3 Marketing Problems Faced by Small Businesses and How to Fix Them
/Watch the video or read the transcript.
Let me ask you a question, do you want to attract more clients to your business? And do you want to make more sales? I bet the answer is, "Yes, of course."
Today I want to talk to you about the three biggest marketing challenges that small businesses face and why they can't make more sales before they solve these three problems.
1: Website Traffic
The number one problem is a traffic problem. A lot of people that I talk to tell me, "I need to attract more clients, I need to make more sales. How do I do that?" The number one problem you need to solve, is to attract more traffic to your website.
So regardless of social media and what you're doing, whether you have a brick and mortar shop or not, your website nowadays is your shop. It is the place where people are going to go before deciding whether they want to engage with you, to buy from you, or to hire you.
And how do you actually get more traffic to your website?
First of all you need to have access to Google analytics so you check and see how much traffic your website is getting. You would be looking for at least hundreds of people or thousands of people checking your website, visiting your website everyday. I am talking about hundreds of thousands per day. I know this sounds like a big number for some people, but conversion rates aren't all that big. And we're going to talk about it a minute, but you need to think that from all the people looking at your website, a small percentage of them are going to buy from you, and that's why you need to attract more traffic. When I check many people's websites, I can see that they don't have a lot of traffic. And if they don't have a lot of traffic, they won't get a lot of clients or make a lot of sales.
How to solve that problem is to look at how you can attract more traffic to your website.
Some ways to do that are:
optimise your website for search engines, so you can be found on Google. So you need to look at whether your website is optimised for search engine, and if it's not, you need to take care of it ASAP.
Use Pinterest which is a visual search engine platform. Whether some people thing it is just for cookie recipes or pretty pictures, it really isn't. It can send a lot of targeting traffic back to your website. So go check it out, how you can make Pinterest work for you.
Use YouTube, which is also a search engine and it can help drive more traffic to your website organically.
Your social media platforms; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all can be a source of traffic to your website if used correctly.
And of course another source of traffic while you build up your organic traffic, which can take a period of time, is by paid advertising. So paid advertising like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads, can all send traffic to your website.
That's the problem number one that you need to solve if you want to make more sales online is to send targeted traffic to your website. You can choose an organic way to do it or a paid way to do it, and while you build the organic marketing, paid advertising can be really a lot of help to you.
2: Conversion rates
Some people do have a lot of traffic come into their website, but they still not making the sales. So what's happening? What's the problem? It's called conversions.
So you have a lot of people coming to your website, but on average conversion rates can go between one to three percent, that's generally speaking some businesses or some industries have higher conversion rates, but generally speaking between one and three percent is the average conversion rate of a website. Which means that between one to three percent of people who land on your website will buy from you, or will make an inquiry, and then you're going to have to talk to them to close the sale.
What can you do to increase your conversion rates?
One of the things that you can do to increase your conversion rates is to have clear calls to action, which amazingly enough many websites don't. And also make sure that you have a very attractive lead magnet, opt-in offer, or anything that entice your visitors to subscribe to your email list.
Because one to three percent of people will contact you or buy from you, but what happens to the other 97%? That is a huge chunk of the market that are just bouncing back and going elsewhere. You want to capture as many leads as possible so you can nurture the over time and convert them into clients. So if not today and right now, in the long run.
And another way that you can increase conversions on your website is by installing the Facebook Pixel because you can then re-target your website visitors with advertising, and that can bring them back to you, which will increase your conversion rates. So it doesn't sound so obvious, but by having the Facebook Pixel installed on your website you can then go after those people who left your website without making an inquiry, without buying, and even without subscribing to your newsletter. That's great, isn't it?
3: Sales Funnel
And now to the third challenge that people are facing. You might have the traffic, and your website is converting, so what is the problem then? The problem is the lack of a sales funnel.
What are you going to do with all of this people that you capture through your subscriber box or your lead magnets? You need to nurture that relationship and put them through a sales funnel. A sales funnel is pretty much a customer journey and how you are going to take your leads into this journey with you, nurture them, but also make offers that are appealing to your target audience.
One of the things that I see people doing is they either just nurture and provide value for free all the time, which gets their market used to just getting things for free. Or they do the exact opposite, which is just making sales offers all the time. Which can also be very boring and it will turn your market off. You need to find a balance and see where your customers, where your target market is, and how you can put them in through a sales funnel that converts and increase your sales.
To summarise, the three biggest problems you need to address if you want to increase the sales is
#1: Website Traffic
#2: Conversion rates
#3: Sales Funnel
Don't forget to put your Facebook Pixel on your website to be able to re-target and bring people back to your website.
If you have any questions please send them to [email protected] and I will be more than happy to answer
