“Markdown!” “Lowest Prices in Town” “Save 75%” “Rock Bottom Prices!” “We’ll Beat Any Price” “Cheapest Deal in Town”. For the past 18 months, these sales slogans have been screaming at consumers from websites, TV and newspaper ads and more.

$1 dollar bins, something you’d normally find only in the aisles of a dollar store, Wal-Mart or KMart are now a fixture in many stores – the first thing you see when  you walk through the door.

But here’s the problem. Shoppers are tired of the message.

Your customers have “frugal fatigue.”

They’re tired of pinching pennies, “buying down” from the product levels they’d normally buy at, always looking for the cheapest price. They’re tired of compromising on quality and service to save a few bucks. And even if they don’t have a lot of extra money to spend, they don’t want to be constantly reminded of it.

Granted, the rampant excess buying of extravagent luxururies is over.  Back in 2005, one of the trends I talked about when I spoke on stage at eBay Live! on the topic of product sourcing was a trend called “mass lux”.

Luxury for the masses.

At the time, people were spending huge sums of money on disposable products. Parents were buying $900 purses for their teenage daughters. In multiples! Heck women were buying $1500 – $2000 purses for themselves, without batting an eyelash.  And these were not people with 7 figure incomes. These were everyday people, making an average income.  Those days are gone.

A Badge of Honor

When the need for frugality kicked in, most people were actually glad to do it. Like eating a big buffet on Sunday and feeling virtuous about cutting back your food intake on Monday – people realized their spending had gotten out of control.

It even became somewhat of a sport for newbies. Those who had never looked at a price tags with much scrutiny were suddenly clipping coupons and happily telling their friends about the money they’d saved on their latest purchase. Or where to find the cheapest prices on food.

But the 2009 holiday season, it became apparent that people had frugal fatigue. Just like day 10 on a low calorie diet, the celery doesn’t have the same crunch and you’re ready for a cheeseburger!

In fact WordSpy, one of my favorite places to keep up with the latest in words, defines frugal fatigue as :

Mental exhaustion caused by constant frugality during hard economic times.

And yes, your customers have it.  They’re tired of being reminded that they are on a budget. Ready to upgrade their shopping choices.

And as a savvy online seller you want to make sure that you are communicating a Unique Promise of Value (UPV) that doesn’t focus solely on being the lowest price in town. You have to clearly explain the value of what you’re offering.

Reuters ran an interesting article today titled “Retailers Broaden the Meaning of Value” that underlines this point.

Recently the term “great value” has become synonymous with low price.  But value is and always has been about more than just price.

What are the benefits of your product?

What is your Unique Promise of Value?

You can’t compete on price. It’s a downward spiral. Even Wal-Mart changed their message from “Always Low Prices” to “Save Money. Live Better.”

Their new message brings up a much more compelling Unique Promise of Value for people.

If your store sells kitchen accessories – what would your message be?

How about “Cook at Home. Eat Healthier. Save Money.”  As a potential customer, now you’ve got my interest!

But if you were to say “Cheapest prices on cookie sheets.” The first thing I’d think of were those cheap baking sheets that warp, rust and burn my chocolate chip cookies.  As a shopper, I don’t want more junk to throw away in a landfill.

If you want to see a store that’s wildly successful and excels at promoting a Unique Promise of Value, check out Moosejaw.  Yes they run sales. And they have some great deals, but that’s not the message that attracts their customers.

So if you’ve been focusing your message on “Low! Low! LOW!” prices, it’s time to go back to the core of your business and see what else you have to offer your customer.

Whether it’s style, selection, value, service, expertise, humor, whimsy, trendiness, quality, product obsession, a keen eye for what’s hot, the latest and greatest, the tried and true or the plain but useful.You’ve got to have something besides “Great buys all the time.”

How about you?  What’s your Unique Promise of Value? Tell me below.

PS: This doesn’t mean that you can’t/shouldn’t offer your customers sales, discounts and special deals.

But when you do, add some special sauce to it! “Save 20% on our color-popping, sizzling hot summer tank tops!” (As opposed to “Lowest price of the season on all tank tops. Yawn )

It’s time to re-energize your customers and help pull them out of frugal fatigue!

-Lisa

Are you being true to yourself in your business?

