Did you know that some companies in Nigeria generate over
3.5 billion Naira a month in sales from their website alone
right here in Nigeria?
While you may not quite achieve this feat (I mean the 1
billion per month sales I talked about earlier), but have you
ever imagined if it was possible to have your phone ringing
24/7 and it would be potential customers calling and starting
the conversation like this;
“I saw your number on the internet, can you help me do this
or that…” or “I got this number from your website, am I
speaking with …”
The thing about having a website is that it not only gives you
exposure, it also positions you as an expert and your
product as the best in the minds of potential clients. This
makes it possible such that when they call you; all initial
resistances would have been watered down. As a matter of
fact, through your website, you would have answered more
than 70% of the questions on their minds and a relationship
is already established.
If it was this easy to get customers calling and requesting
your products and services, why isn’t every business taking
advantage of it? Unfortunately, it’s not so straight forward
and simple. In fact 70-80% of websites created in Nigeria are
shut down after 2 years (my opinion) because they turn into
liabilities for their owners.
In this article, I’m going to show you how to leverage your
website to increase sales in 2017 for your business by as
much as 50%.
How to Increase your sales by 50% using your website
The strategies I’m going to teach you in this article work. It
doesn’t matter what industry you are in. I’ve personally
applied them in my business over the years and have gotten
countless number of clients.
So let’s get started
#1 Strategy: Position your homepage as a Landing Page
The #1 purpose of your website is to sell.
Irrespective of whether you are a non-profit organization or
a profit oriented company, the primary purpose of having a
website is to sell something. Therefore, your website should
be positioned to sell.
In order to achieve that, your website homepage should be
designed as a landing page, i.e. It should be created in such
a way that as soon as someone lands on the page, he will be
encouraged to take an action that will bring you a step closer
to selling something to him/her. This action may be for the
person to request for a free quotation, submit his/her email
address/phone number to get a free offer, ask for a call
back, request for Free consultation etc.
How you engage your visitors will be solely dependent on
the type of product/services you offer.
But the most important factor is that once someone drops
into your website, you should be able to capture the
person’s contact information so that you can reach out to
him/her later.
Also
at the end of every article, we put in a number you can call if
you have any questions or requests as regards to the topic. This makes it possible for us to capture their details
and get in touch with them, right?. While we may
not be able to convert all of them, we certainly do convert a
good number of them into customers. And most importantly
we have a database of potential clients to sell to in future.
The easiest way to achieve this is to design your website
using a landing page template/theme. These types of
templates are already designed to help you capture your
visitors’ information. The forms are positioned appropriately
and call to action buttons placed on hotspots that attract
human eyes.
#2 Strategy: Leverage the popularity of other websites
If your website is just new with very little number of visitors,
no amount of tweaking will make it bring in customers and
increase sales for you.
Therefore, you will need to leverage other existing more
popular sites to get the word out there about your business
while your own website gains popularity gradually.
In order to achieve this, there are 3 ways;
Submit your site to relevant business directories
This is the surest way to leverage other websites. It makes it
possible for your website to have multiple pages in different
places all over the internet.
However, just submitting your business to a directory and
disappearing the next minute will not help you in any way.
You have to constantly update your directory page with the
right keywords so that search engines can take notice of it.
Also if you have photos of previous projects you've done,
some directories allow for you to upload pictures.
The idea is just treat your directory pages as you would your
own website and you will reap the reward
Put out Press releases often about events and activities
in your organization
Putting out press releases is a subtle way of marketing. It
gives you the opportunity of riding on the back of the media
to success. If you are lucky and one of your news goes viral,
that is all the publicity you need to boost your sales.
Take it or leave it, people respect businesses that make the
news more than obscure ones. So don’t wait for the news to
happen, create it and distribute it
In order to achieve this in Nigeria, using a service like Mass
Media Marketing Services will come in handy. They can help
you distribute your press release to over 400 media outlets
in Nigeria. Can you imagine the reach!
Participate in relevant forums
This is also a good way of leveraging other websites. But the subtle marketing strategy is that
at the end of the article like I said before, I normally insert a
number and email address you can use to get in touch with
me if you have more questions or for free consultation. And
don’t forget, the article has already established me as an
expert. So what kind of mindset do you think people will call
me with? Your guess is just as good as mine.
