7 Smart Digital Sales Strategies to Excel Your 2024 Online Revenues

According to Gartner, 51% of CEOs report that digital transformation improvements have boosted company revenues while Markets and Markets state the global digital transformation market reached a value of $695.5 billion in 2023 last year. With over 17 years digital sales & marketing education experience advising hundreds of CEOs, CROs and CMOs on their digital sales strategies in that time, I’ve seen first hand how digital sales transformation is continually evolving to push the boundaries within almost every type of industry. In this article I will share seven simple digital sales strategies that can help excel your 2024 online revenues.

1) Zone In On Your Winning & Losing Online Products

The first strategy is about focusing on what exactly are the winning and losing products within your online venture. By identifying which products are performing well and which are underperforming, you can allocate resources more effectively and optimize your digital sales outcomes.

According to Harvard Business Review, most consumers repeatedly buy the same 150 items that meet more than 85% of their needs. This is because successful online brands know how to increase customer demand for their core products and have such a strong customer loyalty for repeat purchases.

You should review your online sales data to identify which products achieve the best metrics such as consistently high units, strongest profit margins and the ones that receive the most positive customer feedback. It's also worthwhile assessing which products are frequently cross-sold or upsold as well as evaluating the impact of digital marketing campaigns as those that benefit from such efforts are likely to be your winners.

Remember that new online products might need time to grow while your more established online products can accelerate their growth at a quicker pace. At the same time be sure to review your online sales data to identify low performing digital products with consistently low sales volumes or declining profit margins and remove these from your business focus.

Negative customer reviews are early red flags for underperforming digital products. This is why you need to try and identify if a product has reached its decline phase, if it has you will need to phase it out or reposition it.

2) Focus On Your Existing Digital Clients

Focusing on existing clients to grow your online sales revenue can be a valuable strategy. This is because it's often much more cost-effective to retain and upsell to current customers than the extra investment of time and resources it can take to acquire new ones.

One of the best ways to do this is by implementing customer loyalty programs which reward your online customers when they carry out repeat purchases with your brand. You could introduce online points, discounts, or free gifts which are linked to their account spend.

Another idea could be to build an online education academy for your customers. This is where you have a community platform that brings common questions and answers together to help find solutions for any consumers who have problems with your digital product or service. You can also provide exclusive valuable content including blog posts, tutorials or guides relating to your online brand. This platform operates separately to your customer service team and brings your most dedicated customers together to promote as much interaction as possible.

You could also try re-allocating budget to some of your best performing digital sales campaigns to date. This way it allows for you to re-engage your online customers by reviewing digital marketing campaigns that aren't performing as well as others and allows you to apply a sharper laser focus to support the campaigns that are producing more results.

3) Double Down On Your Traffic Success

Doubling down on your highest rates of website traffic is a proven way to leverage your top online successes to help drive more digital sales growth and profitability. The first thing you need to do is clearly identify the specific sources that are driving the most traffic to your website. Such sources could come from your organic search, social media, paid advertising and referrals.

Ultimately what you want to do is focus on the online channels that are already performing well for your online brand. Once you have worked this out, you then need to develop steps to optimize your website for higher rates of traffic conversion. Tactics to do this include making sure your website is user-friendly, mobile-responsive and has clear calls to actions as well as a simple and easy to use e-commerce checkout process. It's a good idea to Implement an online personalization strategy that is based on your customer preferences. This might involve showing your visitors personalized product recommendations which provide a customized digital shopping experience.

You should also try to create more compelling digital product and service descriptions to help increase your traffic. This links closely to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and means that you need to be continuously testing different elements on your website to improve conversion rates and your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Make sure you continue to research and target relevant keywords, optimize meta tags and work on building high-quality backlinks.

Another important way to increase your traffic is content optimization where you create high-quality, engaging relevant content that resonates more closely with your online target audience. This includes blog posts, videos, infographics and other content formats that can attract and retain your online visitors.

4) Plug Your Digital Sales Funnel Holes

The sales funnel of your online brand is made up of a large number of different interconnected steps and what is often the case with most digital ventures is that your funnel contains a number of gaps which  impacts your overall profitability. It can be hard to work out where the actual holes in your funnel are, however here are two of the most common ones for online brands.

