The easiest way to make your business more profitable is to track what is working. What parts of your business, what services and what products are making you money? Which ones don’t? What type of customer is most profitable for you? Where is your most profitable traffic coming from?
Taking the time to dig into your stats is one of the best things you can do for you bottom line.
Your Products and Services
Start by looking at your products and services. These could be services or physical products you offer, anything you resell or even advertising you sell on your website or social media sites. List it all out.
Next to each item on your list, note down how much money each offering has brought in. You can break it down by month, or look at long term figures like year-to-date profits or revenue generated over the past 12 months. Use whatever number seems most helpful.
Next think about how much work each of these offerings or profit streams take. Using the amount of work your offerings require, the revenue they generate, and any time required to create and maintain them create a list. Assign a value to each item on your list.
Use your completed list with assigned values to determine which offerings are most profitable for you to invest your time and money. Also, identify any offerings that are not profitable and determine if you want to continue to invest in them.
Your Customers and Prospects
Taking a look at your customers and prospects is also a good idea. Where did they come from? Who is your core customer base? These are the people that buy everything you offer and are signing your praises to their circle of influence. They may also be repeat customers that come back to you over and over again.
What prospects are most likely to turn into paying customers? Are they people that were attracted by the freebie you offer to get them on your list, or are they people that found you via networking or the great blog posts you write?
You can find a lot of this information by looking at your customer database and by comparing prospect lists to customer lists. You can also learn a lot by talking to your customers and prospects. Start a conversation via a personal telephone call, email, on your site or in a Facebook group.
Your end goal is to pinpoint who your most profitable demographic is and then figure out how to put yourself in front of more of those people.
Your Traffic
It is time to dig into any stats that you have. How did they find you? Who refers them to you? What attracts them to you? If you are looking at website stats, what do they look at once they get to your site and what funnel do they go through until they become part of your most profitable customer group?
Tools like Google Analytics are your best friend here. Spend a weekend learning more about the different reporting you can set up, what you can track and how to read the numbers.
Once you know where your most profitable leads are coming from, put on your thinking cap and figure out how you can tap into more of those leads or something similar.
Keep tracking, tweaking and improving your bottom line. Make it a goal to get more profitable this month than you were last month and you’ll see your business and bank account grow in no time.
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