One of the most difficult aspects of running a small business, especially if you’re just starting out, is increasing sales in a way that’s cost-effective.
It’s easy to compare yourself to a major corporation and think to yourself, “well, no wonder they’re doing so well. They have all the money in the world to spend on ads.” However, small businesses have the competitive advantage of needing to be more resourceful and creative than companies with massive budgets.
Here are some of the most cost-effective ways to boost your small business’s sales while bolstering your brand.
Understand Your Sales Process
The first step in boosting small business sales is to understand your sales process. This step helps you understand your sales cycle, from generating leads to closing sales and asking for referrals.
With this information, you can meet all your customers at different stages of their buyer’s journey, tailoring your marketing and sales strategy to meet your customer’s needs.
Relationships Matter
There’s nothing more important or as cost effective at generating repeat sales than fostering positive relationships with your customers. Relationship selling is perhaps the oldest method for boosting business sales and that’s because it works.
When you build one-on-one relationships with your customers and satisfy their wants and needs, it shows them that you care.
As a small business owner you want to go above and beyond to make your customers happy. Once a sale is closed, follow up with them a couple of weeks later to make sure that they’re satisfied with their purchase, either via email or by phone.
Sweetwater, an online retailer for musical instruments, assigns a sales rep to each customer after a purchase is made. That sales rep calls the customer shortly after the purchase to personally thank them for their business and two weeks after purchasing the product, the rep reaches out to make sure the customer is 100% satisfied. The sales reps assigned are even well-versed in the instrument or product that was purchased, and the customer is encouraged to call them if they need to troubleshoot or need general advice. This one-on-one relationship building strategy has helped turn sweetwater into the #1 online musical instrument retailer in the United States.
Showing your customers that you care and want to help is a tried and true method to attracting loyal customers that will go out of their way to recommend your business to others. Building relationships with your customers takes time and effort, but it’s one of the most satisfying parts of running a small business.
Build A Brand
Creating a solid brand identity is fundamental to boosting your small business’ sales.
A brand identity will slowly make your business recognizable overtime to both your current customers and potential customers. Your brand identity should be apparent on your website, social media account and in all of your advertising efforts.
To create a brand identity, be consist with the following items: your fonts, overall style, color palette, the types of images you use, the language you use, the tone you use when engaging with customers and the types of articles or videos you might share with your customers that are relevant to your brand and their needs.
Offer Free Samples
Another surefire way to boost sales for your small business is to give your product or service out for free to start or for a limited time.
This will give you the opportunity to have a handful of customers try out your product or service, give you feedback and, most importantly, become invested in your product or service by having it speak for itself.
Free Samples can be a low-commitment marketing strategy that can instantly boost sales in the short term.
Provide Value Through Content Marketing and SEO
Content marketing is a method of self-promotion, often in the form of a blog post, video, infographic or ebook.
This method of marketing immediately brings value to potential leads by offering them suggestions and advice for free or in exchange for their email address and phone number.
Content marketing is a non-intrusive way of advertising your services and products while offering other valuable content your audience can use.
For example, if you’re a company that sells peanut butter, you may want to provide recipes for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that use your product as the main ingredient. This is a simple and straightforward way to insert your product into your content without having intrusive ads or distracting your audience.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Paying for advertising on search engines, websites or social media is another great way to boost your sales.
Many pay-per-click campaigns can be extremely straightforward and self-managed. As a small business owner who’s savvy and resourceful, learning to implement PPC into your marketing campaigns can be as easy as signing up for Google Adwords and inputting your products data in the available fields
With these low-costing marketing strategies, you’re more than ready to take your business to the next level and attract even more customers than you already have. Remember to keep this advice in mind the next time you’re building your next marketing campaign.
