According to Small Business Trends, the top small business concern for 2021 is securing new customers. That’s no surprise, given that new customers bring increased revenue. However, there are additional ways of achieving the goal, as well. Read on to learn 10 ways to increase revenue.
1. Stay in communication with your customers
What happens after customers schedule appointments with you? How do you keep in touch with them before and after their appointments? If they require recurring appointments, how do you communicate with them between those recurrent appointments?
Answering those questions is critical if you want to increase revenue.
If you’re still scheduling and confirming appointments and reminding customers of appointments with phone calls, that may be the reason why you’re not building a genuine relationship them. Seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Because aren’t phones voice-to-voice communications tools? And shouldn’t that be the next best thing to being in someone’s presence?
The sad news is that that’s old school. While the tool is called a phone, consumers no longer want to use it for that purpose. Smartphones are now viewed as tiny, handheld computers. Therefore, digital means of communications—email, instant messaging, and, better yet, text messaging—are the means by which consumers want to be contacted by businesses like yours.
An appointment scheduler like EZnet Scheduler® can help you communicate with customers like never before, with customizable text-based notifications and reminders. This is an easy way to let customers know you’re running a special promotion, like a discounted tire rotation or a special price on hair color and highlights. In that way, you can use EZnet Scheduler for “flash sales” (a sale of specific products or services that lasts for a very short period of time), which can bring in a quick burst of additional revenue.
Text messages and emails can also be sent to wish customers a happy birthday or to wish them well on holidays and special occasions. The point is to stay in touch with them by being front and center on the one device that is always in their hand: their phone.
2. Bundle your products and services
Product bundling is a technique in which several products are grouped together and sold as a single unit for a single price. The bundled price is significantly lower than the total would be if each product or service were purchased separately. This strategy increases revenue because it encourages customers to buy more products.
A salon special whereby the customer receives a shampoo, color, cut and blow-out is a perfect example of a product bundle. Free tire rotation when you purchase an oil change is another great example.
3. Focus on repeat customers
Repeat customers are the lifeblood of any business. In fact, according to LinkedIn, repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers do. The more times you are able to get a customer to make another purchase, the greater their potential lifetime value becomes.
Repeat customers are also happy, satisfied customers. Spiralytics’ studies have shown that 72% of customers will tell six other people about their good experience with your business. On the other hand, 13% will tell 15 or more people about a poor experience. So, it pays to invest in building a great customer experience—online and offline—with your business.
As a result, $1 invested in user experience brings $100 in return. That’s an impressive ROI that all businesses need.
4. Implement a lead generation program
Lead generation—often shortened to “lead gen”—is the process of filling your sales funnel with people who are interested in your business. Anything that gets someone to give you permission to contact them or remarket to them is a lead-generation tactic.
Examples of lead gen tactics include webinars, free reports, weekly or monthly newsletters and live demos. There are endless ways to create opt-in opportunities.
Here at EZnet Scheduler, potential customers have their choice of a free demo or a free trial of our scheduler. The 15-day free trial comes with additional perks, too: a 30-minute setup session and a $10 Dunkin’ eGift card.
5. Implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system
CRM software aggregates customer information in one place to give businesses easy access to data, such as contact data, purchase history and any previous contact with customer service representatives. This data helps employees interact with clients, anticipate customer needs, recognize customer updates and track performance goals. CRM software’s main purpose is to make interactions more efficient and productive.
6. Survey customers to gain deeper understanding of your target market
Customer satisfaction surveys are used to assess how satisfied your customers are with different aspects of your product/service. Identifying unhappy customers is as important as identifying extremely happy ones (potential advocates).
Surveys can be implemented in a variety of ways:
- Platforms like Survey Monkey enable you to author and distribute a customer survey.
- E-mail automation programs like MailChimp, Constant Contact and Active Campaign have built-in survey capabilities.
- Social media platforms like Facebook enable you to conduct polls.
- Google Forms lets you put together surveys quickly and easily via their convenient drag and drop interface. You can customize the design of your survey and track your your responses in real time.
7. Enable customer reviews
Nothing speaks volumes to prospective or new customers like a review from an existing, happy customer. There are a few ways in which you can enable customer reviews:
- Enable reviews on your Facebook business page.
- Encourage customers and clients to recommend your business on LinkedIn.
- Depending upon the type of business you own, you can gather customer reviews on Yelp, Google My Business, TrustPilot, Capterra and many other review sites.
- EZnet Scheduler enables customers to submit reviews of your business right within the scheduler. You receive real-time reports about them.
8. Identify customer pain points and offer a solution that will solve their needs
A “pain point” is a specific problem that prospective customers have that your product or service is able to solve. However, not all prospects will be aware of the pain point they’re experiencing, which can make marketing to these individuals difficult, as you must first help your prospects realize that they have a problem. Then, you must convince them that your product or service will solve that problem.
There are 5 main types of pain points:
- Financial Pain Points: Your prospects are spending too much money on their current provider/solution/products and want to reduce their spend.
- Productivity Pain Points: Your prospects are wasting too much time using their current provider/solution/products or they were expecting that current solution to boost productivity more than it has.
- Process Pain Points: Your prospects want to improve internal processes, such as assigning leads to sales reps or nurturing lower-priority leads.
- Ease-of-Use Pain Points: Your prospects
- Support Pain Points: Your prospects aren’t receiving the support they need at critical stages of the customer journey, sales process or user experience.
9. Accept credit cards
Nothing puts cash in your pocket faster than enabling customers to pay with a credit card. Better yet, let customers prepay for their services at the time they schedule their appointment with you. While new customers probably wouldn’t opt for that, repeat customers (particularly those with pre-scheduled recurring appointments) will. In fact, they might just opt for you to automatically charge their credit card at the time of their appointment so they can get in and out more quickly. EZnet Scheduler enables credit card payments right within the scheduler, using any payment authorization gateway.
10. Automate appointment scheduling
Why would you want to call or email customers or patients to confirm appointments when you can automate the process? EZnet Scheduler enables you to send automatic appointment confirmations, reminders and notifications via text, email or voice. Yes, voice, because here at EZnet, we realize that some customers still want to communicate by voice. But for the vast majority who don’t, we offer unlimited text and email confirmations, notifications and reminders, in accordance with each of your customer’s individual preference.