When I first heard the quote from Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken”, I thought it was one of the most brilliant things anyone had ever said.

Maybe I was just ready to hear it.

I was fresh out of college, working in my first job as a merchandise buyer and ready to take the world of retail by storm.

Of course, growing up I know people had echoed that same sentiment to me in many forms. “Be yourself honey, don’t try to be like someone else.” my favorite aunt used to say to me.  “People will like you for who you are.  And if they don’t, they’re not your true friends.” said Fergie (a friend of the family, who was “Fergie”, way before the singer “Fergie” or Fergie the Duchess of York became famous.)

But for some reason it never quite rang true until I heard the quote from OscarWilde.

I think it was the “everyone else is already taken” that really clicked with me.

I remember thinking to myself “yah they are already taken”.  And it was in that moment that I felt like someone had given me permission to be myself.

So if everybody else was already taken, I may as well be me and enjoy it!

It made sense.

I started thinking about this the other day, when I was thinking that maybe I should switch from pronouncing the word niche (rhymes with switch) to niche (rhymes with quiche).

You see I’m interviewed a lot on the radio about the topic of niche markets. And over the past couple years, I’ve noticed more and more, the people who interview me are pronouncing the word “niche” like “quiche”.

So on interviews it sometimes feels like a game of “niche-niche tennis”. The interviewer says niche (rhymes with quiche) and I reply with niche (rhymes with switch). And I can just imagine our audience listening in and laughing at the niche – niche banter.

A few years ago no one, except my friend Robin Cowie, former president of Worldwide Brands and producer of the Blair Witch Project pronounced niche  like quiche. But with Rob  it sounded good, because he grew up in South Africa  and has one of those totally awesome accents that makes plain old English words sound like something special.

However, over the past few years, I’ve noticed that everyone seems to be now pronouncing  niche like quiche. Maybe it sounds more sophisticated.

So a few weeks ago, I decided in the interest of radio interview compatibility, I’d better start pronouncing niche like quiche and not niche like switch.

The first few interviews, it went OK. I had to stop myself from pronouncing niche like  switch a couple times.

But it was fine… until this afternoon. When I gave a 90 minute energy filled teleseminar called “15 Creative Ways to Make Money on eBay”.

I started out saying niche = quiche, but then I got so wrapped up in showing people how they can think our of the box when it comes to making money on eBay, that niche just automatically popped out like switch.

“Great “I thought, “now I’m having a game of niche-niche tennis with myself.” LOL!

90 minutes later I wrapped up the teleseminar totally psyched because I knew I’d expanded people’s vision of how they can use eBay to make some money.

And you know what?

They didn’t care if I said niche = quiche, niche = switch or niche = nicho (the Spanish pronounciation).  What people cared about was that I gave them 15 great ideas about what to sell on eBay and how to sell on eBay.

And it was at that point I thought of Oscar Wilde’s quote. “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”

Right then and there I decided I was going to pronounce niche = switch like I always have. I was not going to rework the pronunciation.

Niche = switch is who I am. My favorite food is pizza. I don’t like “nouveau Northwest Cuisine”.  But I do like to shop at Nordstrom. No rhyme or reason. It’s just who I am.

How about you?

Are you being true to yourself in your business? Or are you trying to be someone you’re not?

Are you trying to copy someone else’s style because you think they have “it” and you don’t? Or do you think there’s only one persona you can adopt to “make it” online.

There’s a big difference between observing a successful person’s behavior and modeling what they do within the context of your own personality.  Versus completely squashing your true essence in the name of “success”.

So are you building an online business that reflects your authentic personality? I hope so.  Because it affects the kind of customers you attract. And if you attract the wrong customers your sales will suffer.

Something to percolate on. And if you ever feel yourself tempted to be someone else in your business other than who you really are… remember – everyone else is already taken.

-Lisa

The only thing constant about entrepreneurship is change. If you’re not one for change, prefer the status quo and like to keep things “as is” for was long as possible, then being the CEO of your own business is probably not for you. Nothing will kill your online business faster than stagnation.

Keeping your business current  is the name of the game. Although this doesn’t mean “chasing rabbits” or having ‘bright shiny object syndrome”.  Nor does it mean dumping your core values.

A current  business  means your market + your products + your marketing + YOU = are in tune, fresh and relevant in your niche!

