- The global e-commerce market is expected
to total $4.89 trillion in 2021.
That's 27.6% growth rate for the year,
and it's not by chance.
That's a big part of my clients are in e-commerce.
If there's one area that I had a chance to learn
from my clients' success and failures, it's e-commerce.
Today, I'm going to share a simple strategy
to scale your e-commerce business and be prepared
for 2021's holiday season.
Hey, everyone, I'm Neil Patel,
and today, I'm going to break down a simple strategy
to scale your e-commerce business
and prepare for the 2021 holiday season.
(bright music)
Before we get started today's video,
I just wanted to let you know
that it's sponsored by alibaba.com.
The strategy I'm going to share with you
revolves around two key points.
Number one, finding out what are the dates in the year
that you need to prepare for
and then maximizing your chance of success
for those seasonal opportunities,
and two, stocking up for those opportunities
while making sure you're getting products
at the lowest cost possible from the best suppliers.
And as a bonus tip, I'm going to show you the way
to save anywhere from 10% to 40%
across 34 product categories
when you're stocking up for your shop.
So let's get started.
Step one, prepare in advance for seasonal opportunities.
Every e-commerce store has seasonal opportunities,
depending on what you're selling.
For most e-commerce shops, holidays like Christmas
or Black Friday or Mother's Day or Father's Day
will typically bring you lots of sales and revenue.
The secret to selling more
on these special holidays is preparation.
You got to first keep in mind that one or two months
before each of those seasonal opportunities,
you should be absolutely ready to do your best marketing
and fulfill orders that will come through.
In other words, you've got to prepare in advance,
and here's how you should approach that.
One, do a search on Google for all the holidays
in your country during the year.
In the United States,
I can even find the most targeted opportunities
by just searching on Google for e-commerce holidays
in the United States 2021.
Next, some blogs will have all the holidays listed out,
so it makes it easier to understand
which holidays have the most commercial potential.
Second, I want you to take note of the specific holidays
that are relevant to your business.
For example, if you own an e-commerce site
that sells grooming products for men,
Father's Day is an important holiday for you.
On the flip side, Mother's Day isn't that so important
when you're grooming products are for men.
Third, once you know which holidays that you should target
for your shop, you got to schedule all the preparation work
for at least one or two months in advance.
Look at your best-selling products.
Think about the unique promotions that you could be running
on these holidays, like discounted pricing, bundles,
or even referral programs.
Your goal is to create one or more irresistible offers
that you can promote and do lots of marketing for,
whether it's with your email base,
push notifications subscribers, social media followers
or even on paid ad platforms.
You want to write up all the email marketing campaigns
that you want to send out
at least a month or two in advance.
That way, you're not scrambling in the last minute.
Write all the copy.
Get all the creatives designed, all the videos recorded.
Any of the social ad campaigns that you need a plan,
do that months in advance, as well.
Step two, stock up so that you have enough inventory
to keep up with the demand
before you start running your promotion.
When it comes to e-commerce, I've seen three things
that online business owners struggle with.
One, getting easy access to high quality products,
two, finding suppliers that they can trust,
and three, getting their logistics sorted
when it comes to costs and turnover.
If you're sourcing your products at a high cost,
selling your products that aren't
of the quality your customers want
and you're being at the mercy of the suppliers
who they're hard to trust and who make a struggle
with logistics, no matter how great your marketing is,
you're still going to fail.
So let's get started with the first one,
getting easy access to high quality products
that your shoppers want.
I'm going to recommend to you alibaba.com
as it's the easiest, most affordable platform source
for your products and to stock up your inventory.
Alibaba has nearly 200 million products
and 200,000 global suppliers to choose from.
It's a lot of suppliers,
and that'll allow you to customize your products
to your own brand.
When you're getting started,
you won't be able to afford high order quantities,
and alibaba.com has dozens of thousands of suppliers
who will make it easy for you to get started
by offering some of the lowest minimum order quantities.
They also have many different suppliers,
so there's many different categories of products
that each of them have,
and the chance are no matter what you're looking for,
you're going to find it on alibaba.com.
This leads us to the second challenge,
finding reliable suppliers that you can trust.
The end outcome that you're looking for as a shop owner
is never losing money when stocking up.
Alibaba.com solves this problem in a few different ways.
You get to see the products in 3D showrooms.
Sometimes just seeing a photo of a product
doesn't give you enough confidence.
Seeing a 3D prototype gives you a better idea
of what you're going to purchase.
Trade Assurance.
Whenever you see Trade Assurance supplier icons
in their platform,
you know that you're going to be paying through the supplier
or to the supplier through alibaba.com,
and you can be rest assured that if you have problems
with the shipping time or the quality of the product,
Alibaba.com will be there to support you
and your product investment.
You'll have the chance of doing live video chats
with live product demos with your potential suppliers,
and you'll get to talk directly with your suppliers
and get a holistic picture
of their business production capabilities, and products.
Last but not least, you'll get your logistics sorted,
so you get your products on time
and have accurate delivery time estimates
so you can run your business
with the least amount of uncertainty possible.
Alibab.com has over 40 million ready-to-ship products
with a quick dispatch time.
They have 28 prioritized trade routes
to provide more stable logistics services to 169 countries
and regions around the world.
The delivery time estimates are calculated based
on global logistics, big data
that's been collected over the past few years.
You just need to find the products
that mark the X day delivery.
If your product doesn't reach its destination
in the estimated delivery date, you can make a claim
to get 10% of the order amount as compensation
to a maximum of $100 USD.
Now, here's my bonus tip.
If you're stocking up for this year's holiday
as I recommend,
you should leverage alibaba's.com Super September.
From September 1st until September 30th,
you can get access to huge discounts up to 40%
across 34 categories.
You'll get at least 10% off drop shipping products,
10% off holiday products.
Not only will you get access
to the world's leading suppliers with high quality products
at a fraction of the cost you pay with other suppliers,
you can increase your profit margins significantly
with hose discounts.
Spend less, sell more, that's business with alibaba.com.