Engage with your website visitors
When a visitor lands on your website, if you don’t engage
him/her within 5 seconds, he/she will leave and never to
return. What a tragedy!
But how do you engage a visitor?
While there are several ways to engage a visitor, I’m going to
tell you exactly the best two I know of that work perfectly
Blog Regularly
Blogging is one of the best ways to catch the attention of
people when they land on your website. For example, if you
visit a honey seller’s website, seeing an article headline like
“How to detect fake honey in the market” will catch your
attention more than all the other marketing messages like
“BUY FROM US - WE OFFER THE BEST NATURAL HONEY IN
THE WORLD”. After all, nobody wants to buy fake honey,
right? Visitors may even be willing to drop their email and
mobile number for you to send them that information, don’t
you think?
This is just an example - find something similar for your
own.
Use live chat
If you have a shop/office and someone walks in and you
totally ignore the person, what do you think the person will
do next? Walk away of course!
But imagine a situation where the same person walks into
your shop and you cautiously and with the nicest of voice
ask the person how you can be of help, what do you think
the person will do? Your guess is also as good as mine.
To achieve this, there are several chatting apps online that
you can ask your web developer to install for you on your
website. I normally recommend Tawk.to and Livezilla. They
are free. At least, These 2 options save you the cost of
monthly payment that is attached to some other options
available. All you have to pay for is just the one-time
installation fee.
However, the major drawback of this is that you need to be
online always to always engage your visitors – This may not
be too feasible for many people. But if you can, it’s the
ultimate engagement strategy.
Be Social
What shall it profit a man to have a business in this 21st
century and not have social media pages!
Not having a social media presence is one of the worst
mistakes you can make as a business owner.
However, you must understand your business’ core market
before you start going social.
The rule is (in Nigerian context);
- If you are a B2B (business to business - i.e. your company
sells mostly to other businesses), concentrate on Linkedin as
your primary social media strategy.
- While for B2C businesses, Facebook and Twitter are the
best option
- If you are in the entertainment industry, Instagram is the
way to go.
There are several other options you can use to boost your
social media strategy, but the best advice I can offer you is
to focus on just one or two social media channels and
become a force to reckon with in those. Don’t try to be
popular in all social media channels online. You know, "a
little here and a little there" kind of strategy. It’s a sure
recipe for failure. Believe me, I've tried!
Advertise
If you want to establish yourself and increase sales in 2017,
you must also be willing to open up your wallet. But you
must do so wisely and strategically. Else your advert money
will just be a pure waste of resources.
Before you start advertising online, you must;
Have a website that can convert visitors to paying
customers
This is the first and MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do for
yourself. If your website is not built to convert visitors to
leads/customers, even if you spend 1 billion in advert, it will
be money down the drain. You might as well take it to a nice
nite club and blow it on champagne and hot chicks.
Have a clear cut digital marketing strategy
Simply put, know where and how you want to spend your
advertising budget. Are you going for Google Adwords or
Facebook advertising (cost-per-click) approach? Or are you
going to place your advert in niche websites for a highly
targeted traffic? What is the demography of your target
audience? For example if you sell Airplane spare parts, you
will agree with me that it wouldn't be a wise strategy to go
about splashing money on instagram ads or even facebook.
For that, spending money on aeronautics blog or even
Google adword will be a better strategy.
Have a specific advertising budget
One big mistake most folks do is to just insert their Debit
card numbers online and have every other smart website
owner take a cut monthly in the name of subscription and
advertising. But you shouldn’t do that. Ensure you have a
specific money earmarked for advert for a specific period.
After that, don’t spend more until your next spending cycle
comes e.g. weekly or monthly.
Have a target amount of sales you want to generate
based on the money you are investing in adverts.
Always ensure you have a target amount you want to get as
your return on investment (ROI). Don't forget, an investment
is what your advertising budget is. Therefore, it should yield
returns.
What you need to do is to know exactly how much it will cost
you to get one lead or how much to convert one visitor to a
paying customer
e.g. if you spend N100 to bring a single visitor to your
website through google, it means that you will need to spend
N10,000 to bring 100.
Therefore, for your advert campaign to be successful, the
product/service you sell should be worth far more than
N10,000 when 100 people visit your website.
Finally we have come to the end of this article, I hope you
have learned a thing or two about how to increase sales for
your business.
