Regardless of the potential of a business, there are always periods of unprecedented slowness, over which you have little or no control.

Economic downturns happen for many reasons – in this case due to the disruption caused by Coronavirus lockdowns – and can last for months or even years. In a downturn, you may experience a sudden plunge in your revenue or cash flow difficulties, or it may be harder to make sales.

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what defines the uniqueness of your business in a competitive marketplace. In other words, it’s what distinguishes your business from competitors X, Y and Z, and is the reason for a prospect to choose your service over theirs.

From your USP flow all the core messages and value propositions you use to make sales. A lot rests on your USP, and it is essential to make it as strong, compelling and clear as possible, regardless of how crowded or niche your sector happens to be.

For a business starting out, the prospect of attracting the right type of customers, with the value you need to grow your enterprise, can be daunting. Fortunately, digital technology allows you to target very specific markets with valuable content and highly tailored marketing messages. You no longer have to rely on word of mouth referrals, cold calling or scattergun advertising.

Yet, simply reaching a market is not enough to turn leads into customers.

As a business owner, whenever you engage a person using a marketing technique – e.g. email marketing, an online advert etc – that person becomes a lead. Lead generation is the process of creating interest in your products and services in the hopes of turning them into paying customers.

As the result of lead generation is ultimately sales, rather than enquiries, finding the best ways to increase the quality and relevance of your leads is central to lead generation, as is the process of nurturing a lead from first contact to first purchase.

Investing in marketing is the foremost way to increase sales and revenue for your business. One of the most effective ways of promoting your products and services to a tightly selected audience is content marketing.

Content marketing, such as on blogs, websites, social media and so on, focuses on creating content for your audience that is engaging, informative and ultimately so enticing they will be persuaded to become customers.

As such, arriving at the right content marketing strategy for your business is imperative to maximising sales.

What is the most effective long term strategy to find prospects and increase turnover? If you are trading or are a decision-maker in a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME), we invite you to read on and discover how to grow your customer base and boost sales income, by implementing digital marketing strategies.

Entrepreneurs know that keeping customers coming back is good for business. Returning customers deliver larger lifetime returns on investment (ROI), and save money and time on marketing and sales.

Looking after existing customers usually costs only a fraction of what one might spend on gaining new customers. So, to enjoy the benefits of this tried and trusted principle, what customer retention strategies should a business follow?

If you work in a specialised industry, you might be loath to spend money on marketing, as your products or services will only appeal to a limited number of people. However, if you plan your marketing activities carefully, they could generate significant quantities of sales.

Here’s how to turn your specialist status into an advantage.

Things are tough for many companies at the moment, due to the coronavirus pandemic. When money is tight, marketing budgets are often the first to be cut, but in uncertain times you could actually benefit from spending more on promoting your brand, not less.

Here are five reasons why increasing your marketing efforts now is the best decision you could make this year.

If you're worried that you won't be able to achieve your business goals this year due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, consider automating your marketing processes. Marketing automation will help you to reduce expenditure and increase sales so that you can maximise your profits. Let's look at some of the advantages it provides.