The things they don’t tell you about advertising— how to increase sales

The amount of people you reach through digital or traditional advertisement does not guarantee sales! Ride along, I will tell you why.

Most people rely on advertisements and forget other factors as important as advertisement. For many years, business people have thought advertisement is the major driver of sales.

I dare not say advertisement does not have a significant impact on the success of a business. Meanwhile, if other important factors are not satisfied, advertisement becomes a waste. If you have spent money promoting ads and sales did not increase, don’t feel bad. We will figure out the problems together. Stay with me.

Now, in this article, you’ll see how advertisement does not influence sales in many cases unless other significant factors are satisfied. I simplified the major factors that determine sales and advertisement seem to be the last on the list, but the most important on the list. Do you feel better now? Lol…

Pay keen attention now. If your prices are higher than normal, no amount of advertisement can drive sales unless you have a monopoly in your niche, but this may not be the case. You are in an open market — you are free to sell your products or services at the highest or lowest prices, but as a marketing strategist, I advise you to keep your prices in the middle; not high and low.

Focus on winning the minds and hearts of the customers rather than winning the war with your competitors. Tweet this

How do I expand my business?

A lot of people ask this question. The answer is simple. Look at the details! Continue with me, I will show you the details you need to know. Let’s assume you increased the production of a product by a certain percent because sales are pretty good and there is more demand for your products or services. You must match this increase by a certain unit of labor force — hire more employees for the expansion. In doing so, your operational expense will also increase, but you will realize good profit.

Your sales will also increase by the same or more than the percentage production was increased. Now, the rate at which your production (sales) change positively is called Business Expansion. This expansion will continue until **natural disasters **occur and cause production to slow, hence hamper sales. I want to equip you for these natural causes when they come, but I must lay the basics. Stick with me!

People will care less about buying non-essential products when natural disasters happen. With this, you have to make a difficult decision — reduce your labor force by laying a certain number of your employees off or close your business until those natural or exogenous factors are controlled.

You don’t want these people to become a liability to your government, but you also want to maximize profit as well. You can’t maximize profit if you keep paying salary you cannot retain from sales, because you are financially fragile. When you lay these people off, your production (sales) will shift downward. This negative change is called Business Contraction.

A simple business approach

Other things remaining equal, advertisement is the gate way to sales. At least that’s what you may know. What you have failed to do is take other primary factors that could influence sales into consideration. Advertising is a powerful tool for competition. It provides valuable information about products and services in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

In this way, advertising will help your business function smoothly while increasing your sales. However, below are several factors that make advertising less useful. If you have not satisfied these factors, you may be spending more on ads than you can get from sales.

Is there demand for what you sell?

Most people do not understand the pattern of demand of the goods and services they tend to sell. If you sell goods or services that are not in demand, you do not expect sales to increase anytime soon. This is why before you jump into a business, you need a **business consultant **to analyze the profitability of investment.

The single factor that is critical for determining the growth of sales is the goods or services you sell. If your goods or services are satisfying the needs of the consumers, they will definitely sell. Meanwhile, you need to be mindful of maintaining the quality of your goods or services and adding or modifying the functions and utilities according to the changing technology and varying tastes and preferences of the consumers.

Now, if the sales of the goods or services you sell have not increased over a year or several months, you need to study the demand pattern of the things you sell. However, if the demand for the things you sell is high, but sales do not increase you need to know what the next item on the list is.

Are your prices reasonable?

Now you have what the people want, but are your prices good? Most people see high prices as exploitation. They literally do not care about the taxes you pay or the cost of the goods or services you provide. They just want good prices! If you want to have more customers and increase sales, you must keep your marketing strategy aligned with the simple law of demand — the higher the prices of your goods or services, the lower the demand (sales).

The lower the prices of your goods or services, the higher the demand (sales). This simple economic law analyzes the behavior of your customers to the letter. While prices are not the only determinant of sales, they play a huge part in the growth of your sales. You want to make sure your customer can afford to buy what you sell.

