Steps To Start A Successful E-Business In Your 20s Malaysia 2019

by Natasha Husna

Have you ever wondered why people today are starting their e-business in this digital era?

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Well, the technology has completely changed the world of business into an easier way to reach the targeted audience and users by just the tips of our finger to start an e-business rather than the old ways to start up the business.

Today, technology has made our life easier and faster as the society now craves instant gratification in which they can have a faster response from the site or their gadgets with just a click of a button. As for that the services and trendy products keep the user more attracted and accessible to shop as it makes the customer feel connected to us more by fulfilling their needs and desire.

In this case, in this digital era, the young generation especially needs to step their game in business in this competitive and highly tech-savvy world. Millennials should go for business online because it seriously gives you a lot of benefits from the business minus the income though.

The first and most important being of business life is that you will have the freedom of location where you can make money everywhere! Be it at home, in a café or even in a different country from your customer. Also, when you have your own business, you get to decide to sell anything in your business.

Meanwhile in a traditional company where they did not provide any connection through the internet with their customers has the limits of agreement and the things you do not like or agree, you just willingly sell it even though deep in heart you are bored with the things you are selling.

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But with an online business in Malaysia, you get the control over where you can agree to disagree and agree all the way, which can make you feel incredibly satisfying and rewarding. Even when you’re travelling the world, you are still able to make money on the go.

If you’re an introvert person, this also your bonus benefits where you don’t have to show up for work or even interact with too many people every day. But still, you need to see people which are your customers as this is to build a connection with your customer to make your customers feel connected with your brand and also build the communication skills to boost up your confidence.

But the real question is, can a millennial start their e-business at any time from now?

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The answer is, yes! You, youngsters out there! This is your time to get back up to live up your dream by making an e-business! If you’ve been exploring an online business in Malaysia that suits you best and you aren’t sure which one is the best for you to get started with your online business. Well, my friend, you’ve come to the right place.

Summary of the article

Ideas to Start the E-Business

Today, I will be sharing with you the steps you have to do to start an e-business that Malaysians are making money successfully. I hope by giving the ideas could brighten up the ideas for you to start the e-business! Well, let’s roll it.

1. Find your niche marketing

What exactly is a niche?

A niche in the market is a specific area of marketing which has its products, requirements and targeted customers to develop and deliver goods services to satisfy the customer and also to flourish the company itself.

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Every successful e-business owner will start with a niche first and that when you are selling niche products that leads to getting to know your targeted audience, you will get a good chance of succeeding in business because from there you will know whom to target specifically rather than just general audience.

Steps You Need to Get Your Perfect Niche

Step #1: Identify your interests and passions

So, the first step to finding the most profitable niche for you are choosing your niche that represents your interests and passions that can you can add value in it. This is a super important first step because this connects with your interests.

If you are selling something in your e-business that you don’t really like or don’t care about, you for sure will lose interest along the way or you even will quit way too early in the business. This is why you have to identify your niches that you are passionate about and that could add value for it to have an excellent profit in selling things in your business.

Step #2: Evaluate your niche

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Usually, the big mistake that young entrepreneurs make when choosing a niche is that they do not evaluate that niche. Because when you don’t evaluate the niche that you’re choosing, you wouldn’t identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or even threats of your niche selection.

Therefore, always and always evaluate your ideas first before starting for the next action. Once you’ve evaluated your niche, you will get a better understanding and the concept of your business in all of the factors surrounding your choice and straight go make a validation for your idea with test selling! Without evaluating and validating your niche your business will become a failure from the start.

Step #3: Secure your niche

So to validate, you have to create a real-world online store setting to test your selling product to your targeted audience if they are interested or not. This is to see if you can create traffic or stickiness for your e-business because having one niche could show and see the real grit of yours and also proves your expertise in your business. Be sure that you are stick to your niche to grow your e-business that could establish yourself as the expert at one niche to go further in proving your authority in the business.

But! If you have a difficult time in the validation step where you might not make enough sales in the validation step, then the niche that you chose is not profitable for you. But you don’t have to spend a lot of money to test your idea. Instead, you might want to think off on the relationship ad also strategize towards building a loyal customer base to create brand awareness of your brand.

Step #4: Make a research of your competition

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The entrepreneurs, especially the millennial, feel peer pressure as they have seen many entrepreneurs succeed in a niche and assuming that if they choose the same niche they will also succeed just like the other entrepreneurs. Well, it doesn’t work that way, my friend.

Don’t just go for a niche that you have no idea about ranking it in. You have to know that, every entrepreneur has their background that can be related to the niche that they’ve chosen. You have to discover more in-depth when deciding what kind of products you can sell. Look through the insight of people like what is top trending at that time.

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And yes, you still have to stay alert on the trending because it changes super fast that the product might fade away or be replaced with another product at any time. But it isn’t the same as a niche. For niche to disappear, it could be the whole industry starting to fade out too. So to avoid that happens, you always need to keep up with the world trends and also Google trends which you can keep in track for a steady and growing trend.

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So, discover your niche as you can develop your business with fewer difficulties as you already know with the ins and outs of the niche which you can handle it with ease. At first, it will certainly make an insane battle where you will be in a tight corner competing with established sites like FashionValet. This is because these established sites have a better ranking, stickiness or even better pricing on the same products that you are trying to sell.

