Moving Your Offline Business Online

We had a GrowWithFundall session on Telegram on Friday, 1 May 2020, Benjamin Ahia, our Growth lead talked about how people can move their offline businesses online. It was an enlightening class as everyone learnt some tactics they can use to transition their offline businesses online,

Here are some of the things we learnt:

Offline business: Business that is run in a physical location.

Online business: Business that is run in a digital location.

Therefore moving your offline business online means running your business in a digital location.

Example of offline businesses: Food Vendor selling in a shop, Fashion designer selling and making clothes in a shop, etc

Example of online businesses: Food vendor selling on Instagram, Ofood, Jumia Food, WhatsApp, People that sell things on Jumia.

Some of the advantages of moving your business online

• Feasibility to operate from anywhere.
• Lower Cost of Operating as compared to brick & mortar store.
• Scalable and Easy to reach a wider audience.
• Easy to track the performance.

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1. Understand the various available online channels

Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, etc), eCommerce websites, Blogs, Forums

2. Understand how your customers spend their time on these various online channels. ( How long do they spend there, what time of the day are they there, What kind of content do they consume there)

3. Audit your current brand (Take a step back and think about your brand as a whole.

Do you have products that are regularly selling out? If you offer services, is there one that is always requested or that gets the most leads?)

4. Define the customer you want when you take your business online

At this point, you should have a clear idea of the kind of customer your offline business attracts. Now, your focus should be on finding out who you want to reach online. Is it the same type of customer?

5. Develop a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data from your current customers. Your buyer persona should include name, demographics, motivations, personality, behavior patterns, and goals. The more details you include, the better.

6. Map out a plan to reach out to your customers whey they are with your brand message.

We used the case study of a food vendor

Food Vendor that sells in a store in Yaba.

First, he understands all the various available channels available for him to sell his food. He thinks of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, Jumia Food, O food, etc

Next, he studies how his customers spend their time on the channels. They are usually on social media a lot of the time. Some of them usually buy food from Jumia Food and Ofood.

Next, he audits his current brand, people love his Yamarita a lot, people also love all the food he sells. His shop is usually filled up especially in the mornings. Most of his customers are young people.

Next, he defines the type of customer that he wants online, he decides to target young people in Lagos since he can only do his delivery to people in Lagos.

Next, he develops a buyer persona:

Amaka

Lives on the mainland

Very active on social media

Visits websites about lifestyle regularly

Loves my food because I sell delicious delicacies

Maps out a plan to reach his customers where they are

He plans to use social media and food listing websites at first to get customers, after which he will open a website where people can order directly from him.

He opens an Instagram business account for his store and uploads images of his food so that people can see the food, price, description, etc and make orders directly from Instagram. For Instagram, he snaps really good pictures. He not only posts, but he also uses relevant hashtags and promotes his posts on Instagram so that he can reach a wider audience.

He opens a Facebook page for his store, uploads his products on the Facebook page, based on the persona he developed, he runs ads on Facebook to get people to order from him.

He converts his WhatsApp to business WhatsApp so that he can set up things like an automated reply, customer follow up, etc.

He opens a Google My Business profile so that when people search for food sellers on Google, his store can show up.

He opens an account on Ofood and uploads his food so that people can order from there.

He opens an account on Jumia Food and uploads his food so that people can order from there.

You can join our telegram group to learn more via bit.ly/GWFundallTel