Whatever kind of business you’re running, your ultimate goal is to make sales.  Like everything else in this world, the way to do that is changing - fast. Growth marketing should be the cornerstone of any business which hopes to succeed.  Don’t know where to start? We’re here to help. Putting in place a growth marketing strategy needn’t be complex or expensive. Here are our Super Seven tips for growing your business and increasing your sales.

Defining your customer

If you’re in the business of selling without knowing who your customer is, you’re automatically setting yourself up for failure. You no doubt are already collecting data on your customers. Now it’s time to put it to good use.  Use a tool such as UserVoice to define your customer and to create an avatar based on the following information:

• Gender
• Age
• Education
• Employment
• Salary bracket
• Marital and family information

By knowing who your customer is, you can target your marketing efficiently rather than using a scattergun approach to increasing your sales.

Pain and Gain

At the outset, the reader must know that everything that follows takes time. A personal brand involves more than going “viral” all of a sudden. And, above all, it requires persistence.

Here’s some news - your product is not a product. As far as your customer is concerned, your product is a solution. This means you need to  identify the following two factors:  

Pain - What problem or issue is your product trying to solve?

Gain - How does your product solve that issue?

Right there is the hub of your marketing campaign.  By identifying an issue that your customer can relate to and then offering to solve it, you’re all set to increase your sales. For example, if there are lots of real estate agents in your area, but you have trouble standing out, try using a great and grabby banner to attract more customers.  Just remember - determine the problem and find a solution. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling banners like ultimatebanners or selling credit real estate.

Get social

We’re just going to say it: if you’re not using social media effectively, you need to start right now. Social Media gives you access to literally thousands of potential customers - and mostly for free. The first thing you need to do is choose your platforms. A lot of brands cast the net a little too wide by trying to have a presence on every single platform. It’s much more effective to choose one or two and to run them properly. You do this by:

• Creating great and organic content
• Encouraging engagement through feedback and competitions
• Responding to messages quickly and efficiently

Using brilliant content with a link to your website is a great way of increasing sales. It happens to be much more effective than just producing shouty adverts that customers tend to see through very quickly.  

By running your social media properly, you’re not only generating new leads but you’re also turning casual customers into loyal ones.

Avoid mixed messages

With a product as fabulous as yours, it’s tempting to gush about it in your marketing messaging. Don’t. Keep marketing messages clear and concise by sticking to one or two main benefits of your product. If your customer is interested, they’ll click through your site to learn more so there’s no need to use a shopping list of benefits in your advertising and marketing. For example, let’s say you’re selling a mobile phone with tons of bells and whistles. Pick the best two features—; maybe a great camera and a long battery life—and use these in your marketing  to speak directly to the pain points and solutions that we spoke about earlier.

Heating up cold calls

Nobody really enjoys making cold calls, but it’s sometimes a necessary part of company growth. Overcome your cold calling chills by making 100 calls as quickly as you can. By doing this, you’re not only putting aside your nerves, but you’ll find that you start to get a really good feel for what works and what doesn’t.

The secret to cold calling is to develop an affinity between yourself and the customer as quickly as possible. This means avoiding pushy sales talk that will have the customer hanging up faster than you can say “red button.” Start by introducing yourself and asking the customer if he or she has time for the call. Use the approach that you feel your product would be of interest to the customer and explain why. If the customer is clearly uninterested, do not, under any circumstances, keep pushing because that can harm your company’s reputation. Instead, thank him or her for their time and ask if there’s a possibility of calling again at a future time.

The price is right - or is it?

However great your product is, if it’s too expensive, you're not going to get the sales. Similarly, if it’s too cheap, your customers may begin to wonder why. Before taking one more step, do your research to make sure that your price is competitive and right. If your competitor is using a different price point, find out why - it may be that their product doesn’t have as many benefits as yours or that they have more cost-effective suppliers. By finding out where the difference lies, you can then take steps to bring yours into line. If you really are unable to lower your price, you need to make sure that the elevated cost is reflected in the benefit of the product.

Keep in touch

Your customers like to feel valued and it’s your job to make sure that they do. It’s great that you’ve made a sale, but it doesn’t end there. You need to reach out to existing customers with exclusive offers and amazing content to keep them interested.  Treat your customers like a VIP and, they’ll start to spend like one. You can keep in touch with your customers in a few ways without being pushy or annoying. Emails should be kept to a maximum of two per week. When it comes to social media, you can be a little more chatty but, even then, posting should be consistent and no more than once per day.

Finally, when it comes to improving your sales, things have changed beyond all recognition in the last few years. It used to be that a big and bold advert was enough to entice customers but, with the advent of the internet, competition is fierce, whatever your industry. Competition is tough but beating it doesn’t have to be. As we’ve mentioned here, keep your marketing message and branding simple, recognisable, and effective, This will have customers coming to you rather than the other way round.

This article was contributed by Ben. You can visit his website here: https://ultimatebanners.co/roll-up-banners/. Ultimate Banners are the premier British printer and sign maker based in Birmingham, UK.