Marketing is your single most leveraged profit multiplier in your business. You can impact your profit line with just subtle twists on what you're now doing. And here's the really good bit. You only need to focus on 3 areas to get a massive jump in revenue. Those three areas are:
- the size of your client base
- your average value of a sale, and
- the frequency with which clients purchase.
Now just in case you're about to say you've heard this before... here's a critical point.
This blog and the supporting tools I create for small businesses are NOT about 'telling' you the obvious. They're about SHOWING YOU EXACTLY HOW to implement strategies to achieve the outcomes. And helping you set your priorities in an otherwise frantic day. Of course, once you uncover the dynamic behind such a strategy, often it IS obvious! Commonsense.
So what if you set an objective to improve each of the three areas of focus by 20%? You'll lift your revenue by 72.8%! I guarantee you, it IS worth doing. So take some time now for this mini-audit of your current marketing. First up, ask yourself:
Focus #1 - Increasing the size of your client base
- Do you test different headlines on your ads and measure the outcomes?
- Do you test different offers?
- Do you tell your FULL story on your website and in your literature?
- Do you script the wording and role play how to deal with phone enquiries?
- Do you have a script and a system for generating more referrals?.
In just those five initiatives to increase the size of your client base, the leverage for increasing your profits is breathtaking. Testing headlines can multiply your number of enquiries by twenty times.
Testing offers up to three times. Role-playing how to deal with phone enquiries can DOUBLE your success on the phone. And so on! These are real figures, not theory!
And this is just scratching the surface. Let's look briefly a:
Focus #2 - Increasing the average value of a sale
- Do you articulate the full value of your services and charge what you're worth?
- Do you train all frontline people in professional selling and customer service?
- Do you test packaging products and services together?
- Do you have a SYSTEM for cross selling?
Again, these are just a few of the options open to you to increase your average sale value. Do nothing different than now, and chances are, it is costing you dearly in lost profits.
Finally, how can you increase the frequency of purchase by your client base?
Focus #3 - Increasing the frequency of purchase
- Do you have a 'client communications calendar'?
- Do you find ways to say thank you?
- Do you plan special events and actively create reasons to add value to your clients?
Where to from here?
Start doing 'stuff'. Remember, if you can implement initiatives to lift each of those three areas by 20%, it puts 72.8% on your revenue line. Do the numbers on what that does to your profit line! And work with your accountant too on ways to get your costs down as well, and your profits could well soar by over 100% or much more.
