How to drive revenue with less budget in 2024

There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world at the moment which is driving a slow market and economic downturn which means that many customer experience and marketing budgets have shrunk, but expectations on driving revenue haven’t.

These downturns or even recessions interestingly become a great test for how sustainable your customer relationships and company is. Companies who over focus on short term acquisition of customers vs customer experience and retention often find themselves in vulnerable positions because when it comes down to it their core business model and customer growth is somewhat superficial. If you’re not creating long term value for customers, then when the market dries up so do you, which makes it really hard to drive revenue.

Here are some key areas of wastage where you could be driving revenue in smarter ways:

1) Teams working in silos competing against each other

It’s crazy how often 2 or more internal teams are competing for the same customers, yet they’ve never thought of teaming up. Working in silos creates a tonne of inefficiency and a frustrating customer experience. It can even become a turf war, which I hate. In these tight times there’s no time for this kind political nonsense you need to shift to more collaborative ways of working or what I call a 1+1=5 mindset. Seeking opportunities to work smarter together to create a better customer experience and better impact for the business. This enables you to drive revenue in more efficient ways. Everybody wins.?

2) Over spending in paid media

Many organisations fall into this habit of overspending in paid media because of the pressures of shareholders and/or boards to drive growth in the short term. This can lead to a lot of wastage and duplications of campaigns from teams working in isolation, which is a build on the first point. Having a detailed attribution model, is a good way to get clarity on what programs and campaigns are driving the most revenue and where you might need to reassess or cut budgets. One interesting thing to note, is that in more simplistic attribution modelling often paid search is over attributed for driving leads, just because it’s the last click, but not necessarily the cause of the lead so it often gets favoured at budget cut time. That's not to say paid search doesn't have a role to play, it's just taking too much of the credit. Which is why having clarity on what really generates revenue is really important.

3) Poor customer marketing programs

We all still receive a tonne of marketing spam emails everyday, which tells us that not many organisations are doing customer marketing and communications well, so there’s massive opportunity there. It goes back to the point above where there’s an over focus on acquisition and an under focus on retention. Most Companies need to get much more sophisticated in?how they use data to help identify their customers’ next goal. For example I helped an insurance company build out a program called ?“The Next Goal Program” a way to help them identify their customers next goal and then nurture them through to their next purchase. It proved to be an incredibly effective program, driving revenue in really efficient ways.

4) Unaddressed customer pain points

It’s a common story where the customer experience and services teams are frustrated because customers keep complaining about the same things, but they never get fixed. Some of these things might have simple fixes that can help save money, retain customers or drive additional revenue. I’ve seen quite a few instances where a really simple fix has had a massive impact. One of my guests on my podcast recently talked about fixing a renewal process which saved tens of millions in revenue in just a few months. ?

5)? Saving customers at risk of leaving

In most companies between 10-30% of customers are at risk of leaving. That’s a lot of customer revenue on the table. Yet, most organisations aren’t paying enough attention to this number, or even know what it is. Some companies are leaking or even haemorrhaging customers and then spending 5 times as much to acquire new ones, it doesn’t make sense, it’s massively inefficient. It’s always been a challenge for organisations with large customer bases to identify customers who are unhappy at an individual level. But companies like Smart Measures through their AI technology are now making this possible. If times are tight wouldn’t you want to hold onto most of your customers if you could?

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From the 5 areas above there is a common thread of a lack of focus on the customer. A slow economy highlights why being customer centric at your core is so important to your long term success as it’s a more sustainable operating model. If you provide customers with great value and great experiences then it gives them a reason to come back. Your customers are your most valuable asset and typically where most of your revenue comes from.

Good luck during these tight times, if you need a hand to figure out how to drive customer revenue in smarter ways, then reach out.

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About me

I’ve spent the last 20 years working on digital transformation and CX projects all around the globe with brands like Samsung, Virgin, Lexus, eBay, Australian Air Force as well as being Head of Brand and Digital CX at a professional football team. If you would like to get in touch or have any questions:

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