Looking to boost sales?
As a business consultant, I come across many business executives that find themselves stuck in a vicious cycle of feast and famine.
Weeks can pass without significant sales, only to then close multiple deals at once (feast), only to then get bogged down in fulfilling the client’s order, hence taking their attention off their sales game (famine); and so it repeats…
If you’re asking how to boost sales for your business, I’m willing to bet that your true goal is to not only increase sales, but to create a process that boosts and generates sales consistently (and by doing so, free yourself from the stressful cycle of feast and famine).
Developing ‘standard operating procedures (SOPs)’ across the key functions of your business is critical if you want to achieve this goal.
For the purpose of today’s article, I want to teach you about one important aspect of your marketing and sales SOP; it is mapping your ‘customer’s journey’.
By doing so, you’ll develop a healthy marketing and sales funnel that will consistently attract customers, encourage their long term loyalty (repeat customers) and the generation of new leads in the form of referrals.
So, let’s jump in how to boost sales by mapping your customer’s journey.
Step 1: Identify and define your target audience
To boost sales, for each product and service you sell, you’ll first need to have a clear and documented understanding of:
- Who your target audience is
- How best to reach them
- What are the factors that motivate their purchasing decisions
Here’s a simple methodology I promote:
Demographics
Review the list below, select the demographic criteria you believe is relevant to the sale of your product and or service, and then create a document that answers each about your desired target audience:
| Age | Gender | Nationality |
| Marital Status | Dependants | Occupation |
| Annual Income | Education Level | Disabilities |
| Political Affiliations | Religious Affiliations | Locations |
These are just some of the possible demographic criteria, don’t hesitate to research more possibilities that could help your team gain a better understanding of your target audience.
Psychographics
Most people understand what a demographic is, but you may not be so clear on psychographics.
However, psychographics are equally important to understand as it will shed light on how to best position your business offering in the marketing and sales process; you’ll struggle to really boost sales without knowing them.
There are technical explanations, but in my opinion, it’s identifying the psychological attributes that your target audience share in common, for example, what common factors motivate your target audience’s decisions.
As with the demographics above, review the table below and select the relevant psychographic criteria you believe to be relevant, and then go about documenting your findings in relation to your intended target audience.
| Values | Beliefs | Life References |
| Challenges | Goals | Fears |
| Aspirations | Personality Traits | Personal Interests |
Decision Making Unit
Before your target audience can make a purchase from your business, have you ever wondered if they need to take the opinion or approval from someone else in their life?
For example, not too many individuals in a marriage can purchase a new car without first consulting their spouse!
Or a marketing manager typically can’t begin acquiring millions in media advertisement without taking the approval of their line manager.
Moral of the story, don’t forget to identify the ‘decision making unit’ that your target audience finds themselves in; your ability to boost sales for your business is correlated to your understanding of your target audience’s DMU.
Then determine if you need to run the demographic and psychographic process above for the individuals in your DMU; you may realize you’ve been missing a large piece of the puzzle, and can now go about developing marketing and sales collateral that addresses their purchasing decisions also.
Step 2: Determine the media platforms to best reach your target audience
In order to boost sales, an amazing product or service is meaningless unless your target audience is aware of it, and hence knows where they can buy it.
Referring back to the demographics in Step 1, ask yourself and document where your target audience can typically be found, and what media do they commonly see / interact with on a frequent basis?
Here’s a small list of possibilities to help you:
| Outdoor Media | Radio | Entertainment Venues |
| Social Media | Transport Hubs | Online / Print Publications |
Chances are, each of the criteria above is relevant to your target audience and DMU, so you’ll need to dig deeper and determine specifics such as:
- ‘When’ is my target audience coming into contact with that media platform?
- ‘Why’ is my target audience coming into contact with it?
- ‘How’ is my target audience using it also?
Let’s run through a quick example, let’s say you wish to boost sales and your target audience are senior business executives..
For the ‘When’
Senior business executives commonly travel, therefore ‘when’ they come into contact with ‘outdoor media’ could be at transport hubs such as the airport.
For the ‘Why’
Travelling business executives could be forced to view an advertisement whilst they’re waiting for a flight (the why); this context could be used to your favor when trying to develop a creative advertising concept to promote your business.
