Hey there meet Tina, Tina runs an online kids clothing store with online presence on an e-commerce website, Facebook and Instagram, however, it didn’t take long before she realized that in order to rake in more sales she needs to churn out contents that will persuade her target audience to buy her offers. So there she was sitting in front of her laptop staring at her blank screen, scratching her head, stuck on what to write.

So what makes a sales pitch successful?, what features must a content have to drive more sales, these and many more are questions that kept running through Tina’s head while she brainstorms about the things she needs to write in her sales content. So if you are like Tina, struggling to come up with a sales post whether as a social media post or a short product description on your e-commerce website, that won’t allow the cash register to stop ringing, the following tips that I’ll be sharing is for you.

MARKET RESEARCH

Before commencing sales write up whether as an organic post or paid content, it is important to carry out research about your target market. When done correctly market research will reveal cogent customers pain points, their preferences, their likes and dislikes, there favourite hangout spot online and in most cases what makes them tick. When you know more about your customers you’ll be able to strategically position the right offers that suits their needs at the right time and spot.

Findings from your market research will ensure that you are selling what people truly want and an advert that sells what people truly wants never fails to rake in more sales, it never fails to deliver.

SHOW OFF THE BENEFITS

Turn the spotlight on the amazing benefits of your products and services, no matter how sophisticated the features and specifications of your products and offers are, if your target customers don’t know how beneficial it is to their life, they won’t give you their money in exchange for it.

To create a compelling content you need to flaunt the benefits of your products, sell a convenient and better life. Rather than highlight the features of your products flaunt the amazing benefits your customers stand to enjoy when they buy your products.

SELL WITH EMOTIONS

‘Selling is a transfer of emotions’ Zig Ziglar

Another special recipe you should add to your content write up is emotions. In order to provoke your desired response from your target markets, you need to create contents that not only convey an emotional message but also evoke an emotional response from your target market. When introduced into a sales content, emotions makes it relatable.

If your intention is to create a sales content that provokes instant sales response you need to employ emotions, introduce emotional trigger words in your write up. When you use emotions in your write up, it portrays your brand as one that truly cares about your customers pains and struggles thus making them trust you, it shows off the human and sensitive nature of your brand. Emotions are very powerful, when people connect certain emotions to your post, the message it contains sticks longer in their minds.

STORYTELLING

If a sales advert were to be a delicious meal, then storytelling will be the secret ingredient that adds the tantalizing magic taste and accentuate the flavour of the other ingredients. Compelling stories helps you take your audience on a journey, thrill them, excite them, it brings your products to life in the minds of your target audience.

Use stories to explain the wishes they’ll be fulfilling when they patronize you or their most dreaded fears that will happen to them which your product will solve. Everyone loves a good story, so tell one.

In a nutshell, the first key to a successful sales content is finding out if your products is needed, by whom is it needed and with what magnitude. Once that has been checked, flaunt the benefits, don’t be afraid to show off, convey your messages with emotions, show your brand’s soft spot, you are selling to humans, and lastly take your target audience on an imaginary adventure with stories while positioning your products and offers as the lead actor.

So let’s say you own a kitchen ware store and you’ve got a fancy easy to clean kitchen blender with exquisite design, high-powered efficient motor, 2-3 horsepower, that’s being sitting pretty on your shelf for three months. Despite the numerous promo materials that you’ve put out there, you’ve only sold five pieces of it within 3 months! Come on! 5 pieces in 3 months, I stocked 50 pieces!!! How will I sell them all?

Well, at this point you are probably thinking I don’t own a kitchen ware store, it’s not my problem. True, that’s not the kind of business you operate but I’m sorry to burst your bubble, it is your problem. Irrespective of the kind of business you run, it is not immune to the ‘poor sales’ virus. At some point in your business journey your sales won’t be over the rooftop. So, what were you doing wrong?

Here’s what you doing wrong: you have poor sales when your sales pitch is more focused on the convincing words you need to say.

The moment you focus your sales adverts on scripts like ‘Hey, come patronise us, we have the latest kitchen blender with the latest high tech function, our new shoe collection is made off pure Italian leather’, you set yourself up for sales failure. I’m not saying this strategy is utterly bad and should be discarded but if you are ready to super boost your sales, add my next point into your next marketing campaign.

Show, Don’t Just Say
People love a good show, they get dazzled by it, the experience from it lingers longer on their minds. So tap in right away, introduce creative demonstration of your products at work into your marketing campaign. Don’t just narrate the amazing features and benefits of your products, put up a breathtaking show about the product you are offering, create the ‘WOW‘ experience that lingers on their mind. Exhibit your products and services maximum benefit with spectacular demonstration.

