You’re passionate about your business. You’re an expert in your industry. But when it comes to sales and marketing, the thought of “selling” stresses you out. After all, you’re the best in your biz, so shouldn’t your products sell themselves?
The truth is, even if you have a great product, it’s tough to cut through the daily noise and reach your target audience. These 5 tips will help supercharge your sales and marketing, keeping quality leads coming in the door while you focus on the parts of your business you love best:
1. Build an Engaging Website
In this modern, digital era, the face of a business is not its storefront or primary office space; it’s a strong website. But you already knew that. What you may not know, though, is that your website should be working for you 24/7 to capture fresh leads that fit the profile of your ideal buyer.
It’s not enough to just have information about your products and services any more. Lending your expertise to your audience will help you slice through all of the distractions they face online – and even incentivize them to leave their contact info behind so that you can start a meaningful conversation.
An active blog and a great lead magnet or two are essential tools that will turn your static website into a lead generation machine for your small business.
2. Embrace Social Media
If a website is the face of your company, social media is its voice. Social media is a brilliant way for small brands to have a two-way conversation with their audience. So, while you may not have the budget to buy a primetime radio or TV spot, you can reach your audience and talk with them – not at them.
When social media first burst on the scene, it was great for small businesses because it provided free, organic reach. As social media channels have been pressured to monetize their platforms, it has become more of a pay-to-play model for small businesses. Organic reach has declined on sites like Facebook, meaning you may have to pay to boost a post or to get more likes. However, because of the rich data social platforms are collecting, you can be extremely efficient with your ad spend in reaching a specific audience.
Why be on social media? Because it’s where your customers are. And if they aren’t there, you could be wasting precious resources investing in the wrong place. For instance, if you’re a B2B company whose target buyer is a man in his 50s, you could be wasting time trying to build a following on Snapchat, where the average age is 18 to 24, and the gender profile is typically female.
Being strategic about which social platforms you leverage and how you invest your spend there will give you another touchpoint with potential customers in this fragmented, noisy digital landscape.
3. Use Video
Every person loves a good story, and video can add another dimension to your small business’s narrative, stamping your branding on the hearts and minds of your audience..
“More than 72 percent of buyers are watching video throughout the entire path to purchase and nearly 50 percent are watching 30 minutes or more of video content. If you’re not producing video content, then you’re not meeting the content requirements of today’s video-hungry buyers,” says Kimbe MacMaster, Content Marketing Manager for Vidyard.
You already know the value of video marketing because you probably catch a few videos a day on your favorite device. But you may be hesitant to try video as part of your marketing strategy because it is such unfamiliar territory.
Video doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. With a little creativity and small business-friendly tools, you can produce and test bite-sized videos in your marketing campaigns and sales process.
Try recording a Google Hangout with another thought leader in your industry and add it to your email campaigns. Get your team to promote an upcoming event like in this Vidyard video:
Or use Camtasia to capture a video of your product to add to your landing pages like we did in our 1-minute quick tour.
Leveraging videos in your sales and marketing can help you deliver content to your audience through the medium they’re craving.
(And, if video just isn’t your speed, you might try a weekly podcast…)
4. Upcycle Content
Blog posts deliver your story and insight to peers and customers, positioning your business as an industry thought leader. When managed effectively, they instill confidence and educate people on making smart decisions—like investing in your company.
It can, however, be a chore to create new, engaging content on a daily or weekly basis. If that’s a problem, follow the lead of some of the best brands in the content marketing industry and spruce up evergreen pieces (ones that aren’t time-sensitive) with updates, infographics, and videos.
Your business has lots of content within reach, you just may need some inspiration to tap into it – like our blog post, “How to Write a Popular Blog Post – Without Writing.”
Upcycling is a great way to produce new content with ease, keeping your brand fresh and relevant without draining your resources.
5. Follow Up
Getting your audience’s attention by optimizing your website, managing social media, leveraging video, and blogging is an investment of your time – and time is money. So it can be frustrating when those hard-won leads don’t convert.
Fortunately, getting leads to convert isn’t rocket-surgery. It just takes persistence and organization – well within the reach of any small business.
If at first you don’t succeed (or immediately hear back), try again. It’s easy for communications and concerns to get lost in the bustle of daily operation, so having a process in place for calling or emailing prospective clients is imperative.
Marketing automation does just that – gives small businesses a simple way to stick to a follow-up process through automated emails, notifications and tasks. So when a new lead doesn’t answer your first email, you have a task queued up to call them the next day. It can take 7 or 8 touches for a prospect to convert, so having a solid process in place is a must if you want to squeeze all of the revenue you can out of your sales pipeline.
Sales and marketing doesn’t have to give you the cold sweats. By implementing these effective tips into your business, you’ll boost your sales and marketing efforts and convert more online visitors into customers.