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MenuI have a skincare brand of 3 amazing products but it has been very difficult to get sales. How can I sell my inventory without breaking the bank?
I have a skincare brand of organic, natural, vegan, and cruelty-free products. I have 3 products so far and formulas for the rest of the line but it has been very difficult to get sales and I am thinking of selling the inventory that I have (2,500 bottles of each one of my three products), and then analyze how to relaunch the brand. But first, I need to monetize and the only way to do this is by selling my inventory. Should I find a distributor and if so, where do I find a good one?
Answers
Consider working with social media influencers (either YouTube or Instagram) to get your product out there. Assuming you have a website setup and can sell product directly, micro influencers are are great way to spread awareness and drive people to your website.
First of all, well done you for starting a business and taking a risk! Tricky especially with the minimum order quantities that you had probably to submit to....
It is really difficult to answer your question as we don't know if your product is not selling because the product is bad, the price too high, the target group is wrong, the ads are not connecting or the distribution channels are wrong, or all of this or something else :)
In anycase, in general you will most likely sell those products at loss whatever the channel you select. Therefore my suggestion, assuming your product is good (we could spend time defining what "good" is but let's keep this for a future discussion), is to send it as a gift to people that :
- can give you feedback or reviews on the product
- can be your future partners (Social media influencers, journalists, retailers...)
- family and friends .... and anybody who you could ask a favor to in the future ;)
Before you do that, I'm happy to jump on a call to understand what should be fixed in your offering, communication or distribution. It might be only a couple of elements.
Hello. All i can say is that you can sale your beauty brands in the following ways without breaking a bank.
You will need to set up your online store in case you do not have one. I will recommend signing up at- https://www.bluehost.com/track/caesim/ since they have affordable rates, free SSL certificate, and a free domain name for the first year. Try out their free trial, i am sure it will cost you nothing.
Now use your website to describe the texture, application, finish, and use of the product. Customers do not have access to trying your product on their own skin. So be as detailed as possible. Keep it less cluttered while adding full ingredient listings, warnings, allergy notices and beauty tips. Enhance product pages with large clear images of the product on a white back ground. Consider using more media like videos and make up tutorials can live on product pages or gallery on the website. Bluehost has nice themes which are fully customizable and can accommodate your brand’s logo, fonts, colours and design.
Market your beauty products. The beauty space is so challenging and competitive for emerging brands, while the industry is saturated with large brands that have even larger ad spends. Now for your case if you do not want to break a bank then i would recommend you sign up for a marketing software called GetResponse at https://www.getresponse.com/?a=WVK9TnCHHf. Depending on your niche audience, identify them, find out where they hang out, speak their language.
Tip. Email marketing will be an important means to get you sales and all this is possible with Get Response. GetResponse is a powerful tool , simplified tool to send emails, create pages, and automate your marketing. By the way, they have a free trial which you can decide to try out. So with GetResponse you will get leads, sales and your business will grow.
Also use the power of social proof and product reviews. Study shows that 70% of people say they look at product reviews before making a purchase. Word of mouth from your average customer can be powerful. So consider offering discounts on future purchases or send product samples to encourage sharing which in the end will give reviews to your products hence making more sales.
You can also use brand partnerships and use of beauty influencers. There are people who make their living by promoting other brands. An example is James Charles who has been viewed more than 43 million times. Most beauty customers are turning to their online influencers on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram before buying a product. If you decide to partner with an influencer , there are many lesser- known creators with smaller but engaged audiences who may be more affordable to work with if you are just starting out and you do not want to break a bank.
If you follow the above methods then am sure you will be able to sale your beauty products without breaking a bank and more so i am available for a strategy call just in case you have more questions. Let me know what you think or share with me what you think will be appropriate for you to sale your beauty products from the above methods.
I think the best way for you to sell your products would be a product funnel (a lead magnet with opt-in page, a really good sales page for each product, a checkout page and email automation).
If you want to sell more than one product at a time or build a brand you'll benefit from a website with a home page, about and contact page.
Next, send as much traffic as you can afford to your sales pages with FB ads.
This is a reliable way to make sales and grow your brand. Probably one of the fastest too.
However, I don't know what your numbers are... so Facebook Ads may not be affordable.
I'm able to get leads for $0.41 cents, but I've seen average cost per lead metrics ranging from $4 to $22. And that's just leads (email signups) only a percentage of your leads will convert to customers.