Here’s an example of how putting up a good show boost sales. In 2010 Blendtec launched a YouTube video series tagged ‘Will it Blend’, the video series showed Blendtec kitchen blenders grinding electronic devices such as ipad, iphones. Of course, they don’t expect their customers to grind their smart gadgets but those video series convinced both their loyal customers and prospects about the durability of their products and most definitely inspired them to make purchases.

So there you have it, your customer aren’t buying from you because your product isn’t fantastic but because you bore them with your sales pitch. Switch things up,show off your products and services in a spectacular way, create the ‘WOW‘ experience that imprints your brand into the subconscious mind of your audience.

Everyday your prospective customers are faced with thousand of tonnes marketing contents from over 85million business profiles on Facebook and Instagram combined, each aiming to leverage the power of these social platforms to achieve one business goal or the other. Now that’s huge competition for your brand whether big or small. Now you might be thinking, what can I do to beat the competition?

In order to beat this competition, you’ve done various things to upgrade your social media game including creating stellar visual contents, made your social media feeds aesthetically appealing, invested a significant part of your budget on sponsored post, yet despite all your efforts your target audiences are not showing interest in your products and services, invariably sales conversion on social media is still low.

What are we not doing right? Why are our customers not coming back? What can we do to build a loyal customer base on our social media platforms? I’m sure these and many more are questions you have asked yourself countless number of times. Well here’s the golden answer.

Make Your Contents Valuable

When you go social with your brand don’t base your post solely on marketing messages, create value with your posts. In fact, according to some experts, contents not related to marketing of your products and offers should make up 80% of your social posts.  Spice up your content strategy with valuable contents that your target market want.

So,what makes up a valuable content? Irrespective of the evolution that the social media landscape has gone through since it’s birth, the underpinning reason for it’s creation still stands, people get on social platforms to get informed about various aspects of their lives, entertained and interact with the rest of the world. Therefore, as brand seeking more loyal and engaging customers on social media it’s your utmost responsibility to ensure that your audiences are not starved of these fundamental elements.

Your contents become valuable when your audience perceive them as educative or entertaining. To get started on that, you need to be conversant with topics that your audiences need more knowledge about, social conversion they are into, fun contents that they find relatable.

Educate your audiences about your products and offers, share industry-related tips that interest your audiences, DIY videos, recipe videos, clothing styles inspirations. Curate and share funny contents that your customers can relate with, participate in social media challenges, you could start one for your social community. These and many are examples of things you can do to make your customers loyal to your brand and make them keep coming back.

In a nutshell, a large portion of your social contents should be more focused on information that your target market finds valuable and not solely focused on what you want them to buy from you. Your customers don’t want to be sold to every time, they want to entertained and educated.

Present day online users are continuously being flooded with numerous marketing contents of various formats and as a small business seeking to make more sales online, you need to stand out from the crowd, to achieve that your marketing messages must be able to grab your potential audience attention at first glance and that can only occur if you are communicating in their language. So,what’s your customers language? Simple answer, KEYWORDS.

Keywords are terms people use when searching for products or services on search engines such as Google. It’s how they tell Google what they want. Keywords are not necessarily single words, they could be phrases or sentences. They help you communicate with your potential customers in the language they are already using. Choosing the right keywords for your SEO journey is not only an integral part of your SEO strategy but also essential for the growth of your brand online.

Keywords help you discover what your potential customers are looking for and when you incorporate them in your marketing contents, you make it easy for your target audience to find you, you’ll be able to get their attention and ultimately extract the desired action you want from them.

Deciding which keywords to use can be daunting especially for a small enterprise new to the SEO game but before you become overwhelmed with the technicality and array of words, here’s 3 things you should have in mind when looking for keywords.

1. Frequency
This implies the number of times a particular word or phrase was searched for on Google. You’ll need to give subtle consideration to terms that people often search for in relation to the products and services you offer.

2. Competition
Let’s be honest, it’s difficult for websites of small brands to compete with big industry giants on the search result pages of popular keywords. As a small business aiming to get good ranking on search engine you should be looking out for long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are those large numbers of search queries with low search volume, they are usually specific to a particular niche and often offer instant SEO results for small businesses. Long tail keywords tells you the exact things online users are looking for, an example of a long tail keyword could be ‘customized handmade footwear delivered in Lagos’.

