The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult on all of us, and business leaders across the globe have felt its effects throughout 2020 and 2021. Even though the crisis is subsiding and that things seem to be returning to normal, we can’t pretend that the pandemic did not have an effect on our financial stability, both personally and professionally. This is why now more than ever before, it’s important to put together a smart business budget and monitor your financial KPIs that will allow you to grow no matter what the next year brings.
That said, you can’t just rely on your budget or your projections to spark growth and build financial security, because you also need to come up with ways to boost your finances and improve cash flow. This is the only true way to grow and take your business forward in the face of economic and social turmoil.
So, what can you do to boost your revenue by the end of 2021 and throughout the next year? Here are some important tactics you should start investing in right now to ensure long-term success.
Explore your funding options
For many entrepreneurs, kicking off a business idea isn’t possible without obtaining the right kind of initial capital first. Even if you have already started your own business, after a crisis of these proportions, it’s natural to consider an investor to help you improve your financial standing.
Depending on your industry, you’ll need to find viable financial strategies and resources. For instance, as a SaaS business owner, you will need to make sure that your idea is competitive. Look for and rely on financial tips specific to your area of expertise if you want to boost your finances, land an investor, or apply for funding.
By focusing on your niche and expertise, you will be able to find and hopefully impress a number of interested startup investors that could help you create a solid financial basis for your company.
Build a multi-channel sales approach
In 2022 and beyond, your goal should be to diversify your sales channels as much as possible. In this digital day and age, you have the unique opportunity to capture leads across a number of online and offline touchpoints. This will allow you to get more customers with multichannel selling and expand your brand’s sales reach in a competitive industry.
If you haven’t already, you need to transform your offline business into an online business by setting up a website and utilizing social media. This will get you the kind of exposure you need to improve your sales manifold with the right channels.
But multichannel selling is all about capitalizing on the channels that aren’t just your website or whatever your biggest sales touchpoint may be. If you get most of your sales from your in-store customers, for example, now is the time to invest in building a sales-driven website, allowing customers to place orders on social media, selling through email and direct messaging, and even using offline communication channels to get customers interested in your products.
If your website is a bit outdated or isn’t as functional as it should be, perhaps it’s time to look for a professional web design company that can help you revamp the look and feel of your site. That alone could help generate more leads and inspire more people to purchase when they land on your site.
The more you diversify your sales channels the higher the chances that you’ll generate a customer. After all, people want to buy on their own terms. If a customer wants to buy on your site and you try to force them to visit your store, for example, well, you’re probably out of a customer.
Generate leads and sales with online visibility
Much like you want to expand and diversify your sales channels, it’s also important to start diversifying your digital efforts in an attempt to build a thriving online presence. Fortunately, there are many ways you can become the leader in your industry and build brand awareness and trust using various digital marketing tactics to educate, engage, and inspire your audience.
From peer coaching and live events to content marketing and posting on social media, all the way to thought leadership and SEO, there’s plenty you can do for your brand in the digital realm. Marketing your brand with a powerful SEO strategy can help position your business better online, which means that you can attract more buyers directly to your online store.
You can also boost your brand’s social proof and build your reputation with press and other media-related campaigns that will get your name out onto the online market. All of this will help you generate more qualified leads organically, and inspire people to reach out to your company, share the news of your brand with others, and boost your word-of-mouth potential.
The more visible you are online, the more trustworthy you’ll become, and people will start naturally gravitating towards your brand. Digital marketing and press campaigns will elevate your company’s status above the competitors and will motivate people to become your loyal customers.
This is how you’ll use inbound marketing to boost your finances.
Consider investing more in cold emails
Outreach is an important part of any sales process. If you want to improve your financial standing and cash flow in the months to come, it’s important that you leverage the right tactics for effective sales outreach, lead generation, nurturing, and ultimately conversion. Now, one of the best tools to achieve all of this in the online world is, of course, email.
Email is a powerful sales and marketing tool in the right hands, and by creating effective, but personalized email templates that deliver value to the recipient, you can easily inspire a potential customer to reply or follow a link to your online store. For the best results, you can use a mail merge personalization tool that lets you send out large batches of cold emails, but with a personal touch. The best aspect of email communication is that it’s personal and direct, but it also allows you to conduct a number of different sales and marketing campaigns.
Use a simple but effective email marketing calendar to organize your email outreach efforts. With a calendar, you can automate certain processes and never miss out on an opportunity to reach out to your customers when they’re most likely to make a purchase.
You don’t always need to try to sell something, as you can also promote your newsletter, talk about the new initiatives in your company, or inspire people to follow your social media pages. All of these, if done right, can generate qualified leads or even motivate people to buy something of their own volition.
Save time and money by automating social media management
In order to boost your business finances over the long term, you have to also consider all the ways you can cut back on extraneous spending. Without a doubt, one of the best ways to start saving money and improve time management is to eliminate internal financial leaks, and you can do that by automating various processes.
Fortunately, nowadays there is a software solution for every department, process, and goal, so you can easily automate fully or partially your rostering and workflow management, project management and administrative processes, onboarding and training, and more.
You can also use dedicated software to automate your social media management, which can take a lot of money, time, and other resources to handle manually. Consider using Instagram bots and automation on Instagram in general to schedule posts, send direct messages, and generate insightful reports.
Learn as much as you can about the Instagram algorithm so that you can boost your visibility and engagement. The algorithm changes just like search engines, so meeting the latest requirements can help you gain more followers and thus improve sales.
You can do this for every social platform in order to save time and money.
On the other hand, it’s also important to consider automating parts of your customer service department. Customer support is an essential element of sales and effective marketing nowadays, and it’s a crucial part of the overall customer experience.
However, running an entire support team manually and without the help of automation software can be extremely cost-intensive. That’s why you should consider automating repetitive tasks like common customer queries with an AI-driven chatbot that can handle these issues with ease.
Your chatbot will alleviate a lot of the pressure off your human staff, and deliver tailored solutions to your customers.
Invest in brand-building to generate repeat customers
Building a powerful brand identity is one of the best ways to future-proof your business in the competitive online world. A strong brand can drive lead generation forward based on name recognition and trustworthiness, but most importantly, it can boost customer retention over the long term.
People develop an emotional connection with their favorite brands, so it’s important to enhance your brand experience as much as possible. There’s a lot you can learn from some of the best personal brands around that focus on personalization and humanizing your business, and by becoming the authority figure in your industry.
However, brand-building is an art form as much as it is a science, so you also need to keep track of your performance metrics to see how well your brand is actually doing, financially. If your strategies are effective, then your financial metrics should be soaring. If you measure your finances with Baremetrics or a similar tool, you can then adapt your brand-building efforts to invest in the strategies that have the most financial merit for your brand.
For example, by producing high-quality, educational content for your audience and by evoking the right emotions with your messaging and values, you can create a positive brand experience that will inspire people to keep coming back for more. If your financial metrics reflect your content efforts, then you’ll know that content is one of the most financially effective assets in your arsenal.
Wrapping up
There are many ways you can boost your company’s finances, but the best way is to increase your revenue. While you can always get an influx of cash by taking out a loan, it’s far more prudent to look for trusted investors and use your funds for the right sales and marketing tactics that will grow your company’s wealth.
Let these tips help you make more money in 2022 by delivering better experiences, building powerful brand-customer and brand-employee relationships, and by eliminating extraneous expenses.
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