For the ‘How’
Sticking with outdoor media, commonly a business executive (or any person) would see an advertisement from a far and that would be that; but clever brands have been known to add the ‘how’, see the famous example below by IBM.
You’ll notice they incorporated a new layer of engagement for their intended audience and were able to boost sales as a result.
Step 3: Map the customer’s journey
I want you to take an A4 piece of paper, place it horizontally, and then draw a single dot on the far left-middle, and another dot on the far right-middle.
The dot to the left represents your target audience before they are aware that your brand exists (at this stage you can consider them as a prospect).
The dot on the right represents the point they have converted into a customer, and have ultimately paid you (boost sales!).
We need to connect these two dots by identifying each step that moves your target audience from the left to the right (from a prospect to customer).
I have prepared a draft customer journey for you in the example below, it’s easier to understand this step by looking at the example, and then creating your own.
Some key questions to ask yourself during this process are:
- When my target audience is aware of a problem they wish to solve, or a goal they wish to achieve, what’s the first step they can take that would lead them to discover your brand?
- Could they enquire with a colleague or a family member for a referral? Would they cross-check with their purchasing department for approved suppliers? Maybe they’ll do a quick search on Google or another search engine?
- Once your target audience became aware of your brand, where would you want to funnel them to? Possibly your website or a landing page? Potentially your social media channels?
- Would your target audience likely buy after first contact with your brand? Or would they conduct further research to check reviews and competitor offerings? Could you collect their email addresses to build trust with them over time and help facilitate their research process with email content of your own?
- If they’re ready to reach out, how should they contact your business? Do you have the infrastructure to handle a particular type of enquiry vs another, for example, is it easier to respond to email enquiries vs telephone enquiries etc?
- Maybe you’re an online retailer and your target audience can self-serve (buy directly online vs needing to schedule a conversation with your team)?
- Where does the contact information of your lead and customers go? Do you have a CRM to track their engagement with your brand over time?
- Are there opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell your products / services? What would add more value to your target audience in the moment they’re ready to buy? The very act of cross and up-selling can dramatically boost sales.
- How should you collect payments in a way that’s most convenient for your target audience, but also facilitates positive cash flow for your business?
- Once you have secured a new customer, what can you do to encourage their long term loyalty and ensure repeat business?
- What steps can you take to encourage referrals from your customers?
Step 4: Define the key metrics that correspond which each phase of the customer journey
Hopefully by this stage you’ll have a funky looking map that represents the ideal customer journey for your business.
Print it and pin it up; you’ve done more than 99% of businesses (is it a coincidence that 99% of businesses also fail within the first 15 yrs of their existence?)
You’ll now need to identify which metrics you can monitor that indicate the healthy flow of movement by your prospects toward their eventual conversion into customers and beyond (from the left to right of your customer journey diagram).
For example, if you believe that your target audience may conduct research using search engines such as Google, this indicates that leveraging Google Search Ads in your marketing strategy could help capture their attention and lead them to your website.
Some metrics in this instance that you could measure are:
- Search-Impression-Share
- Clicks
- Average Cost-Per-Click
- Click-Through-Rate
- Conversions
- Conversion Rate
Each stage along your customer journey will have relevant metrics that your marketing and sales teams can monitor on a weekly basis as you run your campaigns.
As a business operator, you can review the data to identify potential bottlenecks, and or just focus on continuous optimization.
If there is to be a boost to your sales, this will at the very least help you determine how much by!
To learn more about metrics, I have an extensive article of how they can be used to recession proof your business here
Conclusion
So, to boost sales, it is important to have mapped your customer’s journey all the way from an enquiring prospect, through to payment and beyond.
The key highlights are:
- Identify and define your target audience
- Don’t forget to define your target audience’s ‘decision making unit (DMU)’
- Detail the ‘demographics’ and ‘psychographics’ of your target audience
- Determine the media platforms to best reach your target audience
- Draw out the ideal journey for your target audience with your brand
- Highlight the ‘critical path’ in your customer’s journey as the backbone to develop first
- Don’t forget to map the ‘customer loyalty’ and ‘referral programs’ also
- Define the key metrics that correspond with each phase of the customer journey
- Launch your campaigns, measure the results, optimize your actions and then repeat
I recommend to also read and incorporate other advanced marketing and sales strategies linked below:
If you would like help to develop a customer journey for your business so that you too can boost sales quickly and consistently, please book a free call with me today.
