Are you looking for some inspiration when it comes to your online sales strategy?
Do you want to know the best Marketing tools out there to help you increase your sales online? Dux-Soup has your back.
We were lucky enough to be joined recently by Digital Marketing, Sales Funnel, & Conversion Expert, Gaurav Sharma. The Founder of Attrock Digital Marketing, Gaurav has in excess of 10 years of experience working across all aspects of Marketing within multiple industries. He shared his top tips with us during his guest webinar slot.
If you couldn’t make it on the day, and fancy listening back, you can find the recording on our YouTube channel - How to increase sales online.
If, however, you’d like to jog your memory or read the highlights, this blog is for you.
What we’ll cover
We take you through Gaurav’s 6-step approach to success, and share his recommended Marketing tools to help your progression with each step of the journey:
1. Content Marketing
2. Search Engine Optimization
3. Power of Reviews
4. LinkedIn Marketing
5. Affiliate Marketing
6. Paid Advertising
So, let’s quack on!
1) How to boost sales with content marketing
Content Marketing is a way of creating awareness of your brand and providing educational content for your audience. To boost sales with Content Marketing consider the following:
o Create and understand your buying personas - identify the decision-makers, so you create content with that target audience in mind.
o Create intent-based content – make sure your content is, for example, educational/transactional/commercial. Content must be informative and add value. Include a CTA (call to action) to direct reads towards a transactional website – either to purchase a domain or gain further training.
o Create a lead magnet – this is useful content, that you send to your audience free of charge. It requires them to provide you with contact information (email address for example), so you can send the data they are looking for. This then means you can market to them in future.
o Optimize your landing page – make sure the user experience is clear, engaging and an easy user-journey to navigate. Ensure there is clarity around the product and how it will help the user, with clear CTAs.
o Guest blogging – promote yourself to 3rd party websites within your niche and provide engageable material by creating fresh content. It’s a great way to build your brand with followers of other businesses.
o Content Syndication – you can do this by re-publishing content on high authority 3 party websites, where the site names you as their source. Make the content engaging and valuable, informative, and unique.
Take a look at the best Marketing tools for Content Marketing below:
2) How to boost sales with search engine optimization
SEO can be very confusing, so let’s break it down into 3 easy steps.
a) Website on-page optimization – There are about 200 factors to consider in making the ‘perfect’ website. To summarize the main points, a website should be:
· User-friendly
· Well structured
· Mobile friendly
· Secure and safe
· Include SEO friendly URLs
· Include keywords in titles and subtitles and throughout content
These factors all help to ensure your page ranks - and this is how you start getting leads. Partnering with a SaaS SEO company can streamline this process, making it easier to achieve and maintain high search engine rankings.
b) Strong content strategy – To keep users engaged with their search engine, Google need to continue to provide authority websites when a search is conducted.
To improve your ranking with Google for example, ensure your website content is updated and is consistent. The more it mentions your keywords, the more you will appear to be an authority on the subject. Creating strong content to compliment and support the website is the best way to do this.
Create a ‘parent’ article, and a number of ‘child’ articles. Create links within the ‘child’ articles to link back to your ‘parent’ article. Link your ‘parent’ article back to your optimized website. This is the perfect way to generate traffic to your website and generate sales.
c) Extensive Link Building – develop an aggressive link building strategy. Not many companies do this, but those who do are much more likely to get ahead.
Reach out to 3 party websites, asking for a backlink to your own website in exchange for providing them with strong, well-written and engaging content. The aim is not to pay for backlinks as these can be picked up by Google. Creating educational, informative content could save the businesses you approach $200/300 for an equivalent 4000-word post There’s a clear benefit to the company too, provided your content is right.
Did you know?
There’s a term in the ‘SEO world’ known as Pogo-sticking. This is where a user jumps between a search engine results page (SERP) to a recommended site, and then jumps back to the SERP again before trying the next recommended site.
