Bootstrapped Businesses Can Increase Sales With 5 Steps

Bootstrapped businesses have to pay closer attention to detail than any other kind of company. But the good news is, just by being a hawk for details, marketers can boost sales and increase visibility.

Here are five ways that bootstrapped businesses can squeeze more out of a thrifty marketing budget:

Unify Your Brand Identity

Bootstrapped businesses can drive sales and increase visibility just by tweaking their fonts, images and color scheme. When your brand’s look, feel and message are consistent across all channels, you reassure your customers and spend your marketing dollars more efficiently.

Use no more than three different main fonts, keep logos and watermarks consistent and choose a uniform color scheme. Your brand should be projected the same way on everything from your business cards to your social ads. Social Media Examiner discusses saving time and money by creating reusable templates for commonly used elements, like infographic templates, invoice templates and landing page templates.   Yes, even your invoices and email signatures should be included in a unified brand identity.

Optimize Landing Pages for Social

Bootstrapped businesses, don’t allow your PPC landing pages to double as social landing pages. PPC and social visitors come to your site from opposite ends of the funnel. PPC visitors are already sold on the product, they’re just waiting for the right time and price. Social visitors, on the other hand, are likely to have never even heard of your brand or your product. Create unique landing pages dedicated solely to social.

Get Industry Influencers to Share Your Content

It is difficult and expensive to create content that specifically targets the different demographic groups and buyer personas you’ve identified in your audience. Instead, target the influencers who steer the buying decisions of every persona and demographic group within your target audience.

Whether they are celebrities or popular bloggers, a few influencers hold great sway over their given industries. Find who your influencers are, spend time on their social networks to discover the type of content they are most likely to share. Then, create content specifically for them. One share from an influencer will boost both sales and visibility right away. Here is an excellent tutorial on influencer marketing.

Blogger Outreach Can Lift Visibility and Spur Conversions

Targeted content is only one way to get industry influencers to act as ambassadors for your brand. Another is to convince them to review your product and share the results with their audience. Their audience, conveniently, is made up largely of your target market. Send a sample product with a short, informal description.

Bootstrapped businesses don’t need to use any salesy language. Don’t parrot the language of your press releases or landing pages. Also, don’t worry about a bad review — most bloggers won’t review a product just to torch it. Not only will the review increase visibility, but you can pluck select quotes from the review and use them as testimonials.

Request Shares on Confirmation Pages

Embed share buttons in your confirmation/thank-you pages, which should be clear, uncluttered and user friendly. This extends your funnel past the conversion and makes post-sale social sharing the final stop on your customer’s journey. Post-purchase sharing makes buyers brand ambassadors, and it drives social conversions — especially with millennials. Research shows that roughly 70 percent of millennials are influenced to buy after seeing shares posted by their peers.

Paying attention to detail is the least expensive and most immediate action that bootstrapped businesses can take to boost sales and gain visibility. Unify imagery and messaging, create unique landing pages and remember, influencers stand between you and your customers, but they are not a middleman you want to cut out.