Business Amplified

Introduction

Every business owner is looking for ways to boost traffic, further establish brand awareness and maximize their revenue. The problem is, it can be very confusing knowing exactly where to start, especially if you have limited time and need to make sure you are using that time only on the things that will truly move the needle.

You aren’t alone. With so many avenues and options available when it comes to traffic generation, brand building, and customer acquisition, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and lost. And that’s why we wrote this special report. This guide is designed to help you create a simple strategy that works for you. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to what methods and techniques work best for every business, but this report will help you get started quickly, regardless of your market.

Because regardless what niche you’re in, or whether your business is brand new and barely off the ground, or it’s established but you’re looking ways to breathe new life into your campaigns, the strategies featured in this report are proven to work.

Let’s begin!

The Incredible Power of a Bargain

People change over time, and shopping patterns are also constantly shifting. A couple decades ago, no one would have dreamed they’d be shopping online, happily handing over their credit card information to total strangers.

But one thing hasn’t changed since the dawn of time—our love of a good deal.

Customers appreciate when they know they’re getting something special at a lower price. And if you can convince them they’re among a select few who are being offered that special deal, even better.

Whether it’s a sale, a coupon, or a special discount, people love saving money. Even people who can afford the regular price.

You can use this to your advantage easily.

Here are some other ways to get started:

Flash Sales:

This is a special sale you will run for only a very short period of time (from just a few hours to one 24-hour period).

Quantities are limited and discounts are often higher than your usual promotions.

You’ve likely seen a sale like this in action:

“Today only!” “Just 8 hours left to save!” or “70% off, only on Black Friday!”

The idea behind the flash sale is that you offer your customers a discount or coupon code they can use to get a better price on your item(s).

Your ultimate goal is to get those customers onto your site so they see all the great things you’re offering, not just those specific sale items.

Here’s where you can go for the impulse buy, increase your brand awareness, and improve customer loyalty.

When you run a flash sale, you’re taking advantage of the “FOMO”—Fear of Missing Out—and creating a sense of urgency and scarcity to encourage your customers to buy NOW!

If they know they have only a limited time to make a great deal, they’ll be more likely to take action quickly and spend far less time in the decision-making stage of the buying process.

In order to make certain your sale succeeds, think about these types of deals you can offer:

Percentage Discount: Everything.

With this, shoppers can buy anything in your store at a percentage off the regular price.

Percentage Discount: Collections.

You can also hold a flash discount sale of any sort of collection you wish, such as 5% off our most popular items or 10% off a certain brand name.

X-Dollars Off.

Instead of discounting prices by percentage, you can also give a flat dollar amount off the price, such as $20 off when you buy two or $15 off orders of $100 or more.

You can offer the same dollar amount off any item—or apply different discounts for different products you’re selling.

Strikethrough Pricing.

You’ve probably seen this on Amazon. Instead of saying “X Dollars off” or “5% off” you’re shown an original price, which is struck through, and a new price beside it ($145 $99.99).

This is a powerful visual for the customer.

When you see the higher, regular price listed next to the sale price, it clearly reminds you that you’re saving money if you act quickly (and that everyone else will end up paying more than you did!)

One great way to handle a flash sale is to create a special sale page on your website.

This will be a page that shows every discounted object, perhaps even with a countdown timer to spur the customer into a quick decision. You can easily set up a countdown timer with a tool like:

https://www.EmailDyno.com

The EmailDyno countdown timer uses the psychological triggers of urgency and scarcity to take FOMO to the next level.

Having a dedicated flash sale page helps your customers save time, too, instead of having to hunt all over your site for items on sale.

Income Boosting Strategies

Here are a few proven ways to increase engagement and boost sales quickly and easily: Seasonal Offers:

This is exactly what it sounds like—a special sale to celebrate a holiday or season.

Think about Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Those sales also lead into the December holiday shopping season. Your sale should create a special holiday or seasonal deal that’s just too good for your customer to pass up.

One way to do this is by limited edition merchandise geared toward the holiday or season. These items will only be available during that time, and you can even add a countdown timer to encourage customers to buy before it’s too late.

Weekly & Monthly Discounts:

Think about your local grocery store with its Senior Citizens’ Day where you can get a percentage off your bill if you’re over a certain age.

That’s the idea behind these discounts. Pick a day of the week or a week of the month and offer a special discount during that specific time frame only.

This is an especially good strategy if you’re seeing sales slump on certain days or weeks and want to reignite activity.

