Why Online Sales Are Difficult For Local Businesses To Break Into

Why Online Sales Are Difficult For Local Businesses To Break Into

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So you’ve proven that you can sell your product on every in-person sales channel out there.

If you can get yourself in front of your ideal customer or build rapport with them over the phone, you know that you can close them on the sale.

Your success rate is pretty steady, so you decide to take the next big step in your business — scale and bring your products to an online audience.

You whip out the same game plan that you’ve used to sell to your customers 1-on-1 and decide to use that same strategy to sell to an audience online.

You get a few sales once you launch online — you knew this would work!

But as the months pass, those sales don’t continue, they actually start to dwindle or become wildly unstable. Good some months, embarrassing other months.

It’s frustrating when your sales chops don’t quite work online the way it does in-person.

With an abundance of your target customers online, you thought that you could really scale this business and be an instant success.

You throw in the towel and decide to stick to what you know — selling in-person. 

You continue the cycle of tirelessly selling your products to wholesalers, pop-up shops, events, and more. If you’re a service business, you’re on a constant coffee meeting circuit and are networking constantly.

This lifestyle isn’t ideal, but it feels like this is your only option right now. The online thing didn’t work out. 

Here’s the truth about building an online business that no one ever talks about: building a business that sells to an in-person audience is very different from building a business online.

If you fail at it at your first go at it, it’s not your fault. 

Selling online vs. in-person simply requires two different playbooks, two different strategies, two different budgets, and two different time and energy expenditures.

If you’re not aware of what these differences are, you were set up for failure from the get-go. 

Here are the basics of the major differences between in-person and online sales and why your efforts to scale online may not be working.


Shopping Behaviors

The core difference between online shoppers and in-person shoppers is the number of touchpoints they require before deciding to purchase from a brand.

Think about the last time you were on the market to buy something new from a small business in your area, something like jewelry, a jacket, or a card. 

How many times did you go into that business’ store or competing stores before purchasing that item? My guess is that it took you less than 5 visits before you bought something.

Now think about buying that same product online. How many online shops did you sort through?

Did you look at way more competing businesses than if you were purchasing that item in-person?

According to Google, it’s likely that as an online shopper, you will require 20–500 touchpoints before you’re ready to make a purchase online.

When you shop online, you have access to more businesses and can access more research during the time it takes you to visit 5 different stores in-person.

Whereas you are confined to purchasing from the stores that you’re physically able to access, online shoppers don’t have that confinement, and therefore have a bigger pool of competitors to make their decisions from.

The key difference here is that the marketing phase is much longer for an online business vs. an in-person business.

If you’re recycling your in-person marketing strategy online, your marketing cycle may be too short for your online customer who wants a much longer courting process.

So if you try to apply your in-person marketing and sales strategy to your online strategy, you may not find success simply because you aren’t marketing in alignment with your online shopper’s behaviors.


In-Person Connection

When you sell your products online, you don’t have much opportunity to forge in-person rapport with a potential customer.

This in-person rapport is big when it comes to closing a sale. 

Shoppers use social cues like how friendly you are, if they trust your answers to their questions, if they like you, and your body language to factor in whether they trust and like you enough to buy from you.

A lot of online businesses make the mistake of accepting this lack of in-person rapport as their reality and build their marketing strategy without this critical arm.

The smart online businesses recognize this lack and create opportunities to build rapport with their online audience.

This is why a lot of online businesses are aggressive about their Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube strategies  — because it gives them that audience interaction and rapport-building component through video lives, video stories, and more. 

It provides a “face-to-face” opportunity so that brands can interact with their audience and create a connection.

If you’re currently trying to break into online sales and you don’t have this connection component, I strongly recommend that you start dabbling in it.

It’s the one strategy I’ve seen easily catapult a brand’s sales conversions across industries.

Just like selling in-person, if you can get yourself in front of your ideal customer, it’s likely that you’ll be able to close the sale.

If you’ve attempted to expand into online sales and didn’t find sustainable success in it, don’t quit just yet. 

It’s highly unlikely that your business can’t make money online if it’s easily able to make money offline. 

Simply making the adjustments to your marketing and sales strategy for a new playing field may be the approach shift that you need to unlock a fruitful online arm for your business. 


Got 10 minutes in the next 5 days to correct the selling mistakes your business is making? Join my 5 day sales challenge here.

Sophia Sunwoo