How to Get Customers for an Online Business in Pakistan

A practical guide to getting your first 100 orders in Pakistan: content that converts, using contacts honestly, free collaborations, and when ads pay off.

Nobody buys from a page with 40 followers because the product is good. They buy because someone they trust mentioned you, or because they have seen you enough times to stop feeling suspicious. Your first 100 orders are a trust problem before they are a marketing problem.

That changes what actually works at the start. The useful tactics are unglamorous: messaging people who already know your name, posting the same product more times than feels comfortable, and getting a few other small accounts to say your name out loud. None of it needs a budget.

What follows is a working order for the first 100 orders — content, contacts, collaborations, and the point at which paid ads start to make sense rather than just draining money.

Start with the contacts you already have

Your first ten to twenty orders will almost always come from people who already know you. Not because they love the product, but because they know you and want it to work.

The honest way to use that: message people one at a time, and tell them what you have started rather than asking them to buy. "I have started selling hand-stitched kurtis, three designs so far, prices Rs 2,500 to Rs 4,000. Sending you the photos in case they are useful to you or someone you know." Then stop. No follow-up push.

The dishonest version — dumping every number in your phone into a broadcast list and blasting a catalogue — gets you muted, reported or blocked, and a contact who blocks you is very hard to win back. It is a bad trade for a handful of orders.

Two things to be clear-eyed about. First, orders from family and friends are not proof of demand. They tell you nothing about whether a stranger will pay. Second, WhatsApp status is badly underused. It costs nothing, and the contacts who have your number saved and actually open the status tab will see it, so posting a parcel photo or a new design every couple of days keeps you in people's heads without sending a single message.

What content actually converts when nobody knows you

Most new sellers post product photos on a plain background and wonder why nothing happens. A stranger scrolling past that has no reason to stop.

Three kinds of post do the work early on.

Show the product in use, not on a table

A photo of the shawl on a person, in real light, beats a flat-lay every time. If you sell food, film the plating. If you sell furniture, film someone sitting on it. Reels reach people who do not follow you; ordinary feed posts mostly reach people who already do. At the start you need the first one.

Put the price in the post

A large share of the DMs Pakistani sellers get are just "price?". Some of those people would have bought if the number had been visible, and most of them will not ask twice. Put the price in the caption and on the image. You lose nothing, and you filter out people who were never going to pay it.

Show the boring proof

Packing a parcel. The courier receipt. A customer's WhatsApp message, with the name blurred. Delivered photos. This is what makes a new page look like a real business instead of a reseller who will vanish. Post it far more often than feels natural.

One practical note: compress images before uploading if you are on mobile data — a slow-loading page or a failed upload costs you posts. A free image compressor takes seconds.

Post where the buyers already are

Your own feed is not the only place. Early on, it is the worst place, because almost nobody is there.

City-based Facebook buy-and-sell groups still move real volume, particularly for clothing, home items and food. Read the group rules before posting; getting removed for the wrong format is a self-inflicted wound. TikTok is worth testing for anything visual — a new account there can still pick up reach from people who do not follow it, which is harder to come by on Instagram. Whether that reach turns into orders depends entirely on your category, so treat it as a test rather than a certainty.

Reply to comments on bigger accounts in your category with something useful rather than "check my page". Nobody clicks the second one. Useful comments get profile visits.

If you are selling entirely through Instagram right now, the mechanics of turning that attention into orders are covered in selling on Instagram in Pakistan without a website.

Collaborations when you have no money

You do not need influencers. You need five accounts with 2,000 to 10,000 engaged local followers who will mention you.

How to pick them: ignore follower counts and read the comments. An account with 3,000 followers and 40 real comments per post is worth more than one with 60,000 followers and generic emoji replies. Check whether their audience is in the cities you can deliver to.

What to offer: the product itself. Send it free, no payment. Your cost is the product plus courier. Agree exactly what you get in return before you send — one reel, or two stories plus a saved highlight. "I'll post if I like it" usually means nothing gets posted.