You can even time your discounts so you’re offering them when most of your customers get paid (if that applies to your market).

Abandoned Cart Offers:

Think about all the abandoned near-sales you’ve had on your site.

These are customers who have thought about purchasing, but end up leaving without completing the sale.

How much extra revenue could you bring in if you could reduce this abandonment rate?

One of the best ways to solve this problem is by sending Abandoned Cart Emails.

Your email provider (MailBot or MailerLitee, for example) can help you create and send these emails, adding the offers you want to give them.

Make sure your subject line shows your offer prominently, such as “Team T-Shirt 20% off Today Only.”

First-Time Shopper Offers:

There are several ways to take advantage of the first-time shopper and convert them into loyal customers.

One of the best ways is to offer them a discount or free gift in return for their email address (which you will use for your company newsletter that will, in turn, send them more discounts and coupons for later).

Another way is to give your first-timers offers, like signing up for your company loyalty program, which will give them X% off, or using a special coupon code that only works on their first purchase.

Exclusive Social Offers:

You want to build customer loyalty, and one way to do that is to reward any customers who like or follow you on social media.

Post special offers and discount codes on your social media posts and ask followers to share the news, thus bringing you more possible customers.

Exit Popups:

You’ve likely been to a website that uses this strategy.

It works like this:

If you start to navigate away from the page, a popup ad appears, offering you something to stay on the site.

An example would be a box that pops up and offers 65% off their first purchase—all they have to do is enter their email address and you’ll send them the free code.

With this strategy, not only will you capture another email address, but your customer might be enticed to make that purchase after subscribing.

To make a working exit popup, you need 4 key elements:

· A great offer to entice customers to act NOW!

· A Countdown Timer to show scarcity and drive FOMO.

· An attention-grabbing description that highlights why your offer is worth their email address.

· A Strong Call to Action (CTA) that shows exactly what they’ll get if they click your button

Influencer Offers:

You can also offer discount or coupon codes through social influencers. You just need to find the right influencers (on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.) and ask them to feature your products in their videos or blogs.

Give them a special code they can share with their followers, driving those followers to your site for a purchase.

This is a win for you and the influencer both, because they’ll be giving their followers something valuable instead of just posting an ad.

Milestone Discounts:

Customer loyalty is key for growing your business. It’s far easier to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

This is where the milestone discount comes into play. It can be a birthday, anniversary, or even the date they first signed up for your loyalty program.

You can offer rewards whenever they make a certain number of purchases, or discounts on certain merchandise, or even offer VIP shopping days just for your loyal customers.

Bulk Offers:

This is an excellent technique for your slow sales days. In addition to your regular discounts and coupons you can offer bulk discounts like BOGO (Buy One, Get One) sales or “Buy Two, Get One.”

Another good technique is the “Buy One, Get X% off the second item.”

You can even offer a “Buy More, Save More” discount, where you offer larger discounts with larger purchases (10% off sales of X-Dollars but 15% off if you spend X-Dollars, etc.).

Free Shipping Offers:

This is a widely-used tactic that works very well.

You can offer free shipping with any product or on any order, or offer free shipping on orders totaling X-Dollars or more.

You can also offer free shipping within a specified area where your shipping cost will be lower or more convenient.

Review Offers:

When was the last time you wrote a product review?

Would you be more inclined to do so if the company had offered you a gift card or discount code for doing so?

Sure, you would!

This is another win-win situation because you get a review for your social media, advertising from the satisfied customer, and also a potential sale when they come back to use that discount or gift card.

The Power of Social Media

Whether you’re totally new to social media or an old hand who just wants to tighten up your marketing campaigns or explore new strategies, here are a few ways you can use social media to attract new customers, boost traffic and maximize your revenue.

Set goals that make sense for your business:

Start by asking yourself:

What is it that you want most from social media?

You must have a clear and realistic goal in place for your social media campaigns to be successful.

The 2021 Sprout Social Index says the two most common goals for social media are increasing brand awareness and increasing community engagement.

58% of businesses want to improve their brand awareness and grow a larger following; 41% say they’d like a more active community with increased engagement.

Whatever your goals happen to be, clearly defining them is your first step in the process.

They should be reasonable goals that make sense for you and your business. Start with small, concrete objectives that will allow you to scale up when needed, without blowing your budget.

Here are some examples:

Increase Brand Awareness.

This just means you’re getting your brand out there and increasing visibility.

