How to Increase Sales – Online Sales Techniques
This is part one of a three part series on how to increase online sales and sales techniques.
It is what every Small Business Owner needs to know before they begin to build an effective online presence to get More Leads, Sales and Profit, because the internet is the greatest media marketing opportunity in history.
Sales Techniques
I’ve seen some amazing things happen when you implement a well designed marketing strategy on the internet and the great news is, the little guys can take on the big guys because it’s now made it a level playing field.
The outlay that you have to commit to the internet in comparison to traditional advertising is really peanuts.
Digital Marketing Success Stories
My first client had an 800% increase in business. Now, just think about that, 800% increase in business, when most business owners are pretty pleased if they get a 1% or a 5% increase as a result of their marketing. Another client, a motel had 100% increase in business and more recently, a potato cake manufacturer here in Australia in the first 18 months had a 150% increase in business and totally dominate their industry nationally, right across the board. And that’s all as a result of effective internet marketing.
These results are not unique to my clients, anyone can achieve these results if they implement the marketing principles I am about to show you.
So, regardless of what industry that you’re in, the internet is going to change the way we do business forever and you can become one of those success stories.
Fundamentals for Sales Success
There are fundamental principles you need to understand to make your online presence work and this is where most business owners make mistakes and I want to show you a key and it’s the major key in the foundation of when you’re building an online presence.
Search Marketing Vs. Intrusive Marketing
What you need to understand is that your buyers come online to buy. It’s search marketing versus intrusive marketing. If you put ads on TV, radio, papers, etc., that’s intrusive marketing and it is a scattergun approach across an unqualified market audience, hoping that some of them might be your target market and ready to buy now. In reality it’s usually about 1%-3% of the audience you have just reached.
Search Marketing
The great part about the internet is its search marketing, meaning that when your buyers come online, they’re coming online to buy and this is a fundamental foundation that you must understand, they may be in the early stages of buying, but they are coming online with the long term view to buy.
Yellow Pages
In the “good old days,” it was the Yellow Pages. When you picked up the Yellow Pages, you didn’t pick it up to read it as a novel, you picked it up to start your search or where to go to buy.
Sales Transaction Process
In the online sales transaction process, or what I term as the “Road to A Sale” or in any transaction, there’s a process or a series of questions that the shopper is asking themselves.
They’ve got their own fears, they’ve got their own doubts, they’ve got their own concerns and an effective Online Marketing Strategy must answer all of their fears and doubts and concerns.
Now, the other thing is this, like your online buyer you’ll be doing the same with me while you’re reading this, you will be consciously or unconsciously asking yourself,
- who are you?
- Can I trust you?
- Is your product or service any good?
- Will it solve my problems?
- What is your after sales service like?
These are the questions that your online buyer is subconsciously asking themselves.
Fear of Loss Vs. Hope for Gain
What takes place in the psychology of the sales process is what I term as having a “set of scales” in their minds. and on one side of the scales is called Fear of Loss. and on the other side is Hope For Gain.
And this basically happens in every transaction, online or offline. But it is vitally importantly that you grasp this and implement this strategy with your online marketing.
So, in the transaction process or road to a sale, your buyer is coming online and searching for your products or services, They will be somewhere along the journey to purchasing, they might be just starting or they might be well truly along the journey of buying. But whatever way, They’re online and in their mind, there is a set of scales with fear of loss and hope for gain.
What that means is this, is that “Fear of Loss” weighs heavily in their mind, their concerns, their fears, their doubts all outweigh “Hope for Gain” for the product to solve their problem or give them a solution.
The goal with your online presence or the road to a sale is to create a situation where “Hope for Gain” outweighs all of your buyers concerns, fears and doubts.
This is one of the greatest keys in the success of your internet presence and most techie people and design people completely miss this because they don’t understand marketing or the psychology of a buyer.
It’s not their fault, most have had nil or very little training in sales and marketing.
To summarise, your Digital marketing strategy is to remove as much as possible the “Fear of Loss” and create “Hope for Gain.”
