Greetings!
Nice to meet you, dear vendor. Im a 35 year-old American girl living in Australia. I dont have extensive experience in the world of vaping, but my semi-new journey has been intense. Ive been reading extensively throughout the ECF and other sites, absorbing knowledge like a sponge. Ive been noticing how people here behave and what makes them tick. Ive been getting a feeling for the community in general. I also work in Advertising, so I know a thing or two about presenting a business in the best light.
I imagine that Im talking to a small business owner; you have a small room to mix your juices, or perhaps a nice little lab. You take pride on your creations, and you find it superior to most of the stuff out there; you guys create good quality juices with unique flavours, and you want people to love them. Few people work with you, and you have limited resources to make yourself known.
There are a few lines of business advice Id like to offer you. Ideas that, I think, would make your old customers happier, bring you new ones, and make you more profitable. Win-win for everyone! Take what fits, and disregard the rest.
First of all and the most important thing I will say in this whole letter: it is in your very best interest to get vapers to try your juices. I hear that in SoCal there are B&M stores where people can try juices. Imagine that!!! In my world, the internet is the only way to research or buy juices. Many of us actually have to blindly buy whole bottles of something in order to try it. Now, with many dozens if not hundreds of juice vendors to choose from, it might take a while until a vaper goes to your site to try you next. (If he gets there at all.) So when he finally buys from you, you better be damn sure to get his attention!
It baffles me to no end when I buy from a vendor (sometimes good cash) and I dont get one single sample, one little handwritten thank you note. My immediate thoughts are, How cold!, How thoughtless!, They really dont appreciate my business. I actually feel personally offended. Now, why that is? The world of vaping is a community; we members want to feel connected with one another, want to help one another, and we want something personal with our vendors too. Remember: to us this is not a cold transaction. This is not grocery shopping. This is supposed to be fun, and personal; we want to find new vendors that we appreciate, and we want them to appreciate us back. Think community, people!
Just think about it. Suppose that you bought a big bag of cheap 1-2ml plastic vials. One of those full of juice will cost you cents to make. You send that sample to someone. That vaper will not only really appreciate the thought, and be happy as a child on Xmas (because, yes, for a lot of us, few things are more exciting than trying a new juice!), he might really like the juice, and come to purchase it. If he purchases it, chances are he will buy other flavours too. He might become a repeat costumer because of one small sample. He might review it and get others to try it too. So why on earth would you not send him a sample?...
You could send him your very best stuff, to increase the chances that hell be hooked. Or you could send him little-known juices, that no one talks about. He just might start that talk, and get a lot of people curious.
Again I work in Advertising, and I cant think of a cheaper, most efficient way to get yourself in front of your costumers.
Sometimes I try a sample from a new vendor and dislike the flavour, but if it tastes like high quality juice, Ill add that vendor to my to try list.
Samples are so important that you should look for ways to give them away even when people are not buying from you. From the top of my head: create a Free Sample Day every six months. (or a $2 Sample Day whatever). Have people send you a few bucks for shipping costs, and send 2-3 samples to everyone. Think of how many customers you might get out of that! And how fun it would be for everyone to participate.
Presentation is also very important. All I know about you, as a not-yet-customer, is what people say and what your website looks like. So make your website look good! There are a couple of vendors that get rave reviews, but their sites are so blah that I dont care to shop there. Think of kids in a candy store: we dont want to simply stay at the door and somebody shoves a chocolate bar in our hand. We want to enter, feel the special magic in the air, look at shelve after shelve filled with delicious looking sweets, our eyes shining, enjoying that visit just as much as the candy itself afterwards.
So make your website a pleasure to visit. Yummy photos, clever descriptions, a way to sort things (I like to see the bestsellers first). And encourage your users to write reviews! We love reading them as part of the browsing process. It gives us confidence to buy, and its fun, because we can vicariously taste the juice through others descriptions and well have better odds to find juices well love. But only if you keep the bad reviews too. Bad reviews are good!
