How do I generate more sales?

Wednesday, 4th September, 2019

Having mentored a number of entrepreneurs on how to build their businesses, one of the questions I am most often asked is what is the best way to increase sales or get more clients.

My specialism is in online marketing, and I believe that getting your website to work harder for your business is one the simplest ways that you can achieve this objective.

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer

My advice for anyone trying to build a website that will improve sales, is to put themselves into the shoes of their consumer. Understanding how your clients are behaving online, and what are they typing into Google when looking for a product or service is the key to developing a successful online strategy. Google has lots of free tools to help you to achieve this, and there are other websites out there too that can help you to research the digital whims of your potential customers.

Do your research

From this you can produce a list of keywords that your customers are using when looking for goods or services.  This will help you optimise your website based upon your customer’s needs rather than what you think you ought to be saying. Often less-is-more when it comes to building websites especially when attention spans are short and people are using the web to get quick answers to their queries.

Generate traffic to your website

Once you have optimised your website, the next task is to start generating traffic to it. You can achieve this through getting your website to rank higher in Google which is called search engine optimisation, or S.E.O. for short. S.E.O. can be a complicated process and can take time to achieve results. Often you can get a quicker and cheaper return through Pay Per Click advertising on Google and Microsoft. Both companies offer first time advertisers an introductory offer to encourage you to advertise with them. I would recommend getting your campaign set by an expert who has your interests at heart rather than relying on the quick start options offered by the companies who will be taking your adverting budget!

Be relevant

A good pay per click campaign will have well written ads that are relevant to your audience’s searches that will direct the customer to a highly relevant page on your website specifically dealing with their query. Both Google and Bing reward advertisers who have the most relevant landing pages for their searchers term, and the more relevant you can make it the more likely your customer will buy from you rather than your competitors.

Start small and build big

Spending money on advertising can be quite scary at first, however you can specify how and when your advertising is shown so that you don’t waste any of your money, if your campaign is properly set up.

I typically recommend using the free version of Google Analytics because it’s the gold standard of website analytics. It also measures every single advertising channel, so it acts as a central source of truth when you need to compare performance by channel.

When you know things are working for your business you can then turn up the volume and start to make a real difference to your sales. The key to this is measurement to the effectiveness of your ads. How many phone calls, enquires have the ads generated and how has this impacted upon sales? From this you can gauge the return on your investment to ensure that you are getting value for money.

If you would like help with this please feel free to contact me, I would be more than happy to try and help you get set up.

 

Angus Ogilvy-Stuart

Business Mentor & Digital Marketing Expert

Angus Ogilvy-Stuart, also known as The Business Guru, is a highly experienced digital marketing expert having been involved in the online marketing business since 1997 – seven years before the launch of Facebook. Angus is an expert on website construction, Pay Per click advertising campaigns and SEO techniques.