You can win more sales from your web site

“In any recession there are winners and losers, businesses fail through lack of appropriate action, whatever it might be; fighting to reduce costs must go in parallel with battling to win more sales.” OsCar Systems help organisations find the course of action most likely to ensure that they come out on top, fitter and stronger to take advantage of the state of the economy, not fall victim of it. Each of the sections below can be a paper in its own right but this is great start to enable you to get a focus on what you should be doing to develop your successful strategy.

Graham Bailey has amassed a huge wealth of experience in finance, sales and marketing in companies ranging from the largest in the world to successful start ups built from nothing and being sold often in difficult economic climates. He is now applying the knowledge he has gained to help companies in the UK and Europe achieve strength and success. His simple mantra is “Use knowledge of your product, your customers and your business to make the right decisions and act on them now.”

1. Know your customers – you know your product or service; you may feel that it has universal appeal. Sadly or fortunately, this is rarely the case, as targeting the universe is more than a little problematic. What you require is a deal of soul searching to identify exactly who would derive the most benefit and WHY. Identifying the needs of your ideal customer is key to everything else you will do.

2. If you are an existing business, talk to your customers and revisit all your past ones, even if you upset them some time ago, go back to them now. People who know you represent the easiest route to derive more sales. Unless you have a once in a lifetime sale, there is always a need to keep talking to clients. Find out what they need; if they are completely happy and have no current requirements – get a referral and a testimonial. If you are a new business, talk to everyone you know, not to sell to them but to find out who they know who may appreciate the benefits that you established in step one. No takers? Think again about the viability of your business idea.

3. Do you have a web site? New company or established business, the table below shows where activity should be focused.

Web site hits

Hits low, sales low – Lots of work to do but maximum potential for improvement.

Hits low, sales medium – Focus on Links, Keywords and PR activity to get more hits.

Hits high, sales high. – A reputable web site or your business does not come from the web. More hits could mean more business still.

Hits medium, sales low. – Visitors not always seeing the benefits you offer.

Hits medium, sales medium. – Improve Links and PR.

Hits medium, sales high. – Improve Links and PR, web site conversion OK.

Hits high, sales low. – Poor representation of your benefits or call to action.

Hits high, sales medium. – Improve web site for conversion tactics.

Hits high, sales high. – Got it right – relax and focus on something else now.

4. If the chart above shows that you need to do more work on your web site then following the process here should improve matters. First of all, if you don’t yet have a web site, find your keywords first and build those into the body, titles and page URLs of your design. If your web site exists already then you should try to achieve that by some re-design. Key words are KEY and will ultimately get you found on Google and Yahoo. An excellent resource for doing this is https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal it is important to choose short phrases rather than single words because if you start to use Pay per Click, you will find them expensive as other people will be bidding against you. Think about what you sell and what people might use to try to find this.

5. The next vital stage is to get links to your web site, preferably from other web sites that have a relationship with your subject. If you know people with such web sites, now is the time to pick up the phone and ask for a link. Choose the words that they will highlight with a link carefully, do not use “Click here”, you will get little benefit but if you are a photographer, you could for example choose – “wedding pictures to remember forever” for better effect.

6. Social bookmarking is now an essential, so get onto Facebook – http://www.facebook.com, make a video and put it onto Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/ also Tweet on Twitter 140 characters at a time – http://www.twitter.com/oscarpbx also you can learn from the Social Median Portal http://www.socialmediaportal.com/ and as many more as you have time for. Aim for getting at least six social network links to your site.

7. Finally, you need to write some articles and get them published on the web. You can do this yourself at http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/ or use a professional, we can advise on suitable candidates for you who can help get your news out there. Sales is the result of a funnel, leads in the wide top end and sales from the narrow bottom end. Seek to put as much in the top as you possibly can.

To get in touch about improving your sales performance Graham can be contacted at www.oscar-pbx.com/sales.html and we will be pleased to chat through what can be done.