Hence, make strategies for your business to compete with your competitors to able to tackling your targeted customers. The end goal for starting an e-business is making a good profit where before committing to a niche, you need to be clarified if you can make enough income from your niche products.

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But bear in mind, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a perfect process for finding a niche. It just that what got to do is before you start selling the products you have to find the right products by doing some research about your passion and interest in selling your products.

And from there, you will learn how to research different niches in any kind that comes with problem-solving in your business. But if you get stuck in the planning phase and you just simply to give up, you will end up never get around to starting. So, you have to be mentally and physically prepared because as an entrepreneur you need a clear mind and high spirit in making your business flourished.

2. Conduct market research

What is Market Research?

online business malaysia, 20s

Market research is a technique used to gather information to have a better understanding of the company’s targeted market. Effective market research is when we can identify customer needs, desires, fears, and gratification.

Steps to Conduct Market Research

Step #1: Identify your targeted audience

When conducting market research it is to identify the opportunities to serve different insights into a customer where the entrepreneur needs to verify and clarify the unmet needs of a customer.

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For example, what do they want in online marketing or what do they need in online marketing or what kind of online platform they want. This could be useful for the entrepreneurs so that they are the product that they’re selling are profitable to anyone with the data collection that they can grab from the customer.

Some useful data collection that you can use is making a question and answer sessions regarding e-business and observes or makes an experiment on their insight on what they like and what they don’t. The information that they collect will make the next action to have better products in terms of designing and conveying the market message successfully that can attract the customer with quality enhancement.

Step #2: Check out your competition

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As for competitors, the entrepreneurs also need to be aware of the competitor on what are their weaknesses and strengths. You have to look through all of their products, on what kind of services they’re making, their marketing techniques, how the set the price and their strategic location. Usually, for established businesses they are aware of these matters for the sake of their customers.

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They will brainstorm and absorbs ideas from colleagues and customers to make the idea more creative and memorable to make their benchmark. Market research helps you identify the areas for possible business expansion by validating the product that you use by using tactics as keyword research could evaluate the trending products that you can catch up with. This is to test the market to determine whether there is room for a new product or service.

After you are armed with the information about your existing customer and also your targeted customer, this the time you improve your business because when you are understood on how and what your customer desire to set the realistic goals for continuous improvement in business growth.

Step #3: Engage with your audience

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It also depends on the nature of your business and who you are trying to reach. You have to make on-going strategies to make your business keep on-trend. How to do that? Distributing your survey to your existing customer could widen up your ideas and upgrading the business that you can search for respondents for your survey.

When making a survey, you have to be precise about the outcome that you’re seeking to get the perfect answer that you need for your next marketing plans. With a skillfully planned market survey that could grab the attention for the customer’s feedback that will deliver good market research for your company.

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If you have already found out the problems and obstacles in your business, conducting market research in your business could determine the source of the issue. As an example, you can determine if a competitor has entered the market that causing a decrease in sales because they have the same niche as you are. You need to make a move and keep your game in identifying the problem and also to solve it. This is because every problem and opportunity has different solutions.

Remember, as your business grows, you have to be alert and aware of the new problems and priorities. For example, if your business is increasingly at risk or facing the biggest problems you need to take your move fast to not let your business become worst or bankrupt and also forgotten. Unless you take the leap to ensure your property is properly protected to develop your brand.

Step #4: Clarify your unique value proposition

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You have to clarify your unique value proposition in your business where you need to explain and describe why are your business is different and has owned its speciality than other organizations.

Make brand awareness to your targeted customers by promoting your brand on the website and especially social media like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook is crucial because people nowadays, the millennials especially today most of them have their own social media account. So, by promoting your brand in these apps and sites, you will gain attention all around the world whether in Malaysia or outside of Malaysia.

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Social media can give you a lot of benefits and creating brand awareness in social media might be the best choice for you to promote your business. As long you know how to attract your targeted audience by creativity and uniqueness of its products.

In this way, you could tackle and engage with your audience by learning more about what they want and they need, that they could find the valuable things in your product and service, and in exchange, this will help them achieve their desire on what they want and they would like to see.

Step #5: Conclude if your marketing strategies are effective or not

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The best way to conclude your marketing strategies is to conduct the evaluation where it involves the use of various data collection methods through observing the targeted customer by interviewing them and make questionnaires with them.

 Market research isn’t just for new startup businesses; the established business could also use market research to explore new ideas and new insight into their customers for a new customer. Be it businesses from all shapes, scope, industry and experience levels can benefit from market research.

It is super useful and helpful because with market research they will learn new and existing customers’ insights, identify the problem of the company and solve the problems in the company, and also help them to explore new opportunities and strategies for the business just by analyzing the results.

Hence, conducting market research can be a very eye-opening experience as it could show or give you the acknowledgement of people when buying something. With all these concepts in mind, recall that effective publicizing genuinely make the essence of your item. Setting aside the effort to finish statistical surveying to make the most out of your ad crusade will just help drive your item forward in the market.

3. Analyze your target market

What is the target market?

