How to get Customers to Your Online Boutique (and get them to buy!)
Feb 17, 2020
I've been hearing from so many of you who are just starting out in your boutique business. And I hear the same worries over and over. I’m going to be giving you my top tips for your concerns- a step by step to implement NOW to help you solve that problem.
First up, straight from Holly, a new boutique owner who emailed me: “The main thing I’m struggling with right now is getting the word out there about our new business and getting new traffic thru the door.“
What I interpret that as is an issue with having new customers find you AND urging all customers to take action to come to the store (whether physical or online).
Holly, and others struggling with this issue, here are my top 3 tips for you. Please make sure you start to try these out TODAY so you can start to see the shift in your store ASAP:
1. Show up consistently and give a call to action: You may be doing one part of this, but I find that so many of you don’t do the second — a call to action. You really need to first and foremost be SHOWING UP for your business on social media, email, video, comments, text… as many of the ways you feel comfortable with every single day, multiple times per day. “But how do I even try to do that when I’m so busy with other things!?” Have a calendar for your day and stick to it or use a scheduling app like Buffer or Hootsuite to help you manage posts.
The most important element: Give a call to action or make the ASK. I see it so often, boutique owners post one style or item and wonder why no one buys. Ask yourself, do they know HOW to buy? WHERE to buy? WHAT sizes it comes in? HOW it fits? WHEN it will get to their door? You are expecting your customers to read your mind and because they don’t get the full story on what is next. Play this out for them and TELL THEM exactly where to go to buy and to do it now! Tell customers what to do and they will start doing it.
2. Create a sense of urgency: Triggers, people! You get triggered to take action all the time without realizing it! One of the reasons LuLaRoe has been so successful is because they create an insane amount of urgency saying “There’s only 15 of this print!” Cue the customers going nuts.
You can create a sense of urgency with time, quantity or price. Here’s some examples for you to try today:
- TIME: “I’m pre-releasing this item to you, my VIPs, today. Tomorrow it will be released to the public, and I know it will sell out. Get your’s quick!”
- QUANTITY: “I can’t get any more of this at my vendor and they are selling out faster than I planned. Get your’s now!” or “I only have 4 of these in size small. If you are a small, you’re going to want to take quick action to get this item.”
- PRICE: “This weekend only, I’m releasing this item at $15 off the regular price, on Monday it will go back up to $55. Grab it at the low price now!”
3. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat…. and on and on. Again, you think you post something once and it doesn’t sell, it’s a bad item or the price is to high… STOP right there. That’s not the problem. You’re assuming that after seeing something once, everyone will jump on it. That is not typical human behavior. Only about 5% of people looking at a product think, “OMG, I have to have that!” And even smaller than that, only about 1% actually buy immediately after thinking that and seeing it one time. The takeaway: repeat where you post, how you post, what you communicate. Let people visually register an item at least 7 times before you call it a rotten egg.
If you know me, maybe you’ve been around for a course launch of mine. For about 11 days, until the moment the doors close to the course, it’s the ONLY thing I talk about. I do FB Lives about it, post about it, email you about it, run FB Ads about it, Insta-story it… I mean by the 10th day I’m blue in the face about it. But it works. I sell out every program I launch and the launches just get bigger and bigger as my audience grows over time. So REPEAT. OFTEN.
Which tip will you commit to trying this week in your boutique business? Comment below and let me know!
