SELLING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS ONLINE
Your website is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have. By itself it may not produce the results you’re looking for, but when combined with your other marketing initiatives it can be a vital source for your lead generation campaign while helping you increase sales, reduce advertising costs, and produce a higher return on investment. The key is including your website in all your marketing pieces. Whether you engage in online, print, TV, radio, or affiliate marketing, all roads must lead back to your website in order to maximize your return on investment.
1. Your website is a reflection of who you are as a company.
Your design is worth a million words, so make it count by ensuring it is specifically geared and tailored to your target market. A good design should capture visitors’ attention the moment they arrive on your site.
2. Engage your visitors with a compelling message with instant impact
Once you have captured visitors’ attention with your design, your marketing message is the key to getting them to stay on and learn more about your company and what you have to offer. Keep it short and include a problem statement and your solution.
3. Ensure your website has a Call To Action
Whatever action you want visitors to take once they arrive on your website should be clearly stated and highlighted. Say it once and say it again, not just on your home page but throughout your website and at every opportunity you get to increase your chances of converting your website visitors into leads.
4. Use ethical bribes to boost lead generation
You will maximize your return on investment and reduce advertising cost if you are able to convert more of your Web visitors into leads, which will in turn allow you to establish credibility and build a relationship. The best way to accomplish this goal is to use ethical bribes that are irresistible in exchange for their contact information. Try things like "free trials," "free reports," or "free consultations."
5. Nurture leads easily and effortlessly with website marketing automation
Integrate your website forms with a marketing automation tool that saves you time and money. You can easily schedule a series of follow up e-mails or phone calls to stay in touch with prospects and move them further along in the pipeline and into a sale.
6. Increase number of customers, frequency of purchase, average spend
Increasing market share means demand will grow, in fact, it might even boom, even if only in bursts. Make sure your internal systems, processes and customer support infrastructure can cope with the increased demand. A sudden increase in business can bring down a company as easily as no sales can. Be sure to add extra staff and be able to increase the product/s or service to cope with demand. Again, market research is invaluable in forecasting what will be needed.
Increase the number of customers:
This may not be the easiest of the three choices but it can be done. Enticing more customers to try your product may not be all that difficult, but to keep their custom and not have them revert to their original supplier means you need to offer more than a quick buy one get one free sale. Know who your competitors are and find out their marketing strengths and weaknesses. What product advantage do you have to attract their customers? Speak with staff about customer feedback and what they might like or dislike about a specific product you or your competitor may offer.
Increase the frequency of purchases:
Existing customers can be easier to sell to, but you still need to get the marketing right to get them coming in more often.For example, supermarkets often place the bread at the opposite side of the store to the milk with hopes you will pick up more items travelling between the two things.The more times customers come in, the more they will buy.Have any customers stopped buying your products/services altogether? What is needed to win them back? Make it easy for people to do business with you e.g. easy purchase process, easy to understand price structure, different options for payment, information or knowledge available at point of sale (whether its face to face, via telephone, order form or a web page). Communicate frequently, make sure it's personalized. Always promote the benefits of your business/product/service. Tell customers how they'll benefit from buying from you again. Offer the customers encouragement to buy, such as alliances or referrals with other organisations, or adopting new products and services.
Increase the average spend of each transaction:
Once a customer has chosen to buy, you should consider suitable ways of increasing the value of the transaction. You should take care at this stage not to offend or seem too pushy. The emphasis should be on the benefit to the customer. Offer volume discounts. Customers who spend "x" number of dollars can buy another product at a reduced price, and as an extra incentive put an expiry date on the offer. Use suggestion selling techniques. Offer advice on additional products e.g. a customer has bought a torch, what about the batteries?
You get the idea!
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