3.5 billion Naira a month in sales from their website alone
right here in Nigeria?
While you may not quite achieve this feat (I mean the 1
billion per month sales I talked about earlier), but have you
ever imagined if it was possible to have your phone ringing
24/7 and it would be potential customers calling and starting
the conversation like this;
“I saw your number on the internet, can you help me do this
or that…” or “I got this number from your website, am I
speaking with …”
The thing about having a website is that it not only gives you
exposure, it also positions you as an expert and your
product as the best in the minds of potential clients. This
makes it possible such that when they call you; all initial
resistances would have been watered down. As a matter of
fact, through your website, you would have answered more
than 70% of the questions on their minds and a relationship
is already established.
If it was this easy to get customers calling and requesting
your products and services, why isn’t every business taking
advantage of it? Unfortunately, it’s not so straight forward
and simple. In fact 70-80% of websites created in Nigeria are
shut down after 2 years (my opinion) because they turn into
liabilities for their owners.
In this article, I’m going to show you how to leverage your
website to increase sales in 2017 for your business by as
much as 50%.
How to Increase your sales by 50% using your website
The strategies I’m going to teach you in this article work. It
doesn’t matter what industry you are in. I’ve personally
applied them in my business over the years and have gotten
countless number of clients.
So let’s get started
#1 Strategy: Position your homepage as a Landing Page
The #1 purpose of your website is to sell.
Irrespective of whether you are a non-profit organization or
a profit oriented company, the primary purpose of having a
website is to sell something. Therefore, your website should
be positioned to sell.
In order to achieve that, your website homepage should be
designed as a landing page, i.e. It should be created in such
a way that as soon as someone lands on the page, he will be
encouraged to take an action that will bring you a step closer
to selling something to him/her. This action may be for the
person to request for a free quotation, submit his/her email
address/phone number to get a free offer, ask for a call
back, request for Free consultation etc.
How you engage your visitors will be solely dependent on
the type of product/services you offer.
But the most important factor is that once someone drops
into your website, you should be able to capture the
person’s contact information so that you can reach out to
him/her later.
Also
at the end of every article, we put in a number you can call if
you have any questions or requests as regards to the topic. This makes it possible for us to capture their details
and get in touch with them, right?. While we may
not be able to convert all of them, we certainly do convert a
good number of them into customers. And most importantly
we have a database of potential clients to sell to in future.
The easiest way to achieve this is to design your website
using a landing page template/theme. These types of
templates are already designed to help you capture your
visitors’ information. The forms are positioned appropriately
and call to action buttons placed on hotspots that attract
human eyes.
#2 Strategy: Leverage the popularity of other websites
If your website is just new with very little number of visitors,
no amount of tweaking will make it bring in customers and
increase sales for you.
Therefore, you will need to leverage other existing more
popular sites to get the word out there about your business
while your own website gains popularity gradually.
In order to achieve this, there are 3 ways;
Submit your site to relevant business directories
This is the surest way to leverage other websites. It makes it
possible for your website to have multiple pages in different
places all over the internet.
However, just submitting your business to a directory and
disappearing the next minute will not help you in any way.
You have to constantly update your directory page with the
right keywords so that search engines can take notice of it.
Also if you have photos of previous projects you've done,
some directories allow for you to upload pictures.
The idea is just treat your directory pages as you would your
own website and you will reap the reward
Put out Press releases often about events and activities
in your organization
Putting out press releases is a subtle way of marketing. It
gives you the opportunity of riding on the back of the media
to success. If you are lucky and one of your news goes viral,
that is all the publicity you need to boost your sales.
Take it or leave it, people respect businesses that make the
news more than obscure ones. So don’t wait for the news to
happen, create it and distribute it
In order to achieve this in Nigeria, using a service like Mass
Media Marketing Services will come in handy. They can help
you distribute your press release to over 400 media outlets
in Nigeria. Can you imagine the reach!
Participate in relevant forums
This is also a good way of leveraging other websites. But the subtle marketing strategy is that
at the end of the article like I said before, I normally insert a
number and email address you can use to get in touch with
me if you have more questions or for free consultation. And
don’t forget, the article has already established me as an
expert. So what kind of mindset do you think people will call
me with? Your guess is just as good as mine.
