4 Simple Strategies To Make More Money in 2014

By Stefanie Neyland, Small Business Content Developer at BizLaunch.com

The marketing plan for your company is arguably the most important part of your business plan—after all, without customers, you wouldn’t have much of a business to run. Unfortunately though, sometimes small business owners have a tendency to get bogged down in other aspects of their business, such as new customer acquisition, and forget to pay equal amounts of attention to their existing patrons.

It’s a well-known fact in the marketing world that strategies designed to reach existing customers are far less expensive—and often far more effective—than those designed to attract completely new customers. Why? Because you’re preaching to the converted. Existing customers already know you, trust you, and are familiar with your business’s products or services. New customers, on the other hand, have no such experience with you; and therefore you have the difficult task of convincing them to buy from you.

If one of your new year’s resolutions is to make more money in 2014, then here are four simple strategies you can use to make that happen.

1. Get more customers

Okay, I know what you’re thinking—“But you just said that we should focus on our existing customers rather than attracting new ones?”—and yes, that is the best strategy. But that’s assuming you’re an established business with a decent-sized customer base. If, however, you’re a startup or early-stage business, your sole focus should be on acquiring new customers. This is the most expensive and time-consuming strategy of the four outlined in this post, but if you’ve just recently launched your venture you really have no other option.

Invest some of your marketing dollars in well-targeted online ads (think Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or even Twitter, depending on the nature of your business and who you’re trying to sell to), a search engine optimized website, and sales calls. You should also consider offering discounts, free samples, free trials, or a money-back guarantee to encourage new prospects to give you shot. Once you’ve acquired some of those all-important customers, you can then implement the following three strategies to increase your sales.

2. Help your customers buy more from you

Considered a ‘volume’ strategy, one of the most effective ways of increasing your sales is by encouraging your customers to spend a little more with you at the time of purchase. Use cross-selling and upselling techniques by offering an additional product or service to compliment the customer’s purchase for just a little more money. Car dealerships sell add-ons, convenience stores display chocolate bars and gum near the cash register, and fast food chains ask if you want to ‘supersize’ your meal—so there’s no reason why you can’t employ some similar tactics in your biz.

3. Help your customers buy from you more often

‘Frequency’ strategies keep your customers coming back to purchase from you time and time again, so try and create some reasons why your clients should return to you in future. Communicate with customers frequently to build up a relationship and ensure they remember you, and create special offers, events and promotions to entice them to buy from you again.

4. Keep your existing customers happy

As we now know, it’s far more expensive to chase new customers than it is to keep your existing ones happy. So, overwhelm your customers with attention and value-added services. Let your customers know how much you appreciate their business by offering loyalty programs that could include some kind of tangible gift, discount offer, rewards card, special event, free service, or even just a simple note to say ‘thank you for your business’.