On Sunday I went down the Christmas sale at the Royal Horticultural Society… it was fantastic, but I was time-poor and there were a lot of stalls to get through, so I had to make a decision – and my decision was to visit the ones that grabbed my attention the most.
That’s offline – but on the web, it’s no different. Time poor consumers, who want to find what they want quick, buy easily and trust the people they buy from are making decisions like this all the time.
And when it comes down to it – it’s the people who grab your attention who make sales. It’s the people who do that go that extra mile who get your money… with that in mind; here are our tips for getting noticed this Christmas.
Be yourself
We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again but ultimately, your personality is what makes your business different so use your Tradespace to bring that through. This Christmas why not do a post on how you got into business or a video on what makes your business different? We recently attended the Home Enterprise Day where ex dragon Doug Richards rightly said – he had never come across a business who didn’t talk about themselves – question is, are you talking about yourself on Tradespace?
Pictures, pictures, pictures
When we went live with the new site a couple of weeks ago, we had some strong feedback from you on the pictures on the BT Tradespace homepage. Well, the truth about the homepage is – it’s about you, not about us. So, the way we’ve built it, is to show the most popular activity/Tradespaces on BT Tradespace through video, news, general activity, community posts, etc. The idea is to give consumers a variety of ways to find you. The BT Tradespace homepage dynamically pulls in pictures you’ve used on your Tradespace so using good quality images is key to making you (and our site) look professional.
Pictures on any website need to showcase your business well – but there’s an art to getting them right. We’ve done some great articles in the past to help you create perfect pictures – so check them out. But one tip is to put yourself in the shoes of your consumer. If the image doesn’t make you want to click – then don’t use it.
Video is the new sales tool
You may have noticed, but you can now upload your images/pictures and video in one simple-to-use media editor tool. Ok, so we had some teething problems with it, but there’s nothing to stop you now from uploading your videos for Christmas. Video is the new way to engage your customers. Eyeblaster found that overall, online video boosts both ‘Dwell Rate’ and ‘Dwell Time’ (the amount of time visitors spend on your site) when compared to other forms of online advertising.
Consumers want to be excited so give them what they want.
Why not do a simple Christmas message to your customers and talk about what you’ll be doing for them this Christmas? We’ll soon be launching a special offer on Flip camcorders to help you create and publish videos for your business, so watch out for this. But in the mean time, check out our guide to uploading and managing your images and video on BT Tradespace.
Have you set up a Christmas gallery?
If you don’t want to sell on your Tradespace but still have something to offer this Christmas, why not set up a Christmas gallery? Simply go to ‘My Tradespace’ and click on the ‘Manage your Tradespace’ tab and click on ‘Galleries’ to set up one up. You can use a mix of images and video and use specific keywords like ‘Christmas gifts’ or Christmas decorations etc to each item you upload, so not only does it give your customers something to look at, you can help increase your ranking for Christmas terms. Of course, if you’re an existing customer, we would’ve moved your product images into a gallery already – all you need to do to make them visible is to add specific keywords to your items – so you can get ranking!
Have you promoted your Christmas offering yet?
If you missed it, we’ve set up a Christmas community so you can promote your Christmas offers to the wider community. The deal is, you let us know what you’re offering and we’ll promote it on Twitter and our other social media profiles. Now we’re asking, but are you telling? If you’re new to the communities, you might find this how to guide useful.
Offer excellent customer service
The worst thing you can do (example – Royal Mail), is not be available when your customers need you. Saying that, we all know that Christmas gets pretty frenzied when it comes to dealing with multiple customers (who can sometimes be demanding)… so make sure you open all channels of communication to set yourself apart.
Besides setting expectations like delivery times and postage costs etc, make sure you’re publicising your contact details where you can. Another great tool you can use now is the free customer service community on your Tradespace – it will alert you on new queries coming in which you can answer yourself or assign to someone. You can even do company updates through it – so don’t miss out.
Simply go to ‘My Tradespace’ and enable your customer service community from the ‘My Customer service’ module in the right hand column.
Have a post Christmas strategy
Recession or not, shopping continues way into the Jan sales, so if you can start your special promotions why wait till Jan? Do them now. Example – why not donate a percentage of your sales to charity? Consumers are becoming more and more ethical – and this is a great way to show your Christmas spirit to help your own business but others who may need it.
Check out the competition
One thing that struck me at the Christmas sale I attended was that a few sellers were selling the same thing…. If you want to set yourself apart from the competition, keep an eye on the tactics they are using and make sure you don’t do exactly the same thing or buyers won’t be able to tell you apart. What can you do differently that will help you get noticed? Communities are a great way to get inspiration and feedback – so ask the community for ideas and feedback on your Tradespace.
Improve your chances of being found through search
90 percent of all online journeys begin with search – that’s one reason we’ve stuck a great big search box on our homepage 
. But, what’s exciting about the new BT Tradespace is that it gives you plenty of opportunity of increase/improve your search engine ranking, not just on our site and search results pages but on other search engines too. One thing about keywords is that before you start adding them to items, do you reasearch. The words you use to describe your products may not be the words your customers are using to type in to search engines – The Google Adwords tool is free and easy to use to see how popular your terms are. Also, it’s important to not just use words but phrases that are known as long tail . Of course, if you’re too busy to think about the detail of your keyword strategy, there are always the professional services – like our own BT SearchSmart, which will help you optimise your website and manage your PPC campaigns. Check out our special offer on this now.
The one thread through all of this advice is of course, to be active – if your customer can see that you are on the ball, and making the effort, they will be enticed to buy from you and come back to you… the more you do the more you get – simple, but true.
Watch it all in our five steps to Tradespace success video!
