From Zero To Rs. 300,000 Through Online Marketing in 3 Days

1. From Zero to Rs 300,000 through online marketing By : Imtinan Ahmed

2. Ecommerce is on the rise in Pakistan. Many new success stories are being written down every day. We have seen examples of Daraz, Zameen, Pakwheels and Foodpanda to name a few. The beauty about online marketing or ecommerce is that you don’t have to be a big brand name or to have millions of dollars to be successful. You need an idea, a product, or a concept but a killer online marketing strategy. Likewise, India has already proved its mettle with FlipKart, Paytm, Yebhi, HomeShopping, Symbios, Shophive, Yayvo, iShopping, Mega, Telemart, 24hours, and many more brands that are a household name now.

3. Research Pakistan’s e-commerce sales are projected to cross the one billion dollars mark by 2020 as compared to $622 million recorded in 2017. JawadFarid, head of Corporate Innovation at tech firm Excellence Delivered (ExD) said ecommerce market is experiencing an annual growth of 72%. The country has one of the highest rates of mobile and internet penetrations in South Asia with 40 million Internet subscribers and 20 million Facebook users.

4. Recently, I threw my birthday party for my friends. Not the one where you invite people over. I mean the one where your friends call and tell you that tomorrow you are throwing a party and we all are invited. Surprised! Don’t be. I do the same with them on theirs.  On this party, in between all the giggles and laughter, a close friend of mine who assists his father in his watches business, came over and said that “Imtinan! You’ve been training people how to run an online marketing with Facebook. Great. I’m happy for you but I will only believe you when you make my business work awesome online”. My initial thoughts were simple. Yes, I can do this for him. But I said to him “I won’t”. He was surprised and said “Well, but this is what you teach”. I politely said to him “Buddy! Yes, I do and it’s possible but I won’t do it for you”. He goes “Why”.

5. I replied “Because if I do it for you and you see the process of online marketing work for you, then you will say to all you did it yourself. No mention of me. What’s in it for me then?”. I didn’t realize he was serious. He rose up from his seat, asked everyone to be quiet and made this announcement in more of a Bollywood movie style. “Guys! I need help in my watches business. I want to go online. Imtinan can sort this out for me as I am desperately struggling. I am asking him to help me for a month. If he can fix it like he does for others, I will throw a party in his honor, but more importantly, I will be in his debt”. Ah! Those were some kind words coming out. I just loved it.

6. Although, I was convinced to help him the moment he said he was struggling, but on a group request, and a little drama, I accepted the challenge.

7. It was decided that he will come over to my place for one hour in the evening and I promised him that I will give him a dedicated one hour for one week. After that, he will replicate what I will do for him in the next three weeks. He agreed and we began our process the very next day. Here’s the summary of our 7-hour activity plan. I am jotting it down so that you can get some benefit out of it too.

8. Day 1 As planned, I visited his shop where he showed me his collection of clocks, clocks for promotional purposes, wrist watches, digital wrist watches, smart watches, clocks for mosques.

9. He was excited to show their new additions of wrist watches along with interior décor items they have just started. I asked him what sells well. He stated that the clocks for mosques generate the maximum profits since they are five figure items. Moreover, they had some branded Swiss watches since they are the license holders.

11. Plus, the wrist watches that are sold for wedding gift purposes do pretty well, as they are a trusted name in the business because of his father’s hard work. I had some other ideas in mind. I wanted to focus a set working class and picked a Swiss watch that they were retailing for Rs. 8,500. It had a beautiful packaging but the sales were pathetic. He told me that their procurement cost is Rs. 2,200 since it’s branded. Otherwise, a similar unbranded design costs them Rs. 350.

12. He was simply shocked when I picked it up. He said to me and I can’t forget the look at his face “I heard you saying that start with items that are less than 3,000 so that people can afford, then why are you picking something that even we sitting in the market can’t sell”?

13. I first thought not to reply to him and just enjoy this astonishing look but then I changed my mind, and explained “Dude! Yes, that’s true but not when you know exactly who your market is and when you have a decent piece that can sell well.

14. I asked him that I will spend a little on marketing and if there are sales, then I will increase the budget. He was reluctant first, but finally we agreed on a few things. On my desire, he allowed me to sell the watch for Rs. 7,450 and not for Rs. 8,500. Plus, he agreed to spend a maximum of Rs. 10,000, with a caveat that I can increase the budget if there are sales. Finally, we settled on an item as he left things on to decide.

15. Day 2 Now it was my show. From this point forward to till the end of the week, I didn’t need any input from. He was on my shoulder watching what do I do next. Imagine two eyes behind you looking at your monitor seriously. How spooky can that be! So, I decided to play around. So, I logged onto YouTube and played Abdul Wali for him. He just cracked out and said “Are you serious!. I am here for work dude and you are playing funny songs”. My response was simple that “Dude! It’s good to relax when you are ready to do something important”.

