Most B2C sellers make this mistake when it comes to selling charcoal briquettes without research.
Sometimes, they sell their product in an online marketplace or from social media, and they do ads with lots of money. But still, they do not have a customer yet.
One of our clients asked us about this situation, that they selling it from Facebook, and they spend hundreds to thousands of dollars for Facebook ads, he already learned from classes about how the
facebook ads work, and still not getting one single customer.
And then we ask him “Let’s pretend that you are the customer, what is the reason for you to buy charcoal briquettes”
He replied “Maybe when I hang out with friends, have a family gathering, etc do barbeque”
And then I ask him “Where do you buy those charcoal?” And he replied “At retail stores”
That is the answer, he and their market buy charcoal from retail stores and do not do any booking or preparation to buy charcoal from online stores. Because in their market, they all think buying charcoal online is not effective. They can buy charcoal offline on the same day, no need to wait to prepare
the charcoal in the previous days. Because they think buying charcoal is not an emergency reason and also is not a big ceremony. Just for hanging out with friends, chilling out, or grilling with families.
But also, there are some of the few behavioral markets out there that want to stock charcoal briquettes a lot long before for their grilling needs or winter needs such as grilling restaurants, some shisha users, etc.
You can do this by interviewing the market by asking where he usually buys charcoal or checking on Google trends in your country and also checking on your local marketplace and find out how many buyers there are online.
To analyze offline buyers, you can check at the nearest store and find the amount of the product, if there are more charcoal products than snack products, etc.? Or you can also check from a charcoal shop or charcoal seller around, whether there are many visitors, etc. The size of the number of visitors depends on the niche, it’s only natural that it’s not as busy as a general store. This is one of the effective ways to know whether your product is impulsive or not.
So if your target market just buys in the retail, putting lots of money for your purpose on marketing online will not be effective. Like a wise man said “Go to see sugars if you want to find ants”
If you don’t come to the sugar place or do not see the sugar spot, then you cannot see the potential of ants that you can take.
Ok, what about if your target market can be offline and also be online? Then that is also good.
Because you can do lots of reachment to your prospect, and all of them are flexible. But also you need to manage your costs.
Maybe it is a good potential, but if you also do not manage your budget correctly, you can get a blunder.
In business marketing online, there are 2 types of reaching your prospect:
1. Outbound marketing
2. Inbound marketing
So, outbound marketing means that you do marketing strategies by reaching your prospect. You can do this by doing advertising such as Email marketing, and more.
Inbound marketing means that you do marketing strategies where your prospect will reach you. This is commonly used when you make social media and do advertising such as FB ads, google ads, and more.
This marketing is good, but there are some things that many charcoal briquette businesses are unaware of may be aware of but underestimate.
What is that? It is an organic marketing. This means that you do Outbound or Inbound marketing without putting money on the line but just do it with effort.
This effort means hard work, you should do this organic content because it can cut your marketing budget and you can get a higher margin from selling your charcoal briquettes.
There are several organic marketing that you can do, but the only key for organic marketing is also “give your prospect a value upfront”. Here are the organic marketing that maybe you can do:
