The fourth quarter of the year can be a gift or a curse for businesses.
Some businesses get the gift of high volume shopping sprees.
While other businesses get the curse of people mentally, if not physically, checked out and off on their high volume shopping sprees that don’t include what you have to offer.
If you need to quickly ramp up your sales efforts, here are 7 ways you can generate more opportunities right now:
- Sell more to your existing/previous customers
- Get existing/previous customers to refer friends
- Reach out to partners and create a referral program
- Run ads on Facebook targeting your dream customers
- Run ads on Google targeting high purchase intent keywords
- Setup retargeting ads to your website visitors to bring them back to a sales page
- Cold outreach to prospects of a list you research and build yourself or buy
1. Sell More To Your Existing/Previous Customers
Do you run campaigns to your existing customers? Running email campaigns can be used to either bring back repeat business or sell new products or services and increase their order size.
Existing customers are the lowest hanging fruit that you have. They already enjoy doing business with you, why not offer them more value and earn more of their business?
To make this easier over time, you should be running Goodwill campaigns that build your relationship without selling to them. Then when you do have something to sell that’s relevant and valuable, they’ll be more open to your offer and primed for doing business with you.
2. Get Existing/Previous Customers To Refer Friends
The next best thing to getting more business from your existing customers and contacts is to ask your happy customers for referrals.
Since you’ve been doing such a great job with them, why wouldn’t they want to refer more people to you?
Like the Goodwill campaign mentioned above, when you provide high quality products and services along with a delightful customer experience, you’ve already laid the groundwork for referral Goodwill.
3. Reach Out To Partners And Create A Referral Program
Who else has the same target audience as you but is not your competition?
This is an easy way for you to get a foot in the door with some credibility right off the bat. It’s also a way for your partners to be able to add more value for their customers by introducing what you have to offer as well (and this works the other way as well for you to offer more value to your own customers by creating a relevant referral network).
Talk to some other companies that you know well and see what kind of opportunities there are for cross-promoting to each other’s customer base.
4. Run Ads On Facebook Targeting Your Dream Customers
Whatever your opinion of Facebook from a personal use standpoint, it is a great advertising platform. Think about all the data it has on people, and you can tap into that and target your perfect dream customers.
Running Facebook ads is also much more affordable than traditional advertising, plus you can target very specifically and collect much more data from your campaigns to track and improve your ROI.
A major key to marketing success is getting the right message in front of the right people, right?
Facebook makes this easy. Create a special offer that your dream customers can’t refuse, then run a campaign to get it in front of them.
5. Run Ads On Google Targeting High Purchase Intent Keywords
High purchase intent means that a person is searching for something with the sole purpose of buying something.
What high purchase intent keywords are related to your business?
Put together a Google Adwords campaign around those keywords and drive traffic to a dedicated landing page for a no-brainer offer for your customers to start a relationship with you.
6. Setup Retargeting Ads To Your Website Visitors To Bring Them Back To A Sales Page
Are you converting 100% of your website visitors into customers?
If the answer is yes, call me right now I want to know you.
If not, then you need to be running retargeting campaigns. These are the ads that you see when you’re surfing around the Internet and social media and they are promoting websites and products that you were recently checking out.
By running a retargeting campaign, you can recapture some of those missed opportunities from would-be customers that got distracted from completing their decision to buy from you.
7. Cold Outreach To Prospects Of A List You Research And Build Yourself
Still stuck? Cold outreach is more manual, but can still work.
Create a profile of who your dream customers are, then start searching LinkedIn for them. Send them a connection request and follow up with a few Goodwill messages to build rapport.
From there, take the conversation offline and ask for a call or cup of coffee to learn more about each other and if there are any opportunities.
You can also search for people in online communities like forums, Facebook Groups, Twitter Chats, etc. and find their contact information to reach out.
Just remember that you want to add value to your relationship before you start pushing for a sale. Earn their attention, get them to Know, Like, and Trust you, then earn their business.
Your Fourth Quarter Crusher Campaign Worksheet
Struggling to get sales? The fourth quarter is closing and you need to hit your goals quickly. This free worksheet will help you find your way to success.
If you’ve made it this far, clearly you want to crush the fourth quarter this year.
That’s why we have a special offer for you…