You’ve created a great product or service. You are ready to introduce it to the market. You launch with excitement and optimism. But you find yourself months later with poor and lagging sales. What does that mean for your business? More importantly, how can you possibly turn things around?
To diagnose the problem, you first need to take a step back. It can be frustrating to not hit the benchmarks you have set for yourself. But it is important to separate that frustration from your reasoning skills. In this blog, we will illuminate why your business isn’t generating sales and how you can correct this.
1) You haven’t included a call to action
Customers like to be well-informed about how to interact with your business. Should they sign up for a free trial or request a quote? A strong call to action can leave them with a lasting impression about what the process of using your company’s product is like. In order to generate leads for your business, you have to be very clear with customers throughout the process about what is needed from them.
Another benefit of a adding a strong call to action is that you can use the space to highlight one of the perks you will be providing customers when they sign up. For instance, you can say “Get started with your first lesson now” so that customers are reminded that they will be getting value when they begin with you. Once customers are directed throughout the website experience, you will start to generate more sales.
2) Your clients are having trouble contacting you
One of the most common customer complaints about a company is that they are hard to get in touch with. Customers want to know that you can make yourself available to them to answer questions and take appointments. That’s where tools like an online booking calendar such as SuperSaaS can come in handy. You can allow customers to plan time with you at their convenience.
Look for scheduling software that imports and exports customer and calendar information in addition to one that integrates with popular calendar programs and other business apps you use. The added access that this gives customers to your business will be very much appreciated.
3) Your target market is not specific enough
You don’t want to be wasting your marketing and sales efforts on people who just aren’t interested in what you have on offer. Unfortunately, many times businesses can cast their net too wide. In an effort to get as many customers as possible, they forget about the relevancy of those customers.
Put simply, you don’t want to waste time trying to sell to a segment of the population that just isn’t interested in your product. One way to combat this is to create a comprehensive buyer profile for your target customer. What does this customer want? What are their goals and values? What are their challenges and pain points? Intimately understanding what your customer wants will help you make more sales.
4) You have too many options presented on your website
As was stated earlier, customers prefer to be guided through the process of converting. They don’t want to be presented with overwhelming choices and options. In fact, studies have shown that several different choices make a customer less likely to convert.
If you are selling various selections, you should try to minimize the choices for the customer. There will be other opportunities on your website to explain further about the variety of choices customers have. However, at the start, it is recommended to only display the most popular items you offer. This will help customers make a choice and you generate a sale.
5) You aren’t paying attention to your competitors
As much as you would like to put all of your focus on your own business, you still have to keep an eye out for similar businesses. Competitor research is an important part of sustaining any type of growth with your business. This means that you not only have to look at how your competitors are structuring their product but also how they have modeled their pricing and customer service aspects.
Never forget that your target customer has choices. You don’t want to be left behind because you didn’t pay attention to how the competition was moving. In most cases, customers will choose the business that outstrips the competitors and provides the best value for their life.
6) You haven’t mapped out a marketing funnel
Generating sales is not a one-step function. Generating sales is actually a process. In every business model, there is a marketing funnel. Before a customer makes a purchase, they want to know they’re making the right choice. It’s important that they feel loyalty or trust in your business. So before they purchase, you have to take them through the steps of convincing them to buy.
This process is harder for the software businesses that are selling services and are subscription-based. It is harder to convince people to buy something they can not experience physically. That’s why you need to pay a lot of attention to the strategies in your software marketing plan to make sure it meets all your goals and represents your business’s values
From the moment they discover your business, the customer is in your marketing funnel. Each marketing funnel differs, but it generally focuses on getting people aware of your product, making them familiar with your goods or services, evaluating their responses to your offer, and ends with making a conversion.
If you haven’t structured your marketing funnel so that you aren’t aware of the steps it takes to move people through it, you aren’t going to have as much success in making sales. Organize your marketing structure so you can spot patterns in how sales happen with your company.
7) Your website is not mobile-friendly
Desktop computers are slowly giving way to the rise of mobile phones and other handheld devices when it comes to e-commerce. The majority of purchases made online were made on mobile devices in 2018. This number is only expected to rise as more people globally get online access through their phones. Thus, it is absolutely imperative that you make your sales site responsive to mobile devices. Otherwise, you could be missing out on a huge amount of sales.
This may seem like a lot of work, but it is worth it. You may need to adjust alignment and adapt any visuals on your pages for different dimensions. Some companies even streamline their website so as to make it more easily navigable via a mobile device. These are all things that will make it easier for a customer to choose your business.
Diagnosing why your business isn’t generating the numbers you are looking for doesn’t have to be guesswork. These tips and tools can get you started by giving you certain avenues to correcting common issues. All of these tips boil down to one thing: the customer. You have to make the process as pain-free and enjoyable as possible for them. Once you have done that, you are bound to see results.