Remember the 80/20 Rule—80% of your social media posts should be about providing good content that emphasizes your personality and company values. Only 20% of your posts should be promotional messages or ads.

Generate Sales and Leads.

Your followers aren’t just going to buy your product unless you give them a clear reason why they should.

You need to show them how they will benefit, and also let them know about current or upcoming promotions that highlight how they’ll save money.

Grow Your Brand’s Audience Consistently.

With social media, you are able to instantly introduce your brand to people who’ve never heard of you before. You just need to find ways to stand out and capture their attention.

This often includes regularly monitoring and/or listening to the social media channels so you can gain a better understanding of what is working for others and what isn’t. In addition, look for certain hashtags, phrases, or keywords related to your business or industry that are consistently used in posts. The closer you keep a pulse on your market, the easier it will be for you to create successful social media campaigns that go the distance in helping you grow an active and loyal customer base.

Boost Community Engagement.

According to index data, 46% of consumers believe that brands who engage their followers are better than brands who don’t.

You need to be grabbing the attention of your current followers and keeping it. This means doing a little experimenting with your content and messages.

Find out what kind of posts and messages get the most reaction from your followers and keep creating more of those.

Even something as easy as asking a question can improve your engagement rates. If you’ll give your followers something specific to do, or directly ask for feedback, you might be surprised by the follow-through.

Drive Traffic to Your Site.

You can use promotional posts, social ads, conversations, and URL clicks to help get followers over to your website.

Make sure your “signature” includes your website address. Don’t use a link shortener like bit.ly. Instead, use your direct URL so that people begin to associate it with your brand.

You can use any combination of these strategies with your social media. They work well to increase your customer base and improve your brand recognition.

When in doubt, remember to keep your social media strategy simple.

Resist the urge to have too many objectives that might just end up distracting you from the original (and most important) goal of them all. Instead, choose one strategy when just starting out, and stick with it until you have enough data to accurately measure results.

Know Your Audience

Did you know that only 55% of business marketers actually use social data to better understand their target audiences?

This is a huge opening for those of us who are willing to spend time analyzing successful campaigns, and what is currently driving conversations.

The information we need to know in order to create highly-engaging content that will convert into sales is already out there for the taking. And it’s free—available to you right now. You just need to know where to look for it. What does this mean to you? Your target audience doesn’t likely spend time on all of the available social platforms. They probably focus on only 1 or 2. Do you know what those are? Are you familiar with there your customer base spends most of their time?

For example, Facebook and YouTube users are typically older. Think Gen X.

Among Millennials and Gen Z audiences, Instagram and YouTube are currently the top platforms.

Pinterest is a women-dominated platform, so keep that in mind if your customer base is mostly female.

LinkedIn’s users are typically well-educated with a relatively equal mix of men and women.

Focusing on your core audience and finding where they’re already active will help you get your message out to the right people. Here’s a resource to help you get started: https://khoros.com/resources/social-media-demographics-guide

Know Your Existing Social Media Audience.

Many businesses use a social media dashboard like HubSpot, SproutSocial, or TailWind to give them an overview of who’s following them and how they interact with the business on each platform.

You need to know which social media networks are getting the most activity so you can put your money into those platforms instead of rushing around willy-nilly scattering cash.

You can integrate information from your Google and email analytics, too. The more information you have about your current audience, the better. That way, you can make sure your loyal customers stay loyal.

Establish Your Most Important Metrics.

You need a data-driven social media strategy, which means putting your focus on the metrics that are most important to your goals.

Let’s look at some metrics:

Reach:

This is how many individual users saw your content post; how much of your material is actually getting into those user feeds.

Clicks:

Keeping track of how many clicks you get on your post or ad helps you learn what drives your audience’s curiosity or encourages them to make a purchase.

Engagement: this one is a formula—total number of social interactions divided by total number of impressions. Your engagement shows you how well your followers perceive you and the brand, and how willing they may be to interact with you.

Hashtag Performance: you should be keeping track of your most-used hashtags. Which ones were most associated with your business and your brand? Knowing this information helps you focus your posts and content.

Organic vs. Paid Likes: this tells where your “likes” are coming from—either from ads (paid) or from natural interest and searching (organic)—and can help you focus your ad budget on the right areas.

Sentiment: this is how the audience is reacting to your content, your brand, and/or your hashtags.

