Level up your sales and marketing approach with our top 5 tips.

As business advisors, many of our conversations with business owners, business leaders and entrepreneurs lead back to sales and marketing in some way. Sales and marketing principles touch just about every decision in business from how you find and connect with your customers to how your product or service is priced, delivered and consumed. Regardless of what you sell or how great your product or service is, there will be a need for sales and marketing efforts in your business.

If sales and marketing is your middle name, we invite you to read on and take away what you will to improve your business. If it sounds like a foreign language, fear not, our team of marketing and sales advisors are here to help! Simply contact us to book a meeting with one of our mentors.

It’s difficult to summarise all our sales and marketing advice into just five tips so we’ve chosen the top five themes that regularly come up in conversations with our clients. So, without further ado, we present our top 5 tips for sales & marketing:

Tip #1: Define your target market

One of the most important elements of a marketing or sales plan is a clearly defined target market. These are your ideal customers – the people you have designed your product or service for and who will draw value from it. Your target market can be defined in many different ways and you can have as many as you like (defining one to three groups is a strong start).

The key is to define clear target markets and be as detailed as possible. The benefit of having a clear view of your target market(s) is that it helps form the direction of your sales and marketing efforts and can determine where you advertise, what you say, your price point, how you build relationships with your customers, the list goes on!

Tip #2: Promote your unique selling point

A unique selling point (USP) is a value or attribute that makes your product or service truly unique and superior to your competitors. This should relate to the values, wants or needs of your target market and compel them to choose you over another option.

For example, you might choose to stay in an Airbnb on an international holiday to have an authentic experience and live like a local versus choosing to stay in a well-known Hotel to enjoy familiar conveniences and good quality service. Once you define your unique selling point, shout it from the rooftops.

Tip #3: Connect with emotions

According to Indeed, 95% of purchase decisions are emotional. Connecting with the emotions of your customer is one of the most persuasive sales tactics, and becomes a whole lot easier when you have a clearly defined target market – you know who they are and hopefully, what makes them tick.

Connecting on an emotional level puts your customer first by featuring what’s in it for them, rather than what makes your brand so great. For example, Apple could talk about their latest products, amazing technology or price, instead, they connect with their customer’s emotions by sharing beautiful images, inspiring adventures and life’s special moments captured on their devices with their latest Instagram campaign #shotoniphone.

Tip #4: Set realistic goals

This tip applies to far more than just sales and marketing, but it is important to remember when setting goals and KPI’s for your sales and marketing efforts. It is far more motivating to smash an achievable goal than fall short of one that is unrealistic.

Remember what is within your control and be honest with yourself about what can be achieved in a week, month and year and then develop goals from there. From a financial goal-setting perspective, don’t forget to consider both what your business needs to earn and what you need to draw as a wage. And remember, when things change (think worldwide pandemic!) it’s a good idea to adjust your goals to fit.

Tip #5: Provide an exceptional experience

Our final tip is to provide customers with an exceptional experience at every touch point. It can take customers 7 interactions with a brand before they make the decision to purchase. That might mean seeing a Facebook ad, walking past your store, interacting with a staff member or browsing your website before they even formally begin the customer journey. The idea is to make interactions at any stage with your business as easy, enjoyable and valuable as possible and ideally, exceed your customer’s expectations.

This could be as simple as a surprise free gift with an online purchase, a cup of herbal tea after a beauty treatment or a handwritten note – it doesn’t have to cost a lot but it will have your customer raving about their experience and acting as your walking, talking advocates amongst their friends and family – the most effective and cheapest form of advertising!

If any of these tips have raised some questions or if you’d like to explore ideas for how they can be specifically implemented in your business please get in touch via the form below.