16. That brought a smile at his face and he inquired what was that important work that we were about to embark upon.   I gave him a one word answer “Targeting”. Then I explained to him, “Targeting plays a significant role and is one of the make or break points in your business. Unfortunately, your ad account is new, it has no data, and your Pixel is fresh so we can’t expect any pixel fires recorded. We can’t even run a Look Alike Audience. Moreover, you don’t have any custom audiences because you have no traffic, so I need to work on targeting”.

17. He asked “And you can do it in one hour?” I said “Well, I can but if you do targeting, keep at least two full days free because you are new in this”. He nodded. After an hour, I was done with my research, audience insight, Google trends, targeting totality, broad and narrow separators. I was ready for the next day.

18. Day 3 This is the day where I asked my colleague who is a world-class graphic designer to give us one hour and make some designs. These designs were four in total. For online marketing, I got one design for the main ad, one design for each of the three levels of retargeting. Thus, four designs in total. I hardly took my designer forty minutes, since we knew what the images should look like keeping the target market in mind. I explained to my friend that our focus will be conversion ads but we will optimize for landing page views, keeping the longevity of his business in mind.

19. Day 4 The Dee Day! This is when we launched our campaign. The campaign was setup for 8 am in the morning Pakistan Time. My friend came over and said “If there is at least one order, I will recoup my ad cost”. I narrated my positive thinking and thinking big theory to him. The campaign was launched and we was waiting for the results. I told him to wait for 3 days as the campaign is set for 3 days. There’s no time to panic. Knowing the numbers, reading the metrics and studying the data for three days is essential.

20. Day 4 & 5 The results of online marketing are in.  Let me share the screenshots with you. The Main Ad Set Results Retargeting Level 1 Results

21. Retargeting Level 2 Results Retargeting Level 3 Results Results Time Results of online marketing. Since I have a habit of closely watching my numbers, I saw the online marketing results before my friend did.

22. I knew he made Rs. 149,000 in sales from only a Rs. 10,000 commitment, which he was supposed to pay to Facebook at the end of the campaign. He didn’t have to pay. So, no expense to him so far to get these results. Right! Now common! Online marketing, Facebook charges on credit card so he had time to pay. Actually, other than the intellectual capacity, nothing was spent. Moreover, if you add the results from retargeting campaigns too, then you can see he got Rs. 491,700 in three days, shy of Rs. 500,000 in three days. Technically, all of this happened with zero investment. He cost of marketing which in total was Rs. 26,825 paid for itself, likewise the cost of goods sold (the watches that costs him Rs. 2,200 and 66 were sold) Rs. 145,200 also paid for itself. To me, what’s important is the net profit. After all, business is about net profit. In this case, his net profit was Rs. 319,674 in mere 36 hours, with no investment. Bear in mind that we spent the first few days planning. With Rs. 319,674, his net profit on daily basis can be Rs. 106,558, making him Rs. 3,196,740, i.e., Rupees 3.1 million in 30 days.

23. Detailed Results Calculations In online marketing, I prefer digging deep in numbers and you must also do the same. Here are the profitability numbers from the above ad sets. Main Ad Statistics Conversion Rates: Reach  LP Views = 1.76% LP Views  Purchase = 5.93%

24. Retargeting Level 1 Statistics Conversion Rates:  Reach  LP Views = 2.65 LP Views  Purchase = 2.89 Retargeting Level 2 Statistics Conversion Rates: Reach  LP Views = 6.87 LP Views  Purchase = 33.78

25. Retargeting Level 3 Statistics Conversion Rates: Reach  LP Views = 5.14 LP Views  Purchase = 15.68 Total

26. The Rs. 1.2 Million is Achievable Since my friend made Rs. 319,674 in just three days. Thanks to all the efforts we both put in into making it work, but we had a potential of reaching up to Rs. 3.1 million in 30 days. I handed over the ad account at the end of three days and started waiting for the announcement of the party, my gift and ‘I owe you Imtinan” statements, which happened two months later. My friend ran the account; he did a couple of experiments and scored Rs. 1.2 million in sales at the end of the first month.

27. I am extremely happy for him. Not because he made good money from online marketing, but because he started doing online marketing experiments. He plays around, learns new concepts, and studies his metrics. Now the topics of our discussions in our get together have changed. And this is how I learned when I was in my struggling years, as I have already discussed “My Personal Roadmap to Online Business Success” , do read it to get an idea. In this online marketing strategy, If there could be one take away for you from this article, it should be that you don’t need money to make money in life, you just need a skill to turn your life around.

28. Want to Learn more about Facebook marketing : Skillgains • To Read More about the content : From Zero to 300,000 through online marketing