There’s no escaping it, the credit crunch is well and truly upon us and with a recession being announced and people losing jobs, now is the time to take action. It may be tempting to try to reduce your marketing and sales budget but that won’t necessarily help you to survive the recession.
So what’s the solution? You need to be clever with your marketing plan. If you have a company website then this is a very good place to start. Your website should be generating leads and enquiries from potential customers and if yours isn’t, then you need to make a change and quickÂ
1) Website rewrite
If your website has been online for a while but enquiries and conversions have dried up then you should consider investing in some online copywriting to boost your sales. Professional online copywriting can transform the content of a website so that the copy speaks directly to your target audience, conveys the benefits of your business over your competitors and is optimised for the search engines. This is an affordable and effective way to market your business and update your website.
2) Online articles
Creating and distributing articles online is a great way to help your website become more prominent in the search engines and inform visitors of any company or industry news. If you don’t have any articles on your website then you could be missing out on reaching more visitors and ultimately making more sales. If you have an in house copywriter in your marketing department then enlist their help to write interesting articles related to your company. If you don’t have anyone in house then consider contacting an online copywriting company. Online copywriters are generally very experienced in creating compelling and topical articles for businesses. Some will even source relevant keywords for you and syndicate your articles to other websites which can help with the search engine optimisation of your website.
3) Pay per click landing pages
If you find that you’re spending lots of money on pay per click but you aren’t getting any conversions then it could be that the landing pages that you’re directing visitors to are not relevant to the advert displayed. For example, if one of your visitors clicks on your advert for a particular product but this advert takes them through to an unrelated page then they’re going to have to search your site for the product they wanted and unfortunately many people won’t bother. All pay per click adverts should direct your visitors to pages directly relevant to the advert; otherwise you’re paying for a click which is highly unlikely to convert. If you don’t have time to create the landing pages then consider contacting an online copywriting company who can write compelling copy which will convert customers into sales.
4) Newsletters
Don’t forget your existing customers when it comes to trying to generate more sales. An affordable way to keep in touch with your customers is through a company newsletter. Newsletters can give you a great opportunity to promote any sales, inform people of any company news and bring people back to your website. The trick with a good newsletter though is to make it enticing enough for people to read as opposed to deleting it before they even open it. If writing isn’t your forte or your marketing team are too busy then you should consider investing in the some professional online copywriting. An experienced online copywriting company can achieve the perfect tone of voice and write relevant and interesting content to get visitors coming back to your website.
5) Blog posts
If you don’t currently have a blog then this could be a great way to discuss latest news with visitors to reassure them that the business is doing well during tough times. The idea of a blog post is to give a company a personality, the blog posts can be as long or short as you feel necessary but they can really help your website visitors get to know the people behind the company. If you already have a blog but you haven’t posted on it for a long time then this doesn’t create a very good impression to visitors. It can be difficult to find time to sit down in a day and write a post, if you struggle with this then enlist the help of an online copywriter. Professional copywriters can discuss the tone of voice that you want to achieve on your blog and can also write interesting posts to keep visitors coming back. Some blogs can be so successful that they actually create a following and can become a brand or business in their own right.
The key for businesses to survive times of economic uncertainty is to make the most of affordable marketing options. Don’t be tempted to scrimp and save and withhold your marketing spend and instead follow the ideas above for more affordable and clever ways to boost sales.