If you are a brick & mortar business, a food establishment, or are looking to go online and reach more buyers, you need to seriously consider adding an eCommerce option to your business.
In a recent study, the SBA showed a 35% increase in year-over-year sales between 2019-2020 for businesses that added eCommerce to their business.
Listen in as Jennifer, Daniel, and Patricia talk about ways that you can start growing your business by adding in eCommerce, or if you already have an eCommerce store, how you can continue to grow your store to gain new customers and opportunities!
The “It’s the Bottom Line that Matters” podcast is all about providing entrepreneurs and seasoned business executives with actionable nuggets that can be used to immediately help grow their business. Ideas ranging from marketing solutions to strategy, finance, and more.
Jennifer Glass, Daniel McCraine, and Patricia Reszetylo share their combined years in business, knowledge, and skills to help small businesses thrive because it’s the bottom line that matters!
If you are a brick & mortar business, a food establishment, or are looking to go online and reach more buyers, you need to seriously consider adding an eCommerce option to your business.
In a recent study, the SBA showed a 35% increase in year-over-year sales between 2019-2020 for businesses that added eCommerce to their business.
Listen in as Jennifer, Daniel, and Patricia talk about ways that you can start growing your business by adding in eCommerce, or if you already have an eCommerce store, how you can continue to grow your store to gain new customers and opportunities!
Transcript (auto-generated; may contain errors)
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Welcome to another episode of “It’s the Bottom Line That Matters” podcast on today’s program, we are going to be talking about going online for brick and mortar businesses.
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In a recent Small Business Administration study between 2019 and 2020. There was a 35% year over year growth in e commerce, businesses, coming from the brick and mortar sector know a good deal of that came because of the proven 19 pandemic.
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We know that the pandemic caused a lot of businesses that were not doing e commerce sales before to seriously rethink what they can do to get online. But there’s also a lot of other reasons why if you are only a brick and mortar business, you may be leaving
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a lot of money on the table.
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Whether or not you’re in an area where the pandemic is currently ravaging, or if you’re listening to this in the future.
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Just remember that at the moment that we’re recording this, the Omer con variant, yes we’re dating this, the overcrowding variant is still very much around in the United States, thank God, not in the northeast anymore.
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We’re kind of on the lower end. Unfortunately though in other parts of the country it is still very much active.
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And so you really want to be thinking now how can e commerce be helping you in your business and be reaching even more people. Now one of the most obvious reasons why e commerce is going to be a major benefit is because you have the potential to reach
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buyers who are not in your local market.
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Another is, if they’re not able to get out to you because maybe they are coded positive, or maybe they are afraid of getting the virus or any other reason being in a position to get things ordered online, even if its focus as Vicki when from the today
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show coined the term buy online pick up in store or is curbside delivery or any other means of getting the items to you.
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Ecommerce has a great advantage. But Daniel Patricia let me bring you guys in.
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How else can businesses utilize e commerce in a way that’s going to really start generating more opportunities and more growth for their business.
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But one thing that we saw especially going into coded.
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We saw a lot of businesses who were really utilizing social media and email to actually really communicate with their with their customers and their clients, suddenly realized that they needed to tell them, you know, we’re open or we’re not opened.
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And so they made sure to really communicate that to them.
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Of course there was at least an equal amount that didn’t communicate at all and so nobody knew if they were
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very true, always a helpful thing to be communicating with your audience without a question.
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Well, Jennifer, you brought up a really great point A moment ago.
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And regardless of what timeframe somebody is listening to this podcast recording.
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When we’re talking about growing your business we’re talking about expansion and expanding your geographic territory is one way to grow your business.
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If you have a brick and mortar store shop.
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So as long as you’ve got the ability to fulfill by mail order or whatever, it’s going to be, then going online could definitely be considered an expansion of your geographic territory, which may be easier to do than opening up another shop on the other
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side of town, to make it more convenient for those customers. So definitely consider going online, if you haven’t already.
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What I would say, then when you do that, is it’s a little bit of a mind shift for you, business owner as you’re thinking about going online before you probably were concerned a lot with what is my product what’s my service are people walking into the
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store. What are they picking up what are they purchasing.
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Am I going to have enough inventory to take care of all those orders. So a lot of your focus was probably in the moment. and it was probably inventory management.
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When you’re going online by the way we’re going to be talking about inventory management as a topic on upcoming episode, so be on the lookout for that because that is going to be something that Daniel just mentioned inventory management and that is something
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we do have exploited for us to discuss because that really is going to be important.
