Except you’re running a charity organization, the main reason you started a business is to make sales.

When you pray for your business, I’m sure your prayer point goes beyond, “God please give me customers.” You pray for lots of customers, customers that will come and clear your shop in one day. Customers that will clear your container before it even touches land (if you’re into importation).

I’m here to tell you your prayer point is valid and achievable.

Today we’ll be discussing how to boost sales using 3 strategies that have been proven to work.

1. Offer things for free

2. Survey

3. Adverts

4. Recommendations and referrals

- Free things
I know you’ll be wondering how giving things for free helps you boost sales. I’ll tell you.

This technique involves ‘deceit’ sometimes. Let’s say you sell fashion items- shoes, bags, clothes, etc. You could tell your customers, ‘buy a shoe and bag and get a shirt for free’. But the shirt isn’t free. Do you know why?

Because before giving the price of the shoe and bag, you must have added the price of the shirt to them.

Most of the ‘buy 1 get 1 free’ promo you see are not really promos.

Everybody likes free things.

But you shouldn’t always use this technique ‘deceitfully’. Sometimes give people things for free indeed, but not to the point that it affects your sale. This is where discount comes in.

Give people a discount. Let’s say you’re supposed to make a profit of N5,000. You can decide to make a profit of N4,000 instead. But as I said earlier, don’t let it affect your sales. You can do this especially when you want to do away with old stock. It’s like the clearance sales you see around.

- Survey
Survey could be in the form of questionnaires.

You write out very simple questions that should take less than 5 minutes to answer and send them out to your customers. If you’re an online store, you could do this through emails. If you’re an offline store, you could have them complete your questionnaire.

The essence of a survey is to know what your customers want.

Ask your customers what they want. You’d be surprised to find out that what you think they want isn’t what they want/like. You’d also be surprised to find out that there are other services you could be providing that could earn you money, but you’re ignorant about those services.

Make sure you collate your findings and act on them. If you don’t, it’s as good as not taking any survey at all.

- Adverts

I’m sure adverts aren’t new to us. Use adverts to promote your sales. Coca-cola is one of the biggest multi-national companies, yet they are always in your face with their adverts. Be like Coca-cola. Always be in the face of your customers and for every time you’re in their face promise them value. When they come, make sure you give them that value.

The world is noisy. If you’re quiet about your business, you won’t be heard.

The reason you should keep advertising is that many people won’t hear you the first, second or third time and unfortunately, you can’t tell which of your adverts will strike someone to buy.

There are different avenues for adverts. Find out the one that works best for you and maximize it. While maximizing that one, keep testing others too.

- Recommendation and referrals
Nothing beats this. I can't count how many times people have come to me and said, "XYZ said you're a wonderful copywriter and you helped him with his sales copy. Please help me with mine too."

But people can only refer or recommend you if what you’re offering is valuable and you’ve shown yourself capable of maintaining that standard.

If I buy something from you and I’m not satisfied with it, even if you pay me I won’t refer or recommend someone else to buy from you because if I recommend something that lacks quality it means I have poor standards, and I don’t.

So, ensure that every deal you give people has value. It will be easier for people to recommend or refer you that way.

Well said Amala, please how much do you write sales copy?

jospepper:
Well said Amala, please how much do you write sales copy?

Hello dear. Kindly send me a message on 07062525532