So, you’ve done it! You’ve got your business off the ground. Your product or service is available for purchase. You may even be getting great sales so far.
Although this is all a step in the right direction, do you know how to build a strong foundation for long-term growth within your company?
How to increase business revenue
There is no quick fix to grow your business revenue, so don’t think that you will see huge gains overnight.
There are, though, several things that you can do to up your sales for long standing growth.
1) Add complimentary offerings
Offering complimentary products and services as an addon helps with customer interest. For example, if you’re a web designer who is offering services to build company websites, you can also offer business card designs for free, or a small fee as a bonus.
On the surface, it may seem like you, the business owner, are spending money in order to give something away for “free” or for an amount that is cheaper than what you could.
However, bundling products and services are a great incentive to keep people coming back to your business and thus leading to more sales.
2) Raise prices, but slowly
Before you get too happy and start hiking up prices for your product, wait a minute! Research what the market is pricing similar products/services at, and then see if there’s room for increasing your prices.
Understanding how the price of competitor’s products and how your product stacks up against similar products must be looked at from the buyer’s standpoint: Why would they buy your expensive product when they can get the same thing elsewhere for cheaper?
Raise your prices little by little, instead of drastically increasing your price at once. Small price changes will start to make a gradual difference to your profit margins and the bottom line.
3) Follow the Pareto principle
The Pareto principle is also known as the 80/20 rule. This principle states that 20% of your customers probably generate 80% of your revenue. If you’re a B2B company, this is especially important.
Find out who these 20% of your customers are (business size, geographical location, industry, and so on) and invest more of your marketing and products toward them to increase revenue.
The other customers that fall out of the 20 percent may be passive buyers, or picky with their support, and you shouldn’t focus too much on the demographic who probably aren’t as welcoming or willing to spend money on your services.
4) Market to your ideal customer
Once you’ve analyzed and zeroed in on your ideal customer base, make sure that you continue to market to them and any new customer that fits within your current consumer base.
There are a variety of marketing strategies and channels you can use to get your product or service noticed for an uptick in revenue. Assuming you’ve followed the 4 Ps of marketing model, some of the most popular ways include:
Improving your website
Make sure your webpage is eye-catching and speaks to your demographic. In order for people to come across it, though, you need to make sure that it shows up in search engines.
You can use analytics to review your website traffic and develop plans to improve the customer’s online experience.
Use a combination of organic and paid search engine marketing tactics to reach your customers.
Social media marketing
The most cost effective way to grow your customer base is to create your own social media channels. This is a free tool for businesses to use to generate money.
From Facebook to Instagram or Twitter, there is no better way to connect with customers and promote your brand for little cost. Create hashtags that will give you “free” marketing by allowing your customers to promote our brand for you.
Traditional marketing through flyers and billboards
There is still much visibility and benefits that “traditional” marketing will bring for your business. Bring your company to your customer’s physical mailbox by investing in a direct mail campaign.
You can include an advertisement in a popular local publication, send out postcards advertising exclusive events, or mail coupons to new customers.
Industry events
In order to promote your business and increase revenue, you can get involved in the community by speaking at a local event that’s within your niche.
By sharing your experience and getting involved in your industry at a local level, you’ll have the opportunity to grow your connections within your community, as well as your reputation, thus leading to more exposure and sales.
Regardless, it will be useful to review and analyze marketing data from previous years to see what strategies and channels work best for you.
5) Implement revenue operations
Revenue operations is a new, but highly successful way for businesses to create outstanding customer experiences.
A recent study showed that revenue operations departments saw 71% higher stock performance than companies who didn’t have RevOps, nearly three times the growth.
Instead of having multiple departments dedicated to customer success, RevOps is one, highly functioning team that oversees all-things revenue. Revenue operations does everything that the sales department does, but they also work on marketing, customer success and systems too.
Also, RevOps benefits the operation team in a productive way. Since the marketing, sales and customer service teams are all brought together as one department, it’s easier to produce more efficient work results and a feeling of team camaraderie. Everyone has each other’s back. Everyone on the team is researching the market for changes and increasing cohesion with the business.
When you have RevOps in place within your business, it’s easier to focus on the Pareto principle. This is because RevOps helps you target the customer base that’s providing you with most of your money (the Pareto principle, as discussed earlier in this article).
From there, you can adapt or use this research to further dictate your business moves in the future and where your revenue is coming from and how to keep it consistent.
