There are some basic rules of marketing that will increase sales whether the economy is good or bad. These rules apply to all products, in all markets, even if they are sold on the net.
Focus on Customers
Customers are egocentric. They shop only when they need something. They money only when they find a product they want or need.
Many businesses do not understand this aspect of sales. They brag up the product, and list the benefits, then send customers to the squeeze page or shopping cart.
Successful web sites focus on the consumer. Good sales tools focus on solving a problem, improving the customer’s quality of life, entertain, and include an ego boosting aspect.
Focus on Existing Customers
Every business builds a vast network of customers who are already sold. They bought the product. They are already sold. They trust the company and are comfortable with the sales process.
Retail is the first industry to suffer when banks and stock markets undermine consumer confidence. To succeed, the sales focus needs to turn toward existing customers.
Customers may stop shopping, but they continue buying. Diverting the sales focus from winning new clients, to reselling existing clients will decrease the bottom line and increase the top line.
Fine-Tune The Profit Path
Each stage of the sales process needs to be examined. Create charts that outline the time investment, length of ‘sales cycle’, budget, and profit margins for each aspect of the sales process.
Take a serious look at improving performance and increase the buyer conversion ratio. Pay particular attention to fallout and abandoned shopping carts due to inflexibly and lack of choices. Remove the top exit pages. Rewrite the Profit Path to increase choices and make the buy-now page easily accessible.
Take a look at each web page. Do they support the product’s pricing. Does it tell consumers whether the product is geared toward high end or bargain consumers? Are there opportunities to improve cross selling and up-selling?
Add Value to the Product
There are several ways to increase a products value. Consumers are skittish. One of the best ways to improve value is to reduce the risk. Consumers do everything they can do to reduce the risk of phishing, identity theft, and being scammed.
Reinforcing warranties, offering guarantees, and highlighting security pages will all add value and reduce customer’s apprehensions.
To increase value, you need to understand the decision-making process. There are several methods of increasing value without giving away more products. A few successful methods include offering training, live customer service, a return policy, increased payment options, and offering secondary items that compliment the main product.
Advertising
Take a long-look at the risk-reversal strategies used by your sales department. There is risk in every purchase. Risk stops people from buying. Free trials, money back guarantees, and offering training or problem solving, should be mentioned in the advertising. Also consider listing your products in shopping comparison sites, they offer a lot of targeted traffic looking to buy.
What is True Demand
Demand is not measured by the number of people who visit an ecommerce website. There are two types of people shoppers on the net. The first is hopping from site to site looking for something free. They are not interested in buying. The second group wants to buy, but cannot find something that fits their needs.
An effective Internet Marketing strategy targets people who need a product. One method is to divide a site into several parts, each one designed to attract a different type of consumer. The shopping cart will track where customers landing and exit pages. After a while the company will learn which customers need their product, and which ones are just curious. The site can be redesigned to focus on the high demand customers.
One aspect that many sales departments overlook is ‘untapped markets.’ Look through the statistics for gaps between demand and sales. Capitalizing on untapped opportunities will focus the sale’s department’s efforts, improving sales and reducing expenses.
Focus
When all is said and done, there should only be one focus – increasing the profit margin. Many companies can increase their profits, simply by cutting back and reducing waste. One company can hit their top-line growth objectives but still lose money. A second may fall drastically short, but because they aggressively balance their top line with their bottom line, Create a ‘to do’ list of priorities and keep focused.
Increasing sales in an ecommerce company is difficult. Improving sales in an uncertain economic climate is a challenge. It can be done, but only by balancing sales and performance with costs and losses.