Can you be reached easily or not?

You have what the people want at affordable prices. Awesome! But your sales do not still increase. Are you sad? Hey, don’t worry! We will fix the problem. Your competitor is doing better than you, but your prices are handsome and you have what end users want.

Your competitor is ideal. Can you be reached easily? Let me guess, the answer is no! Now, that is the problem. You are selling what people are dying to have.

Not just that you have what they want, you beat your competitors by selling at the lowest prices, but you are at the bottom of the red sea. Nobody wants to go down there even if your prices are the best. The reachability of your business is one of the primary factors that influence businesses, positively or negatively. Simply put, if you are at the bottom of the red sea, come to the shore so potential buyers can see you. There are primarily two ways your business could be reached. You could be reached online or offline.

Bricks-and-mortar store

If your business is housed in a building, you want to make sure the building is very ideal. Being reachable via e-commerce is not so different from bricks-and-mortar stores. The central idea is potential buyers must be able to reach you and they want to do that very easily. Customers do not like to be stressed. They will rather pay the high prices than spend hours to reach you.

Even if you are in the heart of a city where there are multiple stores, you want to do everything you can for your store to be amongst the first few stores if not the first store on the line. This is one of the details that a lot of business owners do not see and it makes huge negative impacts on their sales. I want your business to grow. That's why I am taking time to show you the details.

E-commerce

Do you already have an e-commerce version of your bricks-and-mortar store? If you don’t, you need to have one! I will tell you why you need an e-commerce website soon. Now, when you have the first two targets in place, you want to make sure the name of your e-commerce store is short and easy to remember. Most people tend to forget the names of stores that are long and difficult to remember. An ecommerce website could be used to drive traffic to your physical location as well.

You also want to make sure your ecommerce website ranks on google first result’s page. When an end user searches — Google or Bing — for a particular product or service, the first few websites that come up are considered high ranking websites. The owners of those websites are your business rivals if they are in the same niche as you.

They are outperforming you! They are hurting your customers with their high prices. Are you wondering why your competitors are outperforming you even though you are giving your services or products at the lowest prices? They have been making use of several search engine optimization tools.

But why e-commerce?

Many people want to buy goods and services from the comfort of their homes. Their purchases won’t register on your dashboard if you do not create the environment for them. Their sales count! Online shopping is very important for your business.

It confers one very big advantage on your business – the digital footprint of the customers’ shopping history is available like registering with an e-retailer, browsing through various product categories, preferences, specific shopping on special days, items frequently shopped for – you can use this data to craft lucrative sales deal and personalized sales messages for the customers resulting in higher sales.

You could manually adapt this system if you don’t have an e-commerce store. However, it is going to be a bit stressful. You will have to take time to carefully catalog customers’ preferences, items frequently shopped or asked for, items shopped for on special days, etc. Check my friends out for help, though.

Target a particular market

Now that you have the products or services that are in high demand at the lowest prices and you could be reached easily online or offline, you may advertise! Your marketing strategy plays a prominent role in affecting the sales if you target a specific group. Marketing strategy involves selection of correct target market, brand positioning, and choice of suitable distribution channels.

This can make a huge impact on the sales of your goods or services. Meanwhile, do not expect to make overwhelming sales when you are advertising to the wrong market. I am not going to say Ford F150 Raptor does not sell in China, but your overall sales will be nothing compared to a company that sells the same model of Ford in the United States.

The reason is simple—the Ford F150 Raptor does not have a huge market in China, so I do not care how much you spend on advertising the Ford F150 Raptor in China, sales will not increase. If you advertise to the wrong market, you make little or no sales.

It is time to advertise!

Every move in business must be calculated. If you have what people want in your physical or ecommerce store at the most affordable prices, then it’s time to advertise. That is a calculated move. Do not waste money on ads when you have not satisfied the factors we have just discussed. Advertise your goods or services with my friends.

Until we meet again, cheers to your success in whatever you want to achieve!