The jumping back and forth happens when the recommended sites aren’t interesting to the user.
The key is to increase dwell time and keep a visitor on your website, by using engaging, valuable content. Google notices when users are dwelling on your site and as the pattern increases, so will your ranking on the search engine results page.
To listen to this part in full, go to 17:40 on the How to increase sales online recording.
Take a look at the best Marketing tools for SEO, below:
3) The power of reviews
Having strong reviews for your business is really important. Unfortunately, you’ll never know if a positive or negative review on G2 or Trustpilot (for example), has led directly to conversions, or had a direct impact on a reduction in visitors to your site.
You can however manage and influence your online reviews with the right care and attention. Here’s how:
o Local Business Reviews - People trust reviews online, and for local businesses, this is really important. A good tip is to take a look at your reviews on Google and carry out some online reputation management. Respond to negative reviews and ask your clients who are happy to, to add their own reviews endorsing you.
One way to achieve an increase in review numbers for a café or restaurant for example, could be to ask customers if they’ll try a new dish and provide a review in exchange. In an ideal world, they’ll write a lengthy review of 50-100 words, adding your chosen keyword too. Ideally, you want to be receiving ratings of 4 or more, to really make your mark.
o Product Reviews - For software companies Trustpilot, Capterra and G2 are good review sites, and positive feedback will always help a business to generate online sales. Even if you have a strong brand, if you receive bad reviews, it can have a negative impact on your business.
o Ecommerce - If you have your own website or sell via a 3rd party website such as Amazon, you want to make sure your seller reviews for your online sales are strong. This doesn’t mean you should use unethical means - having strong customer service skills and being responsive to good and bad feedback is the key.
To listen to this part in full, go to 31:43 on the How to increase sales online recording.
Take a look at the best Marketing tools for Reviews below:
4) How to boost sales with LinkedIn automation
LinkedIn has been rapidly growing over the last 10 years or so, and whilst it caters for B2B and B2C, it is used more as a B2B tool. Here are 4 ways to make it work for you:
a) Networking - To get the best out of LinkedIn, make sure you have optimized your profile and that it looks professional. Complete the bio and make sure your profile provides a viewer with a complete history of your career and experience, including your business achievements.
b) Create and Join LinkedIn Groups - Join other networks and engage. People will use the network to find the expertise they are looking for. If someone is looking for website developers/content writers etc., this is the perfect opportunity for you to engage with users within the groups and build your network of prospects.
c) Newsletters - This is a fairly new feature and is a great way to reach all of your network with one click! If you don’t have the feature enabled, provided you have more than 150 followers and a few thousand connections, the support team at LinkedIn will enable the Newsletter option.
Simply create a post and share it to your entire network as a newsletter. This gives you instant reach.
d) Automation - Networking requires you to search for and identify your target audience, visit their profile, reach out to them to connect and like their posts. All of this is a hugely time-consuming process and unlikely to generate leads straight away.
To save time, the smart way of doing this of course is using a LinkedIn automation tool. There are multiple options, however, we obviously favor Dux-Soup (as does Gaurav). Whether using Dux-Soup with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, or with a Premium account – simply connect with Dux-Soup and you can start viewing profiles and sending message sequences straight away.
Once you have created your list in Dux-Soup, you can set the tool to auto-visit profiles while you focus on other tasks. The algorithm works in such a way that automated profile visits mimic your own behavior. This means the use of Dux-Soup goes unnoticed by LinkedIn.
Prior to the introduction of the connection limits (100 p/w), for one particular project, Gaurav reported 10% of the leads generated through Dux-Soup became conversions. The change in the weekly connection allowance has made people more pragmatic when it comes to outreach. Instead of targeting ‘anyone and everyone’, the limits mean people are now targeting more quality leads which are more likely to convert.
To listen to this part in full, go to 37:18 on the How to increase sales online recording.
Get started with your free Dux-Soup trial today – we don’t even need your credit card details to get you off the ground!