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It is pools of the customer to whom you want to possibly potential sell your products or services. This is because your target market isn’t for anyone regarding their areas or status. When you sell something you must have your targeted customers who are fit to buy your products.

They are the customer who most likely to buy your products or services that comes with common characteristics like the same behaviours.

When you’re in the ocean you must have targeted fish that you will be focusing on catching it.

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So the business that you’re doing is actually to fulfil the targeted customers’ desires. That’s why it is so significant to know as much as possible about your target market as this is where you develop your business as well as your customer in terms of branding and experience. The more you are crystal clear to define your target customer, the better you can lead your business in how what and where to reach your best prospects.

Steps to Analyze Your Targeted Market

Step #1: Look at your current customer base

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Figuring out who wants to buy your products that they have already bought something from your company and their keep on coming. By compiling the data on your current customer based on gender, age and interest could make you adapt more about your customer.

Once you have analyzed and understood about defining your customers’ characteristics of your loyal customer, you could go after a more new customer who fits from the same mould as this could widen more customers from any kind of place, be it in Malaysia or another country. This certainly will help you identify your target market that can help you decide on how to advertise to whom and how it supposed to be.

Step #2: Check out your competition

The fact that an entrepreneur can stand out for their business from the competitors by reaching your targeted customer on a person can create longer-lasting relationships as it builds deeper customer loyalty to the business.

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When the customer can identify your brand, for example, whether your brand is fake or original that is what we called as loyalty. They know the details of the product as they will appreciate the service and the quality of the product that makes them feel the company needs to be protected by getting counterfeit products from others.

Step #3: Engage with your customer

Also, knowing your customers more deeply can be more helpful because just like I have mentioned, they can give suggestions on your products and services in a way for better quality. When you can know better about your customer, you can feel the connection between you and the customer by just putting yourself in their shows so that you can see on how you can improve your offerings and what kind of features you can add to serve a better service and your products to your customer. 

Step #4: Have a clear vision and mission

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Having a clear concept of your business on the value of your products or services is super superficial as it is the main thing that you need to have in yourself before you starting your business.

Without a clear concept, the business would be a failure unless you have someone to assist you at the very beginning of starting the business. Question yourself; whether your business could make someone’s life easier by fulfilling their satisfaction in a more interesting convenient way.

If you still do not have a clear list of the benefits of your business, it is time for you to brainstorm, my friend. As you brainstorming with your co-workers, you tend to develop more ideas and creativity in making your business more beneficial and can make your customer’s life more convenient.

Just by asking your regular customer or even your new targeted customer could get the idea of the main purpose of the business as these people will give genuine feedback and suggestions based on their own opinion towards your products and services.

Step #5: Analyze your findings

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Using analytics tools like Google Trends could give you an overall view of the perspectives by identifying and evaluating the competitors’ business. In this way, it could enable you to determine ways to improve your business to attract the targeted customer and for the new customer too.

The benefits of using targeting marketing will help your brand team. It is worth to use this method for a business as it allows you to get more exact strategies for your business in order to engage more with your targeted customer and new customer as to assure that you stay tuned with your main target market as your products and services always evolve so as your audience where they always change over time.

This is because most of the entrepreneurs nowadays always refuse to get connected with the customer. They believe that once they launch their products their targeted customers will just go and buy their products. Well, you could do that. But it will just stay that way without any improvement. To get more big income, you should always engage with your customers to make them feel connected with you.

Step #6: Choose demographics to target a potential customer

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Find out who not only need your product or services but also who is likely to have the desire to buy it. Think of these following factors;

  1. Age
  2. Gender
  3. Income Level
  4. Education Level
  5. Occupation
  6. Ethnic background
  7. Location
  8. Marital or family status

Step #7: Consider your psychographics of your targeted customers

Find out more about your personal characteristics of the customer, including;

  1. Attitudes
  2. Behaviour
  3. Lifestyles
  4. Interest
  5. Personality

To those, who don’t do target marketing will fall apart because there’s no engagement in the business. If you want to be connected with your customers, you should do anything possible to prevent it. So don’t stay in your comfort zone and always explore new things in your business!

4. Evaluate your market viability for your products

How do you know when your product is viable?

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 It is when it’s not only visible but also growing rapidly with developing the name reputation of your own business where that product not only gets purchased by the customer but it also performed well by other perspectives where it is well enough to be recommended by others as it spreads the brand awareness virally. You want to make sure that your products are both initiates with sales and generate word of mouth.

Steps to Evaluate Your Market Viability for Your Products

Step #1: Does it deliver?

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One of the things you have to do when you want to evaluate the viability of your product is you have to always think of the outcome of the products. For example, is the products are okay to be delivered to the targeted customers and etc. You need to really discover the products that you are trying to sell. To find the answer on how viable your products are by just simply discussing the idea and sort of brainstorming for your product or services with the people in your life, as simple as that.

It doesn’t cost you any money, but it will cost you the effort and energy from you. What’s more in this move is that you will eventually develop high spirit with and sincerity of love on your business because you are trying bringing the best out of best for your business. You can make the conversation basically anywhere!

Be it in the hall room with your friends or family, over a meal or even in a car that can be done informally. With a conversation that leads to a brainstorming session about a business could really bring the best ideas to enhance your creation! Even your little sister or brother could also give some suggestions that you actually could use it for your business.