One of the biggest problems companies face is that they have an e-commerce checkout page that either creates a bad user experience for visitors or does not provide enough trust or value to the potential buyer. Elements to include or improve could be trust badges, product guarantees, testimonials or the simple benefits that buyers get from proceeding with a purchase. If you can focus on improving the quality of all of these aspects, then the consumer will be much more confident to proceed with the sale when deciding to make a payment with their debit or credit card.

Another major area that a large number of digital brands fail to capitalize on is missing out on upsell opportunities. For example when you buy a card online for a special occasion like a birthday or wedding, the company will try to sell you other items that are either similar in price or just a little bit more expensive such as chocolates or flowers. This upsell is normally done near the end of your online buying journey just before you enter your credit card details. They try to upsell to you at this stage because they know this is when you are most likely to buy from them and on average 10-20% of consumers will decide to buy these additional products and add them to their shopping cart.

You can watch the interesting video below on how the international engineering and consultancy firm Royal HaskoningDHV in the Netherlands adopted an insights-driven sales system with Linkedin Sales Navigator to help them bridge the online buyer-seller divide.

5) Invest In High Synergy Online Partnerships

Online Partnerships are an excellent way to target new audiences, develop new revenue opportunities, reduce marketing spend and risk as well as improve customer loyalty and trust. The first immediate benefit by partnering with another online brand is you getting access to their network of customers. Also when you partner, your digital marketing budget increases and by putting your resources together you can scale the success of your campaigns and save on costs.

When you proceed with new campaigns you are also reducing commercial risks because any risk is split between you and your partner. At the same time, when you partner with another brand that has a strong reputation within your industry, it can be a key reason why an existing and new segment of consumers are much more likely to become your paid customers. This is because they are already trusted customers of your partner, so choosing your online brand then becomes an easy decision for them to make.

Some of the best online partnerships that provide high synergies include Sponsorship, Licensing and Co-Branding. Two of the biggest online partnerships are Affiliate Marketing and Ambassador programs which take advantage of influencer marketing strengths to impact social media audiences. Affiliate marketing is when you partner with content creators such as bloggers or YouTubers who promote your online product in return for a commission. Whereas Ambassador programs are more long-term relationships with social media influencers who regularly share a brand’s products with their audiences and offer deeper forms of content creation. Instagram and TikTok would be two of the most popular platforms for these types of partnerships. 

6) Specialize In Top Performing Online Markets

The leading digital brands that are in the top percentile of their industries all share one common trait. This is that they are crystal clear in their prioritisation of key performing markets where they can win online. When these firms decide to invest in such markets, they do so with purpose. This means you should conduct deep market research to identify what are the top-performing markets within your industry by looking at factors such as demand, competition, growth potential and consumer preferences.

It's then a smart idea to divide your audience into segments based on their demographics, psychographics, behavior and buying patterns. You should try to focus on segments that align with the characteristics of your top-performing markets. Another good opportunity is to focus on a niche within your industry where your sales data proves that the opportunity for strong future growth and high demand exists. By specializing in a specific niche it allows your online brand to tailor your digital products and messaging to a highly focused audience. To expand on this you could also customize your online products or services to cater to the unique preferences and requirements of these top-performing markets which may involve creating specialized variations. 

This goes hand in hand with localized online marketing. It's vital to adapt your digital sales strategies to reflect the cultural preferences of your key markets. It could be a good investment to double down on localized content and digital advertising spend by offering language and region specific campaigns.

7) Refine Your Sales Offering & CX (Customer Experience)

According to BigCommerce, 53% of shoppers say that they have stopped buying from an online store because of a bad experience or that a competitor offered a better one. This shows how crucial it is to make sure your online venture is heavily invested in customer experience (CX) and that your online sales proposition is as strong as possible to ensure you don't lose business to your rivals.

One of the best ways to improve your online sales experience and CX is to invest in Live Chat Assistance which offers real-time chat support to assist your customers during their visit to your website. Even once a consumer has completed their purchase on your site, to make them feel valued, grow their brand loyalty and increase their lifetime value spend with your company - post-purchase engagement is another smart area for your organization to invest in.

This could be in the form of your brand following up with customers, asking for their reviews and offering new product recommendations. It is also worthwhile introducing a feedback collection system where you encourage customer feedback to continuously improve your online sales processes. Here you can also stop issues like returns or refunds early before they become a problem for your brand in the future.