My conversion rates are between 10% and 60%, but most people convert below 10% (many times at 1%). That means less than 10% of the people who's email addresses you collect will actually buy one of your products. That's why it's important to grow your subscriber list.
If you're looking for the lowest cost solutions, try the influencer marketing as someone else mentioned. You can get some big wins with this strategy.
This article should give you a good start:
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/instagram-influencer-marketing
You can also try selling on FB Marketplace, ETSY or eBay.
Tip #1: Your best option is almost always paid ads (if you know what your doing). They really are cheaper and get results faster... but, you need to have some money to invest in your ad spend.
Tip #2: If you don't know what you're doing, hire it out. Marketing doesn't break the bank. It's an investment. If you're not making $5-$10+ for every $1 dollar you invest in marketing or advertising, you should hire it out.
If you need more information or clarification, book a free consultation.
Securing a professional business coach or a mentor that is affordable and specialize in marketing will be the best investment you can make at this point. They will be able to help you with packaging and messaging that will help you stand out and attract buying customers to you. It may take you awhile but don't give up. If you want to explore some options with me I will be glad to connect.
Hi! Great question. Have you considered contacting both large and small subscription box companies? They're always looking to buy new, innovative products and you could offer them wholesale so that you take some profits home. The other idea you could also try out is selling at local markets. Hope this helps and am happy to throw out some more ideas if needed!
Related Questions
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How to write effective follow up messages?
I am going to begin my answer to this question not talking about writing emails at all, but rather getting at the true source of the problem. Then we'll talk text. The problem with "follow up" messages is they illuminate something is missing in your sales process. Most people fly by the seat of their pants on sales process anyway, believing that only big companies need one. But *everyone* in the field of selling needs a consistent sales process. "To manage we must measure" is a process improvement maxim...and if we aren't consistent in our behaviors, how can we measure? How do you know why you lose some orders and win others? Do you just assume it's your personality, or your price, or your brand? That would be crazy!--and what salespeople do every day. You have given us a single sentence to work with (industry, paths to market, what prospecting/qualifying method you're using now, and other facts would have been helpful). So I don't know anything for certain about your sales process or lack thereof. However, the fact that "following up" is included in your steps and vocabulary indicates to me you are having conversations that go nowhere. If you had a conversation with a prospect and it didn't result in a clear understanding for BOTH salesperson and prospect what the next step was...your process failed. That's what leads to having to "follow up". Every time I see "follow up", the first letter of each word jumps out at me, and that's what I hear it saying directly to me. "FU, Jason. You screwed up." Determining what the next step is, and ensuring it is ultra-clear for both you and your prospect, is YOUR responsibility. It needs to be built right into your consistent sales process. Do it automatically, every time. Otherwise, you end up in this "mutual mystification" situation you're in, where neither you nor the prospect knows what's supposed to happen next. Leading to the plaintive, "Are we there yet?" email. No, we are not. We are nowhere near there yet. If in your qualifying conversation with the prospect you did not uncover the urgent reason they want to buy, do you think you are going to discover it in a "follow up" email? If you didn't find out how important (or not) moving ahead was to them in your live, interactive, back-and-forth dialogue...what makes you think you're going to get the answer in a dull, one-way, inert email? Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Having to "follow up" means you're chasing prospects. Stop doing that immediately, and work on qualifying more effectively. Is this prospect In or Out? A Fit with us or not? Do they have an urgent, important reason to work with us now, or not? Uncover this, and you won't have to "follow up". Most of the places selling falls down are where the salesperson and the prospect have left things in this state of "collective confusion". Each believes they understand what the other means and intends...but the truth is totally different. When a prospect says, "Leave it with me and I'll get back to you," at the end of your meeting, what does that tell you? Me, it tells me NOTHING! Except that I'm being "niced out" of the door. These are times to be a little assertive: "I appreciate that. How long do you think it'll take for you to have a look at it? When should we book a talk to discuss your decision or any questions you have?" Don't leave it to chance. In fact, your sales process ought to have you laying out this as part of the ground rules right up front: "Ms. Prospect, we'll meet for about 40 minutes, that's typically what these conversations are, and I'm sure you'll have some questions for me. I'll definitely have some questions for you, because I want to find out more about your operation and determine whether we're really a good fit for you. At the end of that time, we'll know whether we're a potential fit or not. If not, no big deal. No one will get mad at anybody. If we are a fit, we'll figure out what that next step looks like then. Make sense?" And if the