Growing a Business
How to use a sale to get more business
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As we all come to terms with the new retail landscape after a global pandemic, it’s definitely worth exploring how to use a sale to get more business. Reducing your prices might be a necessary short-term action, but it shouldn’t reek of desperation.
A good sale is sustainable to your bottom line and welcomed by customers feeling the pinch.
It’s also a great opportunity to remind people that you’re still open for business, as you adjust to a new reality.
How to use a sale to get more business
The sale is a tried and trusted way to promote your business, boost revenue, and make people feel good about their purchase. Ultimately, everyone likes to feel like a winner when they walk away with a bargain.
Planned well, they’re a great short-term booster to:
- Spike interest
- Gain customers
- Get some product moving
All of these can be as valuable for motivation as they are for your bottom line.
Why launching a sale is important for small business
For small businesses, a strategic sale can be the gentle nudge to convert a new customer from “I’m interested” to “yeah, might as well.”
If you’re just starting out and trying to gain a foothold in a crowded market, you can start with a tempting introductory offer.
This is a brilliant way to:
- Get your business noticed
- Promote your brand
- Attract some of your competitor’s more fickle followers
For existing customers and followers, you can present discounts as exclusive rewards to help build loyalty.
Treating your core customers right is most important.
And with the right message, a sale could be your brand’s way of helping folks out in a time when money is hard to come by.
Avoid common pitfalls when pricing
Make sure you’re being careful when tinkering with the price of your product. Your product is inextricably linked to its perceived value and a “90% off” or “Five for the price of one” sale could raise a few red flags for savvy shoppers.
Similarly, the sun-bleached “Clearance Sale” poster that’s been stuck on your window all year long isn’t fooling anybody. Remember to use sales sparingly and set a specific goal in mind. This could include a seasonal tradition or a 24-hour flash promotion. Whatever route you decide to take, do it thoughtfully and make it count.
Design tips to get you noticed
The most important thing is that people know about your promotion. Take the time to design some eye-grabbing posters and spread the word far and wide. Use the tips below to help get you started.
Be bold, but stay true to yourself: If ever there was an excuse to use bold colors and display fonts, this is it. But stay true to your brand’s identity above all.
Utilize motion to grab attention: It’s worth it to use GIFs or a video template to stand out in people’s social media feeds.
Make sure your call-to-action (CTA) is clear and unmissable: Potential buyers need to know exactly what the special is and what they need to do to get it. Making the mechanism too complex, or burying terms and conditions in the small print, is the easiest way to lose a lead and cause frustration.
Generate hype ahead of time: Creating FOMO and building hype is critical to your sale’s success and promoting your brand. Anticipation and limited availability serve as fuel for the fire when it comes to promotions.
Avoid recycling the same poster design: This might make it invisible over time. Instead, try planning different design phases that lead up to your sale. You can use similar aesthetics to maintain interest and create the impression of something growing day by day.
Additionally, spreading similar promo designs over different platforms can also only help build awareness.
Here’s how GoDaddy Studio can help
Luckily, GoDaddy Studio has specific layout collections to help you design your own sale promo. It allows you to easily create a multi-platform campaign leading up to your business promotion. Simply pop your own images and text into these pre-designed templates for a clean and beautiful design in minutes.
Beyond the specific promotion at hand, wrapping up your marketing material with a coherent and professional design makes a great impression for your brand.
Related: GoDaddy Studio — Create eye-catching imagery for your brand
Utilize a marketing calendar to help with promo planning
Take advantage of seasonal opportunities. Many industries (most notably fashion) operate by the shifting seasons.
Clearance sales are the perfect time to refresh your inventory and offer customers a few benefits in the process.
Special celebration days might range from Easter to National Pancake Day. It’s important to be aware of dates like these in regards to sales, especially if they align with your audience’s likes and interests. You can also use them for extra promo power to help encourage meaningful engagement with your target audience.
Key marketing tactics to try
These are a few variants of the discount promotion you might want to try for your own brand or small business. Let’s review them below.
The seasonal sale
The seasons shift in very convenient three-month phases, enabling four foundational sales every year. These shifts are essential for fashion (or anything fashionable) to keep offerings on-trend.
The upside is that consumers expect these, so you’ll have an eager audience looking out for discounts. But, you’ll need to work hard to stand out and out-promote the competition.
Off-peak deals also work well for seasonal industries like:
- Tourism
- Swimwear
- Restaurants
They often do this to keep business ticking into the quiet times.
Special days
Whereas seasonal sales are quite generic, special days help you find and target a relevant crowd to which you can promote your brand. Most brands plan these days ahead of time on a marketing calendar.
