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PRESENTER LAUREEN: Welcome to the webinar Marketing my online shop effectively.
In this webinar we will talk about the findability and online visibility of your online shop.
With us in the studio are entrepreneur Emma Hutchinson from ginfling.nl.
Hi. LAUREEN: -Hi, good to have you.
And entrepreneur Sebastian Pollesello of capsulestudio.net.
SEBASTIAN: Hi. -And joining us via video conference...
is Jaap Schepers, with his company Afdeling Online.
And my name is Laureen. I'm your host.
Good to have you, Jaap. -Thank you very much. Hi.
Hi. So with your company, you help entrepreneurs develop and implement an online strategy.
When should you start working on the promotion and findability of your online shop?
Well, a very important question. You already do that from the beginning.
Which means even before you start your own platform, you build your webshop.
You start by looking at the competition, for example.
You look at where your products are being sold by the competition.
JAAP: Which keywords people are using.
But also how your competition places their products on social media, for instance.
From there you know how strong the competition is, you know where to start...
but you also know what your unique advantages are, your USPs. Very important.
So once you've done that, what would be the next step?
Well, the next step, after building your webshop...
is finding out which channels are important for the first sales of your webshop.
Some channels are mostly focused on branding, putting emotion into your brand, et cetera.
But the first step is getting as many sales as possible to put some flesh on your bones.
Some channels are better for that than others.
For example, Google Shopping, but also market channels like bol.com, or Amazon...
are very useful for that.
LAUREEN: Sounds good. So Emma, from an entrepreneur's side, how do you promote your website?
Mainly on Google. It has been really important for us to do that.
But also through the keywords, that have been spoken about.
Our organic growth is really good as well. LAUREEN: -Sounds good.
EMMA: We're also looking at things that are offline to balance the experience.
We've recently been doing some advertising in the metro stations of Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
Supported by our brands.
We've also done a local campaign in Almere for people to come and collect their products...
which allows a bit more personal contact as well.
LAUREEN: That's good, because personal contact is important.
So, Jaap, why is that? It seems to be now more important than ever.
Yeah, that's a really important topic, because when I started out with my company in 2004...
starting a webshop, well, it was difficult from a technical perspective.
But everybody who had a webshop was selling, as easy as that.
Nowadays, it's easy to build a webshop.
But there's a lot more competition and there's a lot going wrong.
Like importing products from other countries, delays and deliveries, and it's all built on trust.
JAAP: So an important way to diverse yourself from other webshops is having a personality...
is showing who's behind the brand and building a lot of trust.
With reviews, good photography, et cetera.
That's really important nowadays, just like I said, because a lot of things are going wrong.
LAUREEN: Yeah. So, Emma, Jaap is talking about that trust part.
But that's also heavily dependent on the carrier. How do you choose which one to go with?
EMMA: Absolutely. I think carriers will always give you something that's outside of your control.
But we have chosen to go with the best-known carriers for the Netherlands.
So PostNL is an obvious choice, and we use DPD.
We thought it was very important to give customers a choice.
So even on a neighbourhood level, they will have different experiences by their carrier.
And also there's different services with the two.
So for us it means we have a choice, they have a choice.
But the decision's really, you know, as a customer would expect from us, we expect from them.
So it is about price, it is about quality of service...
and it is about when things go wrong and how do they help us.
LAUREEN: So, we've established that trust, we have the right carrier, a stable platform.
Jaap, what would be the next step?
Well, after you've implemented all the channels... Of course, some are working better than others.
Some channels are bringing you more orders than other channels.
It's really important to track which channels have the best ROI.
Which means the lowest costs against the highest margins in sales.
For instance, if you're selling your products on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Google...
you can easily see which channel drives the most orders.
Based on that, you should be optimising, which means putting more money...
where the most orders are, and trying to lower your costs by optimising these channels.
Changing your keywords, changing your biddings, et cetera.
So you mentioned TikTok and some other social media channels as well.
Sebastian, how do you distinguish yourself on those social media?
SEBASTIAN: Yeah, good question. I think having a unique personal approach...
is, much like Jaap was saying, something we try to do.
We do between 40 and 50 per cent of our photography in-house.
My business partner Anna does a lot of modelling for the brand as well.
We do street photography, we do shoots in bars and restaurants.
So we try to make a lot of personal content for Instagram, mostly.
We recently started working on TikTok as well. We're still experimenting with that channel.
It's new to us, to a lot of companies.
So we're trying, and we're really trying all different channels that we can.
We do email, social media, website of course, but also a lot of offline partnerships...
events, in person with customers, with partners.
So we really try to be present in every channel we can think of.
And after that, we see which were successful, and again, like Jaap was saying...
we invest more in the channels where we see more results from.
LAUREEN: Nice, nice. And Emma, how do social media platforms work for you?