5) How to boost sales with Affiliates
Influencers and Affiliates are similar, but they are not the same. If you need to improve sales - approach an Affiliate. If you need to improve your brand – approach an Influencer. If you need a bit of both, you need a Micro-Influencer.
Affiliates are paid commission to generate sales for the brand. For this to work, make sure the landing page on your own website is well optimized, engaging and your messaging is clear. Once you’ve nailed this, you can start reaching out to find the right Affiliates.
Join networks such as CJ/Share A Sale, and platforms like Grouphigh, Heepsy, or SparkToro to help you ‘vet’ the potential affiliates. Do this based on their engagement rate, number of followers, website traffic, audience and demographic, making sure their audience aligns with your own. Provide each Affiliate with their own link. When any purchases are made via that link,you get the sale and your Affiliate gets the commission.
Affiliate marketing is best used for long term campaigns. If you want to build your own Affiliate network, here are a few tips on how to get started:
Did you know we have a Dux-Soup Affiliate Program - Dabble?
If you’re interested in becoming a Dux Affiliate and earning a generous commission for selling the most comprehensive LinkedIn automation tool out there; join our Affiliate Program – Dabble. It’s free to join and you can set up your account straight away.
Check out the Dux-Soup Affiliate pages for more information, or simply sign up here.
You can leverage affiliate marketing via blog posts, webinars, social media posts, YouTube videos, emails or podcasts. The best medium to use, will differ depending on who your target audience is.
To listen to this part in full, go to 47:00 on the How to increase sales online recording.
Take a look at the best Marketing tools for Affiliate Marketing below:
6) How to Boost Sales with Paid Advertising
It’s easy to increase sales with paid advertising. Where Exponential growth takes time (i.e. SEO optimization), paid ads produce a linear growth model where conversions complete at a faster pace. The only down-side, is when the adverts stop – so does the revenue generated from those adverts.
Here are a few tips to get the best out of Pay-per-Click advertising:
Search ads – great for businesses with small budgets
· Use the same keywords as your direct competitors – by doing this you’re not only reaching out to a qualified audience, you’re also boosting your brand awareness. The best way to do this is to find competitors you think have an advantage over you and make use of their research when it comes to their chosen keywords.
· Write persuasive copy – make sure you address the pain points of your target audience and discuss their end goal, highlighting your USP. Keep copy short with strong headers (no more than 30 characters) and add clear CTAs. If you’re local, advertise that fact with a local phone number.
· Link your search ads to landing pages – this creates brand awareness and increases traffic to your site.
· Discontinue ads that aren’t performing well – don’t throw your budget away on something that isn’t generating revenue. If you aren’t reaching the right audiences, then stop.
Display ads - great for raising brand awareness
They work by appearing alongside (associated) online material and pick up on your recent searches. Known as ‘remarketing’, it’s where a visitor has left the site without completing a transaction. It’s a great way to ‘subconsciously’ generate brand recall, and by continually targeting them with your related display ad, it’s more likely to lead to a sale. Here’s what you need to know:
· Use a mix of contextual and audience targeting:
- Contextual - place ads on relevant websites to generate better conversion rates (for example showing an ad for dog food on a dog rescue website).
- Audience – show your ads to people who are likely to enjoy your content based on their previous search data.
Pick your placements wisely – check out the slide below to work out how:
Make sure you build responsive ads that display well on a mobile platform, this will broaden the reach of your advert. You can do this yourself in your Google Ads account, by following these steps:
o Select “Display Campaigns”
o Click on “Ads & Extensions”
o Click on “+”
o Select Responsive Display Ad
To listen to this part in full, go to 54:18 on the How to increase sales online recording.
Take a look at the best Marketing tools for Pay-per-Click Marketing below:
To listen to the Q&A that followed with Gaurav and the Dux team – go to 1:00 on the How to increase sales online recording.
About Gaurav Sharma
Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic. He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more.