Step #2: Confirm the market

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After you discussed in more depth about business on the pros and cons, you should by now make your business for a next move which is forward with your idea as you want to start a marketing test on a small scale to avoid the risk of losing lots of money. But yes, it is still fine to lose money if you fail, but hey, this is just the start of a business and yes this is your challenge in making a business.

So, it is normal if you have a bit of short money in the business. If you’re creating a physical product like skincare, have thought of having a prototype so that people could test it out the products and evaluate them with their honest opinion, feedbacks and also suggestions on it, in this it is a more traditional way to test it out.

But in another case, if you are doing a service, for example, making an online business on the app and the user would want to see the review or the feedback before buying the products. So, you surely want to make beta testing by providing thoughts on the interface to see if the app could be easy to use that could lead to overall satisfaction.

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Even you can check the most popular forums on the topics by paying close attention to the frequency of posts on the internet. The metrics on the internet will tell how active the forum is as this is to make you keep on track on the trending business and the advantage of it could also give you so much inspiration of how much public interest the product is.

Additionally, you could also use the online tools which are Google Insights, Good Trends and also Google Keyword Planner. The use of these tools is to show how often the users are searching for specific terms as useful for you to start to strategize the ways to create brand awareness on the internet.

Step #3: Is it a trend, flat or growing market?

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The most powerful method you could also use is to market your products by using any kind of the digital platform, be it on the website, social media whether it is on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. As long, you know what to convey to your targeted customer by using your creativity to successfully attract your audience.

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Using these platforms could certainly help to improve the authority of your brand image for your targeted audiences and in exchange, you could enhance its online visibility for your business. You could also use an SEO to rank up your website by just understanding the SEO you could rank your website on popular search engines like Google for example. If your business is very innovative or trendy, you will likely have your competitors online.

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But with SEO, it will certainly be as easy as a piece of cake to find a spot on the first page of Google. This will bring more traffic on your website that can create the stickiness from the user to your website if they are interested in your website for example like Zalora. It is trending because they are from the fashion line as the millennials nowadays love to shop in clothing on the trending clothes.

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Well, there are always ups and downs in the business. Now it is you that need to make a move to get your business flourished. The best indicator for the viability of your startup business is a proven market to make sure that your business is growing and develop that is just not static. You have to have the target to always improve your business.

5. Conduct a competitive analysis

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When you’re in the line business, no matter how niche you can go, always remember that there is someone who has probably done it before you thought of that niche as the industry now always keeps on racing and compete with each other that has becoming congested in the industry to grow their online presence and getting known by the audience.

Hence, it is hard for brands to build audiences as their challenge is to take care of their customer loyalty because there is the possibility that their consumers will just hop onto the next brands as they have so many options to choose from.  Well, the best way to tackle this problem is, all you have to is embracing your competitors and learn from them by discovering their strengths and weaknesses.

What is the importance of competitor analysis in e-business?

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Understanding your competition in your business is one of the best ways get to get to grips with your business market as you need to remain agile and alert with all the trendy and niche products that are trending and always have to adapt and be innovative just as your competitors are. Remember! E-business will always evolve quickly as you will spot trends quickly, especially social media. For example, Instagram.

But luckily the good thing about social media is, you get to see what are the trendy businesses are running and you will a better space in your industry if you can see what others are doing. Make a research on your competition so that you could have a better view of your business practices and share the spot with them next time. Your competitive analysis can be wide or unfathomably definite.

We’re speculating you’re a bustling individual with a couple of more gatherings to get to (today alone), so we’re going to go for the brisk and simple course, however, you can adjust as you see fit on the off chance that you need a more profound jump.

The benefits of conducting the competitor analysis are;

  1. Got to capitalize on opportunities and exploit their weaknesses
  2. You will get to learn their strengths
  3. You will be aware of your competition so that you will be prepared for your future challenges from them.

Steps To Conduct Competitive Analysis

Step #1: Understand your main purpose

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By having a clear goal before conducting competitive analysis is super crucial as it can lead to a successful business. With the main purpose that you have, you definitely can define more specific areas of interest such as social presence in order to tackle the audience’s eyes.

Therefore, before you get into the line with your competitors, be sure that you have defined your own business first. Discover yourself whether you are an established company or a startup company and what are your main purpose and mission. List any kind aspects that you could think of to consider.

Here are 2 key aspects that I can give you for your business;

  • Inventory – Where you need to list your skills and the business’s capabilities.
  • Customer needs – With your expertise as your guide, you could identify the customer insights and will have the potential ways that you can provide for the solutions.

Step #2: Explore your competitors’ websites

Sometimes, just because competitors get lots of traffic, it doesn’t mean that they have won the website game. Some of the time the website that gets traffic has the content that isn’t very good either. But hey no need to worry! You don’t want to be like one of them right? Hunger for popularity only? You sure want to have a great and amazing quality in every aspect of the website.

