One of the biggest resolutions for many businesses this year is to boost their sales figures by at least 50% by the end of Q1. Let’s face it, behind every company value or work ethic, sales success is important for any business hoping to make bank in 2018.
If you are in the products’ business, say retail shop, a major marketing strategy will be to create more online awareness and increase customer engagement on your various media channels. Can your customers find you easily on the web?
According digital evangelist Neil Patel, you cannot sell effectively until you know who your prospects are, and when you do, you can apply techniques to keep them from ignoring you.
So how do you know your prospects? Essentially, your business prospects are your target audience. But it is not enough to know that they are gainfully employed twenty somethings who live in the suburbs with 2.4 children.
Your insight needs to go deeper into their preferences, lifestyle, language, online behaviour and so on. In this post, we outline a few ways to know your prospects and sell successfully to them.
- Apply smart customer engagement procedures
An optimised customer experience is critical for revenue growth and customer retention. If you do it right, it can be a reliable source of customer insight. Based on a survey by Teradata, no more than 41% of marketers are utilising customer engagement data to enhance their marketing strategy.
Do this by engaging more with your customers in real time. Thanks to new marketing tools, many marketers are leveraging the opportunity. Messenger is a veritable customer service channel, and Drift facilitates brand-customer interactions while they browse your website.
- Use surveys and polls
Many businesses underestimate the value of surveys on their home page. Every now and then, organise prepare surveys and ask your customers to participate. It doesn’t have to be boring. Make it something that interests them. According to Lucjan Kierczak, surveys can improve your customers’ web experience.
Another great idea is by setting up polls on your site. Find out what they would like to see more on your product pages. Polls can tell you whether you need to dumb down on your gym category. These days, new year resolutions are not all about workout regimens.
- Create more robust buyer personas
Avoid generalising the profile of your typical customer (age, sex, profession). Modern tools allow you zoom into their unique characteristics and build accurate personas. For instance, a loyalty program is a great way to develop a buyer persona. As a marketer, loyalty programs should be a major part of your sales strategy.
Online businesses can dig in deeper into their customers’ preferences by using the Google Analytics’ Acquisitions’ tab to determine which social media platforms, professional forums and industry blogs their site traffic originated from. By applying this to buyer personas, you can discover where and when to target prospects for more effective sales and this securing your retail business’s future.
Knowing your prospects is a common aspect of marketing, but few people know how to gain reliable customer insights.
Another great way to drive sales is by cross-selling to your existing customers. Tools for customer relationship management (CRM) have proven to be effective at customer retention. So, while you create conversions on one side of the spectrum, you retain them on the other side.
