Boost your sales in a bear market

15 Feb 2019

Against the backdrop of poor festive season trading updates, the petrol price hike in February and a projection by the World Bank that our economy will grow by just 1,3% this year, it may sound like an oxymoron, but the time is ripe to make, or even increase, sales in 2019.

Care about what your customers want

It’s an error many businesses make: getting caught up in the how they do what they do instead of the why they do what they do. Remember, products and services exist to solve a customers’ problem. Promote the solution, not the tools used to deliver it.

Tighten up paid search

In a bull market overspending here or there might go unnoticed. But not in a bear. During these tough times don’t just run Google ads, make sure that the content on your website is aligned to the search terms you’re advertising against. Being relevant could help you reduce the amount you pay per click by as much as 50% while growing sales by helping your customers really understand your value proposition.

Whip your website into shape

It’s a fact: 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Talk about needing to make a good first impression! To avoid losing your customers’ interest before you’ve even explained how you can help them, make sure your site is clean, easy to navigate and loads quickly.

Convert your visitors with video

Humans process video 60,000 times faster than text. So, it stands to reason that you should put as much of your marketing budget into video production as possible. They provide a far more relatable experience than a standard web page and significantly increase your likelihood of converting a visitor into a customer.

Get personal

Artificial intelligence tools like IBM Watson Marketing Cloud have made it super easy to know what product or promotion caught your customers’ attention when they visited your site. Use this data to your advantage: when they return to your site serve them content that you know they’ll like. This level of personalisation makes the shopping experience so much more enjoyable for the customer and increases the likelihood that they’ll buy.

Recruit your evangelists

Social media makes it so easy to know who your superfans are. Thank them for their ongoing brand love and invite them to share written or, even better, video testimonials about your products with others in your community. Endorsements from these micro-influencers goes a long way. Just remember to thank them for their support by giving them free products or experiences. They’re likely to tell everyone about that too.