The sustainability of a business is determined by the ability of the founders to guarantee continuous cash flow in order to support the operational activities, recurring expenditure as well investments in assets.
Some organizations get caught up in trying to do many things are at time which makes their progression towards activities that contributes to their down line flawed and is visible in the finances of the organization.
Organizations are not necessarily alarmed until there is a sharp drop in revenue; however a sharp drop in revenue is only an indication of many other factors beyond what has been observed. This revenue drop is a symptom that some core activities are ailing such as staff retention, customer service, lack of repeat sales, poor product management, unclear definitions of target market, lack of promotional.
If sale is consistent, a business can survive the most difficult phases as cash flow is directly linked to the overall activities.
The most important question to ask then is “how can more sales be made”? Without asking this question, the business risks every other form of major distraction.
The 360 degrees Marketing Technique
The 360 degrees marketing techniques are sometimes called Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). These techniques are a mix of several activities that organizations are engaged in to increase awareness about a product or services.
The perception of visibility by a customer over a long period of time consistently makes a brand become a sort of inevitable to a customer whenever they need to make a purchasing decision as the brand is the first to come to mind due to the number of exposures they have had with the prospect and vice-versa.
Email Marketing
Email is one of the easiest and fastest ways to reach a large audience and when properly deployed has the potential to create a consistent stream of customers, as it takes the form of a closed user group through reception of newsletters by the customers and overtime a relationship is built through readership as audience are regularly updated about eh activities of the organization or products and services.
Email Marketing also helps to create some form of targets as there are metrics that could show who reads a particular newsletter and how many times. Observing the behaviour of the readers and the type of content they are reading could initiate a purchase decision by offering a product that compliments what they read.
Blogging
Blogging is similar to email marketing, but while email marketing is only sent to subscribers or users generated through a third party, blogging reaches out to all possible audiences that are online and serves as a tool to consistently inform customers about the product, services or activities of a business. Regular blogging should average up to 3-5 blog posts weekly to make conversions; this done over a period of 6 months is a guarantee for increased sales.
Granting Media Interviews
As much as the new media is emerging greatly, the traditional media still holds a sit in the preference of most audience and ability to use these tools such as television, radio and print media is key to reach a lot of people. The conversations on these platforms creates a direct connection with the listeners as it is visual and ability to see the person being interviewed as they share industry based experience makes them look to most audience like a thought leader. This done over time would make such personality become a face and voice in their sector.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is arguably the first on the list of all techniques as it reduces the time, effort and energy to directly reach out to the prospective customers. SEO guarantees that prospects can easily find an offer and make a purchase decision as it places a brand right where the audience is seeking answers. Sales are also made round the clock with no limitation of where the customer buys from.
Networking
Getting exposure as a Founder for your business is necessary to build a personal brand first, as this benefit extends to a business brand as trust can easily be built when people can interact with the owner of the business. A core part of business visibility is to ensure that a business owner continuously puts themselves out there as many times as possible, and this consistency overtime is able to drastically build loyalty right from the onset and sales.
While there are many other techniques in addition to the ones mentioned, engaging in one or more of these activities has the potential to increase the revenue base of the business and reachability.
Emmanuel Otori is an SME Consultant and Business Development Professional with over 10 years of experience in deploying growth interventions for African based businesses. Some of the projects he has worked on cuts across organizations such as the World Bank, GiZ and Mastercard Foundation.
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