How Can I Generate More Sales?

Ensuring your business gets off the ground is one thing - generating revenue and driving its growth is another aspect entirely. Here, we share the steps needed to implement a chain of simple, actionable tactics that will help you achieve sales.

Generating more sales is the driving force behind starting a business. From cake making to saving endangered pangolins, there will always be one aspect of your startup affected by sales targets. You’ve already been through one of the hardest parts of starting a business: developing it, pitching it, convincing investors, choosing the right coffee for your team morning meetings, but now the hard work really starts. 

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be as onerous as it seems. Implementing a strategy to help you achieve sales really is a collaborative effort, and no matter about the size of your business, big or small, everyone’s expertise and help really can be leveraged to ensure you kick start your business in a positive direction.

Use the internet to drive sales

It’s an obvious starting point – using the internet to reach a global audience who might be interested in purchasing your product or brand. But there’s using the internet, and there’s having a basic Wix website connected to a PayPal account – you have to decide how you want to employ certain strategies to entice customers, and then convert this engagement into sales.

Selling strategies tend to fall into two categories on the internet, and you have to decide which one to employ. The first is the high-volume marketing funnel  type and the second is the content strategy approach. Many businesses have reported that a hybrid of the two is the most effective way of generating leads and sales. 

The latter is a less involved, and cheaper, route than the former. It consists of executing content strategies that include generating high-quality content that engages and chimes with your audience. This might take the form of blog posts, podcasts or infographics related to the field your company or brand inhabits, or helpful actionable information or insights around your product or company. You also want to use these pieces of information to reinforce how your organisation is different from your competitors and, of course, remind them what a world-beating, essential brand you are, and how they possibly can’t live without you!! (Or maybe just stick with the soft sell, we get it.)

You can bolster content marketing strategies with content marketing hacks such as SEO techniques, keyword research and page optimisation. But it’s important to remember that you must always put your audience first when producing content. Writing for Google’s algorithms and incorporating keywords and search terms in your copy may help it rank well in search engines, but if you don’t provide the reader with high-quality content that means they trust your site and keep returning to it, your website won’t rank as well in search results and people won’t buy from you.

Having a good website

As a tech startup, this particular point will be internet 101 for you, but there are many overlooked aspects when having a website, especially if it needs to have an element of ecommerce functionality.  In the first instance, don’t be tempted to go for the more budget options, but really invest in your website it’s your shopfront to the world after all. Bring in some outside help if needed from IT developers.

Secondly, as well as making it aesthetically pleasing, make it intuitive in terms of the user journey and functionality. If you haven’t already, try to get someone involved who has a background in UX web design or copywriting, or take a course in it yourself. This process of designing a website, which focuses entirely on the user experience, is an extremely valuable part of a website. Creating a facile journey where potential customers are guided to the point where they can purchase your product. It’s a fairly nuanced skill, which involves something a bit more subtle than just adding a klaxon-like “BUY NOW” button here on your landing page. 

A good website also means one that works as seamlessly on a mobile, as it does on a desktop, with low-res images that won’t take long to load and send your visitors clicking on to the next page. Potential customers may approach your website from all over the globe, so ensure that nobody is left confused of what you’re offering and how they can purchase.

A variety of good-to-go, ecommerce SAAS platforms are all available to integrate with your website, and help make the customer journey as fluid as possible, greatly increasing the chances that they will make a purchase at the right opportunity.

Social Media

A blessing and a curse for many startups, feeding the beast of social media requires immense creativity and effort. But there’s fun to be had with it as well. As you’ll know, connecting and engaging with your audience is key, but so is generating a variety of high-quality content that takes different forms – be it posts, videos, podcasts, interviews or guest editors or bloggers. Diversifying the content you post helps you expand your reach, which brings more people to your site and increases the chances that will buy something, or recommend your site to others.

Just as important as posting good content, is posting it regularly. If you’re posts are in other people’s feeds (and minds), it will be harder for people to forget about you as they thumb-sprint past cute puppy pics, quickfire recipe vids and retro Friends’ memes.

Finally, consider writing a few blog posts on various subjects about your business and in fields and areas related to your business. They could be about a specialism or the point of difference of your brand which sets you apart from the competition. Or it could be some helpful advice on a particular subject that will provide your audience with some high value content and, if you publish similar articles in the future, they will recognise and trust the service you’re offering.

One speciality is to write about very niche and unexpected subjects. This works precisely because the more unique the subject, say the “Proto-Germanic runic language of Elder Futhark” (that you won’t have an article on, but you get the idea) increases the likelihood that the audience searching for that will click on your article. From there, they will explore your site, and even purchase if they have enough of a positive experience.

This positive experience is an invaluable part of your website, growth strategy and motivation to generate more sales. After all, you’re more likely to opt for the Pret Coffee on the off-chance they give you a free one, right?

Phable explains technology through innovative branding and content marketing. We combine expertise in design, copywriting, Video, Social media, SEM and computer science.

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