In today’s 3 Tips to Help Grow Your Business post, I’m going to share how applying a few simple strategies to your business can make a huge impact on your profit potential. If you’re anything like me, you’ll always be looking for new ways to improve your business and attract more customers.
3 Tips to Help Grow Your Business
1. How Taking Action Can Get You Leads
Many people just set up an opt-in page and then sit back and wait for leads to sign up or connect with them. A more effective approach is to actively seek out prospects rather than waiting for them to come across your page or your shop and make a purchase.
Research what questions are being asked that are related to your industry and niche. Best places to check for these are on forums, and Q&A sites like Quora. Also, on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Spend a little time answering those questions. There are huge benefits in doing this. Make sure to always give value first and DO NOT immediately try to sell. This is totally frowned upon and will harm your reputation. Providing answers to these questions will help you achieve more exposure for your business. Moreover, it’ll build you up as an authority in your niche. In addition, it’ll go a long way to building trust between you and potential customers. So, ultimately these efforts could result in you getting some sales.
Examples:
1. If you run an online marketing service, look for questions on the most effective ways to market websites. Then you could leave an answer along the lines of, “Here are 3 simple strategies I find work well… (insert your strategies here). If you’re looking for more information, I assist people with marketing their websites through information and done-for-you services. Here’s a link to an article I wrote detailing 17 tried and tested marketing methods to dramatically increase your website traffic.” Basically, you’ve delivered useful information and value in your answer. Therefore, people will be more inclined to click through to your site to find out more.
2. As another example, if you’re an osteopath, you can find people complaining about muscle and joint pain. Go ahead and offer a few tips that you think might help them. Follow that up by inviting them to drop into your clinic for a free manipulation or consultation.
3. Or if you’re in the weight loss niche, you could look for people asking questions on the most effective ways to lose weight. Give them a few helpful suggestions. Then direct them to a link of a video or blog post of yours with more detailed tips. On these pages you could have an offer for them to sign up to your free newsletter. Then use this as a means to try to drive them into your main offer.
The Power of Connection
Don’t underestimate the power of approaching leads instead of expecting them to reach out to you! The great thing is that this doesn’t only apply to consumer leads. You can use the same techniques to find other businesses to partner with. Moreover, you can proactively reach out to them to try to land a deal. Or indeed contact the media to find out whether they’d be interested in running a piece on something you’re an expert in related to your niche. Dedicating even just a couple of hours a week to doing this can result in enormous benefits for your business.
2. Show Value and Position Your Price to Encourage Buyers
A direct way to highlight the brilliant deal you’re offering your customers is to literally point out when you’re giving a special discount or a significant saving.
Offering people a discount triggers a psychological response. Emotions drive people to buy and if people feel they’re getting better value, then they’re more likely to make a purchase. When people see that an item is discounted, they feel motivated to buy it now, even for those people who may not have otherwise considered buying it.
For example, when you’re listing your price, you could write something like: “$97 — 50% Off Today!”. When people see this, they instantly feel they’re getting a bargain. We all love bargains, don’t we? It also helps them justify the purchase to themselves and is more inclined to push them over the line.
Now, if you have a variety of corresponding offers that are marginally better or more/less expensive than the other, instead of just detailing the benefits of each one, you could add something like “Great Deal,” “Better Deal,” and “Best Deal”. Potential customers need to be led by the hand so don’t assume people will just figure things out in their heads for themselves.
Think about creative ways you can implement this in your business. Can you highlight a great saving amount next to your regular price point to encourage people to buy?
3. Focus on the Benefits of Your Offer
A great marketing technique that encourages prospects to think about the end result your product will give them is to focus on the benefits of your offer. This is a powerful motivator to galvanise people to buy.
Your offer will have features (specifications of your product or service) and benefits (the positive impact and end result of buying your product or service). It’s essential you focus on the benefits of your product or service as it’s these that sell your product or service. Features are important so link them to the benefit that each feature will give your customer. However, benefits are what people are ultimately interested in and what influences their purchases.
For example, does someone who buys an anti-aging cream want to know that it contains the ingredient Q10 or that it noticeably reduces their wrinkles and makes them look younger?
Let’s look at an example of how you can easily apply this.
Consider a business selling drumming lessons. Here are 3 features that they could translate into benefits for their students:
- Feature 1: Over 40 pages of drumming lessons.
- Benefit 1: Learn to play the drums in under 4 hours!
- Feature 2: Get training on how drumming beats are crafted.
- Benefit 2: You’ll be able to create your very own drumming beats!
- Feature 3: Drum on over a dozen songs with step-by-step instructions.
- Benefit 3: You’ll be able to drum over a dozen top songs in no time!
You’ll notice that the emphasis is on the benefit the student is achieving from the feature by demonstrating the end result.
By switching your sales pitch from focusing on the features of your product or service to focusing on the benefits can have a hugely positive impact on your sales. Your pitches can literally turn around and go from low conversion rates to high conversion rates if you do this.
I hope you’ve found value in my 3 Tips to Help Grow Your Business post. Even trying out just one of these strategies could make a significant difference to your bottom line. If you’re interested in discovering how other simple tweaks can seriously improve your sales, you might want to check out this useful survey tool.
BizFire’s Free Business Analyzer and Growth Tool helps examine and determine the areas of your business that require improvement. All you must do is answer a few questions relating to your business and you’ll receive marketing tips, resources, and recommendations based upon your unique business. The bonus is that it’s 100% free and you don’t need to opt-in to use it.
To Your Success!
