7 Online Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales Proven by Life Itself

I can’t believe this article is free because people usually pay for this kind of information. Seven marketing strategies to increase sales, examples included, await below.

How many times have you struggled to break through with your online business? Sometimes you achieved success, sometimes… oh well. I guess you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you that 90% of success in business depends on how well you’ve planned everything out.

Nothing happens by chance and if you take a look at any success history in business, you will see that it all started with a plan or a marketing strategy.

Knowing what you want is one thing, but realizing how exactly you are going to achieve that is a whole different level. Having the right marketing strategy to increase your sales from the start ensures the future success of your online business or marketing campaign. If you’re still in doubt, check out this article “Understanding Website Marketing Strategy: Why You Should Have One”.

You should give your strategy a lot of thought before actually proceeding to some work – and trust me, you’ll never regret having a second thought about something. Our actions, however, are often a subject of regret, especially if done hastily.

But don’t you worry – I have compiled the most effective online marketing strategies in a single roundup for you. Read them carefully and pick the ones that suit your business needs and goals.

7 Online Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales

Here we go, in no particular order of significance.

1. Always Tell the Truth in Your Sales Copy

If your product does wonders to your customers, be sure to back them up with hard evidence. Otherwise, you risk turning into another fake like this one.

Treat your customers the way you would want to be treated, which means DON’T LIE TO THEM. Yes, it’s totally OK to highlight your product features and propose the value. But, please, do it in a way that is honest and respectful both to your customers and to competitors.

Bad example: Sign up for my newsletter and I will teach you how to quadruple your sales in 2 weeks!

Good example: Sign up for my newsletter to get latest industry news, tips, and solutions for your business.

2. Let Your Customers Speak for You

Testimonials are so early 2000’s. No one actually trusts them. In fact, we all know that a lot of them are simply fakes, written by the company’s copywriters.

If you want to earn genuine trust from your customers, you should avoid following the same path.
Instead, encourage people to talk about your product online – preferably, on the social networks. Do whatever it takes to create a buzz – offer free coupons, launch giveaways, communicate with your customer directly, ask them for their feedback and publish customer reviews. But, most importantly, provide excellent customer service.

Based on this strategy alone, Amazon has managed to become a #1 online retail store. So, if it was good enough for Amazon, why shouldn’t you give it a try?

3. Employ Call-Only Campaigns on Facebook and AdWords

You can spend a lifetime optimizing your landing page and messing with your sales copy and the color of buttons. But has it ever occurred to you that the landing page itself is the problem?

Many conversion rate optimization techniques revolve around one simple thing: reduce the number of steps in your sales funnel or checkout process.

Fewer steps => fewer customers get lost along the way => better conversion, which sounds fine.

But before you start converting the visitors into customers, all these people should come from somewhere – like PPC ads in Google, for example.

Now get this: what if you just remove the landing page and allow those who are interested in your product, give you a call immediately, from the search engine results page?

Sounds like a revolution, but it’s been there for a while already. Call-only campaigns are available on Google AdWords and Facebook, allowing you to convert regular users into paid customer in just a click (or tap).

If you run a local business and still haven’t tried call-only campaigns, I can’t think of a better option for you.

4. Narrow Down Your Customer’s Choices

Too much choice effectively destroys any hope of good conversion. These days, people are so lazy that they don’t even want to process the stuff you give them.

They don’t want information, they want solutions, customized and tailored to their specific needs. And it’s your problem, not theirs.

Have you ever gone through an onboarding on Spotify, Apple Music, or any other music streaming service? What they do offer is a custom solution in a pleasant, engaging manner – first, choose your three favorite bands, then genres and so on. As a result, you get your own version of their product – how cool is that?

Try implementing the same tactics for your business. Get rid of unnecessary plans and product descriptions, exclude anything that does not add value to the process of interacting with your website (or product).

Instead, give people the taste of what they will eventually get if they purchase/subscribe to your stuff. It could be an unlimited (in terms of the functionality) free trial, demo version or similar. Ask them questions and customize your product for them based on their answers.

Just don’t expect people to read your 9-page description of how cool you are – businesses have grown much smarter than that now.

5. Provide as Many Payment Methods as You Can

It’s a good thing that your website accepts credit cards. No, really.

But wouldn’t it be greater if it also accepted PayPal, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Amazon Payment, Stripe, We Pay?

Customers these days are so diverse and so are payment methods. Depending on the region, people would prefer to use different checkout options, as credit cards are no longer the only solution.

If you don’t provide the alternative (to the credit cards) payment methods, you might be losing on a huge chunk of your potential customers. And it’s quite easy to fix.

There are billing companies, which can provide you with the whole set of alternative payment methods at a relatively decent charge – do try one of them for your online business.

6. Employ the “Decoy Pricing” Technique

OK, this may lead you to the dark side, my young padawan, but it’s nevertheless worth it.

Decoy pricing (or tiered pricing) is an old trick used by marketers of all sorts to trick customers into buying the products they wouldn’t normally buy. Here’s a classic example:

If sold separately, $7 for a bucket of popcorn may seem way too much for most. However, the situation changes drastically once the other two options are in. Now, compared to them, the $7-bucket looks like a reasonable choice.

It’s that “$1.99” thing on the price tags. You know it’s there to trick you and the retailer knows that you know. But you still can’t help feeling that you still have paid less than $2, even though it’s just a penny less.

Some lies are just too good to be lies because we’d love them to be true. Make sure you employ this technique whenever a customer has to choose between more than options on your website.

7. Go Mobile

The desktop era is over. People rely less on their PCs or laptops these days – everyone has a smartphone, a tablet, or another trendy gadget. They buy tickets, book hotels, order food and drinks using their mobile devices. Hey, you can even park your car with your smartphone!

Make sure your business is equally present on each of the common mobile devices. This includes optimizing your website for smartphones and tablets.

If you want some ideas, go visit Amazon from your phone or tablet to see how it’s done. Remember that mobile user experience is very different from that of the desktop one.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve discussed seven online marketing strategies to increase sales. Do try to implement the ones you liked most and remember to do a healthy dose of experimenting before you actually launch the whole thing into production.

The right thing to do would be share this article with your friends on the social networks – just click on one of the icons of social media, it’s that easy.

If you have further questions on the subject, please write them in comments – I’ll be glad to answer.