Marketing Fixes for Floundering Sales

Nothing is more disconcerting than lackluster sales. It’s a business’s worst nightmare, especially when you feel that you’re doing everything right. High-quality products and service are essential cogs in the wheel, but they’re not enough to guarantee sales.

Believe it or not, selling what you’ve produced – whatever that may be – is an entirely different discipline. A unique set of skills, attributes, and abilities is needed to present your company’s offerings to the marketplace. But it needn’t break the bank; there are cost-effective ways to get your message across and achieve the desired outcomes.

Once the quarterly results come out and things aren’t looking so hot, companies routinely fall into the trap of pouring all their resources into mega budget, top-of-the-funnel tactics like paid search. It’s like rolling the dice – probably not a good idea when desperation creeps in. When facing anemic sales, the last thing you want to do is hemorrhage cash by chasing ghosts. Remember the age-old adage – work smarter, not harder.

In a challenging economy with low profit margins and heavy competition, it’s foolhardy to throw cash at marketing options with minimal conversion rates and high expenses. So, avoid the rookie mistakes and think like a pro.

We’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating: you may have the best products or service, but if your audience is blind to it, your business is on life support. Now it’s time to jumpstart operations with the most converting, cost-effective medium in the marketing arena. You don’t need to find a new audience.

It’s all about working with what you already have in your existing audience and mastering communication to convert them into paying customers. Believe it or not, you can cost-effectively acquire an audience via email marketing channels.

In specific e-commerce sectors, it’s not unheard of for companies to report returns as high as $68 per dollar spent on email marketing. Naturally, companies don’t simply send random emails to recipients. Everything is carefully optimized for maximum effectiveness.

The style, tone, diction, cadence, formatting, and delivery are fine-tuned to perfection. If you are starting out and need simple, cost-effective solutions, evaluating different email marketing platforms is a critical first step. We all use email for personal communication, but email is also the most effective marketing medium for business operations. Let’s take a look!

Why Email is Your Budget Hero

If you’ve ever tried a pay-per-click campaign, otherwise known as PPC, you know that they’re expensive. And depending on what you’re selling, they can be costly. For our discussion, let’s forgo this marketing channel. If your sales are under severe pressure, and your business is facing an existential crisis, you may want to choose a solution that is cost-efficient and effective.

That’s precisely why we’re targeting email marketing as the undisputed boss of the budget battle. Don’t believe us, believe the numbers. The data backs it all up. Other platforms require you to spend a huge amount of money for diminishing returns, but email offers extraordinary financial payoffs per dollar spent.

Granted, there is no panacea for every sales problem. But of the available options, email has proven itself as a cost-effective solution time and again. Consider that for every $1 spent on crafting a polished marketing-oriented email, the expected return typically averages between $36 and $40. That’s an insane payoff ratio by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s virtually an unmatched ROI.

Email ROI is significantly higher than any other digital channel. This makes email the most financially resilient solution for any company needing to drive results without incurring massive expenses. In other words, email simply makes sense.

More importantly, you don’t have to print anything – pamphlets, flyers, posters, mailers – you simply use your available resources for maximum value. It’s all electronic, so there are no postage costs. When you’re facing a sinking bottom line, email proves to be a demonstrable fix.

Email is Your Owned Digital Real Estate

Think of all the flaws in modern sales strategies. They rely on rented digital real estate. We cannot claim to understand the algorithmic structures of social media networks or search engines. But we can move towards stability by building an accurate, reliable, and trusted email list. This is your best resource when communicating up and down the value chain with your stakeholders.

Forget about innumerable competitors on social channels or a seemingly endless volume of competing websites. When you use email, you are targeting your audience specifically and exclusively, without any competition. You’re honing in on one person at a time, even if you are sending mass emails.

Fun Fact: Email is approximately 40X more effective at acquiring new customers than social media platforms. No jokes – email really works because it is the most personal form of communication online.

The Conversion Power of Personalized Messaging

Too many companies focus on nonsense statistics like views or impressions. But the truth is, social media is one of the least converting online mediums. You could have thousands of clicks and no sales – it’s all about the messaging’s conversion ability, not the audience’s reactions. People are far more interested in a personalized message than a generic message. It goes without saying. Let’s take a look at some more fast facts.

Audiences prefer personalized communications.
Personalized emails generate 6X more transactions than non-personalized emails.
Automated emails are a powerful tool with exceptional conversion rates compared to standard manual campaigns (on average, 2361% higher).
Marketing messages sent to customers via email generate 138% more spend than among shoppers who don’t receive dedicated offers.
To be effective, email messaging must capture the customer’s attention within 10 seconds, or face failure. That’s why the right messaging, layout, and structure are absolutely crucial.

There’s another truth about email marketing that many companies are blindsided by. Every single communication you send generates a wealth of transparent, actionable metrics. These directly correlate with sales performance. With email, you can see metrics such as click-to-open rates, conversion rates, and engagement velocity. You can also track the customer’s journey from the email subject line to the final purchase confirmation. That’s pure marketing brilliance right there. Besides, if you can’t measure it, it cannot be fixed. With email, you have checks and balances at every step. Email is an actionable solution to floundering sales. You can bank on that.