Entrepreneurship self-help books are often laced with heavy, cliched phrases like ‘think big’ or ‘aim for the stars’. Truth is, simple and incremental innovations can often bring sustainable growth that is much more realistic for small businesses and start-ups. If you are an entrepreneur who does not have the budgets nor bandwidth to execute large budget campaigns, here are some simple tricks that helped other businesses take their growth a notch higher.
Packaging One Time Service As A Membership : It doesn’t matter if you are a roofer, cleaner or a florist. Every business relies on repeat customers for growing revenues. When Markus Rauschnabel launched Bluum, ecommerce in the mom and kids space was already saturated. But by launching his company as a subscription service, Markus was not only able to secure repeat purchases who may have otherwise made their purchase from different stores each time, but could also save customers the trouble of making an order each time.
Find The Right Communication For Customers : Heard of A/B testing? It’s the process of measuring small incremental changes to your product by the increase or decrease in conversions. When John Weber, the lead digital marketing specialist at Geek Powered Studios was working on a countertop manufacturers’ website, his team decided to run a simple A/B test. They changed the call to action from “No Mess, No Hassle, Your One Stop Shop!” to “Build Your Dream Kitchen With No Mess & No Hassle. Call today!”. The result was a whopping 200% increase in the number of lead enquiries.
Make It Easy For Customers : Often the simplest things can bring about the greatest impact on your business. When Jay Barnett, the guy behind Priority Pickup, an airport transfer service in Perth launched his company, he received quite a few enquiries that did not convert for some unknown reason. After extensively surveying these customers, Jay realized that people were dropping out because they were often unsure about the fare. The company introduced a simple ‘Quick Price Calculator’ feature which Jay says instantly increased conversion rates by as much as 85%. Customers don’t mind paying extra for better service. But they often back-out when they suspect something could go wrong. In the absence of a fare calculator, this is exactly what happened.
Tell Customers What They Get : Ever listened to a dating guru who advises about the need to listen to your partner instead of talking all the time? This is an important strategy in business as well. A number of businesses make the mistake of talking about themselves instead of understanding what the customer wants. According to Nick Pavlak, the founder of Babl Media, one of the simplest changes that brought them the largest improvement in business was changing their communication from “Our company does X” to “We help you achieve X”.
When it comes to simple changes bringing the greatest improvement, every business has a story to tell. Are you an entrepreneur who has an experience to share? Tell us in the comments below.