But besides obvious holidays like Christmas and Halloween, you’ll want to look out for celebrations that align with your product and your audience. There are many special days for the following niche audiences:
- Yoga
- Craft beer
- Mental health
- The environment
- Women in tech
- Bulldogs
- Hot dogs
Your company’s anniversary and other milestones count too, so take advantage where you can!
The exclusive sale
You’ve worked hard to gain the followers you have, so it’s worth making them feel special to keep ‘em coming back for more.
Never underestimate the marketing power of a happy customer.
An exclusive sale is more likely to have a higher engagement since you’re selling to folks who already know (and hopefully love) your brand.
Mystery deals
Intrigue new customers by offering a range of variable discounts or special offers to promote your business. These promos can range from 10% to 50% off and entice the customer to click the offer to see if it’s their lucky day or not.
If they end up being offered a discount at the higher end of the spectrum, there’s a decent chance they’ll see it as a sign and jump on the opportunity. Done right, mystery deals can be more engaging and feel more personalized.
Sign-up specials
One of the most failsafe ways to acquire a potential customer is with a sign-up offer. You can think of it as a very clean and mutually beneficial agreement. While you gain a new lead, they gain a wicked deal on their first purchase or session. Everybody wins!
Activating a new customer is one of the hardest things to do for a small business, so it’s worth the cost and effort to incentivize this. Simply bringing them into your orbit (via a newsletter sign-up or social media follow) is worth offering something in return. If a customer feels noticed or taken care of from the start, it bodes well for the ongoing journey.
Buy one get one
Aah, the classic BOGO technique. There’s a reason we all know the phrase “Buy One Get One” so well. It works like a charm at ramping up sales because free or discounted stuff is very hard to say no to.
A good BOGO promo works great for introducing a wider range of products to your customers.
For example, a candy salesman might notice a customer enjoying something watermelon-flavored and suggest a lime flavor as an add-on. You can also use it to gain new customers by setting up your offer to be shared with a friend.
Checklist
Before you go live, make sure you have the essentials in place. Use the checklist below to help launch your sale effectively and better promote your brand.
Timeline
Create a timeline to plan ahead and use the following questions as your guide:
- When does it kick-off and end?
- Are there different phases to the sale?
- When will you start advertising it?
Answering these questions will set up the frame for the rest of your parameters.
Measuring success
Zeroing in on goals and objectives will give you a clear direction on how to measure success. Ask yourself the following questions before getting started:
- What are you hoping to achieve with this promotion?
- Is it just about the number of units sold?
- Are you more interested in new leads or retaining customers?
Once you have these answers, work out how you’ll measure success (Google Analytics is a good start). You’ll learn plenty for future promotions by monitoring this data.
Terms and conditions
Don’t wait for a disgruntled customer or a devastating loophole to pop up. Take a moment to think through the basic terms and conditions and make them known. Post them on your website or somewhere in your social post.
Unmissable social media posts
Visibility within your social media posts can’t be overemphasized. And while attracting attention to your sale is one thing, making it seem enticing and well-organized is another.
That’s what good design does.
A professional design evokes a quality product or service. Nobody needs to know you made it yourself in GoDaddy Studio. Try it out for free and see how it’ll save you time and money.
All images are available as editable templates in GoDaddy Studio.
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The idea for sharing community management tips came to me about a year ago. That’s when I synced up with the GoDaddy Community team to host a webinar for small business owners. As hundreds of attendees rolled into the Zoom, I had a realization: “GoDaddy has a strong community.”
Behind every good brand and business, there’s a solid community of supporters, stakeholders, and sometimes, even haters.
But building a community and maintaining connections is one of the most misunderstood and least talked about topics within the small business world. For a business with fewer than five employees and a handful of customers, community building might seem like just another marketing tactic that is just out of reach.
To help small businesses build and manage an online community, I asked other business owners and marketers what community management tips they had for creating meaningful connections with customers.
14 community management tips to create meaningful customer connections
Given that creating and maintaining a strong community can help retain and attract customers, consider following these 14 community management tips:
- Be quick to address negative experiences
- Filter out spam
- Showcase success
- Send a postcard
- Get your customers involved in important decisions
- Bring Up topics that encourage engagement
- Provide talking points and engage with your community
- Engage regularly
- Be the face of your brand
- Choose a channel that works
- Create content that addresses customers’ specific needs
- Consider a brand ambassador program
- Reward loyalty
- Recognize the importance of inclusivity
Read on to learn more.
1. Be quick to address negative experiences
A bad customer experience can quickly escalate to a brand reputation crisis, and the company’s response must be fast to revert the situation.
Monitoring social channel mentions is an easy way to keep an eye on conversations surrounding your brand and detect potential concerns.
Once a customer posts a comment that threatens your brand reputation, listen, honestly apologize and be willing to solve the issue in the best possible way. Your unsatisfied customer will feel appreciated and perhaps even become a brand advocate.
