Did you know that e-commerce has been around for more than 40 years? The first spam message was sent in 1978! Amazon began in 1995, during the days of dial-up and hearing “Welcome! You’ve got mail!”. Now, 65 million customers visit the Amazon website each month. Many companies now have apps that allow customers to shop from the convenience of their phones with just a few taps and swipes.

It has become clear that e-commerce is here to stay and has changed the way people shop for goods and services. E-commerce is almost a must for any business and as a business owner, you need to know – or know someone who does know – the ups, the downs, the ins and the outs of selling online. Expanding your business to operate online can drive up profits and make your product available to customers who might not ordinarily be exposed to what you have to offer.

However, simply maintaining an online store or having a form to fill out so you can contact potential customers may not be enough in this global, internet driven economy. To be successful with an ecommerce business, you need to keep your eyes on current and developing trends in the market and then put those trends to work for you.Here are the top new trends that you might want to looking to develop in 2018. Taking advantage of them will empower your business to succeed online.

Netflix. Hulu. Amazon Prime. The Dollar Shave Club. Even Microsoft Office 365. These are all examples of subscription-based services that are on the rise. The Dollar Shave Club built a $615 million-dollar empire in just 5 years by offering razors on a month-to-month subscription. Now, subscription meal services like Hello Fresh and Freshly are on the scene for those too busy to stop by the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for dinner. Subscription services are definitely a trend that will continue to grow going forward.

The technique that many business owners voted as having the most probable future impact is content marketing. Many businesses are now treating content as a vital tool when it comes to engaging their e-commerce customers. From videos to targeted ads on social media apps, content marketing remains one of the brightest stars on the horizon in ecommerce search engine optimization. To bring people to your e-commerce site, you need content that is memorable, visually appealing, and personalized in nature. How to accomplish that? A good content creator appeals to customers by writing with their interests in mind.

When we have a question, an outstanding 90% of people reach for their smartphone to perform the search to find the answer. This is one of those “micro-moments” that e-commerce is looking to leverage. Whether it is someone searching for a nearby store carrying a specific item, for the ingredients to a recipe, or for that baby-shower gift, or watching a how-to video by entering into this space and giving the customer the information they need, it can inspire trust in your brand.

Google has jumped on this by targeting ads based on people’s search history. As has Amazon, which recommends products based upon what has been searched for and purchased previously. Offering personalized goods and services can also help your business to claim a space in a market that is inundated with similar goods and services. Customers expect the same level of personalized service outside of your e-commerce website, in your external marketing efforts. This means ensuring that your promotional emails are tailored to fit your distinct customers. Create an online community around your brand can help your customers connect with your company and their fellow shoppers. Create a customized loyalty program. Use customer data to offer tailored suggestions based on that specific consumers’ wants and needs.

These trends will make an impact in e-commerce in 2018 and beyond. Putting these into place now can help ensure that your business is positioned to make 2018 one of your best years yet.

Door-to-door marketing is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public or gather information. People who use this sales approach are often called traveling salesmen, or the archaic name drummer, to “drum up” business. This technique is also sometimes called direct sales. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit.

With the realization of telephone “Do Not Call” lists it is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect with consumers and business people. An emerging trend is the deployment of very professional, highly skilled door-to-door canvassers to drive product sales and brand awareness.

Coordinating, training and motivating these teams to produce results are at the very core of Fulcrum’s proven capabilities. Fulcrum has the knowledge and experience required to implement these programs, such as best days and times to canvass, who will sell the most product; male, female, young or mature and what geographics and demographics respond best to door-to-door marketing. Put Fulcrum’s experience to work for you and avoid the costly mistakes of trying to manage these programs in-house.

Hire and Train Door-to-Door Marketing Team

If you’re in charge of hiring people, that typically means that you’ve found success in Door To Door Marketing yourself. You know what it takes to be great, but now you’re stuck with an entirely new problem. How do you find others who will be just as good (if not better) and will stick around and grow into important influencers invested in the long term growth of the company? A great D2D sales company is a great recruiting company. So what does that greatness look like?

First off, you need to realize that you’re not going to hire a superstar every time. If you think you have found one, be careful. It’s not hard for someone to seem golden during one interview and you don’t want to be fooled.

Even if you think the candidate does have a lot of great experience working in the field for other companies, you have to realize that success doesn’t always translate. What worked for them at previous companies probably won’t work as well for you. In fact, their success will probably make them stubborn; after all, what reason do they have to follow your approach when they’ve figured out their own?

It’s also possible that the rep’s previous company might have had much better-developed training and selling systems than you do, and that system was the key reason they killed it. If you’re not developing a competitive system, what does that communicate about your company? The more dialed-in you are about a rep’s success, the more likely you are to attract and keep strong performers.