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Excerpt
Any tips on how to create more demand for my frozen product? Should I start advertising it like to make teasers, even if it will still take a few months to ship it?
Well, if you’re taking in pre-orders, it might be a good idea. And when you’re taking pre-orders make sure that you get the cash. So pre-orders usually work that they give you like 50%, somewhere there, 50 to 70%, maybe 50% would be safe of the payment. Some people ask for 30%, so maybe you can get 30% of the money as a down payment for the pre-order that’s safe enough for you, because you have cash flow, right? It’s not that they will place their pre-orders and you’re the one who’s going to shell out. So you ask for 30% down and then you go ahead and order it.
And for the 30%, maybe you can have like the ad spend or advertising spend tuck in already. Always remember, when you’re going to advertise on Facebook and Instagram, you have to have a target, set a goal that every P100 that I spend on the ad, I should get one to two sales from it. Meaning you have a 1% or 2% conversion rate. Actually, that’s amazing. If you have 1%, it’s already amazing in my opinion. But that’s how you can do it.
Now how you’re going to take people into that conversion point, it depends on you. Are you planning to create an e-commerce website or are you willing to chat with them individually? It really depends on you. I see some people who are advertising on Instagram, what they do is they ask people to message them. That would be a hassle for others. Like you have to have, I don’t know, two or three people, depending on how many messages you get from the ad, because people are going to message you and usually, guess what they will say? “HM”(How much?). Right? We Filipinos are known for that “HM” kind of question. So usually that’s what they would say. Get ready to answer those inquiries all the way until you can convert them to do a pre-order with you.
So if you don’t have the products on hand and you’re still going to take a few months to ship it, that’s called the pre-order. But you have to also notify them that you are in the pre-order stage and they’re getting it for cheaper. Because if they’ll order in stock items, they’re going to pay, like, let’s say, I don’t know, P2000, let’s just say. You’re going to pay P2000 pesos when I have stock on hand and you’re going to buy it outright. But when you pre-order, you get it for P1800 only, so you’ll get a P200 discount by pre-ordering. Same thing, you just have to wait, just have to wait X number of months.
Now, why will you do that? You give them a 10% discount to wait. One good reason you want to do that is you gauge market demand. If you get a lot of pre-orders, that’s when you’ll know that you should increase your shipments. You end up saving on the shipping fee, so it makes sense for you. Also, you are able to get cashflow coming in because they’re going to pre-order. They will have deposits on you, and you can use that to run ads or to pay for the shipment coming in. So I hope that makes sense.
If you’re going to run ads, I suggest Instagram. If your product could look very nice, maybe you could show the cooked version, not the frozen product, or you can show both, but make sure you hire a food photographer so that it really looks nice when you run the ad. Invest in your product shots, because your ad is only as powerful as how you present it to be.
