In business there are essentially just 4 ways to improve business turnover.
Quite simply you can:
- Sell to more customers
- Sell more often to the same customers
- Sell at a higher price
- Sell new products or repacked versions of your old products
It is as simple as that - traditionally people tend to ignore the latter 2 out of fear or just inability to think outside their traditional offerings.
The web is a powerful vehicle for enabling you to achieve the first 2 - Selling to more customers and to sell more often to the same customers.
Let me share a story with you of a client I worked with who designed and built pools. Now these were not your ordinary backyard pool. The people my client built for did not hesitate to spend up to $100,000 and beyond on their pool and landscaping. Now as most pool companies do, my client also provided pool supplies by way of chemicals, accessories and spare parts. When we designed a new website for him we came to realsie that he was leaving a huge opportunity pass him by in failing to do more with his pool supply aspect of the business. We soon came to realise that a huge opportunity existed for him in selling chemicals because he knew that once supplied he could quite easily estimate to within a couple of days when they would need re-supply.
What we set out to do was to firstly set up an email marketing campaign to ensure that he kept himself in the mind of his customers. The newsletter would contain pool maintenance tips, landscaping tips and hints about treating your pool etc etc. He would also offer "specials" on certain products to draw their attention to his supplies.
We next ensured that he setup an online shop to sell his products. This was important becasue his customers were busy people, well educated and well acquainted with buying over the Internet. One of the smart initaives we put in place was an autoresponder for anyone who bought a bag of pool chemical. We knew that the bag would last a certain period of time and at that time we sent out a gentle reminder that they may be in need of renewing their supply of chemicals.
A simple but effective application of getting more sales from the existing customer. Many of these customers were in fact going elsewhere before. In addition to the chemicals we of course managed to up-sell the customers to other product lines.
In order to increase your sales over the Internet you should also pay attention to a few other important aspects because just having a plain website will not cut it. You should be considering:
- Improving the brand image of your business ensuring consistency across all areas of the business
- Develop relationship with your customers, suppliers and related stakeholders such as alliance partners off whom you can leverage your business
- Look for new markets, the internet opens many of these up to you that previously were inaccessible
- Use your website to deliver efficiency gains not only for you but your customers and suppliers
- Use the technology to make processes easier, more simple and not more complex.
