How to sell online, Marketing, Sales Tips

10 January 2024

8 Tips for Planning Your Sales Strategy in 2024

One of the most important things for you as a creator is to develop a sales strategy to help you sell out your products.

The most effective sales strategy provides a clear step-by-step guide on individual activities required to achieve sales goals and is flexible enough to be reviewed according to operations.

In this article, we provide 8 tips to help you create the ideal sales strategy for your business.

8 tips for planning your sales strategy

Without a sales strategy, you are walking blind. Here are 8 effective tips for planning the right sales strategy.

1. Be clear on your unique selling proposition

Clarity is the first form of marketing. As you plan your sales strategies for the new year, get clear on your product offering.

What results does your product offer?
What should your customers expect when they get your product?

A good way to solve this is to narrow down a particular topic area and share your knowledge about it the best way you can in your product.

Most customers do not recognize the challenges they face. So even if you have an amazing product, your buyers probably wouldn’t know how much they need it until you tell them.

That’s why you need to create a strong and clear brand message that tells your customers what to expect from your product.

This means no more “Buy my ebook to learn how to lose weight fast.” That’s stale knowledge. A quick Google search and your customers know what they need to do to lose weight.

Rather, you can say, “Buy my ebook to know the calorie content in ALL Nigerian foods and how to combine them for effective weight loss.”

This is specific. It’s what many people pay hundreds of thousands of Naira for. So when you highlight it as the main value contained in your product, you attract people with similar problems and interests.

So, instead of talking about your entire industry, talk about your unique product proposition and how to align it with your customer’s needs.

2. Maximize storytelling

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories, you tell.” ~ Seth Godin

In the new year, tell more stories about your products.

What inspired you to create one
Why you chose that topic
How you got the content idea
How you motivate yourself on days when you feel unmotivated.
The support system that keeps you going and lots more.

When selling your products, it’s okay to want to go by the book, using numbers to show your customers how smart you are. But if you must leave an impression in the minds of your customers, work with their emotions.

Storytelling paints a picture for your buyers. It gives them a feeling and transports them to a fantasy land where all their problems are solved and they are living the life of their dreams.

Also, personal stories and metaphors put a human feeling to your brand and make your message more compelling.

Coca-Cola understands this and utilizes storytelling in this Christmas campaign featuring a devoted father who traveled the Earth to deliver his daughter’s letter to Santa Claus.

3. Generate leads every day

Simply put, attract people interested in your product or business every day. Even if it’s 10 people who ask about the price of your product, engage with your posts, or make any other product inquiry. Ensure you find them every day.

There are several ways to generate leads daily. One way is by offering lead magnets. A lead magnet is a free product or item given to potential buyers to lure them to you.

When your lead magnet is highly valuable, your customers get what they want, you get their emails, and you can continuously market to them.

Learn more about Lead magnets and how to use them to grow your online business.

To succeed in business you need to generate leads every day. Lead generation is so important that marketers are still focusing heavily on it, with 53% of them spending half or more of their entire budget on lead generation efforts.

Other ways to generate leads are by sharing customer results and putting out helpful content about your product. This piques the interest of potential customers and gets them to want to know more.

4. Set limits on promotional offers

Offers such as discounts, free trials, and coupons, are important for marketing. They lure customers into finally buying your product. However, while they are effective in getting new customers, too much of it can ruin your business.

Hence, you need to set limits on the number of promotional offers you atve in a time, whether monthly, quarterly, or yearly.

You can manage your promotional offers by;

Knowing what point in a launch strategy your customers deserve a discount. For example, if you are launching a product on pre-order, it can be a good time to offer discounts on your product. So you can say “Pre-order the XYZ template for 5,000 today. Pre-order sales end 17th of December, after which prices go to 10,000.”

Identifying customers who qualify for an offer. In most cases, these are customers who have bought lots of your products in the past. If you are releasing a new course, you offer them a module or two on a free trial for 7 days.

For general black Friday offers, you can give some of your bundle products for discounts. This way you can still make enough profit while attracting new customers.

Should Digital Creators Give Black Friday Offers? Find out.

5. Update your customer persona

Nothing is constant in marketing. So to stay relevant, you need to be up to date with the latest trends and practices.

Five years ago, your customer persona may look like this;

Female/20 yrs old
In the first year of university
Wants to learn a skill and start a side hustle.

Today20-year-old old man/woman is aware of the internet, knows how to operate a laptop, knows that they can create digital products, is aware of affiliate marketing, and so much more.

So, even if the customer persona you created at the beginning of your business worked, you need to revise it again to be sure you are still marketing to the right people.

That’s because the customers buying your product and the customer persona you created when you started may differ. In this case, you want to restrategize to target the right audience.

6. Maximize FOMO

FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out. It involves creating a sense of urgency to lure customers to buy from you.

When items are scarce they are often perceived as more valuable. Your customers should feel like they are missing out on something special if they don’t buy your product.

Abdulrasheed Othman, a Digital creator, and member of the Forbes Coaches Council uses the FOMO strategy to sell out his cohort course titled BOSS workshop.

Every time he launches an edition of the course, he puts a limit on the number of students accepted and the price. Once the deadline is near, he ends registration for the courses.

This way, customers are persuaded to enroll in the course. And those who don’t have to wait for the next batch (if there’s a next batch).

There are different ways to create this situation for your product. For example, you can launch cohort courses at different times of the year, offer a discount for a specific time, and leverage user-generated content to spur customerstomer to take action.

Regardless of what method you choose, ensure it’s ideal for your business.

7. Have a content strategy

While planning a sales strategy, you need a content strategy. A content strategy helps you to create content for customers at different stages of their buyer journey that caters to their pain points and offers solutions to them.

It involves creating different types of content with a specific goal. It could be to educate, inform, entertain, or engage.

Nemanja Zivkovic, CEO, and Founder of Funky Marketing says, “Business needs a content strategy to attract the right people, educate them on the benefits of using their product, convert them into customers, and keep them as customers.”

Oftentimes, you neglect the importance of having a well-crafted content strategy for your products and wonder why no one is interested in what you are selling.

A content strategy helps you know what type of content to share, when to share it, and the frequency at which you should publish it. Ultimately, it helps you to know what type of content your customer needs on their buying journey.

8. Track and measure performance

Management guru, Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” If you don’t measure your performance, how do you know if the strategies you put in place are working or not?

Performance tracking helps you know which campaigns, content, and messages bring in the most results. Additionally, it helps you know what strategies to stop using for your business.

One way to track and measure performance is by having KPIs. KPIs measure your progress toward a goal.

Common KPIs to have as a creator include;