Strategies for boosting sales in 2015
Every business sells a product or a service. The more sales of its products or services a company makes, the better chance it has of surviving. One of the reasons for companies folding up is that their products are not being sold or their services are being accessed by the people it is meant for.
As we enter a new year, it’s imperative for businesses to either put in place a marketing plan, if they don’t have one, or tweak their existing plan in order to meet their sales target. We provide some simple steps to boost sales and increase revenue.
1. The first step for increasing sales is taking a second look at your product or service. One of the most common mistakes of businesses is to introduce products or services that the potential customers don’t want or does not meet their needs. As a business, you need to take the customer and the environment into consideration when developing a product a service. There is no point bringing a product to the market and trying to force individuals or organisations to buy something they don’t need or want. Products that meet customer needs often sell themselves.
2. Give freebies. One way to increase the level of demand for your products and services is to give free offers. Everyone loves a freebie. Ensure though that the free offers you give are not going to kill your business, but just enough to get potential customers acquainted with your product. If you’ve done the first part right – i.e, product development, then customers will definitely come back for more once they have gotten free offers.
3. Explore non-traditional methods of marketing. If your business doesn’t have an online presence, then you might as well be living in the 60’s or the 70’s. It’s absolutely imperative to create some sort of web presence to market your company and its products and services. The web provides a cheap and alternate way of putting your products out there. If you cannot manage this process in house, then it would help to get a company or hire an individual who will do this on your behalf. The money that youspend in this area will yield results in terms of giving you increased visibility and sales.
4. Do a sales promotion. This is related to the freebie option we spoke about earlier, but goes beyond giving free products. You can explore promotions like reducing prices of products or services, giving extra products for each purchase made, offering clients another of your products for free, partnering with another firm to do a joint promotion, e.g buy my product and get a free spa treatment, a free meal at a particular fast food joint, or a free plane ticket, movie ticket, e.t.c. These joint promotions can work in a sort of trade by Bata system, where you offer free products to the customers of those that you partner with.
5. Explore new markets. Perhaps you haven’t been having joy in the current geography or area; you can explore other markets outside your current vicinity. You can explore the export market also. You can partner with a logistics or distribution company for instance to ensure that your products reaches other states in the country. Also, as the Common External Tariff (CET) begins in West Africa from January 1st 2015, you should begin to explore the West African market for the sales of your product.
6. Increase your Corporate Social responsibility (CSR). This might not sound like a way to increase sales, but if done correctly, it will help to portray your brand In the right way and draw more customers your way. When you increase your giving to charitable causes or begin to take responsibility for the environment in which you operate, you get a lot of goodwill from the community, regulators and current or potential customers. Research has proven that people are drawn to brands that they have an emotional connection to. One sure way to create that emotional connection is supporting causes that help the society.
While these strategies are not exhaustive, they provide a road map to begin to increase sales, cash flow and grow your business overall. Start 2015 on the right note and out sell, out think and outgrow your completion.
All the best in the year.
Oguche Agudah