How would you quickly increase your revenue as a business owner? Tighten the purse strings on upgrades or hold off on adding to the staff? Perhaps, but there are many ways to have your revenues trending upward. So many ways that asking a handful of people at a chamber of commerce gathering could fill up several pieces of scratch paper. But to make it a little easier, we’ve gathered our favorite seven ways to quickly increase your revenue.
Expand Distribution Channels
Expansion might seem like an expense you can’t take on when looking to increase your revenue, but sometimes you need to spend money to make money. If your website has heavy traffic searching for your products and services, offer a way for customers to make purchases through it. eCommerce additions are a relatively quick way to increase the bottom line. Furthermore, a commission-based sales person or putting together a promoted event are also great ways to expand your reach and distribution in a short amount of time.
Embrace Social Media
Another way to expand for relatively little money is to add to your social media and online presence. Maybe you’ve been thinking about adding a Google+ or Twitter account to combine with your weekly Facebook presence. With more and more engagement for businesses happening on social media, taking the plunge into a new network is a great idea. Not only can the same information be shared across platforms, it can be pulled from the archives in a few months and re-used to engage new customers.
Re-Engage Your Clients
What about that dusty Excel spreadsheet with your customers’ addresses, including voluntarily provided emails? Putting together an email marketing campaign to promote new products or services, send a friendly monthly reminder, or a subscriber-only discount can increase your revenues over the long haul.
Network the Old Fashioned Way – Sort Of
Think of all the people you work with in your business – vendors, suppliers, distributors, customers and even your friends and family. Talking with others about your company and any special services you may offer can draw new leads and possible sales. Plus chamber of commerce events, industry conferences and tradeshows are great ways to meet other like-minded people, however, those events take extra time and planning.
Scheduling time away from your business, planning who will cover when you’re away can become overwhelming. Enter LinkedIn, called Facebook for business professionals by some. A social network for professionals, the site has groups you can join to ask a question or two or provide an answer to others. It’s a digital way to talk with industry colleagues and get your business presence out there through networking when you’re crunched for time.
Update Your Collateral
When was the last time you updated the brochures, pictures, and other handout material for your business and its products or services? Was it a few summers ago when you told the intern to surprise you with a brochure? Odds are your business has grown since then and isn’t accurately reflected in those brochures and other materials.
Out-of-date materials, in both appearance and information, can bring sales and leads to a halt. This is especially true if you’ve launched new services or products since the material was created, giving the illusion you’re a little lackadaisical in keeping up on your own products. The same can be said for your website and what information and material are presented through it. Remember, first impressions count, especially in sales.
Rekindle an Old Flame or Two
Many studies have found that old customers provide more revenue over time than constantly selling yourself and products to new customers. Longtime customers also have experience with your company, how you operate, the quality of service and products, and are great ambassadors to others on your behalf. If a customer has purchased from your company, but it’s been several years, touch base with them. Ask how their experience has been since their purchase and if there is any way you could assist them with an upgrade.
Repurpose, Recycle, Reuse
Going green isn’t limited to physical products and services when trying to increase your revenue. If your company has or had a blog, old posts can be brushed up for a relaunched series or packaged into an ebook for customers to download. Inbound marketing leader HubSpot found 76 percent of its website traffic came from old blog posts, and a whopping 92 percent of lead generation came from those posts. And by old, we don’t mean the very first blog post you wrote, but posts as new as a month or two ago.
Did you have a sale or promotion a year or two ago that was met with rave reviews? Retool it for another launch. Anything old can be new again with a little creativity.
Follow up on That ‘Call Back’ Note on Your Desk
Nearly half of all leads are people who don’t know about the service you are offering until you offered it, or aren’t quite ready to buy. Knowing what stage of the buyer’s journey your leads are in can greatly help clarify things for you and them. For example, blogs are great for informing potential clients of things that can help their business, they they may not have known about in the first place.
The Power of Upselling
The power of upselling can be determined by one word…ask. McDonald’s trains their employees to ask, “Do you want fries with that?” or “Would you like to make it a large for 30 cents more?” When you ask for an upsell, you may be inspiring the customer to move forward with a decision they were already thinking about or bring up a new idea they were not even considering at the time. Asking a question in order to get a yes or no response will move you from a 0% up to a 50% opportunity for a customer to say yes. If you don’t ask, you don’t receive. Even further, how to ask for more business is something you should practice regularly. The delivery is everything and will help increase your chances of getting to a “YES”.
Hiring a Marketing Agency
Increasing your bottom line is one of the main goals of any business and Elevare can help you reach that goal. Using inbound marketing, we create a customized marketing strategy for your company and put it the minds of customers around the clock. We hope that these tips help you to increase your business growth. If you need help with you goals, call Elevare help your to further your success.
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