The other collaboration that works and costs nothing: pair with a seller whose products complement yours and who is at roughly your size. A jewellery seller and a clothing seller running a joint giveaway both borrow each other's audience. Two accounts of similar size helping each other is a fair trade; asking a much bigger account for a free shout-out is not.

When paid ads make sense — and when they do not

Ads do not create demand. They multiply whatever is already happening. If nothing organic sells, paid traffic will just lose money faster.

Three conditions before you spend a rupee:

1. You have sold to at least a few strangers organically, so you know someone unrelated to you will pay.
2. You reply to messages within the hour during working hours. Paying for clicks you answer six hours later is paying for nothing.
3. You can fulfil the volume. Twenty orders you cannot pack is worse than five you can.

When you do start, boost a post that already performed well rather than building a new one. One product, one audience, a small daily budget, run for about a week before judging it. Click-to-WhatsApp campaigns tend to suit COD sellers better than sending people to a page, because the conversation starts immediately.

Then do the arithmetic that most people avoid. If your margin on a shirt is Rs 500 and you are spending Rs 900 in ads per completed order, you are buying orders at a loss — and that gets worse once returned COD parcels are counted, because most couriers still charge you something on a parcel that comes back. Ask yours exactly what a return costs before you treat that margin as real. If you are not already tracking this, read the cash on delivery guide before you scale spend.

Ad costs vary enormously by category, season and audience, so ignore anyone quoting you a fixed cost per order. Test with an amount you can lose.

Track where every order came from

Ask every buyer one question: how did you find us? Write the answer down. Columns: date, item, amount, channel, delivered or returned.

By order 50 you will see something you did not expect. Usually one channel is producing most of the orders and two others are producing effort. That single fact is what lets you stop spreading yourself across five platforms.

Your first ten customers are worth more than the next ninety

A stranger who bought once and was happy is the cheapest marketing you will ever get. Message them a few days after delivery and ask whether it arrived in good condition — a real question, not a sales message. Ask for a photo if they are willing, and use it, with permission, as content. Offer a small discount on a second order rather than a discount to new buyers; you are rewarding the behaviour you want.

Referrals in Pakistan happen in WhatsApp groups and family conversations you will never see. The only way to trigger them is to be worth mentioning: honest sizing, the product matching the photo, and a reply when something goes wrong.

What stalls most sellers before 100

Posting for two weeks and stopping. Almost everyone quits in the gap between effort and results. That gap is normal and it is longer than you expect.

Changing the product every month. You never accumulate enough proof for any one thing to sell.

Competing on price. There is always someone cheaper, usually someone importing at volume. Compete on reply speed, honest photos and packaging instead.

Slow replies. The single most fixable problem. A question answered in ten minutes converts far better than the same answer tomorrow. If DMs are getting lost, turning WhatsApp DMs into a real order list covers how to stop that.

Buying followers. It kills your engagement rate, and no serious buyer counts your followers anyway.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to get 100 orders?

There is no honest average — it depends on price point, category and how often you post. What is consistent is the shape: the first ten are slow and mostly people who know you, the middle stretch feels like nothing is working, and the last thirty come faster because proof has accumulated.

Do I need a website to get customers in Pakistan?

No. Most small sellers here run on Instagram or WhatsApp with a single link holding their products and contact details. A website becomes worth the cost when you are already handling steady volume.

How much should I spend on ads when I am starting?

Nothing until strangers have bought organically. After that, only an amount you could lose completely without it eating the money you need for stock. Treat the first month of spending as tuition rather than as a sales channel, and judge it against your margin after returns, not against your revenue.

Should I pay influencers to post about my products?

Not at the start. Send the product free to smaller accounts with genuinely engaged local followers and agree the deliverable in writing beforehand. Paid influencer posts are hard to judge until you know what an order is worth to you.

Nobody is engaging with my posts at all. What now?

Change what you post before changing how often. If the photos were the problem you will usually know within a fortnight of swapping them. If nothing moves after that, the issue is the product or the price, not the marketing.

Lonecto gives you one free link that holds your products, your contact buttons and your socials, so everything you have earned with content, contacts and collaborations lands somewhere a buyer can actually order from — through WhatsApp, Instagram DM or cash on delivery. You can set it up free in a few minutes.