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As a small business owner, finding ways to increase profit and your audience reach efficiently is key. Entrepreneurs need to understand the sales process and know the ways to manipulate it in their favor.

Luckily, there are ways that small businesses can generate leads and boost sales on a budget, to grow and achieve business targets. In this article, we look at four ways you can boost sales for your new startup.

Create a detailed content marketing strategy

Developing an engaging content strategy will help you generate leads and also build authority in your industry, whether it’s an informative eBook, regular blog content or user-generated videos or images that can be shared easily. But beyond creating great content, you need to know how and where to distribute that content to ensure it gets seen by a wider audience.

To get more out of the content you develop, you can find ways to repurpose it for social or email to promote it to new and existing audiences. A blog post, for example, can be turned into graphics for Instagram or made into a video for your YouTube channel.

Having a detailed content marketing strategy that has been designed with distribution in mind will make sure your brand draws the attention of the right customers and directs them back to your business.

Provide convenient payment options

The logistics of accepting card machine payments can be a hurdle for startups, but if you want your business to be a success and increase revenue, you need to provide convenient payment methods for your customers. The payment process for your business needs to be easy to use, so as not to alienate customers, and should also be multifaceted for convenience – you want to capture every sale possible, which requires choice for your audience.

Today, most consumers take it for granted that businesses will offer card payments, whether it’s in-store or online. In fact, the UK is the world’s third most cashless country, so neglecting to offer card payments could negatively impact your bottom line and result in you capturing a smaller percentage of potential sales. Being able to accept card payments is vital in order to avoid risking lost sales.

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Cultivate a positive reputation

The internet enables us to be more informed than ever before, and this can be both a blessing and a curse for businesses trying to generate sales. Startups have the opportunity to foster a positive brand image and reputation from day one, which can be put to good use in influencing future customers.

In prioritizing a great customer experience and encouraging customers to leave feedback and reviews, businesses can cultivate a great reputation that will serve them well in terms of sales and customer loyalty.

There are various ways that small businesses can make a good impression, from asking customers for feedback and then taking appropriate action to improve where necessary, to asking for testimonials when a customer has a positive experience or when their expectations were exceeded.

Entrepreneurs should take the time to respond to online reviews too, which demonstrates that the business cares about its customers and their experience with the brand.

As consumers, we rely on reviews and testimonials to forge our own decisions when it comes to making a purchase or using a new service, so in taking the time to cultivate these types of social proof, you can increase the likelihood of bringing new customers to your business.

Utilize social media

Social media can’t be ignored, for its ability to build a community to the different avenues it provides, and for businesses to reach a wider audience. For startups, however, the main appeal of social media is how cost-effective it is for such big rewards. So many consumers are spending a lot of their time on these channels, so it can be an enormous boost to sales when it’s used correctly.

Most social media sites have a wealth of data on their users, which businesses can use to get their messaging in front of the right eyes. And while not everyone uses social media to buy, it can be a highly effective way to promote products and services, especially if you can offer giveaways, discounts or special deals to grab your customers’ attention for more sales.

For startups, developing a social media marketing strategy early on can be a great way of marketing the business on a budget while still enjoying great results.

Final thoughts

Startups often need to get creative with their strategies in order to keep budgets low while still enjoying growth as a business. Focusing on finding high-impact yet cost-effective methods to build brand awareness, and consequently, sales should be the aim.

Startups should use a combination of these tips and then analyze how each impacts sales to determine where efforts should be placed for better results in the future.

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Harvey Holloway is a digital marketing specialist, with a 1st class honours degree in Digital Media Design. Harvey is now looking to connect with leading publications and share his experience with a wider audience. Connect with Harvey on Twitter: @HarveyTweetsSEO.

Marketing is crucial for your business to succeed. Whether you are an online retail shop owner or a first-time entrepreneur, you probably already know the importance of smart and effective advertising.

In order to kick-start your business and support it as it grows, you should have a detailed marketing plan. This article will look into six advanced digital marketing strategies you should try in your campaign.

1. Guest Posts

Guest blogging is often being overlooked by the majority of entrepreneurs and even marketers themselves. The primary purpose of guests posts is link building, and perhaps they are the best tool for it.

Guest posts are essential for growing your business, and here’s why:

They help build relationships: If you are an expert in your field, you will easily be able to establish a connection with your audience and with the bloggers you collaborate with. Being professional about what you do and displaying an insightful look at the industry can help inspire loyalty and trust in your customers.

