How to Increase Sales in Your Online Business Without Breaking: 11 Strategies

Hot take ahead. 🔥

What the traditional marketing world teaches about how to increase sales is dead wrong. (It’s no wonder 70% of businesses tank within their first few years.)

Heck — even higher education isn’t keeping up.

Dated sales tactics are designed for maximum output. This sounds smart in theory, but as an online entrepreneur, you know that’ll fail.

To make your brand last, you have to find a way to boost sales without breaking… without burning out.

At 19 I took $75 and started an online business. Over the next 10 years, I built an 80+ person team from scratch and grew my brand to over $5M in sales.

How did I increase my revenue so fast? ⚡

Once I put a solid strategy into place involving my own specific processes built from trial-and-error, my sales increased like crazy…. Honestly, my entire life changed.

All because I used a strategic plan to scale and hire. It worked so well that we eventually hit 50%+ profit margins… and, I was able to work only three hours per week before I successfully exited for a 13,000x ROI on that business.

I didn’t take shortcuts. I didn’t give in to the hottest new trends.

I simply focused only on sustainable methods to increase sales — replacing myself in the sales process with automated systems that sell while I sleep, play, dream, and work on the strategy of my business with complete clarity.

In this post, I’ll show you how can do it, too. These are realistic, practical ideas on how to increase sales that you can apply to your online business and repeat over and over again.

Let’s dive right in, shall we?

How to Increase Sales Quickly (Without Burnout)

Having to sell all by yourself equals lost time, frustration, and can cause your sales to decrease. So how do you increase sales then (short-term AND long-term)? 📈

Here’s how to do it by getting known, replacing yourself, and creating evergreen sales vehicles that let you step away and still scale your business like crazy.

1. Use The Forward Flow

In your brand voice, in all the tactics on this list, in everything your brand touches — you should be using the Forward Flow if you want to see big results.

Read my blog on the Forward Flow.

The Forward Flow is the river that carries your lead to act. It qualifies, informs, tells your story, and proves expertise through content geared to function and convert your reader forward through each of those stages. (Much like canoe-ing through a river with the current, rather than against it.)

It all starts with a targeted introduction that qualifies your leads (so targeted, it turns away anyone outside of your ideal audience — let’s not waste time/resources on non-ideals). This is what creates leads that are insanely qualified before you’ve even spoken to them. When you’ve been speaking to them, their pain points, and their ideal results throughout the entire sales journey, you’re going to get conversions and increase sales.

Then, you must inform your audience. Give value. Share with them tips and strategies that will truly help them and impact your life.

Hand-in-hand with that, you have to prove you’re an expert. Don’t just give value, show them your process works. Tell them the results you can help them achieve. Paint a picture. 🎨

The final piece is to create a call to action. Ask them to act and give them an opportunity to do so. You can talk about the cost of inaction here but always end on an encouraging, positive note.

When you’re using the Forward Flow in your business content, your core message and conversation need to follow these four pillars of the Forward Flow:

• Qualify
• Inform, Share Your Story & Educate (Give Value)
• Prove Expertise (Strategic Value)
• Call to Act

Remember this as you move through our list. Structure and exactness in your copy is what makes for a well-oiled content machine.

2. Do Market Research on Your Audience

How do you attract customers if you don’t know the pain points of the exact business persona you’re selling to? Well, you can’t. 🤷

You won’t even get through the first part of the Forward Flow if you don’t know who your audience is and what their pain points are.

Make learning about them a priority — using personas to inform and improve personalization in your marketing increases conversions by 10% and email click-through rates by 14%.

Source: HubSpot

Conducting live market research is so important here. It’s how you gather data that reflects your buyer’s interests, issues, and habits — and inject that personalization into your marketing.

Worried about losing out if you niche down? Check out my video below to learn how it’s done.

Nailing this audience market research is the key to increasing sales through making leads feel like you’re speaking directly to them — even when you’re not there… which we’ll cover next!

3. Harness the Power of Evergreen Sales Vehicles

The biggest business lessons I’ve learned about how to increase sales don’t come from getting bigger teams or working more hours. That’s how you break.

