Finding ways to increase your organization’s profit margins can be challenging, but with a little creativity, you may find that you’re able to move the needle substantially.
You’ve probably already instituted many of the traditional ways of stabilizing your cash flow, especially after 2020’s ups and downs. For example, maybe you’re leasing a smaller space after moving to a hybrid or mostly remote working environment. Or, perhaps you’ve renegotiated your vendor contracts. But have you tried some of the following unusual methods to grow your ROI?
You’ve probably already instituted many of the traditional ways of stabilizing your cash flow, … [+]
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1. Invest in High-Performing Marketing Platforms
As part of your online marketing strategy, you may be buying ads on Google and Facebook. Those platforms take a lot of initial investment in order to see a significant return. If you’re looking to increase your ROI without such a large initial financial investment, look into other platforms that aren’t as saturated, like Youtube and Instagram.
Or, you could switch gears by starting a company podcast, a platform where you aren’t paying for ad space.
Quill’s research shows that branded podcasts offer high levels of return potential. They have been shown to bump up brand visibility by 89%. Maybe even more importantly, podcasts increase buying intent by 14%.
Though you might never have considered diving into podcasting, now might be the time. Launching a podcast involves minimal investment, especially if you have a few eager champions on staff.
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Podcasts also tend to weather recessions because people can listen in for free. Just make sure you measure podcast traffic to track it as a lead generation machine.
2. Automate More Tasks
If you embrace automation to limit repetitive jobs, you might be able to free up two hours a day for your employees. You’re probably already using some form of automation in your workplace. However, you can probably automate more tasks than you already do with the assistance of leading-edge, AI-driven tech and integrations.
What are some areas or departments ripe for automation? Customer support is an optimal place to start. Already, many corporations have adopted chatbots to handle common questions and concerns. Certain softwares can also help customer service agents more efficiently solve problems, and even know when clients are getting feisty. Another area is marketing. Even if you have a small, dedicated group of marketers, you can get more done with less effort. Imagine the upshot of having a machine drive social listening or deploy personalized messaging with minimal human intervention.
Most people aren’t thrilled about the length of their daily to-do tasks. Automating just a few of their most nagging, time-consuming responsibilities helps them focus on getting higher level work done. That’s a great boon for your ROI because it boosts production without the need to bring on extra hands.
3. Unclog Your Sales Pipeline
If your sales pipeline isn’t running as efficiently as you’d like, sit down with your sales team and outline all your customer journeys. Start with lead generation (e.g., how people find your brand.) Then, work your way through to signing on the dotted line.
Stepping into a lead’s shoes will help you see stumbling points that you can address.
For instance, maybe you have too many stages in your sales workflow. Ideally, you’d be getting closer to a deal with each stage. At the same time, you’d risk losing interested customers.
On the other hand, maybe you’re letting your customers down by not having enough touchpoints. In other words, your prospects may feel like your sales team has disappeared from the scene, or has given up on them.
Removing these stumbling blocks and friction points can open up your sales pipeline in a whole new way. You may even be able to speed up your entire sales cycle, which will enable you to boost profitability.
4. Reorganize Your Team
What if you could keep the same amount of core staff and still scale your business in the coming year?
This might be possible with a bit of contemplative reorganization based on the strengths of your staff. By switching responsibilities between team members, you could possibly improve your efficiency. And efficiency, productivity, and ROI go hand-in-hand.
To avoid corporate growing pains and employee grumbling, present your idea to other executives and managers. See whether they think a reorganization is appropriate. If everyone’s on board, you can then move ahead with plans to evaluate workers’ skill sets and professional goals. By realigning everyone’s duties, you could make better use of everyone’s talents and backgrounds. Additionally, you might see a bit of an uptick in morale if you get the restructuring right.
A fresh new year deserves some fresh new ideas for your business. Start planning for 2022 now so you can make the most of every productive day. Oh, and be sure to pass along some of those bottom line benefits to all your stakeholders.