Do this properly and you bring your buyer to a place of what I call the tipping point. That tipping point is where your buyer becomes predisposed to buying from you instead of your competitors.
And it’s not just your website
it’s all of your social media, local directory listings, the whole lot, it’s important that all of it is speaking to the fears, doubts, concerns that your buyer has, whatever the fear may be for them it’s important that you “tick the box” and you answer their questions, in fact your whole online presence is about answering their questions.
By answering the questions, you are causing your customer in his or her mind to go yes, yes, yes, they’ve got what I want, yes, yes, yes.
You’re taking them down the Road to A Sale, to a tipping point where they are predisposed to buy from you.
How Powerful Is This?
This is unbelievably powerful if you really understand it and apply it to your Digital Marketing Strategies, I could give you story after story of what’s happened with our clients. But I think the one that’s the most impacting was this;
Our first customer was a Granny Flat Builder in Sydney and he’s the guy who had an 800% increase in business in six weeks and the following year, went from $1 million to $4 million in sales.
We had endorsed all his online statements with video testimonies from satisfied clients. As a result of our strategies, a buyer who lived in Greece and owned property in Sydney contacted him via his web site and because we had built “Trust and Relationship,” overcame “Fear of Loss” and created “Hope for Gain” with the Sydney Granny Flat Builder, a sale was quickly made even though they never met each other face to face, it was all done via the internet through Skype calls, emails and bank transfers etc.
This shows you just how powerful this can be if you market it properly, understand the Road to a Sale psychology, remove Fear of Loss, create Hope for Gain, take your buyer to a tipping point where they have built Trust and Relationship and are predisposed to buying from you in preference to your competitors.
Traditional Advertising Mindset Mistakes
The traditional mindset in our old-fashioned advertising was, “Well, let’s stick an ad in the paper. let’s put an ad on TV and we’ll get them to call us,” and that mentality has overlapped itself into most business owners digital marketing strategies.
And most business owners are making the traditional advertising mindset mistakes of, “we’ll just stick a little bit of information on the net and we’ll get them to call us.”
No, you’ve got to answer all their questions online because they are looking to buy, they are time starved, they don’t want to be “sold to,” they want answers and if you don’t answer them, they will quickly go someone else’s web site to get their answers.
Talk First Person
And the other thing is that you need to talk to them in first person language as though you’re talking to them face-to-face like I’m talking to you now. Don’t do some sort of abstract this, that, they, third party talk, talk to them as though you were talking to them directly.
Every Buyer’s Journey is different
Now, the other thing is, some people needs lots of information and other people don’t need very much to get to a tipping point and say, “Yes, I want to buy it from you.”
The main thing with this is to make sure that you answer every possible objection or question they may have. the buyer wil decide when they have gathered enough information to proceed with the purchase.
And that leads to another topic on keywords where you need to understand what keywords do or how to find out what questions they really are asking.
In summary, what you need to do in your Digital Marketing Strategies,
- eliminate fear of loss,
- create hope for gain,
- take them on a road to a sale,
- answer every possible objection, fear, doubt and concern within your website.
Your Goal
Your goal is to understand your buyer, understand their needs, their concerns, doubts, fears and endeavour to answer every one of the questions they may have within the content on your website.
plus, you are proving the truth of your claims with customer testimonies and preferably video testimonies. And that’s simple in a sense that as I said earlier, you can get your keywords, find out what keywords they’re searching for.
Trust and Relationship
You’re building trust and relationship with your client or your potential buyer and you can do that through a variety of ways.
That’s what I’ll be talking about in part two of my three part video series.
If this video has helped you, share it with others because I’m sure you know other business people out there that are struggling to pull it altogether and this is the “Must Know”foundational principles.
If you don’t get this right, you will just paddle around and it won’t come together.
And that’s what I’m going to be talking about in my next video, it’s how to make this all come together and get truckloads of buyers predisposed from buying from you.
Thanks for your time and don’t forget, add a comment, if you’ve got a question, just add it on the bottom and I look forward to seeing you next time around. Bye for now.
