Sales strategies have a lot to do with marketing, and the way we promote our sales model is one of the most crucial parameters for its success. In this article we are going to present several successful marketing strategies that produce a positive impact on a company’s sales.
Point of Sale
This traditional sales strategy can drastically increase sales of chosen products. It can be used in both brick and mortar and online stores. In first case it requires attractive displays that should be strategically placed around the shop. Most retailers choose to place point of sales displays where customers spend more time (near a cash register for example). These displays can also be filled with complementary products. In this case they should be placed near other products they can be combined with (many stores place snacks in beer section, or BBQ sauces near meat).
In online stores, point of sales displays are even more advanced. They use smart algorithms that follow customers’ behaviour on the website and determine their interests. They also display complementary products that go well with goods that customer already bought. These product displays can be found on product, navigation and check-out pages on most e-commerce websites.
Dynamic Pricing and Its Implementation
This strategy can drastically increase your revenue or it can lead to a PR disaster. Its results depend on your niche characteristics, dynamic pricing model, algorithms you use and your ability to negotiate with potential customers. Dynamic pricing model is successfully used in transportation, vacation, retail and entertainment industry. Main characteristic of all these industries is that they are overly dependent on customer demand, which often varies during time. This means that they often need to cover their off-season losses with higher season prices.
Covering off-season losses is not the only reason why the companies are applying dynamic pricing. They often need to make their prices more competitive. Very good example comes from retail industry, where Amazon often changes its prices, which makes all other retailers jump and make their prices competitive to ones set by this retail giant. Companies can also serve a different offer to each customer, which would be the ideal implementation of dynamic pricing and would offer lower prices to people who are frequent buyers.
Both high and low price should be promoted throughout different marketing channels. When promoting off-season offers, the price should be the main focus of every commercial, while with on-season offers commercials should focus on the main features of product or service.
Handing out Freebies
Many companies recognised the power of free in recent years. They built their sales funnel around free products they share and this practice often drastically increases their sales and revenue. There are several ways entrepreneurs can offer free products to a customer in order to persuade them to buy more expensive items. These are some of the free models companies use:
- Freemium – This model is mainly used by software companies. They provide a program for free, but charge subscriptions to customers who want to add more features (premium plan) to the free plan.
- Free samples– Production companies often hand out free samples, so their consumers can try out their products. This usually speeds up consumer’s decision to purchase.
- Free trial- Software companies often provide a free product, which their customers can use for a period of time. After this period is over and customers get accustomed to the new product they can either switch to paid plan or quit. Needless to say, most consumers tend to switch to paid plans.
- Bundle- Retail companies regularly offer two products for the price of (more expensive) one. This adds value to the offer and enables retailers to get rid of surplus goods.
- Cross-subsidy- this concept provides consumers with free products or services that should persuade them to buy another that is on the offer as well. Perfect example of cross-subsidy model was promoted by King Gillette in the end of nineteen century. He shared razors without blades for free to everyone and sold blades for them separately.
Another reason why free models are so popular these days, is the fact that we are living in Digital Age where products and services can be made and delivered at a meaningful cost. Advanced technologies also drastically increased competition in almost all of the niches, which is exactly the reason why we need to elaborately plan our sales and marketing strategies in order for them to succeed on such a competitive market.