So the first thing that you should do to conduct general research on your competitors before you start your analysis are;

  1. Look at their website’s design
  2. Compare their prices with your products
  3. Look into their content
  4. Discover their marketing tactics
  5. Look through their product pages(reviews and feedbacks)

By making research on these listed things that you should’ve aware of, could help you to reveal your strengths and weaknesses points when you compare it to your competitor and that you can generate your new ideas with your creativity for your own online business in Malaysia. This is because through visiting your competitors’ websites you can find the ideas of new products to sell by not having the same selling products with the same niche.

Step #3: Make engagement in social media

You could also involve yourself more on social media as it is one of the expressways to establish your business even quicker that could market for your product or services. Most of the competitors have their social media and mostly for Instagram and Facebook to be engaged more with their targeted audience.

Therefore, you can see how their content is and the look and feel of their feed. If their feed is looking a bit off, this is your chance to step in the game to market your business. Remember, your competition in social media platforms is a breeding ground for competitive research as they are evolving continuously.

Step #4: Document brand elements

Presently it’s a great opportunity to examine how every individual contender speaks to itself, from their slogan to their image hues. You can be as itemized or as general as you can imagine at this stage. Simply recollect you will probably distinguish similitude and contrasts, so utilize whatever language encourages you to do this.

To save time, here are the spreadsheet templates that you can use for your analysis, it includes a list of every question to review about the competition;

  • Vision, mission, values
  • Strengths and weaknesses
  • Similarities
  • Contrasts
  • Threats
  • Products and services

Competitive analysis of social media channels is important since it became the foundation starter of running a successful business as a society today are mostly have their social media to look up to, especially from the millennial.

If your competitor is flying high on social media, you better gear up your game to consider a new strategy to engage with your market. But you may still use social media but different look and feel to make your targeted audience in your creative way that they have never seen from other competitors. So always think of something new for your business!

6. Source your products

What exactly the product sourcing is?

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It is a process in a business where they have their methods of achieving the products to sell thrivingly. There are a lot of methods to source their products and most of the sellers use a combination of methods including the dropshipping, wholesale and custom manufactured with their strategy. When you start your business, you will come across the fact that your customer wants more options when it comes to products that are sold online.

You need to yourself in the customer’s shoes where when people online shopping the surely want to choose between thousands of perfectly categorized and neatly priced products. It is not always easy to find appealing products that you can offer in your online website or apps because why? Every customer has their own taste and desire. That is where developing e-commerce product step in.

This is one of the challenges when you’re the line business, to please customers’ aspirations. You need to focus on when choosing the right product that matches the same niche. You will also realize that having a product sourcing with a great strategy will pay off the effort that you did of building a successful e-business.

Here are some tips that will help you to meet your product sourcing goals that totally pay of your effort for your e-business store.

Step #1: Always invest ideas on new things

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Don’t ever limit yourself for the same products over and over. Why? Your customer will get bored of the same thing, for example when you’re doing a clothing line. This is super important as you should always evolve and keep on track on the fashion updates. Don’t be afraid of trying new things, get out of your bubbles and be more adventurous in your business!

If your product sells well in your business, it is highly likely that the same products are being sold on other e-business. This is why so many businesses, not just online, became a failure because they competing with a highly established company. You must always come up with a new product and idea to sell to your targeted customer.

By that, your business will evolve and will keep up with the trend that attracts the customer’s eyes and it will certainly increase the income of your business.

Step #2: Make a research before you launch a new product

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When you’re about to launch a new product, you surely want a perfect launch for your products to attract your targeted audience and also to create brand awareness for the newcomers. One of the most important steps to launch your product with a good strategy is by planning your product launch promotion strategy.

Your product needs to deliver an accurate message as it represents the products and also plays a huge role in how you present your new products to the targeted customers. You need to have a catchy tagline and a perfect motto that should be highlighted the product’s best features.

Once you have developed your product messaging to your audience, the next move is you need to plan on how you are going to promote your launching. In promoting your business sufficiently you could get a flourished business. Because the more effectively you promote your product, the bigger the chance you will achieve success.

The goal of product launching promotion strategy is that you mastermind your targeted customers, well, in a good way and also to build the hype for the launching to create the awareness of a new product.

Here are some ideas to help you in planning your promotion strategy;

  1. Keep your social media followers updated with your progress, meaning update them with the date launches and a sneak peek of the products.
  2. Send out regular email updates to your subscribers.
  3. Start a blog and create posts that could bring excitement to the readers about the product’s features.

There are things that you should take a note on you have to-dos and don’ts when you sourcing your business products. Remember, caution is always a good thing in business.

Steps to Source Your Products

Step #1: Verify your products sources

You need to do enough research for your sources which are your manufacturer and also your wholesale supplier. You surely want to survey what company that do you want to deal with, whether it is domestically or internationally it has to be legally registered and should have their own verified address.

Step #2: Have a few backup suppliers

You should always be prepared to have another plan if your plan A did not work out when progressing the product sourcing. Unexpected things always happen in your business. And for that, you want plenty of backups if your main product sources could not deli0ver what you need on time and you do not want to disappoint your business clients.

Step #3: Don’t deal with an irrelevant middleman

Never deal with the middlemen because they will reduce your profit in a very huge amount of difference. They might have the possibility of intention that they would only want to aim to only make money on the products but do not want to involve in creating it. Hence you should go straight to the main source as close as possible.

