Why Am I Not Getting Sales?

At the end of the day you need sales. Every small business owner understands that and they also understand that the only way to get those sales is with an aggressive marketing strategy. So if orders aren’t coming in and the phone isn’t ringing then it must be a problem with how you are advertising your business right? Actually no, often times it’s not the strategy that needs to be fixed, it’s how you execution as well as your company itself conducts business. Here are some of the main things that are keeping you from sales:

1. Price: First things first, if you are two or three times the cost of your competitors, do you really think a marketing plan is going to make a difference when it comes to sales? Even if you are far superior in quality, people look at prices first, quality second.
2. Competition: What’s the competition doing? Are they more affordable, do they have better service or quality products? Where are they marketing that you aren’t? If you are on the same platforms like social media, are they spending more money or producing better content than you?
3. Where are you spending your money: Whether it’s Facebook, Google or anywhere else, if you want to have quick success you need to spend money. However, when you are looking at your business you need to understand that where you need to spend your money is different from where other companies need to. An insurance company will get more sales from Google than from social media so they should allocate their ad budget in that direction. A restaurant will be the opposite, they will get more interest from social media so that’s where they need to put their money.
4. Customer service: You put your ads in the right spot, they are appealing and they get a click. Someone visits your site and decides to give you a call or come into your store. What now? What kind of service are they experiencing? Do they feel welcomed or are they being brushed off?
5. Functionality of your website: Go ahead and try to make an order on your own site. Do you have pop ups, surveys, annoying pages to go through or difficulty navigating your way through it? You will have more patience than a customer will and any aggravation they experience, even if it’s small, will cause them to leave.
6. Do they know who you are: Branding is often overlooked but it is very important to getting customers to try your products and services. If someone has never heard of you, they are hesitant to try you out. That’s where social media marketing, SEO and creating content is going to help you the most, they are going to establish your brand so people feel more comfortable shopping with you.
7. Quality and reputation: When a potential customer researches your small business what are they going to see? Are they going to see great things about you or are they going to see negatives about your service and the quality of your products? A bad reputation can cost a company 20-30% of its sales throughout the year. That’s not something any company can handle.

If you are getting traffic, followers and clicks from your marketing efforts but it’s not converting into sales then you need to look inward for the root of the problem. If you are overpriced, the site doesn’t function properly or people simply don’t know anything about you then how can you expect to get any conversions? The problem isn’t that people aren’t buying from you, that’s the result of the problem. The problem is why they aren’t buying and that’s what you need to figure out and turnaround.