Whether you’re just starting out on the road of entrepreneurship or you have had a thriving small business for a few years, you should always be striving to increase revenue and sales. Moving forward and developing your business is the very essence of growth and maturing as a potential market leader. With competition now fierce within all industries, it’s vital that you don’t become complacent with the performance of your company.
Your marketing and advertising budgets may be under stringent watch, and you are wary of them getting out of control in your quest to increase sales. You don’t want to end up in a situation where your increased sales revenue isn’t replenishing the profits pot and instead, is being sucked up by other business departments. When you are on a tight budget the journey to realizing an increase in sales can seem long, arduous and never ending. However, there are some ways in which you can utilize your business acumen and put your industry knowledge to good use all in an effort to boost revenue.
Market Research
Your established customer base is worth its weight in gold. These repeat clients who utilize your products or services month in, month out must be doing so for good reason. Is it your exceptional customer service that is drawing them back? Are your competitive prices encouraging them to return? Email your current customers and gauge their feedback with relevant questioning.
Ask what obstacles they are trying to overcome in their sector. You may find that there are common threads that you can draw together which will allow you to spot a gap in the market. If you can be the company to create a new product or service to help them address these challenges you could find the sales stacking up. At the same time, you may want to introduce a referral scheme. Make it worth their while and offer a discount, a BOGOF offer or an upgrade to their delivery option if they secure you a new lead. If you have a particularly strong relationship with certain customers, ask them to provide a testimonial and give this feedback the attention it deserves on your website and social media channels.
Embrace Technology
Now we are hurtling at breakneck speed through the twenty-first century, you can’t have failed to notice the increase in our reliance on technology. Socially and commercially, people of all ages are using the Internet as their number one means of communicating, shopping and sourcing information. This is true in our work lives as well as our home lives. Ensure that you are also welcoming this use of technology with open arms and pushing your business to be at the forefront of industry-relevant technology.
It’s imperative that your small business is willing to take notice of theoretical methodology that is tried and tested in your quest to boost sales. Check out this Clickfunnels review to discover how easy it is to now bypass the need for outsourcing to industry-leading experts and take it upon yourself to take control of your sales funnels. Without the need for technical knowledge, you can use an intuitive interface to implement a range of sales funnel examples specific to the product or service you want to sell. You can then analyze hits to your landing page and view a range of analytics that you can take heed of to find the ideal sales funnels for your business.
Cheap Marketing
The easiest way to market your small business is to utilize Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at the very least. Even though your followers may be small in number, if you select the right hashtag and ensure that your feed is full of informative and relevant high-quality content, new followers will come. Promote your latest product or service across all of your feeds. Put a promotion out there with an incentive to encourage the phone to ring. There is nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned, ‘The first thirty orders will receive a…’ style offering.
Continue to squeeze the loyalty of your customer base and send out relevant emails with links to your company blog. Don’t use these emails as a hard sell but as a pointer to top quality industry-specific content online. By gaining a reputation as an industry guru, you will develop a newfound trust in your customer base which will lead to more consumer confidence in your company.
Check Out Your Competition
You may notice that a competitor is charging double the price as you for a similar product or service but is still generating more sales. Why is this? Test out your rival and order a product. What is it that they are providing that you are not? It could be that their product is inherently better. They could be providing a more personalized customer service, or they could have shorter and less expensive delivery times. It could simply be that there is no difference whatsoever. If this is the case, it may be time to raise your own prices in line with those of your competitor. Although you may see a small drop in orders immediately after initiating your price increase, the higher unit price will counteract this fall in the number of sales.
By increasing your sales and generating more revenue, you will be able to formulate grander plans with a larger amount of money in the company coffers. Whether you want to open up a new office, expand your current operations or venture into the international market, all of these options require funding. Whereas you could opt to seek finance externally, it pays to try and source the money needed from within. This not only gives you more security and freedom but it also means that your company can expand without the unnecessary interference from potential third parties. While spending to accumulate is a good adage to live by, it’s not always necessary to reap the sales rewards you are ultimately after.
