Every business is in existence to make a profit. That means businesses are always on the lookout for more opportunities to market and sell. But, customers are always on the lookout for more ways to save as opposed to spending.
That means, businesses have to constantly innovate and find more ways to sell and get customers to spend. If you’re ready to make more sales than you did in the previous year, you need to try different strategies for sales.
In this blog post, we’ll be sharing 5 sales strategies to help you sell more in 2024.
- Cross-Promotion
Cross-promotion is when businesses team up to market their products to their joint audiences. In Nigeria, almost every cold stone outlet has a Dominos pizza outlet just beside them. In some cases, the pizza outlet is right on top.
Most walk-in customers go ahead to order a pizza with their ice-cream without thinking twice about it. Although they are owned by the same company, this is still a huge marketing and sales strategy. Your business doesn’t have to share the same building with a business selling complementary products, but you can find ways to cross-promote online.
Cross-promotion exposes your business to an audience that is primed and interested in what you have to offer for almost #0. Your business gets to save on marketing spend and still gets exposed to an audience that needs what you have. This sales and marketing strategy is also more effective than regular marketing or sponsored content. Their customer base is more inclined to trust your business because they trust the business you’re promoting with and vice versa.
When adopting this sales strategy, be sure to partner with businesses that have the kind of customers you need. That means a baking and shoe brand cross-promotion would not yield a lot of results because their customer types differ.
Also, team up with businesses that have good reviews. If you team up with a business known for poor customer service, it will do more harm than good.
Examples of ways to cross-promote: Running giveaways with partner businesses, running sponsored ads or campaigns together, and creating UGC content focused on both products.
2. Expand to new markets
Whether it’s finally setting up international payments and deliveries, or launching another product line, expanding to new markets is a costlier but effective way of making more sales. Costlier because money will be spent on production, marketing and the likes, but effective because new products will attract new customers that are interested in them.
If you’re looking to sell more, expand to new markets. Whether it’s a new kind of food on your menu as a food business owner, or healthier treats as a baker, or outdoor shoots as a photographer, new opportunities to grow your business exists.
3. Optimize existing sales channels
If you’re looking to sell more products in 2023, then optimizing existing sales channels is a must. Sales channels are any means via which you receive and process orders.
If your website has a long connectivity time, or a payment processing system that requires many hurdles to jump past, then your business will experience a lot of churn. Churn is simply when customers drop off from making a purchase or moving forward because of bad user experience. Most online shoppers shop with their mobile phones, so your website must be responsive on mobile and be swift and easy to navigate and use.
The longer a sales process takes, the more customers drop off without completing the purchase process. If you use a business website, you can track customer drop-off rates on your analytics board and find ways to reduce that number by fixing the issue they’re experiencing.
If you don’t use a website to process business orders, work towards decreasing response wait time via DM. Research shows that 65% of customers expect a business to respond within 2 minutes to an hour.
If you run a physical store, optimizing your sales channel can look like hiring extra hands during the evening or on weekends when you have a higher number of walk-in customers to attend to. This will ensure that customers don’t have to keep waiting and standing to get attended to.
4. Highlight your USP
USP A.K.A as Unique Selling Point is what differentiates business A from business B. Highlighting your USP to customers shows them why they should choose you over another option. A USP is typically easier to highlight when a business produces its own goods, as opposed to being a retail outlet, but focusing on finding a USP in any business is possible.
Whether it’s customer card points for businesses like supermarkets, or an additional reel video coverage for portrait photoshoots as a photographer, a business USP is the deciding factor for every customer. A USP could be as simple as highlighting a handwritten thank you card as part of what customers receive with their packages. People are sentimental over things like that. Find a USP and exploit it as one of your selling strategies.
5. Capitalize on FOMO
FOMO A.K.A. as fear of missing out is a sales strategy you should try for your business in 2023. Although this is not a strategy that can be used all year round, it can be leveraged at various times in the year. In Ads, it’s commonplace to see phrases like “available for 1 week only” “offer expires in 24 hours” “available to only 100 businesses” “selling out fast, 10 left in stock” and many other phrases. Some websites employ the use of countdowns to show how fast things are selling out to get customers to make hasty decisions to purchase immediately.
FOMO is especially effective during discount or sales seasons like Black Friday as people don’t want to lose out on great deals. If you want to sell more, capitalize on people’s fear of missing out by using copy and captions to portray that.
These are some highly effective sales strategies to make more sales in 2023. Other strategies to consider include opening up an affiliate/reselling program to sell more and taking out slow products to make room for faster-selling products.
Which of these strategies will you be trying?
Share this post with another business owner who will secure the bag in 2024.