As an online entrepreneur, you always need to be focused on the sustainable. And that’s exactly what evergreen sales vehicles are. 🏎️ 🏎️

Although more people are discovering it by the second, one of the most unique ways to increase sales (and also the most sustainable) is to build evergreen sales vehicles for your business online.

Why do they work so well?

They act as a trust-building vehicle (with your “fingerprint”) that replaces you in the sales process. You’re still showing up as you in your webinar, book, or guest blog you write — it’s just taking your place in the sales process while you’re making a lasting impact— this is a key to leads and sales on autopilot.

Evergreen sales vehicles open the door for your online business to a reality where there’s a constant stream of highly qualified leads, massive revenue, and more time for you to step away.

4. Delegate & Create a Team

You may have heard that one of the general ways to increase sales is to hire more salespeople.

Not anymore. 🎉

Online entrepreneurs using evergreen sales vehicles with the Forward Flow don’t have to use salespeople. Because when executed correctly, your content and evergreen vehicles are going to sell for you.

Instead, delegate and automate your business tasks to others. Start with hiring a content writer, so you can focus on strategy, and start building your team (graphic designers, CPAs, YouTube video producers, etc.) from there.

Finding a smart and reliable contractor willing to work for you at an affordable price is getting easier to do. Because from January to October of 2021, a record 38+ million workers quit or changed jobs in the US alone.

…And many of these ex-employees are turning into creative freelancers! So tapping into this massive and eager talent pool is a huge content trend for 2022 and beyond to take advantage of.

This is exactly what’s happening when you hear of online entrepreneurs pulling in $10K, $50K, or $100K months while working a few hours a day. Stay involved in your business strategy but make a plan to delegate the day-to-day work and keep yourself at a bird’s eye view of your business and where you’re headed.

PRO TIP: Many online entrepreneurs who are used to being a one-person-show clam up when I first bring up hiring a team to help. Don’t let that stop you! There are a lot of great ways to work on this for yourself, starting with building your self-worth and addressing mindset.

But you have to if you want to scale. It’s how to increase sales in your online business without breaking.

Once you’ve built up your rock star team, you’re going to wish you’d done it sooner.

Ready to get more out of life through creating a powerful online business? I’ve freed up time for my passions and created multiple million-dollar-generating websites by getting strategic, and you can, too. I’ll give you the exact strategies I’ve used to increase sales and manage a team that nearly runs your business on autopilot. Enroll in the Content Transformation System today.

5. Record a Webinar to Offer Free Training

A fantastic way to increase sales (and another evergreen sales vehicle) is to record a free training. I offer two versions of my free training vehicle — one for budding entrepreneurs and one for established brands.

When creating your webinar with the Forward Flow, remember that your sales vehicles should offer your leads an experience — one where they’re “sitting down” with you. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

You can also seek opportunities to host free trainings on other platforms to expand your brand’s visibility. For example, I recently jumped on as a guest and offered a free live training workshop with Teachable that was recorded.

6. Help People for Free

Don’t be afraid to give away too much of your knowledge in your content. You never know who really needed to find your article when they did, and what that will do to build trust with you and them. That’s the power of the internet, right?

Offer almost the whole enchilada for free. Don’t give away your products or services, but be giving with the knowledge you have — in your blogs, in your emails, and whenever you can. Your time, live in any setting, is what you should charge for and what people primarily expect to pay for.

Because when you’re authentic in your content, using the Forward Flow, and genuinely helping people — you’re going to increase your sales. You’ll find your customers organically by building brand trust, and they’ll be grateful for the free help you did offer.

Helping people not only feels awesome, but it impacts your business positively as it:

1. Helps your SEO-optimized blogs rank higher: Google and readers love helpful posts that are written with care and quality. 🖊️
2. Builds trust with your audience and creates highly qualified leads: When you solve a big problem for people, for free, they’ll be super grateful. And if you’re doing it over and over again in your content using the Forward Flow, you’ll see an avalanche of excited leads.
3. Establishes you as an authority in your niche: When other leaders in your space look at your content, they’ll know you’re a force to be reckoned with if you’re proving you know what you’re talking about.

If you’re a coach, you can’t replace 1:1 consulting with free content. People will still want to pay for your services (especially if you’ve impressed them with your ungated content).

If you’re selling digital products — you can still offer bits and pieces of that content for free. Many products can be created out of repurposing the related free content you’ve already written into organized and easy-to-digest formats.

