The year 2024 is coming to an end. With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the way businesses operate, many new strategies and tactics come to light. The demand for some products dropped to its all-time low while others are becoming highly popular.
Many companies had to reinvent themselves to adjust to the new normal. Trying to meet the consumer’s needs led to the development of different approaches to sales and marketing. The key goal of many businesses in 2024 is to make a profit while covering the losses suffered in 2024.
Let’s take a look at 6 important tips for businesses in 2024 to consider in order to boost sales and stay on top of their game.
1. Set SMART Goals
Setting the right goals is the key to success for any online business. However, goal setting is a complex process that requires a well-structured approach. For example, “Boosting sales” is an excellent goal but lacks any specifics. As a result, it’s tough to create an efficient strategy that helps achieve it.
That’s where SMART goals come in. SMART stands for:
- Specific – goals must be specific. Narrow them down as much as possible for efficient planning.
- Measurable – a goal should be easy to measure so you can track progress properly.
- Attainable – by evaluating your past efforts, you should understand which goals are possible to achieve and which aren’t.
- Relevant – the goals should work toward achieving long-term objectives and supporting the company’s bottom line.
- Time-based – the goal should have a timeline, which is easy to follow for your team
Some examples of SMART goals for online businesses are:
- Increase sales by 10% in three months.
- Convert 10,000 new customers before June 2024.
- Improve customer satisfaction score in two months.
By taking a close look at your past sales achievements, you can understand which goals are attainable for your team at the moment. For example, if you managed to increase sales by 5% last month, setting a goal to “increase sales by 25% in 30 days” is unreasonable. Consider increasing it by 7% to 10%.
2. Work on Your Customer Support
Customer satisfaction is one of the most important factors contributing to your company’s success. If you want to achieve better results in 2024, your online support should be impeccable.
Today, customers expect an immediate reaction to their support requests. In fact, if you don’t pick up the phone within three rings or answer a web form request within 10 to 15 minutes, you could lose a client.
Train your customer support specialists to ensure an immediate reaction, a well-thought-out conversation structure, and smooth problem-solving. You may want to outsource customer support to a company that can do it 24/7. It’s usually a cheaper solution than hiring an in-house support team.
3. Invest in Email Marketing
Even though social media and OTT marketing is on the rise, email still remains one of the most efficient marketing tactics. The email marketing ROI can exceed 4400% depending on how much time, effort, and of course, the money you are ready to invest in it.
Things to consider in 2024 are:
- Video content – use video content in your email messages. More than 50% of consumers want to see more video content from the brands they like.
- Personalization – emails gives you an excellent opportunity to connect with the customer through personalized messages. Today, personalization is an integral part of any marketing effort.
- Trust – even with all the spam still making its way into inboxes, email remains a digital channel that consumers trust. By structuring your message in a valuable and personalized manner, you can improve the relationship with your clients.
While you are working on your email marketing campaign, don’t forget about email validation. According to experts from Byteplant, sending your messages to invalid addresses affects your sender’s reputation, hinders your marketing campaign, and hurts your relationship with existing and potential clients.
4. Employ Retargeting
Did you know that only 2% of customers convert during the first visit to your website? The rest leave to look for other options, get distracted, feel unhappy about your website design, etc. If you let these potential clients go, you are losing a big opportunity to drive a sale through.
To make sure you don’t lose these visitors, you need to employ retargeting. Retargeting involves attaching an invisible piece of code to the user once they leave your website. Then you can follow visitors to other websites, social media, and even email and place a paid ad in front of them.
These ads remind users about your products and bring them back to the website to complete a purchase.
5. Practice Sales Enablement
Many online businesses don’t invest enough time and money in enabling their sales reps. Meanwhile, these specialists need sufficient information, equipment, and materials to get their job done right.
Enabling your sales team to execute their responsibilities can allow you to boost sales tremendously. For example, you can give them access to the necessary software to track potential clients and provide them with sufficient information about certain products. Or you can come up with efficient tutorials to help with the sales rep onboarding process.
Pro tip: Written and video materials you use for sales enablement can be reworked into blog posts for your content marketing efforts. Click here for more info: https://www.allego.com/blog/what-is-sales-enablement/.
6. Consider Dropshipping
Dropshipping involves working with a third party supplier and eliminates storage costs. You can sell some of your items through the dropshipping model to boost sales while cutting expenses.
For products that you can’t afford to stock, dropshipping works the best. While this model isn’t highly profitable on its own, it works in an excellent manner as an addition to your online business. Other third-party providers can process orders from picking to packing and even returns like https://redstagfulfillment.com/order-fulfillment/.
The Takeaway
In 2024, online shopping is expected to thrive. Even if the pandemic subsides, online buying habits are here to stay. By using the above tips, you can stay on top of your game in both sales and marketing.
