There is no secret or magic formula:
To fund growth and expansion, capital is needed. Increased revenue comes from increased sales.
In this blog, you will find inspiration and motivation to seek new ways to increase revenue and delight your customers.
3 Ways to Increase Sales:
- Buy more customers
- Increase transaction value
- Increase the number of times the customer buys from you over time
If you stop and think about the price you’re paying to bring in paying customers regarding time or money, you can start to make better decisions about how and where to put those resources.
Focus on what your customers are buying. Experiences or bragging rights, prestige, security, comfort?
Do this by:
- Provide free trials, incentives to “try-before-you-buy.”
- Ensure a splendid buying and user experience. Go out of your way to take care of these new shoppers.
- Treat referrals as gold – they have been referred by a trusted source and are as good as gold!
- Find new sales channels:
- Social Media platform (Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn etc.),
- Online sales,
- Trade shows,
- Pop-up shop,
- Uber-eats etc.
- Expand across culture, language, country borders
- Offer new ideas & reasons for customers to buy through your communications, examples are
“The Perfect Gift or (Gift Card) to your beloved ones”,- “Play and challenge your friends”,
- “Connect with your kids”,
- “Make this summer fun with our new outdoor toys”,
- “Beat the heat”. Such messages trigger new ideas and motives in consumers’ minds to act upon.
- Ensure that the interest generated from marketing is converted into sales.
- Attracting potential new customers through innovative marketing process Eg. Host beneficiary marketing.
Gaining a new customer is expensive. Utilize all you have to increase the transaction size when they are buying. Increasing your Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPC) requires patience, creativity, and strategy. Fully utilising one or more of the steps below would aggressively generate more revenue to meet business goals.
Do this by:
- Increase transaction size by charging more and adding more value.
- Bundle products that complement each other adding a reason to buy more.
- Cross-sell products that are frequently bought together.
- Offer larger units of purchase, with discounts for bulk buy.
- Upsell,
- Offer free postage for a specific amount of sale
- Once you have identified the upsells, train your team and run a competition in your team encouraging them to strive for excellence
- Deliver more than expected.
- Positioning yourself further up-market:
- If you’re good at what you do, moving your products or services also upmarket and placing your business at a higher level of distinction or quality than your competition can improve your business dramatically. By repackaging your product or service to appeal to more sophisticated or affluent buyers in parts of the market beyond those you currently cater to, you can often command higher prices in the marketplace and leave behind the type of business that gives you all your headaches. The more you raise your market positioning, the more your existing customers are likely to respect and appreciate what you do, which frequently results in even more loyalty and referrals.
- Excel in customer service.
- Motivate customers to refer family and friends – Recognize that your customers have friends who are like them. Provide a special introductory offer to them and likewise reward your current clients who helped.
25% to 40% of the total revenues come from returning customers. Even better, steady customers help businesses weather lean economic times.
Brand loyalty is one of the most important strategies to focus on.
Before we get into specific tactics that you can use to increase brand loyalty with your customers, have a look at Global Loyalty Sentiment Report from Nielsen. It’s filled with insight into what customers from different international markets and different verticals care about most when it comes to the brands/products they buy.
Do this by:
- Enhancing relationship, educate and compel customer to repurchase
- Create an account – Customer accounts can make repurchasing much more comfortable by giving customer easy access to past orders as well as pre-filled shipping information. o So how can you efficiently implement and encourage customer accounts while not hindering conversions of first-time customers? The trick is to provide the option to create an account after the first order has been placed.
- Your email list is a critical tool for maintaining and building relationships with your current customers. Time and time again email has proven itself to be one of the top converting channels for e-commerce.
- Rewards program (customer loyalty) – Further developing the idea of customer accounts, is to reward customers for their loyalty. Developing a loyalty membership to your store is another way to increase conversions for your current customers while rewarding them for their repeat purchases.
- Creating a loyalty program can be as simple as rewarding customers on their second purchase at your store or after a set dollar figure.
- Offer a Discount or Credit to Return
You want to be careful with discounting your products. For many e-commerce merchants, margins can be tight, and if your customers become accustomed to discounting, they may expect it all the time. However, discounting can also be an effective trigger for bringing back customers that haven’t purchased in a while.- You may also wish you experiment with offering credits to use at your store (i.e. $10 towards any purchase) versus a percentage discount (i.e. 10% off any purchase). The credits make the offer feel more tangible and makes the customer feel like they need to spend it. Otherwise, they are wasting money.
- Free samples of other products
- Surprise & Delight Your Customers by sending a small gift to your best customers.It can be a great way to remind them to come back while adding the element of surprise and delight.
- Giving an unexpected gift also plays to the law of reciprocity which refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action.
- It can be as simple as a digital gift certificate to your store, or you can take it a step further and send your customers something that lets them know you went the extra mile because they are important to you.
Consider this post from Reddit where the owner of an auto body shop sent out a handwritten note to thank a previous customer:
The customer was so impressed with this small gesture, he posted a photo to Reddit, which ended up receiving over 1,500 upvotes and nearly 800 comments. So not only did this one handwritten thank you note likely to create a customer for life, but that customer also became an incredible referral marketing channel, broadcasting the incredible service from Jimyz Automotive to tens of thousands of people.
Joining Fortix Business Accelerator is a good way to grow your business. By simply joining you are making a statement that you care about quality and want to use quality service providers associated with Fortix to grow your business.
Jo and Alex could have the best plans but if they would buy cheap machines and employ inexperienced people their business would not work.
Our Fortix® Vision
We’re building a vibrant community of business people, so we can all work together to grow our businesses. We are aiming to be the best we can be in our occupations and offer our services all who need them.
We believe that working together is much better than working alone. Our combined efforts will prosper us, and we will learn from each other as we leverage our strengths. Together we can overcome all business challenges we’re individually facing.
Our prosperity will overflow to the people we employ and to the community around us. Together we will create over 1000 new jobs.
Fortix is a growth platform for people to work on their business. It is a place where you can think – plan – do. It is a space where people can escape the busyness of their own business and craft sound growth plans.
It is a place where community meets, business is transacted, and flow is created. It is a place for inspiration, ideas, collaboration and innovation. It is an inclusive place where everyone is welcome.
We believe that our knowledge framework, events, coaching, mentorship and Fortix technology will provide you with the great support to achieve your growth plans.
Our vision can be summarised in these three words:
work – learn – prosper
These words come in unity, and we believe that everyone who is willing to work (effort) and is continuously learning (progress) should expect prosperity. If your work is helping people and your business runs with integrity, then prosperity should be the outcome of it all.
What works for you? How have you grown your sales and what have you done to retain and grow your current sales? Let us know at Fortix Business Accelerator.