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Stay tuned.
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Word accounts. When you’re going online.
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Think a little bit more about your customer list, management, rather than inventory management. The most important thing you can take with you when you move online is a list of customers.
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So let all of your current customers know that you’re moving online and it’s available, they can purchase from you there that could increase the frequency that they purchased from you, which would be fantastic for your bottom line.
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Not just new customers but think about your existing customers as well.
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Also think about how when you move online. How can you expand the customer list that you’re trying to capture.
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You want to get more and more people onto your list, so that you can do what Patricia mentioned a moment ago, which is continuously communicate and update and stay in contact with that new list that you’re acquiring online.
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So think about list and customer management a little bit more than inventory management going online.
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And that’s a great tip Daniel and here’s another one that you really want to be thinking about as it relates to inventory management.
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When you have a brick and mortar store your inventory is limited by the square footage of your business.
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In, e commerce world, you’re no longer limited based on what your square footage is you now can be a drop shipper for other businesses are having drop shipping services from other companies, where you can now offer even more items for sale that people
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can be purchasing from you, and you’re not even holding that inventory. So from a cash flow perspective. You’re even better off than you were before. Because now what you have is you have more opportunities to sell, and you’re not holding additional skews
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additional items additional inventory of anything because nothing is there. And so, there’s more opportunity that you have for additional growth. So think about that 35% growth that we mentioned at the top of the show, where that was really coming from.
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There’s so many opportunities out there when you do start looking at adding e commerce. Here’s another one.
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If you’re a restaurant.
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Have you thought about flash freezing, your meal that you can now ship it right if you are a pizza place, or your deli or you are a diner whatever kind of business you have.
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If people are not coming in to actually be sitting in the restaurant.
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At the time of this recording here in the north, east, there was a massive Blizzard that hit the Northeast over the weekend, outdoor dining, which is something that was big during coded.
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When we had that massive snowstorm outdoor dining was cancelled.
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And so, what do you do if somebody is not going to the restaurant. If they don’t have the ability to get it out to you. And some of these businesses have their own delivery services, some of them are using a delivery app.
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By the way, just as an aside, to help be restaurant owners.
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If you want to buy from a restaurant and support them, please order directly from them not to take business away from the delivery app, but they take about a third of the total price.
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So if you can try and order directly with the restaurant.
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We really want to support all businesses, big and small.
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But think about the what you really can do to make that different standouts of people who are outside of the normal trading area where you operate are going to still be getting your food, your beverage, your whatever that can really be a major benefit
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in terms of what you’re trying to do. So, As we looked at additional tips on moving to e commerce.
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Anything else, Patricia Daniel stand out for you guys.
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The only other thing I would say is ecommerce can be complicated. It can also be pretty easy to get set up as well.
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So, if you aren’t comfortable with trying to do something yourself wouldn’t be too hard to reach out and find somebody who knows how to set up, e commerce, you know, even if you just pay them for a couple of sessions to help you get set up.
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It’s going to be worth your time to do that. And again, listen to our other podcast episodes about delegation and time management, may be better off, letting someone else get that ecommerce store setup for you then trying to do it yourself.
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Absolutely. And I will share anyone that’s using WordPress as their platform for their website. There’s an amazing e commerce system called woo commerce, that is easy to use but you may still want a professional to actually get involved and deal with
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it to make sure it’s properly set up make sure that everything integrates correctly. And also, if it’s not your core function like Daniel was saying let someone else do it, that is better equipped because if you’re thinking about your own time.
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What can you do to make more money from the time that you do have as opposed to doing the things that really aren’t going to be generating as much in sales.
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Patricia anything you have to add to the conversation.
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You know I had stuff in my head and then Daniel said it.
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Great minds think alike.
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Yeah.
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So, as we wrap up our conversation on adding ecommerce, to your business.
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Think about what you can do, start small and start adding.
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You can certainly work with a developer if you need help with development, I’m just going to throw it out there, feel free to reach out to me, that is one of the services that we do offer.
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If you’re looking at getting help finding drop shipping, there’s websites out there that help you figure that out as well that you can find products that you can add, and also think about what your customers have been looking for that you may not have
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been able to offer in your store simply because of your own square footage issues that you weren’t able to carry. Think about all those ideas that you had.
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This would make sense it would make sense but you weren’t able to do it simply because you didn’t have that square footage. There’s a lot more you can do with eCommerce. On that note, this has been another episode of “It’s the Bottom Line that Matters” and until next time, here’s to your success.