Product sourcing is a super important business operation because it involves the middleman in your business that can create miscommunication in the business. So, you should take time in surveying your sources by list out the relevant details before you launch your business.

7. Sell your products on social media

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A decade ago, social media was used only to connect with your friends, family and your colleagues no matter what world you are in. But now, social media is used for all sorts of activities, from catching up with your friends through social media to what technology has done to the whole universe today.

As for businesses, social media is very powerful marketing that could help thousands of entrepreneurs to market their business. It is the cheapest marketing option that doesn’t need any costs to sign up for or maintain a social media account.

Unless you are doing a boosted post for the post that you want to market. It is essential that you need to have a little bit of knowledge about social media, in case if you want to market your business on social media.

To make sure your business isn’t failed in the social media foray, here are things that you should keep your mind at all times:

Step #1: Build and stay connected with your network

One of the challenging but most rewarding parts of social media in e-business is establishing a network. Why? It involves all of the aspects that require lots of strategies and brainstorming to manage the management of social media account that also needs a huge investment of time and energy from each teammate.

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According to Google, 97% of consumers usually go online to research products and services. Having a strong online presence is an essential component of your marketing strategy as there’s no other easy way of gaining followers to make stickiness between the audiences. You need to start from the bottom to the top by promoting your social media account until it is verified unless you are willing or have extra money to pay a service that will gain your followers.

Other than that, you have to make sure that you are updated with your social media streams do not let your followers hanging or being questioned by your hanging social media account as this can lose your followers and your account will be unknown.

When you update your account for any mention of your business or related keywords, we make sure that you engage with your posts especially when if they are questions for example; you do a q&a session with your audience. This will build a connection that will keep your followers and yourself closer

Step #2: Know your targeted audiences’ behaviour and adapt it

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If you want to promote your business by following your targeted audience because you have to know what kind of platform they usually use, for example, if your targeted audience is the millennial, you have to know what social media platform they usually use and normally they will use Instagram and Twitter for their daily basis to check out new updates.

But if your targeted audience is in the range of 35 and above, the majority of them probably use facebook to check their new updates. It also depends on the niche you are trying to get into, so this is what you need to find out so that you can focus all of your energy and sources into a good strategy that you will be applying based on the social media platform that you will be using to promote your business with the right audience with a right platform.

Hence, make sure that you observe your targeted customers behave and insights on the platform that they’re using frequently, then you can start tailoring your strategy to take advantage of their behaviour effectively.

Step #3: Post your content on a regular basis

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A great way to stay connected with your audience on social media is by posting relevant creative content regularly. By posting a content on the regular basis could also give benefits on your business to improve the strategy where you can know what’s the best posting frequency is, what time you should post your content based on the social media platform you use and how can your audience can react to different type of post regarding the likes and comments.

If you post your content that can connect with their interests, they surely will share with their friends and family and try to stay connected with your social media account to see the updated news and things. A high-quality content could build trust among your audience because they will feel the connection and can be trusted which can make your brand an authority figure that fits in your niche.

When your audience sees your creative content consistently, they can make your social media account trusted and can be recommended by other new audiences Thus, informational and creative content is an excellent tool and strategy for e-business. It is now on you, whether you want to take this chance to build up a new strategy or you want to stay as you are now.

Step #4: Create a personalized customer experience

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Personalization could create a connection between your brand and your audience where it will let you know your customer even deeper. Then, you cause this knowledge on in a way that could benefit your brand and your audience because in making business is about to give and take, right?

So it created a good foundation in making the connection between the brand and the audience, even the sales relationship. Every entrepreneur should know this, when a customer trusts your business with their information, you, therefore, will give them an efficient customized experience.

In today’s world, social media is a powerful tool for any business because with social media as it engages with the whole world that could reach and enlarge the chances of boosting your sales if you strategized everything with perfect informational content and creativity. It presents a great opportunity for you to spread your brand’s name, make a profit and also creates a loyal customer.

But you must keep trying to keep your customers feel content and making sure they are well responded and feel appreciated because many entrepreneurs haven’t fully seen the benefits of using social media to market their products or services because they haven’t fully discovered in it.

If you use this strategy correctly you will surely build trust, loyalty, and genuine connection with your new audience and existing customer. It’s never too late to invest your social media efforts for your marketing business.

8. Build your brand

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Your branding is a way of representing your business and also defining your business to yourself and also to society. Without branding, your business means nothing because they won’t recognize by your brand or be familiar with it. But having the branding, your business will be known by everyone if you can establish your business. Branding could develop a mark around your name or your career.

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Vivy Yusof, Co-Founder of Fashion Valet

For example, Vivy Yusof. She is known as the co-founder of FashionValet and her brand known as dUck. Building a brand to make it known by the universe takes time and effort, but trust me, it is worth it. It is something that no one can take away from you, once you are well-known.

The benefits of having an established branding are;

  1. Customer can feel the connection with your brand emotively that could lead to higher sales and recognition.
  2. A strong brand could give you an ideal platform which to extend your offering to your customers.

Here are some tips on how to successfully make your brand well-known by people;

Step #1: Be unique

If you are starting up your business and still think of what kind of name you want to name your brand. Make sure that you want to name something that the market still hasn’t heard as this will make people feel interested and attracted by the unique name.

