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This article will help you build strategies that will generate extra revenue on your short term objectives with CRM & Marketing Automation

Being hands-on consultants, involved in the execution of a variety of marketing activities with all sorts of brands, gives an excellent insight into challenges and opportunities of the current crisis. 

In this short blog, I would like to share my main insights with you, hoping you can benefit from this directly.

Let’s first split brands into two categories:

1. Brands that sell products (e.g. E-commerce brands, or brands with the ambition to become e-commerce players). 

These brands are typically engaged in high-paced projects to develop a suitable and sustainable strategy, creating a foundation to execute and trying to do all of that as fast and good as possible.

2. Brands that sell services.

These brands are typically coping with their challenges: staying top-of-mind with target audiences, delivering their services while working from home, making sure there is a commercial basis for success in the rest of the year.

Revenue generating strategy for brands that sell products

Advertising to and communicating with target audiences that you want to acquire is more difficult and expensive than ever. 

Not only are your competitors doing precisely the same in this respect, but suddenly there are a lot of new competitors who are also trying to get a piece of the pie.

On a global, regional as well as local scale, it is clear that people are ‘in-market’ for your products.

 E-commerce is booming! Bear in mind two critical success factors:

1. A big part of that target audience is more demanding than ever: they want your product, and they want it now.Are your processes ready to facilitate their needs, meaning: deliver the product they want as fast as possible?
2. In times of uncertainty, trust is more important than ever. Therefore, the data and relationships you already have are more valuable than ever.

Your revenue-generating strategy: engage your existing customer base for re-activation, retention, up-sell and cross-sell purposes.

Extra challenge: are you able to do this relevant, personalised and timely, with a suitable creative concept to make the experience stand out for your audience? 

This exercise enables you not only to generate extra revenue immediately but at the same time, increases the value you add to your customer’s life sustainably!

Revenue generating strategy for brands that sell services

Delivering your services is challenging already (e.g. everyone is working from home, you are not able to meet clients and prospects)

But how do you make sure you work on your future success? 

If you don’t plant the seed now, you know there won’t be anything to harvest in the future for your sales team.

We see that a lot of brands that deliver services forget to connect their sales and marketing efforts to their sales cycle. 

If your general sales cycle takes months, don’t expect one LinkedIn campaign to deliver you a big pool of highly relevant leads instantly! 

The trick here is to slowly, but surely, move along with your target audience.

Feed and nurture them over time with relevant content and contact until its the right time to make an introduction or send them a whitepaper or trial product.

Also read: Life after customer acquisition – CRM and Marketing Automation

Your revenue-generating strategy: Develop a sustainable lead management mechanism.

Make sure to connect with your target audience’ mindset and deliver whatever suits their needs. 

Over time, you earn a top-of-mind recall for your customer as they start looking into options for the service your deliver.

Then, and only then, is your time to harvest!

Extra challenge: are you able to ‘sense and respond’? 

Do you know when a prospect is at the top of the funnel? 

OR

When this prospect has moved to a ‘Marketing Qualified Lead’ or even ‘a Sales Qualified Lead’? 

If you are there, you have control over next steps and the follow-up process to make sure you reach the goals you have in mind for this year, even when going through a significant crisis.

Conclusion

Despite the challenging times we are all facing, there are still many opportunities to generate additional revenue.