If you want to increase your turnover you must increase your sales, right? Great - so where do we start?
Well in order to increase your sales you are, in turn, going to need more people to be interested in your products and services. So how do we do that?
Well, the first place to start is understanding the shift in buyer behaviour that we are all experiencing - buyers are now more in control than ever before when it comes to making purchase decisions. Buyers have realised that there is a lot more information at their fingertips now, and they are doing far more research themselves online with social media, Google searches, review websites, trade publications etc. In fact, research has shown that up to 70% of the purchase decision is already made before the buyer even contacts a sales advisor.
So, Let’s Look At This More Closely…
Your potential customer has a particular problem they need to solve, so they go to Google and put in a search. The search may bring up some articles relating to their problem or even a few websites. Once they have had a good look around those articles and websites, they may go back to Google and type in a different search - for example, your company name followed by ‘reviews’ to have a look at what other people are saying about you. This may then prompt them to go over to your social media channels to have a closer look at you and to see how people are interacting with your brand. They may then go back to Google and look at some of your closest competitors to do some comparisons, followed by a final search on something very specific to their needs.
Sound familiar? I am sure you have done something very similar yourself recently, whether that was researching a new supplier or searching for information on personal purchases like a new car, home insurance, home improvement contractors, etc.
But what does it all mean? Quite simply - you can no longer just rely on one thing to generate new leads for your business! As a business owner, you have to understand all the different touch points that your prospects are making in order to make sure you are seen as a potential company for them to do business with. You have to understand where they are online, as well as what part of this journey they are on, so that you can offer them the right conversion opportunities at the right time! Sitting back and waiting for the phone to ring with a new enquiry is just waiting for your competitors to jump in at the right time and take that enquiry away from you.
What I mean by this is that the buying decision is being made during this research phase - causing them to pick the phone up, and not the other way around.
Let’s take a look at a typical approach we see all the time when business owners are starting to look at how to make digital marketing work for them…
The typical approach is to do some marketing activities to create sales opportunities, which will hopefully convert to customers.
Activities ————— > Sales ———————-> Customers
Let’s say that you focus on the following activities: website, referrals, PPC/direct advertising, social media, SEO and you get 100 new leads as a result.
From those 100 leads you get 10 good sales opportunities, and from those opportunities you get one new customer.
Well, that’s great - but if you want to double that result you will have to double those activities, which can become a very expensive exercise!
This is why tactical marketing does not work as a long-term strategy. Just doing activities in isolation, lead by data-driven decision making without a clear strategy or systematic approach, will have a hit and miss outcome.
A good marketing strategy will seamlessly create leads which turn into sales opportunities and, ultimately, sales. Marketing Automation takes care of automating all the repetitive processes involved in qualifying the leads and introduces human interaction at exactly the right time. This means that you can tailor your sales interactions to exactly when the buyer is ready, therefore increasing your return on investment and revenue - without spending the time on manual processes! Marketing automation saves you time and helps you to scale your business in a predictable way.
Three Steps To Marketing Automation
1. Capture leads that would have otherwise left your website without a trace
2. Nurture, educate and ready your leads for the next step
3. Turn a one-off purchase into a life-long customer
A marketing automation platform creates a consistent experience for your prospect as well as giving you the ability to track and measure all of this activity so that you can understand what is working and what is not - leading to better decisions being made and higher return on your marketing investment.
Using a proven marketing system, like the one we use here at JDR, is the easiest way to grow your sales and save time. Marketing automation allows us, for the first time, to really track, measure and analyse every marketing activity - driving better and better results!
Get in touch with one of our team today to arrange a free Marketing audit to fully understand how you can get this working for you!
Or in the meantime, take a look at our latest video for a lesson in business from Dave and .... Love Island!
Image source: Pixabay
