5 Essential Steps to Increase Revenue in Your Business
If you are like many businesses today, your business would greatly benefit from an increase in revenue. But if you want to see any real revenue increase in your business, it will take a well thought out plan and a map to execute that plan.
While there are many paths you can take to achieve revenue growth, this article covers five very specific steps that have consistently generated increased revenue for the businesses that implement them.
Increasing your business revenue starts with a plan for growth and a map for executing that plan.
Five Surefire Ways to Increase Revenue in Your Business
1. Determine your marketing goals for the year
“Plan your work and work your plan” may seem cliché, but developing a strategic plan with the help of your key people will go a long way towards getting off to a good start. One of the things I suggest to the clients I work with is to create a client wish list, these are the companies that you want to work with. Your client wish list can include a specific list of 50, 100 or even 500 of your ideal clients.
Let’s face it, not every potential prospect is a good fit for you or your business. In order to be intentional with your business (or sales) growth, you need to be focused on the prospects that would be ideal clients.
While determining your marketing goals for the year, ask yourself the following questions:
- What is my overall revenue goal for the year?
- What key metrics are important to measure my sales and marketing success?
- What new product or service offerings will I be launching this year?
You should make sure you can answer these questions before moving forward with your marketing plan. Although plans can and do change throughout the year, the big marketing goals should be strategic objectives that fall in line with the rest of your company’s vision and direction.
Sellers are different, buyers are different and one content marketing strategy does not fit all. Some sellers need to persuade one buyer to give them their business, while others deal with a committee of five people every time they attempt to land a new customer.
— Melonie Dodaro
It can also be helpful to review and analyze marketing data from previous years. Tools such as Google Analytics can be helpful in creating dashboards that track year-to-year data on traffic visiting your website. From this information, you can find out which channels are performing the best or how your followers and their engagement with you has changed over the past year.
Which platform are you seeing the best engagement is another question you will want to ask yourself. Find out what’s working and what isn’t and don’t be afraid to make changes based on what works best for your business.
In addition, you can use email open and click-through rates to track how emails are being read. What subject lines are generating better open rates? What days of the week are best to send emails to your audience?
Great sales professionals don’t just work with anyone – they target a list of companies or individuals they want to do business with.
— Lori Richardson
Great sales professionals don’t just work with anyone – they target a list of companies or individuals they want to do business with.
— Lori Richardson
2. Decide on the marketing strategies you want to implement
There are a variety of strategies and channels you can implement to get your business noticed by your target audience. These include:
- Web development
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Social advertising
- Search engine optimization
- Public relations
- Content marketing
- Traditional marketing tactics
You don’t have to (and shouldn’t for time reasons) use all of them, but rather determine what works best for you and your audience and focus on those first.
83 percent of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue, but only 31 percent have documented theirs.
According to a report by Content Marketing Institute, 83 percent of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue. That marks an increase over the 74 percent who mentioned the same strategy the previous year. More telling is this statistic: Even as more marketers understand the need to have a documented strategy, only 31 percent have documented theirs.
Consider also revisiting your marketing messaging and brand story. This requires taking a step back and looking at the “why” of your business. Ask yourself if your mission statement is representative of who you are as a company.
Have you been able to clearly articulate the “why” of your brand story? Do your current marketing messages connect with your audience and do they address your customers’ biggest challenges? If so, are they clearly showcasing your ability to help them overcome these challenges?
3. Add a new revenue stream
It’s far easier to sell something to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new customer. Is there a new product or service that is a natural fit for your existing customers? Adding a new revenue stream for your business allows you to widen your customer base and offer new products or services to the customers who already know and trust you.
While there are a variety of marketing strategies that most businesses would love to utilize, they don’t always fit into budget. Therefore, it’s important to prioritize your marketing needs and choose the tactics that are most effective in spreading your message – which will ultimately increase revenue in your business.
That begins by budgeting the most important items first, then adding secondary tactics as they fit into the budget. Hopefully your marketing priorities and budget should be a mix of tried and true tactics, with new methods you want to test. You can also learn by listening to your customers and then implementing the strategies that best speak to the audiences you are trying to reach.
4. Get more creative and personal with your content
Content that engages people on a personal level will always be liked the most. People don’t like content that isn’t relevant to them, but content that is personalized and based on user personas is more likely to be read and shared. Try adopting a storytelling approach and narrate the story in a manner and language that your audiences understand best.
Cisco estimates that visual content will account for 82 percent of all internet consumer traffic by the year 2021. At present, 74 percent of internet usage is being covered by videos, with live streaming growing in demand. So, with this information in mind, one of your strategies should be to have more videos (both live and recorded) as a part of your content marketing strategy.
Visual content will account for 82 percent of all internet consumer traffic by the year 2021.
5. Review your online presence
It’s important to review your online presence at least once per year. Review the pages of you your website to see how they are being viewed on desktop, mobile and tablets. Go deep into your Google Analytics, is your website traffic growing? How about your SEO, where are you showing up for the keywords you want to be found for?
Look at how your posts are performing on social media. Are all of your social media sites up to date? Are you growing your followers on the various social media platforms?
You may also find out that you are spending time on things that aren’t generating results. Is it time to cut these marketing activities or change your strategy?
Businesses that don’t transform how they operate in the online world will suffer and fail by not knowing how to create influence nor how to deliver their unique brand value to their audience.
— Doyle Buehler
Do not make the mistake of minimizing the importance of mobile. The trend has been to focus on making websites more mobile-friendly, as Cisco statistics tell us that mobile will account for nearly 80 percent of all Internet usage in 2018.
Therefore, it makes sense to optimize your website for mobile first, then add desktop functionality. Millennials and Generation Z consumers typically won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site, so adjust your priorities accordingly.
Three out of four marketers say email is their most successful distribution channel, but if you’re struggling to see success from email marketing you may have thought about giving up and focusing on social media. Instead, think about sending more targeted emails, especially in relation to a subscriber’s history.
Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Ask others to poke holes in your plan and offer suggestions based on their experiences. Measuring, monitoring and adjusting your marketing plan is the key to success.
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to be overwhelmed when considering all the marketing choices and paths available to grow your business.
A well thought out plan and map to execute that plan doesn’t necessarily take a long time to put together, but now is the time to act if you want to see results. Take the plunge and let us know how it’s working for you.
If you would like help with lead generation or other strategies to increase revenue in your business, click here to schedule a time to chat about your goals and how we can help you achieve them.
