feel special by giving them a special discount is a useful tool. There are many options in our coupons features on Veiled Market and you are unlikely to need more. Options:
- Display a discount coupon on your shop within Veiled Market, why would you do that? Two reasons, firstly it encourages people to login to the market on your shop page, so you make more sales. secondly it helps build the customers that come to you first. Change the coupon regularly encouraging your customers to login to your shop often to see the new offer
- Create a secret coupon that you send only to your mailing list, ensure like the one above it has a limited lifespan so they have to keep reading your advertising emails. Always ensure you obtain a customers consent before adding them to the mailing list to avoid breaching the GDPR regulations, click here for more detail.
- Personal custom coupons, you can create a custom coupon for a single customer if they spend over a certain amount. It makes the customer feel special and ensures they come back. Just make sure you limit it’s use to one time only.
Sales
There are many seasonal sales during the year in the UK that you can tap into. You can put as many products on sale as you wish or use your discount coupons from the box above to make the task faster. If you are going to offer large discounts to get attention use products that are slow movers or end of line, or last seasons design, just as the large stores do. This helps you convert inventory you have not been able to sell into cash quickly, a good move for your business.
Product launch sales, if you are launching something new and a bit experimental you can test the product with a limited time offer on launch. This will help you decide to expand the new product line or maybe think again, always useful to get real customers reactions.
Ensure all of your sales are REAL, it is fine to run an offer on a new product (providing it is new), or a discount on a product that was more expensive in the past, anything else risks damaging your customers trust in your brand. We all know of retailers that have constant sales, so much that almost nothing is ever sold at full price, problem with that is they lose impact and customers ignore the sale.
Advertising
Very few small businesses have the budget for anything other than online advertising, mostly Facebook or Google Ads. Be careful in your choices as these adverts can become expensive, so be cautious with your first few and only repeat proven winners.
Advertising your physical shop
Traders with a physical shop on their local high street can advertise it on their Veiled market shop to attract more customers to visit you. You can also ensure customers at your bricks and mortar shop know how to find you online, for times when they cannot make it to your shop. The options are in the store Manager Dash at settings/location and settings/opening hours
- Address
- Phone number
- The location on the map
- About your shop
- Advertise your opening hours, with options for each day of the week
Ensure you select the correct categories for your products.
To make it easy for customers to find items in your new shop it is important to assign all your products the correct category. If the ideal category is not on the list, assign your product to the best top level category, such as art, jewellery, spiritual, etc.. then contact support via the Veiled Market Sellers Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/veiledmarketsellers/ to request a new category.
Veiled Market admin will respond to complaints from traders or customers regarding items being placed in the wrong categories. Do not panic overly about this, nothing would be taken down for a simple mistake. However it is important never to spam categories that are not relevant to your product, Veiled Market will close products/shops if items are added to an excessive number of irrelevant categories. Spamming categories not only annoys other traders, it also damages a shop’s reputation with customers, so should be avoided at all costs.