They are good for SEO: When you leave a link to your website on the guest post you write on an authoritative blog, you will not only receive more traffic through those links, but your website will rank higher in web searches. Google sees backlinks from different places that lead to your site and this makes the search engine prioritizes your website over others.

They are relatively cheap: Compared to other marketing techniques, guest blogging is fairly cheap. The thing to keep in mind though is that you must mainly focus on the quality of content instead of trying to sell your products. If your article has no value, then what use is it?

They provide new leads and opportunities: As mentioned before, being an expert in your field can potentially lead to new customers. If people like your content, they will want to find out more about your business and eventually become your clients.

2. Translations

The logic behind this strategy is fairly simple: the more accessible you make your content, the more people you will reach. By translating your website into different languages, you will be able to appeal to the foreign audiences, which will lead to your business going global.

If you are not good with languages and don’t know anyone who can translate your content, you can always turn to online translation services which have become very popular in recent years. Such sites as The Word Point offer translations to dozens of languages for a decent price and in a small amount of time.

For this marketing strategy to be effective, you should consider translating to at least two or three languages other than English. If you are based in North America, a good idea would be to spread into South America. This means that you will have to localize your content for the respective countries, whose main languages are Spanish and Portuguese or variations of these.

Likewise, if you are based in Europe, you can target the biggest potential markets that you are missing out on at the moment. Don’t try to hurry though, and start off with several languages first. You can increase that number once you have established yourself in your target countries.

3. Skyscraper Technique

When using the Skyscraper Technique, you will be able to develop many aspects of your business marketing. The technique itself is pretty simple:

Find Trending Content: The first thing you do is find the content in your niche that is currently trending. Sometimes such topics can die out as fast as they sprang up, so be sure to act fast.

Compile A List Of Distributors: Now make a list of websites or blogs where you will be posting your future content. Your articles might be guest posts, so you have to find out if the sites permit backlinks beforehand.

Create Better Content: Go through the content you found and make it better. Develop certain points or include additional analysis. Maybe the content lacks facts or statistics. If the language is too complicated, simplify it so that more people can understand it. Your goal is to create an article that is better than what you found. Because you are using a trending topic, you will most definitely succeed in finding an audience for your work.

Post It & Receive Feedback: Once you post the content on the sites you chose, keep interacting with your readers. Show that you are willing to stay up-to-date on the topic and are a professional in your industry. The backlinks should increase your traffic too.

4. Smart Emails

You are probably thinking about how useless and ineffective email marketing is nowadays. But this is actually not the case if you know how to do it properly.

A good email will possess all the qualities of a good ad. To make your emails more appealing, think about these features:

-Design is everything. Make it stand out.
-Less text. More images.
-Saturate your content. Only on topic.

Along with the things listed above, try targeting specific people instead of the general public. Look for certain users on the Internet and aim your emails at them. One way to make email marketing easier is to use such a tool as MailChimp or analogs. It makes sending these messages faster and more efficient.

5. Moving Man Method

This is a fairly new tricky technique that was coined by Brian Dean. The system goes like this:

-Find Defunct Websites: Find websites in your industry or niche that have moved to a new URL, changed names, stopped offering services, or went out of business completely.
-Look Through The Data: Carefully look through these websites to find the content you like.
-Create Better Content: Just like with the Skyscraper Technique, create better content than what they used to offer.
-Reach Out To Sites With Backlinks: Find sites and blogs that contain backlinks to these defunct websites. Reach out to them and ask if they would change the links to your own articles.

Quite a witty technique that is gaining popularity right now, the Moving Man Method is an easy way to create quality content and get backlinks to your site.

6. Advertorials

Last but not least, advertorials are the way to go because of their unique nature. Unlike traditional advertisement, advertorials serve the purpose of connecting with your audience rather than plainly selling your product.

There is a great article on How To Write An Advertorial that you can check out to get acquainted with what an advertorial is. Here’s a rundown of how to make your advertorial more appealing:

-Find the right media outlet. Don’t choose at random.
-Clearly label your advertorial as ‘advertisement’ (according to FTC’s guidelines), or else it will be banned.
-Advertorials are like blogs: don’t sell the product, sell the content related to your product.
-Share your advertorials on social media.

To sum up, these are definitely not the only advanced digital marketing strategies that will aid you during your advertising. But they are most obviously worth a try and may be of great use when implemented right. Don’t pass by and take note!

4 Ways Startups Can Boost Sales