Unfortunately, even the most well-intentioned entrepreneurs can let things get stale. Reinventing doesn’t mean starting from scratch. It means updating, refreshing and sometimes retooling.

So how do you know if your business is ready to be reinvented? Here are 7 business and personal signs that tell you it’s time!

7 Signs It’s Time to Reinvent Your Online Business

1. You’re doing things exactly the same way you did a six-months, a year, two years ago or more. Things happen fast on the Internet. (That’s one of the things I love about it the most.) Everyday brings a new tool, technology, strategy, opportunity. Your customers change. The market changes. If you’re doing business in exactly the same manner you were 6 months ago, your business is losing ground. What’s one new thing you’ve implemented in your business this month?

2. What your customers want to buy from you has changed, but your offerings haven’t. Can you imagine going to your favorite store week-after-week and seeing the same products displayed the same way? It wouldn’t take long for you to say “What’s the point of coming here anymore, everything is always the same?”  What new things are you offering your customers? Are you continually bringing exciting products into your business?  It doesn’t matter what you sell – whether it’s physical products, affiliate products or digital products – you have to continually introduce new products into the marketplace in order to keep up with what people are buying now.

3. Your business model isn’t a viable business model. If you’ve read my recent blog post on profiting without passion or purpose, you know that I am a firm believer that you can’t be successful in your online business without a passion, purpose or interest. But that doesn’t mean “do what you love and the money will follow”. If you love goats and want to build a business selling goat products but there isn’t a big enough market for goat products – you don’t have a viable business model. If you want to build a business selling common craft project instructions that are widely available for free on the internet, it’s going to be a tough-go. And many times your business model and your numbers don’t add up.  I had a client who wanted to design, sew and sell her own clothes online. She also wanted to make a consistent $10,000 a month in her first year with no additional staff. We ran the numbers – she wouldn’t have had enough hours in the week to turn out the inventory required to make that kind of money on her own. Even with staff, she would have been working for free. Passion, interest and optimism are core when running your own business. But a viable business model is a requirement.

4. Sales are lagging. If your sales are not what they used to be, something has changed. And before things get any worse, you need to find out what the problem is and figure out a way to solve it by reinventing what your business offers.  If you sell physical products, the first place to start is by looking at your product line.  What new products have you brought into your product line recently?  If the answer is none, it’s time to restock. If you’re marketing affiliate products and your sales have dropped, what’s changed? How’s your traffic, what’s the demand for the product your marketing, did you get slapped by Google? If you’re business is not growing, it’s dying.  But don’t let it get to that point before you refresh and reinvent it.

5. Your niche is declining or has changed. Every niche market ebbs and flows, morphs and changes. This is why it’s so important to stay on top of the trends in your industry. Trends are about people – your customers. Lifestyle changes, demographics, the economy, marketplace changes all dictate the trends in your niche.  What about your niche? What’s really going on in it today?  Is it growing, changing or declining? How has it changed? Where does your business fit in?

6. You haven’t grown as a person and neither has your business. The person you are when you make your first $1 on the Internet is not the same person you’ll be when you make your first $10,000 or $100,000 or $1,000,000,000.”

In fact, it’s impossible for you to remain the same and make more money. If you’re not growing as a person, neither is your business. That’s why if you haven’t made your first $1000 yet, you shouldn’t be worried about how you are going to make your million.  You’ll  grow and change along the way and as you grow, so does ability to make money.

7. You’ve lost passion/interest in your business. This one is tricky. Because there is a fine line between temporary boredom or frustration in your business and a true loss of passion/interest. And  of course there are a whole slew of emotional reasons why we may think we’ve lost passion in our business, but we haven’t. Things like fear of failure, fear of success, wanting to “have fun” and not work, reluctance to adhere to a schedule, perfectionism, you name it. But don’t kid yourself. You know in your gut if you’ve truly lost passion/interest in the business you’ve been running. And if you have, the time to sell it or reinvent it is now. Don’t wait for it to die on the vine so that you have an “excuse” to shut things down.  I see this happen all the time. Instead of taking a stance of power and saying “I’m ready to move on.” and then sell the business or reinvent it while it’s still profitable, they wait till it’s on life support to make changes. It’s a lot easier to sell or reinvent a business when it’s on top.