-Rebeca Sena, GetSpace.digital
2. Filter out spam
The most important thing you should be doing in regards to community management is interacting with your community, and you cannot do that properly if you have to work through a bunch of spam. There are many programs out there, even some within the different social media sites, that can filter out spam in your comments and messages so you can focus on addressing your community. Plus, getting rid of the spam and moderating harmful comments creates a better space for your community to contact you through.
-Jacob Dayan, Community Tax
3. Showcase success
Develop case studies from your successful community members. This is a practical way of propagating the core values of your online community and encouraging new users to join your community.
The more these members contribute to the community, the more impact these case studies have. You can start by creating basic reports to identify the members who are actively contributing high-quality content, assisting other members, and elevating the community.
-Hasan Farahani, Yocale
4. Send a postcard
Many of my customers spend $15–$20K on medical care in Latin America. I send my customers handwritten postcards to remind them of their journey, thank them for their business, and to stay engaged while they recover from procedures like dental implants or plastic surgery.
The cost in time and money is very low, but a human touch in the healthcare space is increasingly rare.
-Wesley Jacobs, Apollo Medical Travel
5. Get your customers involved in important decisions
Taking the time to follow up with your most active customers and getting their insights on important decisions makes them feel like their opinions are truly valued and cared for.
In the long run, this forges a strong connection between you and your audience that relies on more than simply a transaction.
An added benefit of doing this is that you may even get some eye-opening suggestions and creative ideas that could end up benefiting your business.
-Harry Morton, Lower Street
6. Bring up topics that encourage engagement
Meaningful connections need to originate from a common source that offers a moment of relatability, which can further build brand trust. Social platforms offer numerous opportunities for these types of exchanges. When managing your social community, bring up topics that encourage engagement so you can connect on a level that goes beyond the basic company/customer relationship. In doing so, the consumer will feel more at ease to comment, ask questions and even provide more detailed feedback.
-Lindsay McCormick, Bite
7. Provide talking points and engage with your community
It’s important to recognize that community management is an ongoing responsibility. If you want to see your community thrive, you must create opportunities for customers to voice their opinion, communicate with other community members and provide you with feedback. Finding success is contingent on your ability to encourage participation from users, so you must provide talking points and give them plenty of avenues to stay involved.
If you leave your community dormant without your administrative oversight, engagement will start to dwindle as fewer users initiate conversations and take part.
Communities rarely function autonomously, so be sure to play an active role as you connect with and safeguard your community.
This gives you a chance to speak with your customers on a personal level, helping you learn about their likes, dislikes, objections and pain points directly—all of which are crucial in building meaningful connections with customers.
-Mike Grossman, GoodHire
8. Engage regularly
The best community management tip is to engage regularly and don’t neglect questions or threads you didn’t start—even better if they aren’t getting a lot of feedback. If you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to regularly interact with your customers, make sure you’re commenting often and have a badge next to your name letting them know you’re a moderator or part of the company. That will really cement that feeling of connection and letting members feel heard. Plus, we’ve found that a community manager can really breathe life into a topic by offering input and pushing it to the front of that community for more engagement.
-Sylvia Kang, Mira
9. Be the face of your brand
Revealing the human side of your brand is without a shadow of a doubt an efficient strategy to boost your customers’ connection. It conveys transparency and accountability, building a stronger human bond. Consumers tend to trust people more than a company, and showcasing real people will make you and your brand easier to remember and trust.
-Chiara Sternardi, Passport-photo.online
10. Choose a channel that works
The best way to build an authentic community is to have everyone communicate using the same social media platform. Make that a crucial part of your strategy.
If it’s a professional audience that you’re going after, choose LinkedIn. If it’s a broader audience, use Facebook or Instagram. If it’s a young audience, try Snapchat or WhatsApp. If it’s a politically charged audience, maybe try Twitter.
YouTube is a great way to encourage people to watch videos that provide clear instructions on how a product or service works.
Users flock to YouTube for instructions on everything from how to change batteries on a device to playing scales on a guitar. The comment section can be useful for feedback purposes, and it also can be a way for customers to communicate with one another.
-Joel Jackson, Lifeforce
11. Create content that addresses customers’ specific needs
By creating audience and buyer personas based on different client categories, content marketers can create social content that speaks to people rather than just industries. Learn where your customers hang out online using your social media demographics. Then, narrow those results using audience research to help you define a specific audience and channel. You can then customize communications by researching the LinkedIn profiles of potential customers. Doing so will allow you to identify different stakeholders within the organization and determine their pain points. You can then create better content that addresses their challenges. But it’s all about finding an interesting angle for each segment.
Content that is too broad won’t result in authentic engagement with your followers.
