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At the end of the day, there are only 3 ways to grow revenue, but a number of different tactics that can help you.

Extend Your Reach to Increase the Number of Customers
With ads, organic traffic, reviews and special offers.

Increase Basket Size to foster Bigger Customers
By using better analytics tools, improving your reputation and online brand.

Improve the Frequency of Purchase to cultivate Better, More Loyal Customers
By leveraging Social strategies, eCRMS systems and Content Marketing.

MORE, BIGGER, OR BETTER?
How do want to grow revenue?

It’s a rare business that does not want to increase their revenue. While there are thousands of different tactics you can use to increase revenue, ultimately there are really only three strategies:

  • MORE: increase the number of customers buying your product or service;
  • BIGGER: increase the basket size or average revenue per transaction; or
  • BETTER: increase the frequency of purchase.

That’s it.

At the end of the day, any campaign to increase revenue will fall into one of these three strategies. Each of these requires their own particular mix of marketing campaigns and digital tactics and channels.

MORE: Extending Your Reach

This is usually the first and obvious strategy to increase your revenue. If you want to increase the number of customers for your brand, then you look at ways to expand your audience, extend your reach, and scale up your messaging. That might include some of the following digital marketing techniques;

  • Paid Search Advertising, to reach consumers who are actively seeking your offering.
  • Display & Social Advertising, to introduce your offering to your target market.
  • Expand your Backlink Network, to build your Referral Traffic and improve your organic search.
  • Reduce the Friction & Risk associated with purchasing your offering, with free trials, introductory discounts, free shipping and other offers.
  • Improving your Ratings & Reviews, by soliciting testimonials and positive reviews, providing social proof, and closely managing your reputation and ratings.

Success with this strategy is not only supported by a clear understanding of your customers’ lifetime value, but also closely managing the factors that contribute to the cost-per-acquisition of these new customers, fine-tuning these tactics to improve ROI, and then scaling up your campaigns.

BIGGER: Increasing the Basket Size

This is perhaps the most nuanced strategy, because it requires a more sophisticated understanding of your customers’ preferences and purchase behavior. That might involve improving your branding to a premium price-point, or perhaps it means upselling your customer to a larger order or additional items. Here are some digital techniques that can help you bump up the average sale:

  • Nuanced Customer Analytics to better understand purchase behavior and identify upsell opportunities, and premium offerings.
  • Improved Branding & Positioning through better messaging and higher quality creative in all your marketing materials and customer interactions.
  • Better Digital Customer Care, with live chat, responsive and empowered social customer care, and a well-thought-out user experience.
  • Keeping a close eye on your Online Reputation, with positive ratings and reviews – and appropriate responses to potential negative ones.

Success with this strategy is supported by a thorough and deep understanding of your consumer experience, reinforced by reliable data and procedures, that ensure you are delivering as much value as possible at every opportunity.

BETTER: Increasing the Frequency of Purchase

This is perhaps the most overlooked strategy, and might represent the lowest hanging fruit. Attracting new customers or launching a premium product might be a sexier endeavor, but the most efficient and effective way to increase revenue might be to increase the frequency of purchase from your existing customers and clients. Here are some digital marketing tactics that can help you do that:

  • Blogs, vlogs, whitepapers, articles, and other forms or Content Marketing with help you stay on your customers’ radar, and remind them of your expertise or product attributes.
  • A robust and well-managed eCRM System will help you stay in touch – and stay relevant – with your customer base.
  • Active and relevant Social Activity, supported by organic and promoted posts.

This strategy works best when it is planned out with appropriate publication scheduling, tracked by appropriate analytics tools to confirm engagement, supported by occasional paid media or other resources, and given enough time and commitment to gain traction and deliver results.

SUCCESS FACTORS

To ensure that you are delivering results, meeting your objectives and achieving good ROI with these tactics, you will need to ensure that you have the right tools and processes in place, and are collecting and reviewing the right data:

  • Advanced and sophisticated integration of Analytics Tools like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, retargeting and tracking pixels, to ensure that you are capturing the right data.
  • A thorough understanding of the Ad Platforms & Social Tools required to manage paid ads and content generation activities.
  • Technics and processes for Conversion Rate Optimization to help you understand how efficiently you are turning viewers into customers.
  • Strong Competitive Intelligence, so you can understand appropriate costs, tactics and messaging techniques.
  • Clear and efficient Dashboards, that can pull data from multiple sources into a single interface, to give you concise, actionable insights.

Strategic Perspective

Finally, it’s important to be realistic and strategic about how you use these tactics to build revenue.

Could you create a campaign that increased the number of customers, the average basket size, AND the frequency of purchase? Maybe, but that would be an extremely ambitious campaign, with a lot of moving parts, and it would be more likely to dilute your efforts and fail on all fronts.

It’s better to think strategically and focus on manageable objectives, measurable results, and impactful tactics to deliver your digital marketing goals.