You Need to Know These 5 Tips to Boost Your Small Business’ Sales on a Budget
Business success is usually rooted in driving sales. However, if your marketing, advertising, and promotion costs balloon higher than your sales, it can spell doom for your business.
Costs that outrun sales can cripple businesses fast, especially if you’re on a shoestring budget. Fortunately, with some targeted efforts you can promote your sales at a low cost. Below, you’ll find some useful tips for boosting your sales without breaking the bank.
Leverage free social media sites
Social communication platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter give you access to millions of potential buyers.
Social media allows you to promote your products and interact with potential new customers. Creatively crafting your content on these sites can contribute to improving your visibility and boosting your reputation. With the right content, you raise your chances of enjoying higher click-throughs and purchases. Here are some tips for gaining mileage on social platforms:
- Make sure your profile stands out, and that its visuals are aligned with your brand image.
- Engage and interact with people.
- Use your profile to share fresh, helpful information or attractive, entertaining posts. Avoid pushy and sales content.
Target the right people
While much of what you can do to boost sales through social media is affordable, it makes sense to get the most for your money. So, make sure you’re targeting the right customers online by leveraging the right social channels. If you outline a clear buyer persona, you will likely figure out which sites your customers frequent the most. For instance, if your buyer persona is:
- Age 30-50
- Professional
- Interests in golf, and networking
- Worried about retirement
- Struggling with finances, mortgage, etc.
You are more likely to find this buyer frequenting LinkedIn or Twitter. Through online sales training, you can learn how to fish out your prospects. Once you have your prospects hooked, lead them to your own site, where you’ll have more control.
Build your brand equity
Customers prefer to buy from brands they know and trust. While it can take a while, building your brand equity is important for long-term sales. There are simple actions you can take to boost your brand equity, such as:
- Using the same style and tone in your brand messaging.
- Keeping to color schemes and patterns.
- Maintaining the same image and video styles.
- Using the same font across your websites and profiles, as well as in marketing materials.
- Training staff to keep to your brand identity.
Over time, a rich brand identity can position your business vividly in your customers’ minds and blur out the competition.
Focus on organic SEO
Focusing on organic search engine optimization(SEO) can pay dividends. When you tick all the boxes on organic SEO(for example, having the right keywords and relevant, valuable content), you pay less for advertising. So, consider starting a blog, podcast, or other forms of content output. Then, optimize your website and content for strategic keywords to rank higher on Google.
Apart from ranking on search engines, your customers are more likely to appreciate your valuable content, which in turn increases their trust in you.
Is it costly to develop a keyword strategy? It can be, but with a free Google search and training on online keyword tools, you can navigate your way to an explosion in sales for a fraction of the cost.
Nurture customer relationships
Making your customers feel valued helps to retain their loyalty. Happy customers tend to be more willing to tell their friends and family about your products or services. Activate word-of-mouth referrals through simple strategies like:
- Delivering exceptional services or products.
- Following up on your customers.
- Conducting after-sales surveys.
- Encouraging interaction through simple, cost-effective strategies like email newsletters and genuine conversations.
You can also run a referral system through your existing customers. Give away something small but valuable, and your customers will have more incentive to rave about your products.
Measure results
To avoid sinking your potentially limited resources into failed efforts, you need to track results to see what’s working and what isn’t. Analyze the data to see:
- How people are interacting with your posts.
- Which platforms have the highest click-through rates?
- Which platforms have the best conversion rates?
- The method reeling in more return customers.
Keep an eye on your results regularly and lean toward the platforms that are yielding the best returns. It may also help your team to take online training to review metrics through tools like Google Console accurately.
In conclusion
With a little outside-the-box thinking, you can work with your small budget to bring sizeable results. You can use both social media and your current customer base to boost sales.
More importantly, remember to play the long game. Fix your horizons on the long term by etching your brand image into your customers’ memory and strategically climbing to the top on search engines. Couple your long-term strategy with online sales training and result analysis, and you could have a winning sales formula that’s within budget.