Product or service should be genuine enough to make them feel the curiosity and wonder of the name. Once you have your brand, you now should identify your strengths and makes your business unique. Think about the characteristics and motto that could represent the brand name.

Step #2: Transparency in admitting mistakes and fixing the problems

Customers are experienced with lots of brands. If they have any bad experience with any brand that will remain unresolved, why? Because they will write off the brand that spread negative feedback through social media and word of mouth, therefore, you need to be at the top of the game to improve your customer service in a better way.

Once, you get a bad review, you need to accept it whether it‘s your fault or not. Do not ever point back to the customer as that will make your image and reputation even worst.

Step #3: Grow your community

Many of the Malaysians’ and world’s best brands, in an example, Zalora, Shopee, Lazada, Google, Amazon, etc, focus on building and improving their communities because they want to have the stickiness and last long connection with their audience. Even starts up businesses have a lot of opportunities in building online and offline communities.

For example, you can build a connection through Instagram and Facebook. By connecting with them, your brand will be recognized by people even more, if you keep updating them with your products that could excite them.

Step #4: Have a logo or name that will stick to people’s minds

With a strong brand is easy can be recognizable where first the recognition starts with your logo or the name of the business. The logo usually will appear on the business cards, website or social media, etc as this to introduce your business to everyone that also creates the first impression by them.

So having a strong and memorizable logo or name is super important to make people acknowledge your brand. People usually associate brands with the brand’s logo to your targeted audience in mind. A creative logo builds to pull your brand together.

Step #5: Empower your customers

The meaning of empowering your customers is not that you are controlling the customer not control of your brand. But you can set your brand’s direction where you want to approach the targeted and potential customers that are interested in you.

This is because people can become your brand’s ambassadors even celebrities. You will have a bonus if a celebrity becomes your ambassador because they will promote your brand and your brand will get the spotlight from everyone. Also, you can spread your ideas and brand to their networks too.

Step #6: Make your products and brands with quality

The key to build an outstanding brand is a high-quality product. Whatever you are selling, remember that you should stand behind your brand and product with quality. Because if you do not imply qualities in your product, the customer will surely do not want to make any engagement with your business.

But of course, quality should be matched with the price too. Make people impressed with your excellent sells, and that they will make them keep coming back for more.

Step #7: Get rid the fear of outshining others

When you have a quality product, I am sure that it will bring you close to a successful business. But it must come with courage as it can get you there much faster. So don’t be afraid to speak up and being outshined from people because, in business, you have to stand out to be recognized.

You have to present your brand as best as it could be for the product and service. If you believed in its potential and share your passion with other people, it will come back multiplied.

Step #8: Be consistent

If you want to get into a market, it is crucially necessary to make your brand strategy consistent where you have to stick to the main concept of the brand. When you first start your business, I suggest you do not make any alterations of your presence because that could be the sign of weakness as people will think that you are unsure of your product.

Plus, when you aren’t that famous yet, and you keep on changing the concept that can lose the trust from the customer in your brand because it is constantly changed, so, stay true to yourself so that people will begin to swarm in they see your business.

With these brand awareness tips, you will be a superstar brand in no time as long as you stay true to your business with your creativity and uniqueness.

9. Create your online store website

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Once you’ve legally registered your business and has already started thinking about the design, then you have to register your domain name and with any redirect URLs that might be relevant.  Building e-commerce websites need an extensive technical understanding to build the website and grow your business online successfully. Do you want to have your own online store but you do not want to spend a lot of money on building it?

Well, let’s get down to business. Here are the steps in making a successful online store;

Step #1: Always engaged with web design

It doesn’t matter if you have the best product that fits in your niche and has the best customer service but if your online store design is outdated and awful, your online business presence, my friend, will be doomed. Why? Because most of the buyers look at the first impression on the design of the website as visual appearance are the most essential factor to make a purchase.

So to create an online store, you can either invest a little of money to a web designer or if you do not want to spend any money on your online website, you surely can build your website on your own.

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But luckily, there’s a ready-made template site that you can just get it and customize the way you want it to be. There are a lot of sites that you can visit, for example, Wix or Colorlib. They are so easy to use once you understand the users of the things inside the site as they have the latest trend we design.

Few tips for improving web design;

  1. Your online store can be designed by a professional web designer or if you can design by yourself to code the CSS or with a template provided in the sites.
  2. Web design should attract visitor’s attention as it will engage the customer better.

To help you get that website you’ve been wanting for your business, Sterrific also provide you with web design services, so go hit them up now!

Step #2: Collaborate with other brands

Show the customer with a good reputation by establishing your site to show which companies whether it is big or small but preferably the big ones are working with you as this will build the trust and excitement to the targeted customer.

The more partners you have, the better the reputation of your business.

Few tips for partnering with other brands and influencers;

If you have collaborated with a lot of brands, put in your website because the more partners, the more buyer will trust your company,

Highlight any partner companies on your homepage as this will make the first impression of your site visitors.

