Ever wonder what makes some businesses more successful than others? While there is no exact formula, there are strategies and habits that successful businesses share. One of the biggest differences between successful and unsuccessful businesses has to do with how much money they make after paying their employees and bills. This is known as “residual income.” To create a profitable business, you need to understand how to generate residual income.
Focus On Customer Acquisition
A key differentiator between successful and unsuccessful businesses is their approach to customer acquisition. To generate residual income, your product or service must be such that it is desirable to at least one group of potential customers. In other words, you need to have a target audience. Before you put a single ad on Facebook or Google, consider the demographics you’re focusing on, the costs associated with the ad, and how many conversions you’re likely to get.
Most businesses think about customers when they’re thinking about revenue, but you should be thinking about customers long before you think about revenue. This is because the cost of acquiring a customer is typically lower than the cost of getting them to purchase a product or service. As a result, it typically makes more sense for businesses to focus on customer acquisition. However, this doesn’t mean that you should throw money at getting traffic to your site. Instead, you need to use tools like Google AdWords to get precise with your targeting. You can use tools like Google Analytics to see exactly which words and phrases your audience is using to find your site and product. This way, you can create adverts that are more tailored to what your audience is searching for.
Measure Performance With Numbers
Once you’ve established the target audience for your business, you need to consider how to measure its success. To do this, you need to look to numeric metrics rather than gut feelings or impressions. Using tools like Google Analytics and Hootsuite, you can then examine how many people are visiting your site, how long they’re staying for, and what actions they’re taking (i.e. subscribing to your newsletter, making a purchase, etc.). This type of measurement will allow you to establish clear benchmarks for your business and determine if you’re reaching your goals. In some cases, you might decide that your target audience isn’t large enough, and you’ll want to re-evaluate your strategy.
Even if you’re happy with the results you’re getting, it’s important to remember that Google and Facebook make money from advertising, so it’s essential that you get the most for your money. This is why it’s crucial to measure performance with numbers rather than gut feelings or impressions. The better your measurements, the better your results.
Create An Income Stream
Income streams are simply a way of creating regular, recurring revenue streams. The most common example of this is a monthly newsletter, but it could be anything from offering a weekly deal to selling and delivering appliances. The key is that you’ve got to have a way of making money every month, even if it’s just a few dollars here and there.
The truth is that you probably don’t need to have a ton of revenue to make this work. All you need is a few consistent income streams and a bit of luck. So long as you’ve got a way of generating revenue, even a few dollars a day, you can easily become profitable. If you can build a business that generates $500 a month, you’ll be able to fund your lifestyle (and possibly invest in more equipment or launch a new product line).
Avoid Being Niche
One of the biggest mistakes that new businesses make is that they get too obsessed with creating a product or service that’s a niche in some way. For example, if you’re selling shoes, you might want to create a lifestyle brand that focuses on fashion and trends rather than solely on athletic wear. In this way, you can appeal to a larger audience and be more successful.
You should always be looking for a way to expand your customer base and increase your recurring revenue, but oftentimes this means catering to a niche. Trying to be everything to everybody will inevitably lead to your product or service being considered irrelevant by your target audience.
Offer A Value Proposition
One of the things that make some businesses more successful than others is their ability to offer a value proposition. Simply put, a value proposition is the combination of benefits that your product or service offers to the customer. The key is to offer something that is both valuable and unique. For example, if you’re selling shoes, but the shoes you’ve designed offer very few advantages over other brands, your value proposition becomes heavily reliant on benefits that you can’t deliver on.
As a business owner, entrepreneur, or marketing pro, it’s your job to come up with a unique, valuable proposition that will make your product or service stand out. If you can do this, you’ll be able to command a higher price and ultimately become more profitable. You might want to consider outsourcing this effort to an expert, as it is difficult to distill a value proposition down to one or two sentences.
Monetise Your Passion
One of the best things that the internet and the overall digital economy has enabled is the ability to monetize a passion. If you have a hobby or a side-hustle that you love doing, you can create a business around it. For example, if you’re passionate about painting, you can start a business that provides brushes and canvases for artists. Or, if you love to cook, you can create a food truck that provides grab-and-go meals for people on the move.
If you’re passionate about a subject, you’ll be able to find a way to make money from it. However, this doesn’t mean that you should limit yourself to one hobby. Instead, you should look for ways of making money from a variety of interests and talents that you have. If you can truly monetise your passions, you’ll be able to create a business that can live off your residual income and be profitable. Just make sure that you’re not depriving yourself of any chance of realising your full potential. Having multiple interests and hobbies can lead you to a much more rewarding and profitable career.
Avoid The ‘Race-To-The-Bottom’
A common mistake amongst new businesses is to compete with each other in a head-to-head battle for customer acquisition. In other words, they try to out-do each other with lower prices and discounts in an effort to be the cheapest. While this may work in the short-term, it will inevitably lead to a situation where none of them can survive, and the game of ‘chicken’ begins.
To avoid this, you need to focus on what makes your product or service special rather than trying to out-do your competitors with lower prices. Furthermore, you shouldn’t be afraid to raise prices, as long as you’ve established a benchmark for a fair price, you can always go back later and reduce them if needed. Even a small price increase can mean significant growth for your business, so long as you’ve implemented a strategy to promote and educate your audience about the value proposition behind it. The danger with undercharging is that, in the long term, your customers will realise that this is all you’re offering and find other, more suitable, alternatives. The key is to find a happy medium and make sure that everyone within your organisation, from the top to the bottom, buys into it.
Have A Growth Strategy
To create a successful business, you need to have a strategy for growth. Simply put, growth strategy is a plan for expanding your customer base and increasing your revenues. To do this, you need to consider multiple factors, both inside and outside your company.
On the inside, you need to consider how your product or service will be improved and expanded upon. If you’ve got a solid plan, this will become more apparent to you as you work through each stage of product development. The fact is that every organisation needs to grow, and it’s important that you have a plan in place to do this. Take a look at your competitors’ websites and their growth strategies. Are they expanding, contracting, or staying the same size? Look at how they’re doing this and apply this to your own business.