3 Sales Strategies to Increase Market Share

Sales is an ever-changing game where, although the fundamentals remain the same, the way these are executed is variable. If your firm is struggling to gain market share, it might be time to reevaluate your sales strategies and ensure they are up-to-date.

Here are a few sales strategies that will help you increase your market share and your bottom line.

1. Increase Inbound/Content Marketing

By employing inbound marketing sales strategies, you can spend 61% less than you would when using traditional advertising methods.

• Your ultimate goal should involve being information-based and pervading the relevant market with your content.
• Figure out what questions your clients are asking, and make sure you answer them in blog posts, on your website, throughout social media, etc.
• Rather than simply supplying information, use a journalistic approach to tell a story and incorporate current events. Make sure the references you make relate directly to the customer whose business you’re trying to grab.

Know the current trends in content marketing and how they relate to your business, and don’t be afraid to allocate a sizeable chunk of your marketing budget to this end. For most companies right now, this is in the general area of 20% of the total budget. Many buyers out there are becoming more educated on specific products than ever, and it’s more difficult to keep customers when competing businesses are outspending you in this department, creating more engaging content and getting better rankings in search engine results pages.

2. Focus on Branding

When branding, seek to create an emotional connection between your product and your customer by creating a shared experience. Consider the iPhone’s growing popularity in a competitive market, for instance. The company keeps its logo and aesthetic front and center, and the company communicates creatively to its user base. People have an idea of what to expect with each new release, and so they continue to contribute to Apple’s market share.

According to the CEO of a business coaching and brand strategy firm, Libby Gill, promoting exceptional value through free content (such as branded informational videos or white papers) can be especially helpful in capturing consumer interest and linking it to a brand. It’s a great way of giving away information on exactly how a customer can benefit from a particular product, thereby keeping it relevant and positioning the brand as a solution should the need arise.

3. Optimize for Mobile

One of the most prevalent pitfalls companies fall into is not optimizing their websites for the mobile world. In fact, up to 61% of mobile traffic may divert from your page to a competitor’s if the page isn’t optimized for mobile users. Considering the prevalence of mobile devices, this is an obvious sales strategy and can be done easily using responsive design which allows you to adjust content and layout without having to maintain more than one site.

To sum up, many successful companies are focusing on reducing expensive traditional advertising and using more content to capture business. They are also making emotional connections through branding, and are optimizing their websites for mobile users. These are just a few sales strategies becoming more prevalent in today’s marketplace — is your firm keeping up?