Social media posts that offer helpful information are guaranteed to stand out in your clients’ feeds, resulting in more likes, shares and leads.
-Daniel Tejada, Straight Up Growth
12. Consider a brand ambassador program
A great way to create authentic connections with customers is with an acquisition and advocacy program like a brand ambassador program. For example, if a user can get five people to sign up for a service or product, they become an ambassador.
These brand ambassadors can help your business acquire new users. You can reward them with swag and access to special products or services … maybe even a special event!
-Jennifer Pieniazek, Resume Now
13. Reward loyalty
You can create meaningful connections by rewarding loyal customers to show how much you appreciate them. Just like any relationship, whether it’s personal or professional, people appreciate rewards. Show your customers that they matter and are top of mind in your decision-making. That’s how you create a stronger, more loyal customer base—one that will continue to pay attention for new initiatives and future rewards.
-Alyssa Berman-Waugh, Level Home, Inc.
14. Recognize the importance of inclusivity
To create meaningful connections with customers, recognize and accept diversities within your community. Each of your customers will differ in terms of their culture, orientation, ability and life experience. It’s imperative that you celebrate these differences and welcome input from individuals of all walks of life as you advocate for equity and inclusivity. This will develop your community’s reputation and attract diverse groups in greater numbers.
Communities that cater to just one group of people almost always become echo chambers, creating a suboptimal environment for connections to form and important discussions to take place.
By listening, asking questions, and welcoming input from diverse groups of individuals, you’ll cement your community as a welcoming place for diversity and insight to flourish.
In doing so, your ability to build a rapport and create meaningful, lasting connections with your customers will blossom.
-Patrick Casey, Felix
The community management tips used in this article were gathered using Terkel.
Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.
Have you ever made a dining decision based on a review you saw on the internet? You may have picked a product because it seemed “more trustworthy” online. It’s also a deal breaker if it isn’t handled correctly.
Customers are more inclined to believe in your company if it presents itself well on the internet. Whether a startup or a large corporation, your online appearance and behaviour matter to your consumers if you own an offline or online company.
Why Should Your Business Go Online?
In addition to being available for your consumers, here are other reasons to consider your online presence.
It Improves Your Company’s Accessibility
When you don’t sell anything online, a solid online presence can help you make more money from the internet if you aren’t engaged on social media.
Before making a purchase, most consumers do internet research to learn more about the company and the goods. Being at the right place at the right time is simply good business.
It Takes Care of Your Marketing and Branding
An internet presence provides a steady supply of customers for your company. Customer feedback and social media participation may help boost purchases. It’s easier for consumers to identify your online presence with a website or social media account.
It May Boosts Your Company’s Credibility
Having an online presence is essential for your organisation to be taken seriously. A startup might have difficulty being accepted as a legitimate organisation in its early stages. It’s essential to have a strong internet presence before people take you seriously. It’s easier to get quick loans at gdayloans.com.au to expand your company.
It Aids in the Comprehension of Your Target Market
When you have an online presence, you can engage with your audience in a two-way conversation to get valuable feedback or evaluations. In addition, it helps you learn more about your prospective consumers and the things they’re looking for. If a restaurant uses polls on its Facebook page, it may determine which specials and goods are most popular with its patrons.
How Can You Evaluate and Enhance Your Company’s Web Presence?
Analysing your online reputation simply means monitoring what others say about you online. Then you make it work for you.
You can monitor and enhance your company’s online appearance by following these three steps.:
Monitor Mentions of Your Business
Monitoring your company’s internet mentions can help you track what’s being said about you and mitigate unfavourable publicity. This can also help you identify communication gaps.
Google Alerts can help you track online references of your company. Set up notifications for your business/product name and relevant keywords, and you’ll be alerted promptly whenever you’re mentioned anyplace online.
Analyse Your Website Traffic
The source of your traffic (and how much) might assist you in evaluating your internet presence. It may be necessary to expand your internet activities beyond your website. For example, low social media traffic might imply a poor social presence.
Tracking your website’s traffic with Google Analytics might reveal secret traffic sources that your Google search may have overlooked. It will also help you find unnoticed remarks or backlinks.
Assess Your Social Media Engagement
Your social media presence affects your online reputation as well. Active consumers on your social media platforms help build trust and confidence.
Consider checking a company’s and a competitor’s Facebook accounts. You may observe that one firm interacts with clients while the other has a few likes but no comments. Which do you prefer?
Bottom Line
An active social media presence gives the impression of reliability while also conveying a sense of humanity and authenticity. Your audience will be more engaged as your social media presence improves.
To keep up with your target audience, you need to be one step ahead of them online. The first step is to become well-versed in everything your consumers discover about your company through the internet. Your internet presence must be understood, monitored, and improved to reach this goal.
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