Raising your sales while keeping your costs on ice is one of the best ways to take your small business to the next level. With a bit of outside-of-the-box thinking, you can explore different methods to help put your business on an upward trend.
Let’s explore some of the best ways to boost your sales without breaking the bank.
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Leverage your existing customers
Loyalty pays, at least when it comes to your business. AnnexCloud suggests you have a 65% higher chance of selling to an existing customer than a new one. This makes leveraging your current customer base a cost-effective way to raise your sales.
Here are some of the ways that you can advance your sales through your existing customers.
Focus on customer retention
Your repeat customers come back to buy from you because they like and trust what you have to offer. If you keep providing them with exceptional service and products or services they can rely on, they’re likely to stick with you rather than turn to your competitors. However, it’s important to not take this loyalty for granted by keeping on top of your customer retention strategies.
According to negotiations.com, any sales training programs that your reps take, whether online or in-person, also include customer retention strategies. That way, you can be sure to bank on repeat business, which is cheaper than seeking out new customers.
Also, consider conducting customer surveys to get feedback from your customers that can help you improve your offering and customer service quality. Once you hear from your customers where you’re getting it right or wrong, you can channel your resources toward improving your weaknesses and bolstering your strengths.
Develop a referral system
Happy customers are usually willing ambassadors. Setting up a referral system gives your customers an incentive to create a buzz around your products, which can light a fire under your sales.
Word of mouth works. Statistics indicate that more than 90% of people trust products recommended to them by people they know.
A referral system doesn’t have to be costly. For instance, you can give your customers cost-effective sweeteners such as reward points when they send leads your way. These points can earn your existing customers a discount when the points accumulate to a certain level.
Remember, there’s no fixed approach that works for everyone. You may need to test out different systems until you get a better picture of the kind of rewards that motivates your customers. This could be overwhelming, but, getting help from an experienced fractional CIO could significantly reduce the learning time.
Use social media
According to BackLinko, 3.96 billion people worldwide are active on social media. So, as marketing training courses commonly emphasize, getting involved on social media gives you a cheap or even free opportunity to reach out to a wider global audience.
Consider setting up a new business account or beefing up your existing profiles on social sites like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Use your social media platforms to increase brand awareness and engage with customers, then lead prospects to your site to complete the sale.
You can create compelling content using images or videos, then pair it with a winning caption using the right hashtags to draw in more customers. Tailor your content to the specific site to increase the chances of your posts making an impression with the right potential customers.
Remember to avoid spreading yourself thin on too many platforms. Instead, it helps to come up with a detailed buyer persona to help you predict the sites your potential buyers would use. Once you determine which socials your customers love and are more active on, you can focus your efforts on those specific platforms, increasing your chances of resonating with customers.
Use email marketing
Your email list can be a potential goldmine to boost your sales. Plus, it’s an inexpensive way to stay in touch with existing customers and promote your products or services directly.
Consider giving away a value-offering freebie like an eBook to harvest customer emails to build your list of prospects. As your list grows strong, craft well-written and helpful emails that your prospects will be compelled to respond to.
Your emails will yield more responses if you follow some of the key tips from email marketing training like:
- Make your emails short and sweet. If you get to the point quickly, your customers are likely to stay engaged up to the end, increasing your chances of eliciting a response.
- Make the subject line specific, honest, and straightforward. Clear subject lines that don’t exaggerate are more likely to pack a stronger punch. That’s because a clear message can quickly entice prospects and show how your offering delivers value.
- Keep it personal. 71% of consumers are more likely to open and read emails from brands if the email is personalized to them, according to Dynamic Yield. Personalization is more than just addressing the customer by their name. It also includes sending well-timed emails, predicting customers’ needs, and staying relevant.
- Write valuable content. People receive tons of emails every day. That’s why to hook customers to your products or services, your email content should be a cut above your competitors and provide value in exchange for their reading time.
- Have a clear call to action (CTA). Once prospects read your emails, it should be easy for them to take the next step. If you put in too many confusing calls to action, chances are high that the prospect will simply click out of the email – even if they liked what you had to say. So, use a clear CTA to direct the customer to the next step, and avoid wasting your efforts.
Boosting your small business sales
Getting more sales for your business doesn’t need to cost the earth if done right. By retaining your customers and using referral systems to pull in more customers, you can leverage your customer base to draw more business your way on a dime. Plus, using social media and email can be powerful yet affordable marketing strategies to reach more potential customers and take your sales to the next level.
