There are probably thousands of ways to boost sales and increase the inbound flow of potential clients. The problem is that there are no completely universal solutions – an idea that has worked for nine businessmen may be useless for the tenth. This is why any advertising or marketing advice on how to increase sales should be perceived as a hypothesis. Here are a few proven and non-obvious solutions, which with the proper approach will help almost everyone. Implement them gradually, test them on small budgets, and leave the most effective ones for your business.
Make a purchase funnel
The purchase funnel is a process that includes a person’s first introduction to your product until the moment they part with their money. This process consists of a person making a first impression about your product or service; as a result, they may want to learn more about it and even buy it, leave a review, and share their experience of using the product. By the way, in order to get real reviews about real customers of your company, you need to contact the experts on upreview.co.
Your main task is to conditionally divide the sales process into several stages and observe what number of consumers move from one stage to the next. For example, imagine that you own an agency that organizes tourist trips. With contextual advertising, your funnel potentially looks like ten customers saw your advertisement, three of them went to your website to learn more, two were interested and contacted your agency, and only one person booked a trip with you. By doing an evaluation of your funnel, it will become clear to you what needs to be changed in this process. In case we have explored, a possible solution would be to revise the text used in the advertisement and set goals for the sales team.
Use mystery shoppers and learn how your competitors work
In retail, almost the main problem of a sales downturn is the salespeople themselves. They lack discipline, they don’t understand the needs of potential customers, or they burn out and become rude to customers. If you are looking for a solution to increase sales in a retail store, then try to use mystery shoppers. Develop a few scenarios and run the actors in the stores at different times. Test how salespeople work in stressful situations and how they relate to well-meaning people. Similarly, if you want to sell more, you should look at the experience of competitors and not hesitate to borrow their successful practices. The best way to find it out is to introduce yourself as a competitor’s customer. Learn about the existing channels of their potential customers and play a little game by presenting yourself to your competitors as their buyers. While consulting with their sales representative, keep track of what methods of interaction with the customer are being used, especially when the customer expresses disagreement with something.
Using advertising
Using advertising on large street banners is good, as you “bombard” their message immediately to a large number of potential customers. However, you should take into account how relevant will be your advertising to all these people and, accordingly, whether it makes sense to spread it with a banner. In the case you sell products for which you need a targeted advertisement, you should consider using special services. They set up advertising so that it sees a person after entering specific keywords in the search box.
Pay special attention to those who already buy from you
Experts recommend paying more attention not to attracting new clients, but to increasing loyalty among customers that you already have. This makes sense – if a person likes your product and your approach to working with clients, he or she is bound to share this information with other people and recommend they contact you. That’s how you’ll get new customers. Start a mailing list: create an email database of your customers and periodically inform them about discounts and promotions. You should also consider launching various programs that both increase your sales and encourage customers to choose you over your competitors. One such example is the use of coupons in coffee shops so that if you buy five cups of coffee, you get the sixth one for free.