Step #3: Advertise your site on social media

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By promoting your site on social media channels is a super powerful way to engage with lots of potential customers in a creative way. You can promote anywhere you want with any kind of platform. Be it on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat. I recommend you to use a tracking tool like Google Analytics to track which platform your targeted customer frequently use and that you can focus your marketing efforts on the suitable platform.

Here are a few tips to advertising on social media;

  1. Use online analytics to track your ads on what the customer like and do not like so that you can move forward in improvising it.
  2. Allows a lot of creativity and fun so that the customer will feel connected to the brand itself.

Step #4: Make your site SEO-Friendly

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Your online store has to receive lots of traffic to make an income for your business. The key to generating the traffic is by SEO which is Search Engine Optimization. What SEO does is that when you insert keywords into your product titles or description even in your posts, your site will rank higher in the search engine. This is to increase the visibility of the site that can create greater visits and more transformation to make.

Here is a tip for you in making your site an SEO-Friendly;

  • Insert relatable SEO keywords to your product pages to see who will you be competing with. If the keywords are the major sites, then you need to consider changing the term to less familiar and competitive.

To help you get that website you’ve been wanting for your business, Sterrific also provide you with SEO services, so go hit them up now!

Step #5: Keep an eye on the Competition

Usually, users browse through only stores to look for the cheapest product and the recommended shopping experience. To keep the buyers attracted to your online store, you should identify that they are quite similar to your own business that they can compare. Make a research about your competitor so that it enables you to determine and improvise what elements that you have to change to keep the customer buyer to stay loyal.

Here is a tip for assessing your competition;

  • Consider the design of competitors ‘sites and not just their offerings. Note how it might e more user-friendly than your store that how it might be attracting the buyers. 

Step #6: Email Marketing

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Email marketing is an easy way for the owner of the business to build the relationship between their customers. It is easily done just by send out the targeted messages to a targeted potential customer. By attracting them with their interest, email marketing can be a powerful tool to increase the sale with success.

How to do email marketing? You need to collect the emails of the targeted customer and make sure that it is received from your company as this will build trust and also connection. Not every customer wants to sign up for the email list, but to those who signed up the email list, they are eager and excited about your brand as they will make an engagement to respond to your email marketing.

Here are a few tips using email marketing;

  1. When you do email marketing, make sure that you have to track the messages such as how many times it was opened and which link is mostly were clicked.
  2. Track which customer unsubscribe from your email list so that you can improve the email marketing to attract back the customer.\

What are the common mistakes usually entrepreneurs make after launching an online store?

  1. Not having a marketing plan before you start your business to drive customers to your store.
  2. Did not use the power of social media
  3. Using the low-quality images and bad descriptions for your product
  4. Not tracking your conversions with Google Analytics for e-business tracking
  5. Not having a customer service plan
  6. Thinking that all you need is just a store and not having the internet engagement

And now, you are ready to go!

Tackle these key areas and you will have created a solid foundation for you in building an online store.

So, how’s the tip? The times of physical stores overwhelming the whole universe of retail are a distant memory.  The advanced scene is staying put, making on the web stores the best spot to sell. 

Yet, becoming wildly successful online is much harder than it appears. What’s more, huge amounts of web-based business organizations battle to hang out in such a soaked group.  Clients who don’t have the foggiest idea on how to utilize your site shrouded sending costs, obscure item esteem, poor route, and more are at fault. 

Fortunately, you can assume responsibility for your online business store’s prosperity.  To begin with, comprehend that your image needs to represent something, and you have to tell individuals precisely what that is.  Your image’s qualities ought to line up with clients’ qualities, fill a need, and bolster moral tasks

Website optimization gets traffic, so you need to take a shot at upgrading your rankings. Do some catchphrase research and include in watchwords your site to pull in more clients.  Be that as it may, don’t attempt to swindle the framework, or Google may punish you, which could prompt a decline in rankings. 

Clients love amazing UX. Clarify what you’re selling and include CTAs with the goal that you can channel individuals through your site’s pages.  Streamline your site for portable clients, as well. Assemble straightforwardness by adding contact data to your site, uncovering any extra expenses or transporting costs before checkout, and implanting client audits. This manufactures trust with customers.

Remember to help generally commitment rates. Get dynamic via web-based networking media, make a blog with important substance or item updates, or run some paid advertisements on the web. Fabricate a “gathering” or “network” segment on your site where clients can meet up or have a few occasions to draw out a group for a decent time.

Making a successful business can be a very compensating knowledge, yet it tends to be a lengthy, difficult experience to arrive. That is the reason it’s critical to appreciate the adventure. Set aside the effort to appreciate the everyday minutes. Set aside an effort to rest and think about yourself. Also, remunerate yourself for the achievements you accomplish.

Life is an adventure, not an ultimate objective.

You’ll discover genuine bliss when you’re doing what you cherish each day. Find where your energy crosses with the necessities of others, and you’ll be genuinely fruitful.

I hope with these tips, it will be useful to market your upcoming e-business or ongoing e-business in Malaysia as it is super crucial that you have to stay updated with all the latest marketing trends and techniques in building your online store successfully as these digital strategies for web-based business stores that we gave are a little piece of the open doors your business can use to arrive at more clients on the web.

Each purpose of this article demonstrates thoughts which can be formed into working deals.

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Good Luck!

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