How many times do you see emails and adverts on Facebook/Twitter, showcasing products like the new burgers from McDonald’s, or the latest model of iPhone from Apple?
The main reason you buy from these places is that they reach you before you can approach them, the convenience of the IoT (Internet of Things) ensures there are plenty of opportunities and gaps in the market to showcase your products and services as a business.
Let’s take a look at a list of some cool and effective strategies you can put in place to really get your business out there!…
Having an Active Social Media Presence
In my opinion – The number ONE resource you can take advantage of as a business, regardless of your industry is social media. The amount of times that I see SME (Small/Medium Enterprises) have a Facebook page with likes in the single digits, no opening hours or contact number, and not even a logo or image on their page – It is more often than you would expect!
Not even just Facebook, but if you really want to grab the customers who are waiting to find a service like yours, you have to branch out to all the sites that will help you grow sales, we’re talking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora.
A study by SimilarWeb showed that Facebook users spent 58 minutes per day within the app, and users of social media in general spend well over two hours per day surfing over apps such as Instagram and Twitter.
In an average person’s lifetime, this could amount to over 6 years’ worth of time spent on social media, so make your business appear on their news feed in that time, whether it is through rigorously sharing your page, or optimising through paid targeted ads.
Maintaining a Professional Email and Cold Calling Approach
If you need a great method to find and sell to your target audience, cold calling and cold emailing are useful approaches to ensure you can attract customers from a wider search. It’s best to lead your email with a captivating subject, something the customer can read and think “Wow, I’d like some of that!”, you have to sell straight off the bat, without raising suspicion to the reader.
As for cold calling, make sure that your canvasser/s are introducing the company, the purpose of the call etc.
Every point of contact should gather some form of information from the potential customer, whether it is their requirements within your industry – let’s say you sell software, do they need a basic package, or are they a business themselves and would prefer to opt into a premium package?
The people you’re approaching might not be interested whatsoever, but the sooner you can find this out, the more time you will save, marketing is a numbers game – The more people you talk to and gather opinions from, the more sales you’ll consequently make.
This doesn’t mean you’ll have a good conversion rate, but it essentially means you can create a scope for your target market. You may find from your marketing approach that it’s better to approach younger customers, as older customers are less likely to adopt your online software over the 15-year-old software they’re currently using.
You Know – Like Actually Spending the Time to Optimise Your Website
Did you know that almost 80% of people NEVER go past the first page of their Google search? Making sure your website easy to reach is probably one of, if not the most important trick to ensure you gather sales quickly. If you don’t invest time into SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and generating a wide scope of backlinks, your website will never probably reach the first page on google – Even when you do invest the time into this, it can take over a year to climb up to the elusive first page.
Make contact with other websites, ask them if they’re willing to advertise your backlinks via their page. They don’t have to be a larger business than you – How do you think half of the big YouTuber groups got so famous?
Aim to consistently keep your URLs customised and readable – AVOID having URL links that are just a set of numbers, for example:
https://mailninja.co/blog/1432506049read23453/ – Is not only going to deter people searching, but probably search engines too…
Opt for investing into relevant links/URLs, which are in line with the contents of each page, whether it is your landing page, your blog, or the links to your product/service showcase.
Here’s a good example:
https://mailninja.co/blog/power-words-to-improve-your-stats/
Although it is longer in length, the reader is going to know what the page is going to be about.
A custom URL isn’t expensive, you can purchase these for a few pounds a year on sites like GoDaddy and SquareSpace.
Affiliate Marketing
Now this one is a bit more industry-specific, a music streaming app is probably going to benefit more from partnering with affiliates than a cupcake distributor. Why? Because cupcakes aren’t a ‘necessity’ to the majority of consumers.
Not literally a necessity, but the modern consumer probably listens to music a lot more than they treat themselves to a cupcake, right? To back up the point, around 15% of all revenue generated in the digital media industry is generated through the use of affiliate marketing.
How does it work?
Depending on your budget and status, you would hire a celebrity, influencer, social media star – You get the idea…
They would get a free (or paid) sample of your product/service, and they will then either post a review about it, or include referral/discount links redirecting their fans to your website. Although the conversion rate is usually between 1-3%, some YouTube and Instagram stars have millions upon millions of followers, and we’re sure that the majority of them will be happy to review your product!
The most common sites that offer affiliate programs include Amazon (Amazon Associates), Shopify and Ebay Partners, to name a few.
Make A Blog!
Props to all of those marketing managers that have either delegated employees to post blog content, or perhaps have started doing so themselves.
Blogging is a fantastic way to reel in the pockets of customers who wouldn’t directly search for your product/service, but are curious about the industry or service at hand. Let’s say somebody is looking for a cheap video editing software that enables green screen recording (that’s probably quite a popular tool nowadays, but you get the picture).
Your own video editing service, with its SEO back-links might pop up on the first page of this customer’s search, they see your website’s blog post titled, ‘How green screens can make your videos captivating in 2020’, and upon landing at the blog post, they have advertisements located wherever you have decided to place them.
Quick Tip – Don’t make your website’s advertisements and promos big and flashy, unless you have a huge sales promotion going on, and it would be better for the customer to buy a product/service than for them not to.
Probably 1 in 10 times the customer will click the advertisement and be directed to your product/service pages.
Remember, blogs aren’t just about your product, they are a way to showcase your company’s expertise in the industry, and give people an insight into the competition in the market.
You can’t really afford to lose consistency with a blog either, studies suggest up to 60% of all marketers post at least 1 blog per day. Even if it’s just a short-length post about something that went on in the news, having a constant stream of relatable content can further increase your business’s sales potential.
Again, make sure to optimise these blogs, or else they probably won’t appear on the first 5 pages of the search, let alone the first.
Well there you have it, 5 important and useful strategies to really get your business’s sales improving. It isn’t easy to get an increase in sales straight away, as you’ll have probably found anyway, but making use of the free resources and strategies available in 2020 can definitely put you one step ahead of your competition.
With so many social media platforms, so many search engines, and so many freelancers, you can take an extra step quite easily. Especially with the internet and tools like Google, getting your website and blog out there is a fairly straightforward thing to do if you know the steps needed to work your way up the search ratings ladder.
Now after reading this, probably 1 in 10 people are going to move onto another one of our blog posts, the figure is probably a lot less than that.
Even less people will go ahead and view our services and programs available, but the fact of the matter is that you probably wouldn’t have reached this page without seeing it through Google, social media, or a backlink.
Should you require additional tools and tips to better your company’s email sales campaigns, and marketing strategies, why not check out our email marketing services on offer? Click the link below to find out more:
