Zero To Poor Sales ? Sales Boosting Marketing Solutions To Consider For Start-ups And Entrepreneurs.

 

So you face these challenges and important issues …

 

1. Your business is facing too many competitors.

2.Your sales are poor

3. Wondering how you can convert your social media connections to customers.

4.You lack effective digital marketing know how

5.You dream BIG

6.You enjoy learning new ideas

7.Your current education isn’t suffice for digital marketing

8.You spread yourself thin through multi-tasking

9.You have a lot to do but little time

About The Author 

Hie Iam Cain Ndhlovu the founder of Sunrise Digital Marketing Agency in Harare, Zimbabwe. I help startups and entrepreneurs through provision of outsourced digital marketing services that generate sales on their behalf so that their businesses can grow to medium sized enterprises and beyond.

In summary the benefits gained from this are; (1)  increased and sustainable sales (2) relieving the marketing function / helping entrepreneurs focus on less (3) gaining digital marketing skill (4)  achievement of business goals 

                                                           I do relate …

 

Here is my own story. A generous friend called Thando helped me in 2007 to get employment as a Sales Negotiator at a real estate agency.

As the national economy went under my father always told me to start my own thing. So the entrepreneurial nature of commission based employment resonated with me but no one told me about what needed to be done to earn the commission.

The property market had vicious competition. I was not prepared for it. I was just a school leaver who only knew poem writing.

I still have fond memories of my masterpiece Wilderness Wanderer which talked about a beautiful girl searching for true love. Indeed, I was equipped with a table knife for a gun fight. I lost the fight because I was eventually fired.

I joined another estate agency. This time I wasn’t fired but the agency owner simply told me the words, “maybe selling real estate isn’t for you.” I left on my own.

Ultimately, I had to answer one question, “How can I improve my sales?”

I wasn’t prepared to quite yet. Being penniless and at the deep end I tried to make do with what was there.

So I managed to turn poem writing into property article writing. Noticing the new development my friend helped me set up a blog.

I am forever grateful for this because the blog published my property articles on the internet thereby marketing myself to a wider audience at zero cost (blogger is free).

 

                                                      A turning point  …

The year 2014 was a turning point because after years of try and error the new approach finally paid dividends as I earned USD 1 000.00.

It all started when I wrote an article titled,

 “ Financial consequences of purchasing property from a seriously-ill seller and other purchases to avoid ”.

 

This article resonated with a Harare lady. She had just purchased a Msasa (Harare) house from a seriously-ill seller and there was an outstanding balance.

After reading the post she decided to clear this balance by selling another property - a piece of land in Madokero (Harare).

I was the real estate agent she commissioned to do the job on her behalf. Finally, I had discovered the winning formula!

Success happened when I was at my last real estate agency. Of course I wasn’t fired this time but I left with full honors!

After the digital marketing miracle of 2014 I was emboldened to start a digital marketing agency in pursuit of the vision of starting my own thing.

Zero To Poor Sales ?

Sales Boosting Marketing Solutions To Consider For Start-ups And Entrepreneurs !

 

So what are the various marketing solutions a start-up, entrepreneur, small business or side hustler can consider in order to boost their sales ? Generally, marketing today is divided into two - offline and online marketing.

Offline Marketing

The world started without internet and the promotional methods started in this era are what is called offline or traditional marketing.

Online Marketing

After the internet marketers could not be left behind as everybody else quickly embraced the powerful technology. Promotional methods that use the internet are what is called online or digital marketing.

 

So what are the examples of online and offline marketing ? Here is a infographic with answers. 

Which is the best ? Online vs Offline Marketing.

Probably the dominant narrative these days is biased towards online marketing. If truth is to be told both offline and online marketing have their respective set of advantages.

However, with the growing accessibility to the internet as is always reported by POTRAZ (Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe ) and with more and more people consuming information on the move online marketing certainly prove to be much more beneficial and advantageous than offline or traditional marketing. Please consider the following comparison

Outsourcing Digital Marketing Services

Despite the fact that digital marketing is more effective many small businesses still heavily rely on traditional marketing because they lack digital marketing know-how.

So how do you solve this problem?

You can simply out source digital marketing services. These days you do not need to do everything yourself in order to become a successful business person. Outsourcing digital marketing services means you simply get a digital marketer to do it for you. Here are some of the benefits;

Benefits of outsourcing digital marketing services

1) HIGHER SALES.

Sales gained through outsourced services are higher than what you earn doing it yourself (DIY).

2) FOCUS ON CORE ACTIVITIES.

Helps mitigates against doing a million tasks at the same time and achieving nothing or less than average ( Helps avoid spreading yourself thin)

3) LEARN MORE.

Brings along a wealth of knowledge, education and professionalism.

4 Common Digital Marketing Mistakes

1. Not marketing your website or blog

Many believe that once a site is live it will market itself and visitors will flock to it in their millions. This is not true. Why ? Because without real efforts to distribute your site’s content especially on social media and search engines your site is wasted resource.

There are over 1 billion websites on the internet today so what are the chances of someone stumbling upon yours?

 

2. Having unrealistic expectations

Sometimes this is caused by the assumption that online initiatives have overnight results. Yes there are cases of exceptional success but these are rare at best. If you are wise you don’t base strategy on exception but on rule . The rule is that online success is built upon hard work not shortcuts.

 

 

3. Engaging in shady practices

A programmer once told me he could improve my blog’s ranking on Google for certain key words. When I asked him to explain how I discovered that his methods were what Google Inc call SEO spam or black hat methods that may involve tricking the search engine into giving you a better search ranking for certain key words.

Google has invested millions for combating SEO spam that is why they have developed Google Penguin a software dedicated to punishing websites involved in what it may deem black hat methods.

Being penalized by Google is something difficult to fix.

 

4. Marketing to everyone

Many companies erroneously measure a website’s success by the quantity not quality of visitors. For start-ups, micro and small enterprises successful marketing is usually niche marketing.

 A site require the right visitors because at the end of it all you need visitors who will convert to customers.