3. Relevance
Your chosen keywords should accurately depict the product and services you offer. There shouldn’t be a mismatch between your selected keywords and the intentions of the people searching. For example, if visitors clicks on your website looking for custom made cakes but discovers you only sell doughnuts, they’ll leave, which will result in your website have a high bounce rate. That’s bad news because when a website has a high bounce rate it’s chances of ranking high in search results reduces drastically.

So there you have it, the 3 things you need to look out for during keyword research. Paying attention to these things will not only guide you to selecting the right terms but also ensure that you are putting your best foot forward on your SEO journey.

Now that you are on Instagram you have probably come to the realization that getting noticed on IG is not as easy as it seem especially with the ever changing algorithm that’s constantly declining the rate of reach of organic posts. The frustration that you feel every time you view your organic posts analytics and realize that not even one tenth of your followers saw your post can not be overemphasized.

Despite all the efforts put into crafting that visually appealing content, your post is not reaching your target audiences, if they are not seeing your content, how will they engage with it let alone carry out the desired action you expect from them and with an already stretched budget, running ad campaigns is not a luxury you can afford all the time. What should I do to boost the reach of my organic post?

IG stories are quick photos and videos often accompanied with visual filters and features often displayed at the top of a user’s IG timeline. Stories disappear after 24 hours for viewers but high performing stories can be stored in an archive which can be reposted again.

Instagram stories, yes!!! Instagram stories, the Snapchat model Instagram copied and launched in 2016. Since it’s launch IG stories has grown in popularity with over 500 million people viewing stories in a day and one third of the most viewed IG stories belonging to business thus providing business both big and small and avenue to showcase their products at no extra cost. What’s IG Stories?

If you want your audience to see your brand frequently at no extra costs,IG stories should be your new best friend. The strategic position of IG stories ensures that you are more likely to show up in front of your customers more often. Likely? Yes ,likely.

Although, you have a high chance of been seen if you use stories to exhibit your contents, Instagram will only give your stories priorities on your target audiences timeline if they engage often with your stories.

To create engaging IG stories, your contents needs to have a personal feel. Loosen up a bit with your IG stories, make them look as natural as possible, unfiltered, let your stories radiate the funny aspect of your brand.

Here are examples of things you can incorporate into your IG stories, organize Q&A sessions, quizzes, flash sales and discount announcement, teasers about upcoming new clothing line launch, behind-the- scenes videos showing how your latest shoe design was made, Live videos.

Mastering the free features of IG stories is crucial to the growth of your brand on IG, asides from the fact that you’ll grow the number of your followers organically, it’ll help you cultivate a highly engaged community.

Congratulations!!! Your brand now has a presence on Instagram, at least with all the buzz going round about how Instagram is a fertile ground for leads generation, being part of such network is a wonderful move for your brand whether big or small. But alas! Engagement around your IG page is low, visitors are not checking your profile out, even when they eventually show up they are not hitting that prestigious ‘follow’ icon. Like that’s not bad enough, the few followers you’ve struggled to gather are unfollowing you at an exponential rate. What are you doing wrong? Here’s what you aren’t doing right.

Your IG Content Game is Lame

Instagram is a visual oriented social media platform unlike other social channels, it’s users rely heavily on visual contents. In order to improve engagement on your page, you have to start creating visual contents which are not only stunning but compelling contents that resonates with your target audiences. These contents have to be contents your potential customers can relates and connects with right away. So, what contents should my brand start producing? There are tonnes of means by which you can pass your marketing messages across to your leads on Instagram, examples of such include visual images, videos and user-generated contents (UGC).

Visual Images
Ever heard of the phrase ‘a photo speaks a thousand words’, that’s what happens on Instagram. You have to start creating stunning and captivating visual images that will relate your messages at a glance, in order to drive traffic to your IG page. Examples of visual images you can introduce into your IG feeds include illustrations, animated gifs, infographics and photos.

Videos
Gone are the days when sharing pictures often on your IG page gets you enough engagement, nowadays in order to keep the traffic coming, you need to incorporate authentic, original videos into IG feeds. Your videos should have a personal feel to them so that your audience’s attention can be grabbed instantly. As a small business you don’t need to invest too much in professional video production equipment to create beautiful videos, a good smartphone and video editing apps can get the job done. Examples of videos that you can post regularly on your page include but not limited to product unboxing, how-to tutorials on natural hair styling, short cooking video showcasing your latest recipe.

User-Generated Content
User-generated contents usually referred to as UGC, are contents such as images, reviews or videos of your products developed by fans of your brand. It could be a photo of a customer posing with your doughnuts or a video unboxing of a pair of shoes a customer purchased on your e-commerce website. It’s the online version of word-of-mouth advertisement. This is the goldmine of social media content, it positions your brand as a trustworthy enterprise because people tend to trust products endorsed by friends and family more than by brands. To influence UGC creation you can offer rewards, giveaways or initiate online competitions.