prospect wants to add anything into the agenda, they can. Most salespeople never even lay out these simple ground rules. A consistent sales process is a series of steps. At the end of every step, either it's over or it continues. If it's over, you know why: it's not a fit for a specific reason (no need, the problem's not big enough for you to get involved, or the prospect has uncontrollable anger issues, for example). Over is not a bad thing; it keeps you out of trouble and away from The Client From Hell. If you goof up--and I certainly do from time to time, even though I work with this stuff every day; it happens fast and there's a lot to keep in mind--and you must write an email, you must get the train back on the rails. Let it read like this: Mr. Prospect, I appreciate you meeting with me on (date) about (topic). I forgot to make sure of something at the6 end of that conversation, and I'm hoping you can help me out. Turns out you and I didn't figure out what our next step will be. Now you've had some time to go over what we talked about. At this point, there can only be three possible outcomes: 1. You've reviewed everything, and it's just not a fit for you at this time. 2. You have looked everything over, but have more questions that need answering before moving ahead. 3. You are delighted with the idea and want to move forward, and were just waiting for me to give you this quick reminder of the project. Let me make this super-easy. If the answer is the first possibility, will you reply to this email with the digit '1', and I'll know you're no longer interested? If you want to talk further, please reply with '2' and I'll call you about the further questions you have. If you are ready to go ahead now that I've brought this project back on your radar, please call me at ### so I can get things started ASAP...or reply with '3' to this email, and I'll know to call you so we can begin. Thanks again, YOUR NAME ** This message doesn't chase. It gets things back on track. If your prospect ignores it and you don't get an answer, you can safely assume it's '1' and stop trying to "follow up". In sales, "Yes" is good, "No" is good, but "I need to think it over"--making you have to "follow up"--is torture.JK
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What would be a good answer for describing the size of your company to a potential prospect who might consider you too small to service their account?
What an awesome question! Businesses are running into this issue more frequently that ever, good news is, it can be done. Having worked on projects with oDesk, Fox Television and Wikipedia and having a very very small staff, it's certainly possible. Here's how I say it in our pitches to larger organizations: "Tractive West provides tailored video production services to organizations of all sizes. We have developed a distributed workflow using the latest digital tools. We leverage our small creative and management team with a world wide network of creative professionals, that means we can rapidly scale to meet the demands of any project while keeping our infrastructure and overhead lightweight and sustainable." Cheers and best of luck.SM
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What is the best way to sell to dentists?
Get specific with the "who" of your market (i.e. what kind of dentist? what is their specialty? whom do they serve? demographics and psychographics of both the dentist AND their patients?) And specific with your offer to them. What are you selling? What are they buying? And why do they want it (according to THEM... not you)? Get those factors right and they'll buy from you all day long.DB
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How can a small offshore development company find companies/software sales people to sell their service in the US/UK?
My company does a lot of consulting with offshore firms who are looking for a way to generate new business, so I hear this question a lot. My first reaction is that you need to totally reverse your mindset when you talk about your own company. You mentioned that you have: a great software developers team, proven track record, passion, real value But, everyone says that. There a 10,000 companies that have those things, so a customer isn't going to notice it. You need to figure out what your company is best at (doesn't have to be technical) and present it as a solution to a specific problem that clients have. Maybe a speciality, or really good project management, really good communications, a special expertise or experience, a personality, experience with a certain type of client.. really anything.. But, there must be some thing that makes your company 'special' otherwise you will be lost in the mix. Don't worry about things like rates, or the fact that you have 'great' developers. Those are generic. Think about why a client would really choose you, and try to build on that! After you understand your company identity, it gets much easier to identify and engage marketing channels because you understand your target.DH
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Recommended copywriting course?
Writing skills are best learned through practice, critique, and revision. Curriculum is a waste, in my opinion – that is, listening to generalizations about how to write something other than the task at hand. Only the actual words on the page are worth discussing. Not rules. Maybe courses would be worthwhile if they entail a lot of hands-on interaction with a brutally honest, pragmatic instructor. What your team would really learn from, I suspect, is watching someone perform surgery on their copy, pausing to explain why the guts are being ripped out here, why the sutures are stitched up in such and such a manner there, etc. Consider hiring someone to workshop in person with your team. No prearranged abstract curriculum. Just critique.JP
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