Five Ways to Boost Sales in a Slow Economy

Article Summary: This is our DURFM strategy. You can use to immediately increase sales, attract new customers, and help your home business grow in the current economic climate.
Posted: Friday 5th March 2010, 17:51:29

This is our DURFM strategy. You can use to immediately increase sales, attract new customers, and help your home business grow in the current economic climate. Don't know what DURFM is? Check out this article that will teach you everything you need to know about surviving in a turbulent economy.

As you are no doubt aware, the world economy is kind of slow right now and a lot of businesses have seen sales drop (especially in the auto industry).

This drop in sales has affected all kinds of businesses and services - even home based businesses - but there are steps you can take right now to give your home based business and sales a boost and ensure that you continue to thrive no matter how bad things get.

We call this our 'DURFM' strategy. It involves Discounts, Freebies, Updates, Rollouts, and Marketing (DURFM).

Five 'DURFM' steps to increasing sales in a slow economy
1.    Offer deep discount pricing on special combo packages - One way to quickly increase business is to offer deep discounts on a combo package of your most 'in demand' products so as to create an irresistible offer. Your customers will have no reason not to buy from you.
Special packages will give customers a reason to buy now rather than waiting and possibly forgetting about your products.
2.    Offer free shipping - Offering free shipping is an easy way to make an offer more tempting.
Studies on Internet shopping sites have repeatedly shown that when two sites offer the exact same product and one offers free shipping, the site with free shipping will usually get more sales - even if their prices are higher.
So offer free shipping and be sure your customer knows that it is free.
3.    Offer updates to existing products - Customers who have purchased your existing products may be interested in current updates to those products. This is especially true when the product is a piece of software or training videos.

With software updates, you provide the customer an opportunity to gain new features and benefits from their software for a small update fee. Just about every company that offers software does this and many customers will both expect and request regular updates.

With training products, updates are generally in the form of a ‘volume 2’ (or volume 3, etc) and provide additional and updated information, starting where the original training CD left off.

One advantage of offering product updates is that you already know who your most likely customers will be - those who purchased the original product. Use promotional emails to let them know about the update and be sure to offer a discount to show your appreciation for their prior purchase.

4.    Offer New Products - If you've been offering the same old products for several years, you've probably seen sales drop off as those products near the end of their 'shelf life'.
A product's shelf life has to do with how long the product will remain viable in the market-place. In the case of training videos and computer software shelf lives can be very short, often as short as two years.
To combat declining sales you'll want to create or acquire new products that you can offer your customers.
Be on the lookout for new home business ideas. You never know when the perfect home business opportunity will appear.
5.    Expand your marketing efforts - It should be obvious that one way to increase sales is to increase your marketing efforts. But in a declining economy one of the first things many businesses do is cut their advertising and marketing budgets.

When a business cuts their marketing efforts their products are almost always less visible, even hidden from potential customers. And this almost always hurts sales.

To make money without increasing your marketing efforts use 'zero cost marketing' tactics like placing videos on YouTube, posting messages in discussion forums, sending out press releases, using affiliate programs, creating your own discussion forum, offering something free on your web site and sending out free 'tip of the week' emails.

Expanding your marketing efforts doesn't have to mean spending lots of money. It just means using the tools and resources available to you to reach the customer most likely to purchase your products.

So there you have it - a basic DURFM strategy to boost your sales.

By applying these elements to your business operations…

•    Discounts
•    Updates
•    Rollouts
•    Freebies
•    Marketing

…you'll likely see a boost in sales and an increase to your client base.

May your success be more than you can hold!
 
Kevin

http://www.CambridgeBusinessAcademy.com