If you want to grow your business, your choice of strategies boils down to three possibilities:
• Expand your pool of qualified prospects
• Close a higher percentage of prospects
• Sell more to existing customers
Deciding which to focus on isn’t always as simple as it sounds. Here are a few guidelines to help:
Do You Need More Prospects? Google Analytics can offer a tremendous amount of insight. Check your statistics on “new vs. returning visitors.” If your new visitors are trending down, step up your prospecting.
The keywords people use to find your site also offer clues. If the majority of searches come from some variation of your company name, you’re attracting people who are already familiar with your company, not new prospects.
How’s Your Conversion Rate? If business growth has stalled despite a stream of new prospects, you’re either attracting the wrong people or, more likely, you need to work harder to make the sale. Start with a critical look at your website. Dig into the “Behavior” section of Google Analytics for clues, or do some usability testing to determine what to change.
Review your contact strategy. If you’re not staying in front of people regularly with email, snail mail and/or social media, you’re leaving money on the table – perhaps a lot of it.
How About Selling More to Existing Customers? More frequent contacts can go a long ways towards boosting the average value of a customer. So can line extensions or new product categories.
Related offers can also help. Bundle compatible products together and offer them at a discount. Offer free shipping for orders over a certain dollar amount. Give a credit good towards a future purchase.
Know Where You’re Going. To quote Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” Don’t choose a marketing strategy based on what everyone else is doing. Take a close look at where your company is right now, decide which metric will have the largest influence on your growth, and then – once you know where you’re going – determine how you’ll get there.