Engage with your website visitors
When a visitor lands on your website, if you don’t engage
him/her within 5 seconds, he/she will leave and never to
return. What a tragedy!
But how do you engage a visitor?
While there are several ways to engage a visitor, I’m going to
tell you exactly the best two I know of that work perfectly
Blog Regularly
Blogging is one of the best ways to catch the attention of
people when they land on your website. For example, if you
visit a honey seller’s website, seeing an article headline like
“How to detect fake honey in the market” will catch your
attention more than all the other marketing messages like
“BUY FROM US - WE OFFER THE BEST NATURAL HONEY IN
THE WORLD”. After all, nobody wants to buy fake honey,
right? Visitors may even be willing to drop their email and
mobile number for you to send them that information, don’t
you think?
This is just an example - find something similar for your
own.
Use live chat
If you have a shop/office and someone walks in and you
totally ignore the person, what do you think the person will
do next? Walk away of course!
But imagine a situation where the same person walks into
your shop and you cautiously and with the nicest of voice
ask the person how you can be of help, what do you think
the person will do? Your guess is also as good as mine.
To achieve this, there are several chatting apps online that
you can ask your web developer to install for you on your
website. I normally recommend Tawk.to and Livezilla. They
are free. At least, These 2 options save you the cost of
monthly payment that is attached to some other options
available. All you have to pay for is just the one-time
installation fee.
However, the major drawback of this is that you need to be
online always to always engage your visitors – This may not
be too feasible for many people. But if you can, it’s the
ultimate engagement strategy.
Be Social
What shall it profit a man to have a business in this 21st
century and not have social media pages!
Not having a social media presence is one of the worst
mistakes you can make as a business owner.
However, you must understand your business’ core market
before you start going social.
The rule is (in Nigerian context);
- If you are a B2B (business to business - i.e. your company
sells mostly to other businesses), concentrate on Linkedin as
your primary social media strategy.
- While for B2C businesses, Facebook and Twitter are the
best option
- If you are in the entertainment industry, Instagram is the
way to go.
There are several other options you can use to boost your
social media strategy, but the best advice I can offer you is
to focus on just one or two social media channels and
become a force to reckon with in those. Don’t try to be
popular in all social media channels online. You know, "a
little here and a little there" kind of strategy. It’s a sure
recipe for failure. Believe me, I've tried!
Advertise
If you want to establish yourself and increase sales in 2017,
you must also be willing to open up your wallet. But you
must do so wisely and strategically. Else your advert money
will just be a pure waste of resources.
Before you start advertising online, you must;
Have a website that can convert visitors to paying
customers
This is the first and MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do for
yourself. If your website is not built to convert visitors to
leads/customers, even if you spend 1 billion in advert, it will
be money down the drain. You might as well take it to a nice
nite club and blow it on champagne and hot chicks.
Have a clear cut digital marketing strategy
Simply put, know where and how you want to spend your
advertising budget. Are you going for Google Adwords or
Facebook advertising (cost-per-click) approach? Or are you
going to place your advert in niche websites for a highly
targeted traffic? What is the demography of your target
audience? For example if you sell Airplane spare parts, you
will agree with me that it wouldn't be a wise strategy to go
about splashing money on instagram ads or even facebook.
For that, spending money on aeronautics blog or even
Google adword will be a better strategy.
Have a specific advertising budget
One big mistake most folks do is to just insert their Debit
card numbers online and have every other smart website
owner take a cut monthly in the name of subscription and
advertising. But you shouldn’t do that. Ensure you have a
specific money earmarked for advert for a specific period.
After that, don’t spend more until your next spending cycle
comes e.g. weekly or monthly.
Have a target amount of sales you want to generate
based on the money you are investing in adverts.
Always ensure you have a target amount you want to get as
your return on investment (ROI). Don't forget, an investment
is what your advertising budget is. Therefore, it should yield
returns.
What you need to do is to know exactly how much it will cost
you to get one lead or how much to convert one visitor to a
paying customer
e.g. if you spend N100 to bring a single visitor to your
website through google, it means that you will need to spend
N10,000 to bring 100.
Therefore, for your advert campaign to be successful, the
product/service you sell should be worth far more than
N10,000 when 100 people visit your website.
Finally we have come to the end of this article, I hope you
have learned a thing or two about how to increase sales for
your business.
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