Nasty Gal, is perhaps an interesting choice of name for an online retailing store that targets women, but it is the brainchild of what was then a young twenty-something woman who decided to open up an eBay shop selling vintage retail finds. Unbeknownst to her she would be creating her own business empire.
We all know eBay, have shopped there, or at least browsed and considered the good deals. But the lessons the founder, Sophia Amoruso, learned there helped her carry through to set-up her own online store, Nasty Gal, now its way to sales of $128 million.
Now you don’t have to set-up an ebay shop to create success for your own business, but you can apply some of the marketing skills that helped create a strong following to spark commitment to your own business.
Online First Impressions Speak Value
Ebay taught Sophia a powerful lesson that she applied to her business in the years to come. Sellers are only allowed a few pixels of the screen to convince the customer to click on their product, while competing with other sellers on the same page. So she learned how to give the best first impression of her clothing through thumbnails, and that taught her a powerful lesson:
It’s all in how you present it.
Great visuals is what helped Sophia sell cheap thrift-store finds for hundreds of dollars and can also be applied to your online marketing strategy. Ask yourself how do you present your business? Is your website in the right colors? Easy to navigate? Read? Or is it cluttered and frustrating for your customers? If it’s a retail venture do you give the best possible image quality of your products? Or are they blurry? In an ugly background? Or to small to really see the details?
If the first glimpse of the business does not convey the quality you want to communicate, then you are loosing out on making a winning first impression on your audience and prospects. Quite simply, you decide what your offering is worth by how you present it.
Turn “Likes” Into Sales
Nasty Gal used a combination of social media savvy Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook from sparking interest to creating sales.
How do you tell your story on these platforms? I am a strong believer in picking the right platforms for your business and crafting the right story, so that at the end of the day, your audience knows what you are about even without you preaching it.
The best way to know if you are communicating the right message is if your target audience can easily describe what you are about, that’s your brand. And it’s how you create a bond that turns from more than just clicks to ambassadors and referrals for your business.
And if you have created a list of followers, how do you turn those into sales? What do you offer that leads them to your website or storefront? It’s not enough to toot the number of people liking you or following you, but also to manage those likes and turn them into sales.
Having trouble? That’s where a digital marketing strategist might come in handy to help you transform the ideas into tangible results, click here to contact me and we can get the conversation started.
Daisy Quaker is a Badass 