Revenue: How Are You Spending Your Time And Money
In the first post on revenue generators we looked at marketing and branding. Before we get into the last two revenue generators, advertising and sales, I want to delve into marketing a little more.
Revenue Generator: What Is Marketing?
The goal of marketing is to improve the selling environment. In a manner of speaking, marketing sets the table for the sale. In running a small business, or a large business for that matter, your marketing should increase the number of interactions between potential customers and your company.
There are many ways to do this from using promotional techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and public relations to creating new sales channels, or creating new products.
Too often, the self-employed business owner, entrepreneur or solo professional focuses too much time and energy on the product or service and not enough on the marketing. In my personal business coaching practice I would put lack of marketing or understanding the value of marketing on a short list that holds business owners and businesses back.
Revenue Generator: Advertising
Very often, part of a successful company’s marketing business plan includes advertising. Advertising is focused on communicating the name of the product or service and how it could potentially benefit the consumer.
Advertising also does attempt, in many instances, to persuade potential or existing customers to consume more of a particular brand, product or service.
Revenue Generator: Sales
Regardless of whether you are in a small business or a large business, the number one measurable revenue generator is sales. Too some extent you can measure the impact of advertising, depending on the campaign. Branding is more difficult to measure. And marketing is really a composite of all your efforts.
Sales are the measurement of the effectiveness of your marketing business plan. Too often I see businesses seeking more sales but refusing to do anything different in their marketing. Small business in particular suffers from this. The business owner doesn’t realize that the circumstances around his business are always changing and that he must change with them.
Very often the self-employed business owner believes that if he hangs in there long enough that somehow his sales will magically rise to a level that brings peace and a sense of stability.
This becomes a fantasy for the business owner who is otherwise grounded.
In coaching success and owning several successful businesses myself, I can assure you that when you commit the time and energy to your marketing, branding, advertising and sales that you increase your odds of long term success.
Understanding revenue generators is quite simple. Coming up with a plan for revenue generation is more difficult. And, the most challenging piece of the puzzle is the implementation.
Take the steps of implementing your revenue generators and you will generate the revenue to have great success.
