HOW TO SELL YOUR IMPORTED PRODUCTS IN YOUR COUNTRY

Congratulations now that you have your products successfully shipped to you! Our work is done. We only wanted to teach you how you can import. But it’s also good if we learn how you can sell the product.

Watch video below:

I know you probably already know or have your selling channels already but this is primarily for first time traders and importers. Once your product is here, you sell them through:

1. A physical Store
2. Social media channels
3. Ecommerce stores.
4. Blogging

12.1 Physical store:

If you plan to sell via a physical store, you should or you must have large inventory. Mini importers usually start small and it may not be advisable to rent or open up a physical store. Renting a store may set you back significantly and attract all manner of tax and government agencies that will further cost you money. So you only open a physical store once you are ready to have larger inventory and probably hire someone.

You remember the 3Ps of marketing we talked about? I you are going to rent a physical store, then you must find the right place or location for your store. Once again, the 3Ps of marketing are:

• People: You and the right team
• Product: Selling the right product that solves a problem
• Place: Where you market or sell the Product.

12.2 Social Media channels:

The fastest way to expose your products is to build an active presence and community with a social media channel. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a Whatsapp business account is on top of the list.

Create a Facebook page and Instagram account and a Twitter account for your business. Post contents to it and build an audience of interested people around your pages.

Run targeted adverts to reach even more people who might be interested in your product. Targeted adverts are sponsored campaigns that give you the ability to reach a certain group of people around your niche. For example, if you sell Pregnancy pillow, with targeted advert, you can target only pregnant women using Facebook or any other platform. They will keep seeing the product repeatedly until they decide to make a purchase or share or ignore.

Save the mobile numbers of people who call you for inquiry and always periodically broadcast messages to them using Whatsapp for Business.

12.3 Ecommerce stores

You are advised to leverage the popular ecommerce platform’s wide reach to sell your product. Most African countries has Jumia and other Ecommerce stores. Nigerians are familiar with Konga, Jumia, Jiji and other niche ecommerce websites like Wavetra.com which we run.If you are outside Africa, you may wish to check out the popular ecommerce website of your country like Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress, etc.

How to sell on Ecommerce stores

Selling in any of these stores is easy. Just open the website and scroll to the menu or link that says something like “Sell on Konga”. For example here’s for Jumia, scroll to the bottom and notice my blue circle highlight:

For Amazon. Right at the top:

And selling on Konga also at the top:

And for Wavetra, right at the bottom:

Now, follow the process for becoming a merchant or seller from the respective website you are interested in. The instructions may be unique but usually straight forward and clear. They may need to verify your business or product but once you are successful, they will onboard you and that is it. Your products will go live to thousands of customers and you will be expected to ship or fulfill them whenever you receive an order.

You can as well contract someone to create your own ecommerce store where you host and list your products and be in control of the pricing without sharing commission with any one. If you choose this option, you will be solely responsible for the marketing of the website.

12.4 Blogging

The last but not the least in online sales and marketing is blogging. Here you are expected to craft beautiful and persuasive stories around your products that will make people actually buy or talk about it. You can create your own blog around what you sell. You can also become a guest blogger for blogs that talk about what you do.

Google loves quality contents and most people actually search on Google for a particular product before making a purchase. Quality write-up or content will make sure your product always come up in Google search for a related product.

You can also register in popular forums in your country and frequently talk about your product or use it as your signature.