7 Tips to Using Technology to Boost Your Business’s Revenue Stream
You want your business to be successful. After all, why have a business if it isn’t going to bring you any type of profit? The newest and most certain way to boost the revenue coming into your business is by intertwining the use of technology into it.
Technology doesn’t have to be a bold move. Technology is often no more than posting on social media or creating a pin on Pinterest – like it or not, we live in a digital age, and if you want to profit, you have to get on board.
Ways to Use Technology to Boost Revenue
As of January 2021, there are 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide, totaling 59.5% of the total population. Furthermore, 92.6% (4.32 billion) of these users accessed the internet via mobile device. It is hard to argue with numbers like this, which is why, as a business, you must look for innovative ways to grab the attention of these users if you want to increase your revenue. Unengaged users don’t purchase goods or services and are likely to go to the competition.
That is why following these seven tips will make it easier for you to boost your business’s revenue and likely more popular with your target audience.
1. Increase Social Media Presence
If you haven’t noticed, social media holds a lot of weight in the success of a business (and even people). Approximately 3.48 billion people are using social media, with users spending approximately 2.5 hours online each day. So it is no wonder that 90% of brands are using social media as a means to drive awareness and increase their marketing.
How do you increase your social media presence?
We aren’t going to leave you hanging, though. Depending on when you were in school, chances are you may not even know how to leverage a social media account to work in your business’s favor. Here are some ways you can build up your presence:
Identify a Target Audience
You should already know what you want to achieve, increasing your revenue, but now you need to identify who you are trying to reach. This group is called your “target audience.”
You should note that not everyone is an audience, and you are trying to focus on those you want to be your potential customers.
Cultivate Social Media Relationships
Instead of just having followers or people commenting on your posts, make sure you interact with them. Your customers want to feel special, and the best way to do this is to make them feel as though they are being seen and heard. As a result, happy customers are often returning customers.
If you choose to automate some of your answers, make sure they are helpful and used tastefully. For example, you won’t want to give customers the wrong impression by using an automated response with nothing to do with what they say. In the same way, content should be engaging and on point.
Keep an Active Presence
It is hard to increase your social media presence if you are never online. There is a fine line on posting to social media and you don’t want to overstep the boundaries. You also don’t want to be so active that people are blocking your posts.
To be “active,” you not only want to post, but you want to engage. Talk with customers, get feedback, and answer the questions that they might have. Building relationships is one sure way to gain trust.
2. Include Mobile Branding in Your Strategy
Smartphones are one invention that many of us can no longer do without. Gone are the days of the push button pre-paid Nokia phones, which paved the way for much greater things – like touch screens and video chatting.
The number of smartphone users surpasses six billion and is only estimated to grow even further. There is a lot of revenue potential just in getting your brand positioned for mobile interactions.
How can you do this?
Optimize your website for mobile use
Develop a mobile app for your brand
Promote your app and brand by giving incentives for downloading and using the app
Use mobile advertising techniques
Accept mobile payments
These are all ways that you can potentially increase your revenue stream while exposing your branding to more potential customers.
3. Create Better Marketing Strategies
For a business to be profitable, there has to be a solid marketing strategy. Without a strategy, it would be like throwing your startup money into the wind. You can “wing it” with some things, but your business is not one of them.
Here is what marketing does:
Marketing informs consumers.
Marketing engages consumers.
Marketing builds relationships between you and the consumer.
Marketing sells to consumers.
Marketing builds your business’s reputation.
Marketing grows your business.
The common denominator? Marketing! Marketing strategies are the one way to ensure that you are getting the most out of your business and the highest revenue streams possible.
4. Use Video for Better Engagement
Video is one key piece of content that goes hand-in-hand with all the above.
Think about these key facts before you deny the impact that video has on a business:
Over 500 million people watch Facebook videos every day.
More than 75% of all video views come from a mobile device.
93% of businesses claim that new customers were a result of branded video content.
In these three statistics alone, we touched on social media, mobile, and marketing – and we are only skimming the surface. You would be surprised by the impact of creating a video on social media to increase revenue streams into your business.
Try creating a video and posting it online. As a small business, you don’t have to seek cinematic perfection –be real with your customers, and they will appreciate it.
5. Measure User Engagement
You don’t want to assume that your strategies are working only to find out when it is too late that they are not. Implementing an analytical approach to measure the engagement and loyalty of consumers, like Google Analytics, can help you interpret the data and improve conversion rate.
What is getting the highest bounce rates?
Are there specific media and content posting that your consumers seem to gravitate to?
You can use all this information to fine-tune your marketing strategies, focusing more on what your consumers want, even if they aren’t telling you.
6. Implement Web-Based and Contactless Payment Solutions
Have you ever went into a small business and asked, “do you take credit/debit?” Fewer and fewer people are carrying cash on them; even fewer are writing checks. The majority of consumers are using cards or hands-free forms of payment.
Even since the pandemic, the numbers have increased – more than 51% of Americans are now using contactless payments. Mobile wallets are becoming increasingly popular as well.
Why does this matter in terms of small business?
Not all small businesses are equipped with the ability to take any type of payment other than cash or check. Many of the new banks that have entered the scene are online and do not offer checks and mail-out debit cards to their patrons, and even then, the list of ATMs for these banks is few and far between.
So, what should a small business do?
There are payment solutions that can be implemented that don’t cost a significant amount. In fact, when it comes to the comfort of paying with a card over finding cash, many consumers are willing to absorb the fees for using their card into their payment. Two examples of online payment platforms are Square and PayPal, both used by businesses looking to take card payments without the need for large point-of-sale (POS) equipment.
7. Use Apps to Increase Productivity
The best worker is an accountable one. If you want to ensure your employees are productive, you can implement apps that help them be successful.
Successful employees are profitable employees – you are trying to boost your revenue, not hand out money to undeserving workers.
Depending on the type of business you run, you can use things like Slack, Trello, Podio, Basecamp, and Asana, among others, to help with better organization and employee productivity. Many of these come free or have a free version up to a specific level – allowing you to test it out and find what fits your situation.
The best part about most productivity apps? All you need is a mobile phone to get started!
Why Implementing Technology Now Makes for Revenue in the Future
If you want to boost your business’s revenue, you have to be proactive about it. You can’t just wait to get swept up in the current and try to catch up to the rest of the industry. Have you ever heard the saying, “strike while the iron is hot?”
You want a successful business, which means you want to do what it takes to get it there. With these tips, you can gain the competitive advantage you need while preparing your business for the next level.
Even with all the technological advances we see in business, this is only the beginning. Wouldn’t you much rather get on board with it now than wait until it’s almost too late?