Whether your business is struggling or you are trying to take your business to the next level, making more profit is the best way to get the capital you need.
But, instead of putting your prices up, you should think more creatively to encourage more customers through the door – virtual or physical – and to persuade them to convert. There are a few methods that you might like to try and by doing all these things you should certainly see a difference within a few months.
The trick is to look at your business as a whole and then decide where the biggest difference can be made. Prioritizing is crucial for all businesses but it’s very likely that this is where you should start.
Streamline your systems
How you take orders from customers and clients will affect how many people are willing to go through the whole process – from initial interest to conversion.
So, if you take orders by phone you need to make sure that your phone number is easy to find (on Product, Invoice, and in Google Searches too), the customer can get to speak to the right person immediately and they won’t be asked for excessive amounts of information to put the order through.
You should also look at your value stream. As you work around your office, you should see which teams are adding value to your product and how.
Doing this will help you create a value stream map that should highlight the areas where you can improve your processes either to encourage clients to buy more or to prevent clients from dropping out of the conversion process completely.
Optimize your site, funnel, and rankings
Most businesses now have a website where a lot of the conversion funnel process takes place. For an eCommerce business, the conversion point is where the customer puts in their payment details and makes the order but for other businesses, such as service providers, the conversion goal is more likely to be requesting a call back to set up a meeting.
Whichever business type you are, you should always be looking for ways to optimize your site using SEO practices to persuade every customer – or as many as possible – to convert.
This works in a similar way to the value stream as you should look at your site from the customer’s perspective and see how your business works from their perspective.
Regular checks to your website will flag up potential issues like a page not loading correctly or a glitch in the system but you might also find that customers are reticent to add in lots of personal information at the outset.
Anything from changing the layout to reducing the number of clicks it takes to get to the final conversion point could benefit your business and setting up a split test on your site could give you some surprising results.
This is the best way to find out what your customers are looking for without risking your business goals too much. Ask a digital marketing company for some help to get started.
Diversify your offering
Once you have looked at how your business processes work and the SEO of your website, you should also consider diversifying your offering. Put simply, this means adding other products or services that will complement your current business.
So, let’s say you have a company that provides SEO services, you might also like to offer content writing and social media. Diversification can be a bit of a risk, especially if you have to bring in more staff to be able to offer it but, usually, clients are looking for a one-stop-shop and will be tempted to spend more with you as a consequence. And you can always use freelancers while you get set up!
Diversifying products is also a good idea though you should be very wary that you are still offering relevant items for sale.
Think about the way high street shops work with the smaller gifts and treats close to the till just tempting shoppers into buying one more thing.
This is a little harder to achieve online but Amazon pretty much mastered the art of persuasion with their ‘customers also bought’ feature at the bottom of the page.
Though all 3 will require some time to settle in and consistently bring in more profit, don’t be disheartened.
You should see a boost to your overall profits within a couple of months – however small – and you can continue to tweak your strategy or add some ideology in the meantime.
There is always something more you can do to perfect your business, so just keep going!
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