You don’t want an offensive post that could harm or ruin your reputation, and you don’t want your brand’s hashtags associated with the wrong sort of sentiment.

Find out how people are talking (and feeling) about you and the brand.

How to Create Engaging Content That Converts

By now, you ought to have a fairly good idea of what you should be publishing based on your audience, your brand identity, and your business goals.

Stick to themes that match your brand and display your personality.

You can even find social media management tools like Loomly, HubSpot, or SproutSocial to help organize your media library and post scheduling.

Here are some social media trends to keep in mind when creating your content and campaigns:

Stories and Time-Sensitive Posts:

These types of posts utilize that FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

Content that reads like a story is interactive and can’t miss with your followers. It’s also something that’s going to show up first in their feed, so you can count on your post staying in their minds.

Short-Form Videos:

54% of marketers say video is “the most valuable content type” for reaching your social media goals.

Social video is big business on the internet, especially with TikTok and Instagram Reels. Video is designed to capture immediate attention, and best of all, you don’t need a huge production budget to succeed at short-form videos.

Posts That Show Off Your Human Side:

Don’t worry about showing your followers that you and your employees are human. Your personality should be part of your brand.

Make Your Social Presence as Timely as Possible.

This is even more important than it’s ever been for your business. It’s not enough anymore to just put out fresh content on a regular basis. You need to make sure your posts are timely as well.

Here are a couple of ways to maximize your busy schedule and make sure your time is well spent on social media:

Post at the Best Times to Engage:

It’s not going to do your business much good to post at the “optimum” time in the evening if your office hours end at 5:00pm.

Instead, try to make sure your people are available and ready to answer questions whenever you post. Take time to learn the best times to post on each social media platform, though. It will help improve your engagement rates. Tip: Use a tool like https://www.loomly.com to schedule, manage and analyze social media content easily. They’ll even show you the best times to post for maximum engagement. You should also read this article: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/

Respond to Customer Questions and Shout-Outs in a Timely Manner: 47% of customers think strong and consistent customer service is key for a great brand on social media (46% think they should engage their audience).

Don’t leave your customers hanging—respond to those compliments and questions quickly, and apologize if you get a bad review.

Most users believe that a great brand responds to social media messages within four hours!

If you can incorporate timeliness into your social media posts, you’ll really have an edge over the competition.

Top Traffic Strategies

Traffic is King, so let’s get right down to it.

Here are a few fast and easy ways to drive high-quality traffic to your website:

Topic Expertise:

Google favors content that is highly-detailed, extensive (1500 words or longer), and well-organized. Writing this kind of content is also the fastest way to become an expert in your market.

In turn, Google will increase the amount of organic traffic they send your way.

One way to create stand-out content is by creating what’s called a Pillar Page—a longer blog post covering all aspects of the topic you’ve chosen.

Once that’s in place, you can then add in “cluster content”—posts that support your main page and show your audience you’ve covered your topic completely.

These smaller posts should target longer keyword phrases that your customers are using to search with.

Influencers:

One thing you already know: customers are more likely to buy from a business that has great word-of-mouth.

The question is how to create that word-of-mouth yourself?

Well, first, you should post content that satisfies your customers—but the next best thing is to seek the services of an influencer.

This sort of marketing isn’t just a passing fad anymore. It’s a great, and absolutely proven way to drive traffic to your website.

You can reach out to one or more influencers and hire them to showcase your products, or create a coupon or discount code that they can pass onto their followers in order to encourage interaction.

You can even host giveaways through an influencer.

Voice Search Optimization:

Voice search is becoming an increasingly popular way to find information.

According to eMarketer, voice searches have increased nearly 10% (by the end of 2021).

This means you need to optimize your content for voice search.

To do this, you need to research long tail keywords, which simply means using phrases rather than singular keywords.

Do a little homework and find out what keyword phrases you could use for your brand and the type of content you create.

You also need to write content that is aimed at answering the most common questions your customers are asking.

You can then answer those questions using voice-search with short “sound bytes,” — snippets of information today’s smart speakers are looking for.

Alexa and Google Home don’t want long, detailed responses to most questions, so keep your answers concise and to the point.

QR Codes:

QR codes can drive a ton of traffic to your website. The thing to remember about a QR code, though, is that it is essentially a Call to Action button. You need to give the customer a very good reason to scan that code and go to your website.

So, think about what you could offer on a dedicated landing page that will entice visitors into subscribing to your mailing list or taking other action that will guide them into your sales funnel.

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