EMMA: It's a little more difficult for us, because on some social media...
we cannot sell our product, because it's alcohol. So we use it as awareness.
We post every day. So we're always showing the customers there's something interesting...
but it's never a selling platform for us.
LAUREEN: So no mocktails on there. EMMA: -We can do mocktails.
But people are more interested and we get far more likes with the alcohol.
LAUREEN: Okay, okay. So, Jaap, once you've set up these channels...
how do you keep monitoring them and see if they actually work?
Well, for instance, you can use very good and free tools for that, like Google Analytics.
There are a lot of ways to connect your shop to Google Analytics and see your transaction data...
the users, your pay-per-clicks, like the visitors via your advertisements, et cetera.
And from there, there's a very easy KPI, like ROI, which you can use to track and monitor...
and see if your revenues are all right and your costs are okay.
Okay, sounds good. So, Sebastian, I heard you mention in your previous answer...
something about working with different channels, but also different...
Not vendors, not really competitors, but adjacent companies. How does that work?
I think that's something we've tried to leverage from the start...
is to find synergies with other companies around us.
Whether that's jewellery brands or bakeries...
or even a flower shop close to us that we collaborated with.
So we do different things. We do events together, we do giveaways.
For Christmas we usually do a big giveaway of a box...
that can contain a sweater from us and a gift card for a cake, some jewellery or candles.
And we find that this really amplifies our reach, because we might have 4,000 followers...
and all these other smaller brands or companies...
have between a few thousand and tens of thousands of followers.
That really gives us a reach to their follower base as well, which again, amplifies the spend...
on these giveaways or collaborations. So we really think that that's useful:
Finding other companies that can work together. Not someone you compete with.
So maybe not an alcohol brand...
but someone selling cocktail glasses would be an example for you.
I like the thinking along going on here. Yeah, nice. So we're setting up those connections already.
So once those social media are in play, and you're attracting the right customers...
Jaap, how do you keep track of that?
And how do you keep attracting those customers via those channels?
Well, it's all about experimenting. Just like I was saying earlier:
First you start out with the channels which are very important for the first sales.
But after that, you need to start working on your branding.
You have the first sales, but then you need to create the personality of your brand.
That means that channels other than Google or Google Marketplace are much more important.
Think of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Building personalities build brands for the longer term.
That creates recurring revenue, depending on your product. I think that's very important as well.
LAUREEN: So different strategies for different social media maybe?
Yeah, different strategies... Well, not only for social media.
Just like I said, you need to divide the channels...
in sales-intended and brand-intended channels. And you need to look at your target groups.
LAUREEN: So... JAAP: -Sorry?
LAUREEN: I'm curious, which ones would you recommend?
The best one I would recommend, is starting to look at your target groups.
See which ages they are, what their hobbies are, and segment them into different groups.
For every single group there's another channel...
which is more important, another social media channel.
Like, for instance, Facebook is more for, well, the elderly people. Let's say 35 and up.
If you look at YouTube, it's mostly male, for instance.
Other channels like TikTok are more for the younger groups.
Although they have the disadvantage that advertising for younger target groups...
is much more difficult.
In general, looking at the target groups is very important.
So what would your advice be to, maybe, continue optimising marketplaces, online marketplaces?
Well, the difficulty with marketplaces is, you get revenue out of them...
but you're not really building a brand. That's the most difficult thing about marketplaces.
You're only driving boxes and sales, but not building the brand...
because you're promoting, for instance, Amazon and bol.com.
So I think they're a really important way to sell the products...
but you need to combine it with other channels to build your brand.
LAUREEN: So you need to be out there and partially use online marketplaces...
but you need to be out there yourself as well, on the preferred channels for your brand.
The preferred channels for the preferred occasions, for the preferred target groups.
Sounds like we need some advice with that, because that sounds like a lot of work.
Well, it is a lot of work. There's some repetition in my story, but, just like I said...
you first need to look at the target groups and see how they're segmented.
What their criteria are...
and look at which channels are the best to reach them.
After you've done so, you're using Google Analytics to see if it's working...
and if your ROI is okay. And according to that, you do more with them, you optimise them...
by putting more ads on them or lowering or raising the ad spends, for instance, and the biddings.
LAUREEN: So, Jaap, last question. What would your golden tip be for those launching a webshop?
Well, the golden tip is divided in two parts:
Building a personality brand for the longer term, that's really important...
because the competition is really fierce.
And the other one is optimising: From the early start, see where your revenue is coming from...
and try to adapt that into your strategy and emphasise it. Most important.
Thank you so much for joining us via video call, and Emma and Sebastian here in the studio.
LAUREEN: To recap, a good stable platform and investing in the right channels is key.
And the most important thing when it comes to marketing your online shop effectively...
is not only to distinguish yourself, but also to analyse and adjust.
So focus on where you get your highest returns from...
and make sure you tell your story and show your face...
because this will instil confidence in your potential customer.
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