Attaining high revenues by expanding the reach and improving operational performance is every business’s lifeline. As the revenues increase, there is a higher chance of your business to survive. The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that only about 50% of the companies survive past the 5-year mark. Because of this, every single say matters when it comes to increasing the reach and revenue of your business, especially if it’s a startup or a small, growing business.
Most owners of a small business cannot afford to wait to see the results of their long-term strategies and significant changes to their business models. Therefore, the sooner a small business increases its reach and profits, the better.
Moreover, customer relationship management (CRM) is the key to organizational growth. CRM for small businesses, when integrated with technology, can help you stay more connected with the right customer which in turn enhances business performance resulting in a higher reach. Henceforth, this needs to be managed more effectively and efficiently.
The following seven simple and easy steps can help you get started on increasing your business’s reach and maximizing your profitability.
1. Search for the right customers
According to Salesforce.com, “79% of all marketing leads are never converted to sales, without a CRM.”
A tried and tested way to improve upon your reach and revenues is to convert your leads into customers, and that can only be done through a robust CRM system. What’s the point of investing time, money and resources into generating new leads and not being able to turn them into long-term, sustainable customers? The sales reps should know which opportunities are the most fruitful, especially when you are a small business.
Extracting the maximum out of your marketing team, tools such as email, marketing automation, or connecting customers to a CRM platform in any way will lead to higher sales revenue. Both the sales and marketing team must have the complete details of the leads and potential customers so that an engaging communication is established.
2. Lessen Sales Cost
As we all know, it easier and less costly to sell to an existing customer as compared to creating a new lead and converting it into a new customer. To be more accurate, the probability to sell to a new customer is around 5% to 20% while selling to an existing customer is 60% to 70%.
Acquiring new customers is the key to constant growth, but it is neither easy nor cheap. Offsetting new customer acquisition costs through selling to the existing customer base is a cost-effective way to gain greater visibility.
This method is done via the cross-sell, up-sell, and renewal opportunities in the existing customer portfolio, increasing repeat purchase behavior.
According to a study conducted by Rosetta, “engaged customers” are repeat buyers who become brand advocates. They are highly satisfied customers. Moreover, they spend 300% more than typical customers, are six times more likely to buy new products, and are twice more likely to purchase the upsells. They even add to a business’s longevity and hence revenues as they are more dependent on referrals and repeat buyers.
Source: Rosetta’s Customer Engagement from the Customer’s Perspective
The best way is to convert the one time client into a repeated buyer, using the following CRM methods to improve business performance:
- Enhance sales efficiency: In congruence with the type of interactions your firm carries out, it is easier to prioritize those leads that are highly likely to be converted to customers.
- Increasing opportunities for upselling and cross-selling: Adding on to the deals that are already in progress is a great idea. Therefore the marketing team must always be on the lookout for such opportunities.
- Improving sales effectiveness: The sales and marketing team must be aware of which customers are engaged and what is the right time to reach out to them for optimum response.
- Enhancing referral business: instead of wasting time, money and resources into dead leads, it is better to find potential opportunities in existing relationships and maximizing on on them.
- Lessening closing time: when you gain a 360-degree view of your customer, a sales team must be instantly aligned with the lead to close the deal.
3. How to Expand Your Reach to a Broader Market
Be it geographic or demographic reach expansion; it is for you to decide. For instance, if you have saturated your current market base and wanted to move to another city or country regarding business expansion, then your marketing efforts must be designed in a way to target and connect with a broader customer base.
One way to do it is if you widen the marketing message reach by creating blogs. This way your business can reach out to a broader audience. By reaching out to a general audience rather than just the target market, a business can gain referrals, create partnerships and acquire more exposure from the media. When focusing only on the potential target market, a company loses sight of other interested and potential parties who may have contacts with other prospects for your business.
Engagement First: Another effective way to increase your business’s reach is by engaging your clients. It can most efficiently be done through social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
- Getting customers to follow your brand and engage with your post should be the number goal. Therefore, building a rapport is the key.
- You can start by posting pictures, questions, and Or you can begin to share links to interesting articles or inspiring quotes.
- Once trust is built, you can link your posts to your products or your
- Maximum views and reach are only gained by posts that are the most engaged with, according to the Facebook algorithm.
4. Eliminate Bottlenecks in the Sales Pipeline
Another way to increase business revenue is to examine the sales pipeline and improving specific areas critically. For instance, an offline sales funnel can comprise of store walk-ins, outgoing sales calls, or incoming customer calls.
Once it is determined which part of the sales pipelines do most of the customers drop off, it is easier to spot the leaks and improve them. Or in other words, the lesser the number of steps for the customer the easier and more satisfying the transition is from the decision to purchase.
5. Boost Referrals
Referrals are the best drivers, especially for relatively new businesses, as they instantly increase reach, revenues and maximize profits. A good reference is the one that is least costly. Potential customers tend to believe opinions of their closest friends, family or acquaintances.
According to Nielsen’s research, 84% of buyers believe and trust product recommendations from friends, colleagues and family members.
- An example could be initiating referral program with discounts and coupons in exchange for referrals.
- Satisfied customers can write testimonials and share public reviews for maximum reach.
6. Leverage SEO
Leveraging SEO, which is search engine optimization, is another useful business branding approach that can increase the reach of your business in the most minimalistic way possible. Through unpaid SEO a company can reap benefits in the long run, but through paid SEO, a company can make a bid on the best keywords relating to the business they operate and acquire more traffic through the targeted buyer.
7. Implement Hyper Retargeting Strategy
To increase sales revenues, using hyper retargeting has proved to be the most fruitful. In this strategy, a firm targets people who have visited the site several times and then starts to map their purchase cycle. They are then segmented and categorized based on market behavior. Push advertisements are then shown, based on where they are in their buying cycle.
