Making more sales on your website may be as simple as choosing. Assuming you have a good product, and a market exists for your product, all you need is to add sales and marketing expertise to your webbusiness.
You have 3 options. Which will you choose?
1. Hire a full-time Sales and Marketing Director
Description: He or she understands how to attract and keep customers. Manages budgets and people, sets goals and evaluates performance. Many times must “sell” strategies and tactics to decision makers, who may have strong but wrong-headed opinions.
Pros: Knows how to build sales. Can have industry-specific experience and contacts, which may give your firm an advantage. The best will have extensive online sales marketing experience.
Cons: A huge investment, which makes this option only available to larger firms. Many times an otherwise experienced sales marketer must play catch-up to learn about tools and tactics that work on the web.
Cost: It varies by experience and where your business is located. According to Salary.com, a sales and marketing director position can command $96,000/year in Chicago, $107,000/year in Boston and $103,000/year in San Diego.
2. Hire a online sales specialist.
Description: These sales consultants have built up web-specific selling expertise. He or she knows what sends online shoppers clicking away from a website and is fully versed in attracting potential customers and converting them into buyers. Can develop a sales and marketing plan, prepare budgets, implement the plan and other tasks.
Pros: Should be able to tell you how to get the most impact for your money. Knowledgeable about techniques that will get the best results. Will first determine what needs to be done, then is connected to the copywriters, webdesigners, search engine specialists and tools that can help.
Cons: You may find a “one size fits all” solution provider. For example, he may really only be experienced in search engine placement and unaware of other tactics that would work especially well for your particular business.
Cost: Prices vary. You can get a website sales tuneup starting at a few hundred dollars and up. Some consultants work on advance against percentage of increased sales.
3. Do-it-yourself with the help of an book
Description: The two top-sellers are the ebook Make Your Site Sale by Ken Evoy, and the 2-binder set, The Internet Marketing Course by Corey Rudl. There are also books available focused on search engines positioning, copywriting, traffic-building and more. A list of links to these resources is available at http://www.jawdrop.com/resources.html .
Pros: Inexpensive and fast access to information from people who are succeeding at selling online. Many times these books contain specific info and lots of examples.
Cons: Many people who BUY books don’t READ them. If they read the materials completely, the next challenge is implementation and accurate evaluation of the results. For example, a website owner may try a pay-per-click ad. If it fails, he may think “pay-per-clicks don’t work”, when an expert may see that it was the ad itself that failed, or that particular pay-per-click did not work.
Cost: $25 – $397.
To get sales expertise, you can spend $25 up to over a hundred thousand dollars. With such a huge range in price, it seems like getting sales help would be a no-brainer, but that’s not the case.
What is the best way to build sales for YOUR website? It depends.
Do you have time for the learning curve of doing it yourself? How expensive is the learning curve in terms of out-of-pocket and opportunities lost in the meantime? If your website a side-business out of your spare room, you will probably choose differently than a business striving to meet payroll.
Sales help for your business website is out there. Reach out and get some now.
Raynay Valles is a High-Sales Marketer who makes
websites profitable. Her Internet Marketing Ideabook is full
of proven ideas to get more sales from your website. For
more info, visit http://www.internetmarketingideabook.com
or write her at rvalles@internetmarketingideabook.com