Catalyst for Change

Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If it’s time to reinvent your business, it’s better done sooner than later. There’s no sense in waiting a moment longer to reinvent a business to make it more profitable!

How about you? Is it time to reinvent your business? Have you recently reinvented your business? Share your experiences below…

Do you have a blog?  Do you want more traffic to that blog or to your website or online store?

If so, I want to invite you to join me in doing some NO COST marketing for your business over the next 30 days!

You see a blog is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website, eBay store, ecommerce site or anywhere else you sell.

Not only is your blog your home on the internet, blogs are favored by Google, provide inbound links to your website or store, give you a place to sell directly from, help you establish your expertise in a niche, and are very “sticky” (meaning customers will stick around.)

Blogs do all this and more…

IF…

You update them with new posts!

Problem is, most people don’t which renders their blogs USELESS.

All that good, free, traffic going to waste.

30 Day Blog Challenge!

That’s why my good friend and Internet strategist Dr Jeanette Cates is hosting the 5th “30 Day Blog Challenge!”

You’ll find all the info here.

Participation is free.

PS: Think blog marketing isn’t productive?

Last night I checked my traffic stats and found that my BLOG had generated 7 TIMES more traffic than a PAID marketing program that cost me several thousand dollars last year!

Now do you see why I’m doing the 30 Day Blog Challenge.

C’mon with me and let’s get some marketing done in June!

Lisa

Last month, when speaking at the 2010 Ecommerce Summit someone asked me  “If there was one piece of advice you would give to up and coming online sellers, what would it be?”

My answer to this question is always the same and it applies no matter what you sell or where you sell it.

Your best opportunity for creating a successful business on the Internet is to…

Find a niche and FOCUS.

• If you’re a jack of all trades, master of none,  it’s time to find a niche!
• If you’re spreading yourself thinly between three different eBay stores and 12 different types of products and none of them are up and running profitably, it’s time to find a niche.
• If you’re selling information products on health and fitness, starting an eBay store that sells used computer parts and trying to monetize a green-cleaner website all at the same time, it’s time to find a niche and focus!

Over the years, in working with thousands of online sellers in11 different countries, selling in more than 2300 different niche markets, sub-niches and micro-niches -  one common thread runs through the most successful businesses…

Each one is succeeding in a niche market.

You see, once you’ve identified a profitable niche to serve, you can monetize that niche many different ways.   But without that niche identified you’ll find yourself chasing market after market, opportunity after opportunity, never making any traction or money.

Many would-be business owners find themselves dabbling in multiple niche markets, putting in 10% of their time and attention on each.  But 10% effort in 10 different niche markets does not add up to a 100% income.

You need to first be 100% focused on serving a niche and maximize the monetization of that niche to enjoy  a 100% income.

Because of the importance of this topic, I’m putting together a series here on my blog, showcasing some successful niche businesses and explaining why they work.  Additionally I’ll be explaining  how you can implement this in your business.

So let’s start first, by talking about 7 business reasons why you should find a niche and focus! (Note: There are many more reasons than this, but let’s start with 7.)

7 Reasons to Find a Niche and FOCUS

1. You can’t be everything to everybody. At first glance, this seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at the number of business owners I see trying.  This especially afflicts new Internet business owners, who see the internet business buffet and want to sample everything. The problem is that this sampling goes on long past “happy hour” and into the “main meal” – the point at which you should be building a business that is hearty, focused and nourishing to your bank account.

2. The money comes from knowing your market. What does your market want? What are their problems? What are they buying? How do they like to be marketed to? Where do they hang out? It takes time to really get to know your market. If you don’t know your market, you won’t know what to sell to them and how to sell it. If you sell baby products, how to make money with Google Adsense eBooks, and affiliate products for pomeranians, you won’t have enough time to find out about ANY of those markets.  So you’ll throw a bunch of stuff up on the Internet and hope someone buys. And then they don’t.  Contrast this to selling baby products, eBooks about parenting and affiliate products in the baby niche and now you’re cookin’!

By the way, I call this my Niche Monetizer Method™, but that’s a subject for a later post.

