Effective Ways to Increase Sales during Pandemic

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic storms have proved to be very effective in significantly changing consumer behavior. Most of the middle class and above (the middle class) withhold spending or spending in response to economic uncertainty and the risk of recession. 

The impact of this behavioral change is very clear, household consumption spending has fallen sharply and has contributed significantly to the decline in economic growth in the second quarter and will continue in the third quarter. Even the IMF has officially stated that the COVID-19 Pandemic has become a global economic crisis marked by many countries on the brink of recession.

Given that the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing people to stay more at home so as not to catch the virus. Most of the activities take place online at home, both work, school and shopping. Business players are expected to learn digital marketing strategies to advance their business in a pandemic like this.

This is the right moment for business owners to maximize the marketing process with the help of digital marketing or online marketing services that will deliver a lot of benefits. Commercials in national media will make the product better known to the public. Given that in this digital era, competition is getting tougher. The number of e-Commerce is a breath of fresh air for online businesses.

Doing business through online is actually not difficult. As long as you master the market and have a good digital marketing strategy, the business will continue to exist. Supported by current conditions, more buying and selling activities are carried out online.

Online business requires you to master digital marketing and social media. If it is too difficult to learn, you can go to digital marketing services or other third party services that could help you with your sales. 

Now let's discuss the conveniences that you can benefit from to increase sales. Even in the current crisis, you can actually develop a powerful sales strategy to sustain your business growth during a pandemic and respond to changes in consumer behavior that have changed as a logical consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Make it Affordable and Reachable!

The first strategy that you can adapt to your business, is to make the products or services that you sell easily accessible and affordable. For example, by providing easy payments, extending installment periods, reducing down payments, reducing packaging and increasing the number of payment options. 

With this first strategy, even when customer purchasing power is declining, you don't need to reduce prices too drastically. This is because it's going to make cash flow critical. Conversely, this strategy will make your product or service appear friendly and empathetic to the financial condition of the customer, which is generally very difficult in a pandemic like today.

2. Develop More Specific and Unique Customer Segmentation

The second trendy sales strategy is to develop a more specific and unique customer segmentation. For example, you can make customer segments on the basis of their purchasing power, taste, where they live, and perhaps on the basis of their consumption behaviour. Performing Customer Segmentation will enable us to target customer targets with greater precision and matching accuracy.

The request, for example, is that you provide special discounts for fishermen's customers, workers' customers and informal workers who are currently struggling with purchasing power due to their reduced income. This second strategy has the power to keep cash flow even though the profit margin is declining, but not until it is completely eroded.

3. Do The Green Ocean Strategy

The third Strategy is the Green Ocean Strategy. This strategy works by increasing the sales reach and distribution of new markets that are more potential and still competitively silent. This strategy is generally used by companies that have experienced saturation, aka stuck with a specific market or target customer, or it could be that your company is experiencing regulatory barriers that are making revenue worse. It is therefore advisable to find new areas with regulations that are more friendly and business-friendly.

Expansion is an example of the application of this strategy, which means enlarging the sales pie by targeting new markets or areas that are still green, or by shifting production to goods that are urgently needed by the community during the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest example is some entrepreneurs who started working on the production of PPE, masks and hand sanitizers at affordable prices and maintained quality, at the same time they moved to open the market for herbal products such as herbal medicine, which turned out to be greeted with great fanfare and generated luxurious sales and were able to help. People who need support to increase immunity. So it turns out to be convincingly proven that even in difficult times like now, you can avoid bankruptcy or get stuck with complicated debts and don't have to run around chasing credit-collecting bandits.

4. Narcissistic Selling Strategy

The fourth strategy that you can use to keep the business alive in times of crisis, is called the Narcissistic Selling Strategy. Namely, increasing the availability (availability) of your product or service at every corner of the opportunity in the market, both the conventional market (offline) and the online sales platform.

That is, how can your product be everywhere, easy to find even in unexpected locations. This is very important because during a pandemic, customers are generally too lazy to go far to get the goods or products they are looking for. 

But if it turns out that you are able to make the product or service narcissistic, then this is really beneficial for the product to be purchased immediately because it is easy to find, especially if it turns out that the product has a price that is easily accessible to customers, such as in the First Trendy Sales Strategy. 

So how do you keep your products and services narcissistic and exist in most markets or sales platforms? It's very easy and there are many alternatives, the choice that is often used is to do a partnership or deposit goods. Another name is consignment. This fourth strategy, when combined with the three strategies above, will certainly have a tremendous impetus for increasing your sales.

5. Humble Strategy

The fifth or last strategy to increase sales during pandemic  is the Humble Strategy. Maybe you are not familiar with this term, but I am sure that you will understand how it is implemented after this article.

This fifth strategy explains how the products and services that you market are easy for customers to feel and touch. So, they first feel the benefits and differences and the value that will be obtained from these products or services before finally deciding to choose or buy.

What is an example of this understated strategy? Recently a lot of people opened online training classes for free or for free. The goal is none other than so that some prospects, prospective clients or even existing clients gain insight and benefits about the new training module The 10 Habits of Highly Productive People. As a result, after participating in the free training, prospective buyers become aware and know that they need the product or training module, so for the second pull of course they have to buy and pay.

These five effective strategies are developed in such a way that to ensure that even in the challenging conditions during the pandemic, you are still able to survive and even grow sales, so that you can successfully pass through these difficult times with confidence. 

Besides strategy, there is one more addition you should have in your sleeves to boost your sales. Can you guess what it is? Yep! Customer Service. Great customer service is a requirement for a smooth online transaction because there is practically no human interaction face to face. So you should support all your customers’ needs with a balanced customer service. Your agent or your representatives should have a great knowledge about your product and exudes sympathy and empathy when they serve your customers.

Omnichannel can help you serve better customer service. This service helps you build a good relationship between you and your customers virtually. OneTalk is an Omnichannel Customer Engagement product from TapTalk.io that could integrate multiple messaging platforms for your sales, marketing, and support. 

When you need to be a proactive party to your customers, you can reach them first with the Start New Conversation feature that allows you to start a case so that your business can reach your customer first. You can use this feature just by entering your destination number.

But worry not! There are a lot of features that could also support your business so that it could enhance your customer service. Messages and complaints are integrated in a Single Dashboard, so this makes your customer service easy to manage. Various messaging platforms are supported with this service so your agent (or even agents!) can immediately answer them. Supported platforms in OneTalk are Telegram, LINE, Twitter, WhatsApp, e-mail, etcetera.

OneTalk also enables you to reach your customer all at once with the Broadcast Message feature. This will allow you to send messages to multiple recipients and even support various types of files, such as Images and Videos.

If you want to delve deeper with our feature, contact our agent and ask everything you want to dig. We will anticipate your messages!