Love, light and vapour,
Milazinha
Nice to meet you, dear vendor. Im a 35 year-old American girl living in Australia. I dont have extensive experience in the world of vaping, but my semi-new journey has been intense. Ive been reading extensively throughout the ECF and other sites, absorbing knowledge like a sponge. Ive been noticing how people here behave and what makes them tick. Ive been getting a feeling for the community in general. I also work in Advertising, so I know a thing or two about presenting a business in the best light.
I imagine that Im talking to a small business owner; you have a small room to mix your juices, or perhaps a nice little lab. You take pride on your creations, and you find it superior to most of the stuff out there; you guys create good quality juices with unique flavours, and you want people to love them. Few people work with you, and you have limited resources to make yourself known.
There are a few lines of business advice Id like to offer you. Ideas that, I think, would make your old customers happier, bring you new ones, and make you more profitable. Win-win for everyone! Take what fits, and disregard the rest.
First of all and the most important thing I will say in this whole letter: it is in your very best interest to get vapers to try your juices. I hear that in SoCal there are B&M stores where people can try juices. Imagine that!!! In my world, the internet is the only way to research or buy juices. Many of us actually have to blindly buy whole bottles of something in order to try it. Now, with many dozens if not hundreds of juice vendors to choose from, it might take a while until a vaper goes to your site to try you next. (If he gets there at all.) So when he finally buys from you, you better be damn sure to get his attention!
It baffles me to no end when I buy from a vendor (sometimes good cash) and I dont get one single sample, one little handwritten thank you note. My immediate thoughts are, How cold!, How thoughtless!, They really dont appreciate my business. I actually feel personally offended. Now, why that is? The world of vaping is a community; we members want to feel connected with one another, want to help one another, and we want something personal with our vendors too. Remember: to us this is not a cold transaction. This is not grocery shopping. This is supposed to be fun, and personal; we want to find new vendors that we appreciate, and we want them to appreciate us back. Think community, people!
Just think about it. Suppose that you bought a big bag of cheap 1-2ml plastic vials. One of those full of juice will cost you cents to make. You send that sample to someone. That vaper will not only really appreciate the thought, and be happy as a child on Xmas (because, yes, for a lot of us, few things are more exciting than trying a new juice!), he might really like the juice, and come to purchase it. If he purchases it, chances are he will buy other flavours too. He might become a repeat costumer because of one small sample. He might review it and get others to try it too. So why on earth would you not send him a sample?...
You could send him your very best stuff, to increase the chances that hell be hooked. Or you could send him little-known juices, that no one talks about. He just might start that talk, and get a lot of people curious.
Again I work in Advertising, and I cant think of a cheaper, most efficient way to get yourself in front of your costumers.
Sometimes I try a sample from a new vendor and dislike the flavour, but if it tastes like high quality juice, Ill add that vendor to my to try list.
Samples are so important that you should look for ways to give them away even when people are not buying from you. From the top of my head: create a Free Sample Day every six months. (or a $2 Sample Day whatever). Have people send you a few bucks for shipping costs, and send 2-3 samples to everyone. Think of how many customers you might get out of that! And how fun it would be for everyone to participate.
Presentation is also very important. All I know about you, as a not-yet-customer, is what people say and what your website looks like. So make your website look good! There are a couple of vendors that get rave reviews, but their sites are so blah that I dont care to shop there. Think of kids in a candy store: we dont want to simply stay at the door and somebody shoves a chocolate bar in our hand. We want to enter, feel the special magic in the air, look at shelve after shelve filled with delicious looking sweets, our eyes shining, enjoying that visit just as much as the candy itself afterwards.
So make your website a pleasure to visit. Yummy photos, clever descriptions, a way to sort things (I like to see the bestsellers first). And encourage your users to write reviews! We love reading them as part of the browsing process. It gives us confidence to buy, and its fun, because we can vicariously taste the juice through others descriptions and well have better odds to find juices well love. But only if you keep the bad reviews too. Bad reviews are good!
Love, light and vapour,
Milazinha