3. It takes money to monetize a niche. If you sell physical products, in order to find the products buyers want, get the best inventory and stock your store, you need to attend trade shows, read industry publications, purchase information on your niche. This alone could cost you several  thousand dollars a year. You may attend the Sporting Goods Trade Show a couple times a year, subscribe to a couple sporting goods industry publications and consumer publications. You may make a few other buying trips during the year to source inventory.

4. Google loves themed, quality sites. This means a niche site with content, audio, video and products all geared toward achieving the same objective.  Want to sell products in the juggling niche? Your site must not only have products, but also content to go with it.  If you have a site that is not niche focused, creating a quality, themed site is impossible to do.

5. Become a destination site online. As a small to medium-sized business, you need to be a go-to destination in your site  in your niche. A well optimized site, featuring the products and services that people want is the path to becoming a destination site online.  If I’m a customer looking for a unique prom dress, I want to browse a site that specializes in prom dresses, with a depth of selection and a knowledgeable customer service staff.  If I’m shopping an eBay store for a prom dress, I don’t want to be looking at running shoes and circular saws being displayed next to the pink frilly prom desk I’m looking at.

6. Branding for the big bucks. Focusing on a niche enables you to build a brand. Your logo, the look and feel of your store and website, your blog, all play an important role in building your brand online. In my upcoming blog series, I’ll show you some examples of online sellers who have built a strong brand  – brands which is now getting people to sit up and take notice!

7. The number of hours you have in each day are limited, with a niche focus you leverage those hours. The Law of Attraction says “What you focus on expands.”  Lisa’s Law of Action says “What you take action expands.”  And the way to leverage your actions is to get more than one benefit from that action.  For example, let’s say that you’re selling info products in the sizzling hot niche, in-city vegetable gardening.  You write the eBook (or have it written), create some article marketing articles, identify your niche keywords and put together your Keyword Bank™ – you can now leverage all these actions into more advertising and marketing.  The article marketing articles are now re-purposed as blog posts or tweets, your keywords are used to optimized your sales page, and the associated products you are selling on eBay. And your eBook becomes a stand-alone product or a bonus for the physical products you sell or your new home study course.

In the span of two days, you’ve leveraged the actions you’ve taken in one niche.

And of course, once you get the system down for monetizing one niche, then it’s lather, rinse, repeat for the next one!

Ask Yourself Today.  “What is my niche?”

How about you? “What niche do you currently sell in?”  or “What niche will you focus on?” The answer to that question is key to your next steps.

Throughout this blog series, I’ll be showcasing businesses who are monetizing in several different niche markets.

Coming up first in our series…

1. From the Variety Store Model to Rapid Niche Success we’ll look at an entrepreneur from Australia who started selling in the variety store model on eBay, but whose business really took off when he started focusing on a niche.

- Lisa

Spring has sprung and so have online sales!  We’ll be hearing about the March ecommerce sales figures in the coming weeks, but early indicators reveal that an early Easter and the arrival of spring weather will bring a boost of online retail sales in the neighborhood of 8-10% over 2009.

For eBay sellers, spring also brought with it some major changes to the way business is transacted on eBay. With the end of the Store Inventory Listing Format, millions of items formerly nestled away in eBay stores, saw the dawn of a new day in eBay’s core search.

For many eBay sellers, the inclusion of “store in core” has been a boon for sales.  Many people are finding that inventory they’ve had sitting on their virtual store shelves for two years is now selling.

Other sellers who had enjoyed a  sole position in core, while their competitors left their listings in store, have seen their categories explode with many competing products alongside theirs where none were before.

But there’s no doubt about it.  No matter what changes you’ve seen in your sales on eBay over the past week or so, with the eBay changes and the arrival of spring, it’s time to refresh your strategy!

Today we’re going to look at 4 ways to get started doing just that!

4 Surefire Ways to Make More Money on eBay This Spring

Put Your Spring and Summer Merchandise Front and Center. Walk into any brick and mortar retailer these days and you’ll see the signs of spring.  Brightly colored signs, spring products in the hot new colors and a fresh array of merchandise to choose from. Spring is a time or renewal and rebirth, and people are wired for that.  They’re also very ready to make new purchases for spring and summer. And the eBay seller who actively markets their spring and summer products is the one who increases their sales!  Unfortunately, I see many eBay stores and listings that are not doing any spring marketing at all. Even worse, holiday messages and graphics remain. Fall and winter categories are featured in stores and spring merchandise is buried in sea of fall and winter products.