It’s no longer a breaking news that been on social media channels is another great means of driving in more sales for businesses both big and small but with a tight budget, your small business can’t afford to be on all social networks. How then can you choose the right social network that will help you increase your brand awareness and ultimately optimize sales?

Define your target audience
Firstly, you need to define your target audiences. Before setting out on your social media journey, identifying the type of customers you are looking to attract on social media is a crucial step, not only will it help you tailor your marketing contents appropriately but it will make establishing your presence on your chosen media an easy ride.

Find your target audience
It may seem like everybody is on every social channel but that’s not the case, certain demographics relates more with particular social networks than others, for instance, a relatively a large portion of the over billion users on Instagram belong to young millennials unlike LinkedIn which has more of working professionals forming a bulk of their users. In order to make the most out of your social media engagements, you need to find out the social media platforms where your target audiences are most active.

Congratulations!!! Your website is finally live,you now have your own share of the big web, but alas! something is not right, visitors are not showing up on your homepage despite the stylish and luxurious aesthetics on your page. What’s going on? Here’s the simple answer, your website is not showing up in front of your potential customer search results page when they look up possible answers to their search queries on search engines such as Google.

Contrary to what can be obtained in the offline world, where exquisite store signage and interior designs attract customers to your physical store, the online space doesn’t operate on that dimension. In order to make your website pop up the next time your potential customer enters a search query related to your business, here’s the secret.

Keywords
In the world of the big web you need to speak the language of your customers if you want to be seen and to achieve that you enlist the help of keywords by incorporating them into contents on your website. So when next a potential customer looks up a term related to your bran, your website has a high chance of showing up. These keywords are not necessarily single words they could be phrases, and they are terms online users use to describe their search queries on let’s say Google.

Relevant Content
Different search engines use various algorithms to determine the websites that shows up on search result pages but the basic principle is relevance. To show up on users search results you need to tell Google that your web content is relevant to their queries. Let’s say you own a doughnut shop and you are looking to get more customers online,your potential customers could look up search terms such as ‘fresh doughnuts available for pick-up in Lagos’. To show up for this search, contents on your page must reflect that your doughnuts are freshly prepared at your location and they are available for pick-up at your shop or delivered to certain locations.

All these seems like a lot work right? Don’t panic, let Chromite Solutions do the heavylifting for you, click here for FREE website reviews, let us help you discover what needs tweaking on your website, so you can start showing up in front of your right customers.

Showing up in search result page is a great way for your customers to find you but in order to achieve that you need to find out what your customers are looking for, so you can be able to serve the right content to the right audience at the right time.

Nowadays, there’s an undeniable loud buzz going around about how important having a website is to a business. Whether big industry giants or SMEs, the need to carve a niche on the world wide web is at an all time high and cannot be overemphasized.

Aside from the giving the brand a sense of been in vogue and up-to-date with the current trends, having a website that represent your business in the vast online world helps the brand not only to increase awareness about the services and products you offer but in the long run helps you stay connected and engaged with your customers thus increasing sales and ROI when optimized correctly. Sweet deal, right? Well before you invest any part of your budget into building a website, there’ one thing to considered, of course ,there are a ton of other factors that should be put into consideration before your website goes live but this point trumps them all.

Align your business goals and objectives with the website features.
Yes! Before you get busy with the coding, colours, themes, UX design and all the baggages that comes with web development process, set aside ample time to revise your goals and objectives as a brand and carefully select the ones that you want your website to help you attain. There are numerous website elements out there but not everything will be applicable to your company’s needs and stage of growth. So don’t dump everything in it,not only will it be awkward to view but customers and potential customers might perceive your brand as spammy. Seems like a lot of work right, don’t worry Chromite Solutions got you covered. Okay, what’s the catch?
Here’s how, Chromite Solutions offers free consultancy to help you discover the type of website that is fit for your business,click here to talk to an expert.

Now let’s get practical
Let’s say you own a photo gallery in the offline world and have recently decided to move your business online. You need to decide ahead which of your business objectives you want your website to help you attain. Let’s also say you’ve chosen to increase your brand awareness and number of email signup, that means your website must essentially have a blog and newsletter subscription features. It’s going to be a total waste of time and money to include an e-commerce feature.

In a nutshell, don’t just have a website for having sake, build one that radiates your brand’s personality, one that pitch your business in the online world and to achieve that, take your time during the planning phase to decide what you want your web to do for you and select the appropriate features that can make it happen.