By Hostway
It's been a tough year for sales, and we're moving into the home stretch. Here are five tips to help you boost sales and reach your revenue goals as the 2009 shopping season gets underway.
1. Offer incentives to compete with Amazon and eBay.
This year, customers are counting their pennies, and their business is going to the company that offers the best deal. Big retailers are already offering discounts and incentives, and you'll need to jump on board to compete. Can't afford a price cut? Throw in something extra to raise the perceived value of your product.
2. Understand your Web site visitors.
Increase conversions by tracking your visitors and identifying and fixing trouble spots in the sales path. Understanding visitor behavior is key to the online success at any time, but it's even more urgent now that your competitors are also ramping up their efforts to get your customers' money.
3. Increase customer loyalty and gain trust with user-generated content.
Traditional advertising is being replaced with user-generated content such as product reviews and blogs. Customers trust their peers over advertisers to give them the unbiased information on how a product performs. Web sites that take advantage of these tactics will see more sales and return customers than those that don't.
4. Focus your advertising efforts on direct response over brand awareness.
Direct response advertising is crucial to reaching cost per acquisition (CPA) goals. To achieve your CPA goals and maximize your return on investment, digital marketing channels such as pay per click advertising are your best bet.
5. Leverage your local search presence.
People searching for a local business are most likely to turn to the Internet. Make sure your business gets listed in the search results by claiming your listing on all relevant search sites.
Even though you're looking for places to cut costs, cutting your marketing efforts can be a losing proposition during a recession. It takes some effort and consistency to build a steady business stream, and cutting your marketing efforts can cost you business.
End the year on a high note by focusing your efforts on increasing sales now.