All businesses are wanting to improve their bottom line, but very few seem to be able to focus on more than one area at a time. Indeed, it is very difficult to gain a huge amount of positive financial difference, if you are only looking at one area of your vast business. Instead, you should look at your business as a whole and find little ways of tweaking the different areas and departments. Saving a little bit here and there or investing in areas that will see profitable growth should give you a much larger sum on your bottom line than before.
Of course, it is not all about saving money, it is likely that you understand the proverb that you have to spend in order to gain. Therefore, investing some money in good marketing strategies, website design and employee initiative will also see a growth in your bottom line, even though you will have to spend before you start to see the results that you are so evidentially desiring.
#1 Improve your website
Your website should be an area that you look at first. This is because, regardless of what else you do, you will be directing all your potential customers towards your website. If your website, therefore, is not up to scratch, contains old data, or is not relevant to what you are promoting or selling, then it will reflect badly on your business as a whole and you will find that your potential customers click away without spending any money with you or placing orders.
Your website should be easy for your potential customers to navigate, accessible and appealing to all of your target markets. This can be a big ask, but getting a professional involved from the start can make the whole process a lot easier and stress-free for you.
#2 Enhance traffic
One of the main areas your website will get traffic will be from search engines, such as Google. Without expert knowledge of the SEO process, it can be very hit and miss to get good or even fair results, with the emphasis on the ‘miss’ part. There are a fair few different areas that come under the SEO umbrella including, but not limited to, long-tailed keywords, backlinks, and content between forces to incorporate other prominent keywords.
However, it is not all about getting people to your website, indeed having users look is one thing, but getting them to make purchases or place orders is quite another. This is when you will have to look at your conversion rates to get a more accurate picture of whether or not your SEO is hitting its mark. To make sense of any SEO analysis, you would do well to invest in an online conversion expert knowledge so that you know which areas you will need to tweak and which areas are performing to the best possible outcome, and getting you the sales that you want.
#3 Attract customers
There are a few different ways to entice customers to part with their money and place orders. One of the best is to offer discounts on orders placed before a certain date or on orders over a specific amount, either quantity or price.
However, there are other ways in which you can entice them to part with their cash. For instance, offering freebies or company swag or even samples of your other products which they may like (based on their purchase history with your company) could be good. You would be surprised by the number of customers that will pay a little bit more or place additional orders so that they receive a free gift (a mystery or named product) with their next order, even more so if they are claimed to be limited editions or pieces of a set.
#4 Educate employees
There is a lot to be said for educating your employees, it is certainly not wasted time or money. Employees are a business’s biggest asset, and you should use yours to their greatest potential. Whether you chose to educate yours on-site with in-house training that is only relevant within your company or one very much like yours, or whether you decide to offer your employees the chance of completing online courses that will better their career prospects as well as benefit your business tremendously is totally up to you, but the wheels that you will set in motion in either example will be a fantastic bonus to your business.
Employees that have completed training to a specific standard within your corporation will be able to carry out their job roles to a much higher spec, you will find that because they have gained knowledge, and therefore confidence in their capabilities, that there is less chance of rework or mistakes. This makes the process that they are working on far quicker, meaning that your business will earn more money per hour for their hourly output. You will also find that your employees become far happier in the workplace giving the atmosphere a boost, sick time is likely to reduce, and employee retention numbers are likely to be increased. This will be even more beneficial and prominent to your business if you offer your employees a way to progress through your business via definite promotion pathways so that those that choose to improve and stay with your business have a chance to do so.
You may ask what this has to do with your bottom line. With a business containing experts on every level, you will be able to project your business as a highly efficient and motivated cutting-edge business offering quality products and services to its customers that far surmount that of your competitors, as well as making savings on production times and the cost of components that would normally be wasted in rework methods.
#5 Initiate software and outsourcing
It is important to use software and outsourcing facilities that will drive your business forwards in the race to gain prospective customers. This will alsosave your employees valuable time on job roles that can be carried out by professionals who have made it their goal to specialize in certain areas of business management, or indeed in the attainment of interested parties and potential customers. When it comes to outsourcing, there are generally two different types of contracts available. Those experts who make their time available per job or project so that you use their knowledge to get you a certain result in a one-off case, and those businesses that you can hire out to work on your behalf to perform certain regular tasks, such as payroll for instance.
For those individuals that you hire for a one-off project or on an ad-hoc basis, you will generally get a quote upfront for the work in question. This can be a vast saving on paying a person with their level of skill, knowledge, experience, or qualification a yearly salary as you will only be paying them for the time that they are working for your business.
Outsourcing to businesses that are experts and willing to take on work (for instance marketing, accounts, HR, payroll, or even front of the office) can save you money across the board as you will only be paying for the time they spend dealing with your business material. They will only be spending part of their time working for your business as they will have other businesses on their books at the same time. This will free up your employees to work in other areas of your business, where their attention may be far more profitable to you.