7. Write a Killer Sales Landing Page

What is the quickest way to increase sales?

I’m all about long-term, sustainable growth. This is how to grow your business revenue and not burst into flames while doing it. ‍🚒

But if you want to see an impressive influx of leads, make a sales landing page that uses the Forward Flow. Then, automate it into your content strategy so that people get sent to the page easily. Boom. 💥

You can check out an example of this on my coaching program’s landing page. Here’s a peek of it in action on my site:

8. Self-Publish a Book

How do you attract customers that are dying to buy from you?

Write a book. 📚

But when you do, make sure to…

1. Make it good
2. Get real-world experience in the book topic
3. Sit back and watch the leads pour in

Although they take the most time, books are my favorite examples of evergreen sales vehicles. Not only are they fun, but because I make sure to only write about topics I’ve actually done, my books come together really easily.

But book sales alone aren’t going to be why you should write a book.

It’s about the relationship you’ll build with the reader. You’re going to sell them a book, spend hundreds of pages together, and then that person is going to be way more likely to throw money at your online business for a chance to consume more from you.

This is HOW self-published books bring online entrepreneurs such highly qualified leads… years after they’re published. For instance, I was recently told, “So You Think You Can Write saved my life, Julia! It gave me the relevant marketing skills I needed when I got a contract writing job!”

…that book came out years ago. ❤️

I’ve written six books since 2016 and have made over $20K in royalties (plus WAY more from client sales). I went through a lot of trial and error, so I made sure my coaching program included a system, templates, and a simple pathway to getting a high-ROI book published without burning out. Here’s a preview of what we cover in the Content Transformation System regarding promoting your self-published book:

Publishing a self-published book is an art and a science, and that’s why I cover exactly how to ideate, write (or get a ghostwriter), self-publish on Amazon, and launch a successful book that sets your sales target on fire. 🔥

9. Let Leads Book Calls With Your Team

Got a high-ticket offer and wondering how to increase sales with existing customers?

Your sales strategies should include letting leads book calls with your team. Make sure they’re zero-pressure and super clarifying calls, so people know exactly what they’re investing in, and tell your team to be honest if they aren’t a good fit!

10. Double-Down on Your Content Marketing

My goal is to teach entrepreneurs sustainability in business through content.

Why?

Because content marketing is the future. The worth of the industry is about to skyrocket to $600 billion by 2024.

First off, organic always has and always will beat social. You don’t own your following on your social media platforms — they can (and do!) close huge accounts with no warning. I’ve watched in horror as businesses instantly evaporated this way. 💨

Blogging on your own platform dominates. It’s a building block to unleashing the power of content marketing in your sales process. Because when you’re wanting increased sales, you need to take the lifespan of content into account.

But blogging is a long-term strategy not for the faint of heart. It requires patience, skills, and consistency to see a return on your efforts. But when you look at the content marketing ROI statistics — you see why content marketing needs to be part of your long-term goal setting.

11. Create a Business Strategy for Clarity

If you walk away with anything today, it’s that you need a business strategy if you want to see explosive sales. 🚀

A strategy that includes impactful strategies like the Forward Flow, focusing on content marketing, and delegation is a must. And one that includes evergreen sales vehicles in your content marketing strategy.

When built with the Forward Flow, evergreen sales vehicles will sell a ton of your products and services. But for getting more sales online, it all comes down to strategy and clarity.

Ready to Make Your Own Evergreen Sales Vehicle That Skyrockets Online Revenue?

Don’t sleep on making your amazing evergreen sales vehicles — they’re an amazing way to increase sales.

Whether you’re starting an online business or trying to scale one, I can help you.

Phase 4 of my coaching program covers exactly how to increase sales using the Forward Flow — including a proven template for creating a high-ROI webinar that is structured to sell and showcases your expertise. (My coaching students receive access to 30+ plug-n-play templates to plug directly into their business and grow quickly.)

Secure your seat in The Content Transformation System and you’ll get the training, proven repeatable systems, and 1:1 mentorship needed to build a sustainable seven-figure business from content. You’re just one application away from experiencing enormous change with guidance from an online business mentor who has been there, done that.

I’d love to be the mentor that’s proud to see and cheer on your success.