Mariya, is the owner of eBay Store Color Me Happy Boutique and also runs a  website under the same brand. Mariya’s business depends on keeping her inventory fresh and staying one step ahead of the seasons.  When you take a look at Mariya’s store, you’ll see that she even features a bright, colorful graphic reminder her customers that “Summer Starts in 75 days.”  Mariya is a community member in the WhatDoISell Business Growth Center and she always puts her best merchandise front and center!

Take a look at your store and listings.  Will customers be excited by what they see when they land on your eBay pages?

“Top Up” Your Store Categories. If visitors to your eBay store can’t find your new merchandise, they won’t become buyers.  And part of putting your new spring merchandise front and center is rearranging your eBay store categories so that the new in-season categories are featured at the top. Many people list their categories in alphabetical order, but by doing that, you relegate your Spring and Summer merchandise to the bottom of your category list where no one will find it!

Keep in mind that a shopper’s focus is going to be “above the fold” which means you have to engage them with what’s on their screen BEFORE you can get them to scroll down to see what else you are offering. Always put your most popular 5 or so eBay store categories and in-season categories at the top of your store category list.  If you have a lot of categories, once you feature your top 5-7 categories you can continue your category list alphabetically.

Use Subtitles for Marketing not Product Details. eBay subtitles are the best marketing deal on the web IF you use them for the right purpose.  eBay listing subtitles should be used for one thing only – MARKETING.   Think of eBay listing subtitles as the banner you hang outside your store or the sign you place on a product that tells people what makes that product different, unique or special than everything else the customer is being offered.

The other day I was looking some forum posts on the eBay stores and noticed a thread where people were discussing a plan to remove ALL their listing subtitles since they were now using Item Specifics to further describe their products.

Two important things that every eBay seller must know.  eBay listing subtitle keywords are not included in core search, this means that if you are putting item specific keyword data into your subtitle in the hopes that it will help people find your products, it does not contribute at all to that purpose.

Item Specifics however, does exactly that.  So for search purposes, you always want to accurately complete the Item Specifics portion of your listing.

For marketing purposes you want to craft what we call in marketing a USP (Unique Selling Position) or a “headline”  – that will make people do ONE thing… and that is CLICK on your listing and go to your listing description page.

A listing subtitle has ONE purpose – to get a prospective buyer to CLICK on your listing and go to your listing description page where you then display the product information that will convert that browser into a buyer!

So what should go in your listing subtitle? Anything that showcases what’s different about your product or service.  The thing that sets you apart from every other seller.  Maybe, you’re selling a “Limited Edition Platinum Retro 60 Series”. Maybe your product is an “Exclusive Set.  Only Available on eBay”. Maybe you are fortunate to carry an item that is “In Stock with Same Day Shipping. Sold Out In Stores”.  Maybe your item is “Eligible for Bing Cashback”. Or the product your carry is “Winner of the Top 10 Toy Awards”.  In many categories these days “We Ship Worldwide” is a USP – there are a lot of eBay sellers who no longer ship worldwide. (Which is the subject for another blog post.)   Or your item is “100% Made in the USA”.

Whatever your USP is, don’t hide it in your listing description! Feature it in your sub-title and watch your click-throughs increase and your sales go up!

And speaking of click-through rates, you always want to test and track the strategies you use online…

Use eBay’s Search Visibility Analysis Tool to test and track your strategies. The most important key to success when running a business on eBay or anywhere else is to know what works for your business. Each business has so many variables to it, that you have to apply the strategies and then test them and track them to make sure that they are right for you.  eBay’s Search Visibility Analysis Tool will help you test and track changes you make to your listings as well as view the impact they have on your ranking in eBay’s Best Match.  For example, the tool will show you how many times your listing has been displayed to buyers and the number of times a buyer has clicked-through to view your listing description.  This information is critical to determining why your listings are or are not selling. If shoppers aren’t clicking on your listing, they definitely aren’t buying. With the Search Visibility Analysis Tool, you can pinpoint where the problem in the process is and make changes accordingly.

We’ll we’ve just covered four solid business strategies to increase your sales this spring.  There’s only one thing left to do now… apply what you’ve learned and implement!

