Today selling online means recognizing that our e-commerce is just one of the commercial channels that can be activated. Even analyzes that try to measure the flow of e-commerce must try to bring order to all the heterogeneity of the platforms on which companies can present their products and services. Currently, we have the possibility of selling in different channels such as: marketplaces, third-party e-commerce pages, conversational commerce, social networks, etc. In addition, we must take into account the new forms of online business that are being developed in the B2B world.
How to sell online without dying trying?
It is clear that having an online presence and being able to sell through our e-commerceit becomes something indispensable and attractive, but it is not that simple. For our business to be successful, we must take into account some key aspects when organizing our company and being able to make a difference. Currently, many SMEs collect inquiries and orders from their own store through a form or by telephone, and all this information is passed manually to other management platforms. This is a great waste of time and can create a danger in the face of managing high sales volumes. The Internet has an international reach, and if we do not properly measure distribution costs, our resources, and the supply chain that supports our e-commerce, we can head straight for failure.
The collaborative dimension between companies and third-party e-commerce
It is in this highly heterogeneous environment that the need to sell through a marketplace was born . When we talk about a marketplace, we are not referring only to Amazon, which claims to have 12,000 Spanish SMEs present in its ecosystem, but to all these platforms that allow companies to take advantage of the necessary technology, services and visibility without having to make investments technologies in their own web infrastructure. Especially with regard to international markets , specific skills and strategies related to the use of marketplaces can represent a fundamental resource for the success of our business.
Store Marketing Digital
Another path less traveled in the development of e-commerce strategies is also represented by collaboration with other existing online stores. These are businesses that have already developed adequate responses to reputational, logistical and digital challenges and that have grown their audience.
Identifying these potential business partners, in Spain and abroad, negotiating a profitable agreement with them and maintaining an open communication channel so that the visibility of the shared products and services can be increased and taking advantage of their respective knowledge of the market could be defined as “ Store Digital Marketing ”, a term that we borrow from the world of large distribution. A series of useful actions to gain experience in the target market, even to prepare for the launch of our own e-commerce. In particular, this approach can be useful for companies that want to address international markets where their brand is less well known and developing their own store would be more costly.
Even more promising is the development of electronic commerce in the B2B world . In fact, more and more operators, in various sectors, make confidential platforms available to both their acquired customers and their business partners (agents, resellers, installers,…) in order to provide them with added-value content. , information and services of an administrative nature and obviously the possibility of consulting the catalog with its availability, placing orders, and in some cases proceeding with an online purchase.
A good reading of the environment is key to the success of our business
Therefore, if for years we have thought that having an e-commerce was the definitive solution to start selling online, today we must recognize how difficult it is to be able to comprehensively cover the phenomenon of online sales, since the forms and the channels in which this can occur are increasingly numerous and varied. If the investigation is more difficult, the interpretation and reading of the environment must be even more careful, especially by those who occupy positions of responsibility. At Redflexión Consultores we support companies in the strategic, technological, financial and training decisions necessary to meet the most consolidated, but also most demanding, expectations of consumers and professional buyers.