If you liked these eBay tips and strategies, don’t miss my brand new e-series starting April 15th, “15 Ways to Make Money on eBay”.  Most people only know 2 or 3 ways to make money on eBay.  Starting April 15th, I’ll show you  15 ways to make money on today’s eBay!  Register here for this free ecourse.

-Lisa Suttora

I couldn’t send you chocolate for Easter, so I put together a “basket” of 5 tasty online selling tips instead.

Better than chocolate and they have  ZERO calories! 

Enjoy!

“The Ecommerce Bunny”  (a.k.a. Lisa Suttora)

If you think shopping is a perfunctory, logical process for us human beings… think again!  The decision to make a purchase is largely based upon emotion (often subconscious emotions) that is then justified by logic.

Too often however, niche online sellers offer pages and pages of products that are devoid of emotion and personality.

Inanimate objects sitting on a page, the sales copy brings no life, no emotion, no meaning to what they sell. And because of that they don’t sell.

How then do you reach your customers and inspire them to click the “Buy” button?

• Is it simply through “matter of fact” product descriptions?
• A stock manufacturer’s photo?
• Always offering the  lowest price?

No!

It’s by creating the right emotional connection with your buyer. One that speaks the language of a conversation that is already happening in their heads.

For example, my friend Marina loves to buy shoes. She has more shoes than any human could possibly wear out in a lifetime.  Laid end-to-end,

her array of boldly colored leather shoes could easily rival the spectrum of colors found in a box of 64 Crayola Crayons.

Did she need all those shoes?  Of course not!  But each pair, each purchase,  has a story.

Like the lime green pair of strappy sandals she bought last spring – the shoes that helped reframe her mindset after a long, cold, hard winter as a real estate agent.  Those shoes were not ‘just’ a pair of shoes.  They represented a fresh start, a new mindset, an investment in herself. She received an offer on the first house she showed that weekend.

Lest you think that Marina is simply a female footwear fashionista, consider this…

A recent article in the New York Times explains why footwear sales in October 2009 were reached $1.5 Billion dollars in October 2009.  The highest sales figure in an October since 2006.

Did shoes across the nation suddenly wear out?  Hardly.  But people are suffering from “frugal fatigue” and find it easy to spend money on a new pair of shoes that they want (meeting their emotional want)  and then justifying it with the “logical” need.

(Read the article by the way, it’s a must read for anyone who sells anything online. It will give you further insight into how your customer’s mind works.)

And for you guys out there reading this blog post, don’t think that creating an emotional connection with your buyer is just for women!

Make an emotional connection with your male customers and they are likely to spend even more than their female counterparts.  Consider my friend Eric who has a garage full of tools, many of which he’s only used once for highly specialized projects. Eric says he bought all of these tools “because they all do something different”.

But inquire a bit deeper and you will find that they line the shelves of his garage because each has a story or was part of a life event.

They represent project dreams, a way to save money by “doing it himself”, a cool whiz-bang gadget that was the envy of his friends, or something that just looked fun to buy…

People Buy on Emotion & Justify It With Logic

The sooner you accept the fact that your customers buy on emotion and not just on lowest price or a basic product description, the more successful your ecommerce business will be.

It’s then that you will start thinking about how you can make an emotional connection with your customer.

Does product value count?  Sure. Is product functionality important? Yes. Does price matter? Sometimes.

Does it matter how your product or the buying experience makes your customer feel?  You betcha!

7 Questions to Help You Make an Emotional Connection When Marketing Your Products

If your product sales have been devoid of emotion so far, the prospect of creating an emotional connection when marketing your products may not come intuitively to you. Below are 7 questions that will help get you started connecting with your customers.

1. What do your customers want?
2. What do they care about?
3. How can your product contribute to their life? Their day? Their well-being?
4. What will inspire them? Perk them up? Make them feel some enthusiasm for what they are about to buy?
5. What are their worries? Their cares?
6. How can your product make their life easier, less stressful, more productive, calmer?
7. How will your product make your customers feel?

No matter what you sell or where you sell it, you have to make an emotional connection with your potential customer.  Go right now to your website, your eBay listings, your Etsy store and look at your product offerings through a new pair of eyes.

Are you making the connection?