How to Increase Your Prices and Boost Your Business’s Profits

People often overlook this very simple, very easy way to increase their business’s profits: increase your prices. Most people tend to undercharge for their services, so try increasing your prices, as a test, and see what happens. Funnily enough, most people perceive something that is higher priced as being of higher quality, which can encourage people to buy your product or service. As you increase your prices, you’re also receiving more per sale, increasing your profit margin. Take this strategy a step further and target higher value clients.

For example, if you run a business coaching company, and you currently charge $200 an hour for your time, increase your rates to $1000. With the perceived higher quality and value in your coaching, target businesses that make a lot of money vs. those that are barely getting by. In this example, one client would be worth 5 of your clients in the past. Not only have you raised your hourly rate, but you’ve decreased the amount of work you need to do to earn the same amount of money.

An interesting example we’ve had before is when we’ve sold courses or software for $7 vs. $497 vs. $997+. Although the $7 price gets the most conversions, the $997 price would almost always make tons more money. You just have to make sure you do a good job of showing the value!

So test out this simple tip and try increasing your prices and targeting customers who have more money to spend on your product/service.

For more easy ways to grow your profits and increase your sales check out this book: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How Contests Can Be A Great Source of New Targeted Leads

Contests can be a great way to grab more leads or prospects, get feedback or testimonials from existing customers, encourage participation or attendance on webinars, and more. And, it’s not like you have to give away a car or something crazy expensive. In fact, often times cheaper giveaways will help increase your conversions even more (perhaps because they think they’ll have a better chance of winning?).

For instance, you can run an ad where you’re advertising a contest for a free drone that you’re selling. Anyone who enters you know is probably a potential prospect, as they’re interested in the drone that you sell. When you do that, you can immediately advertise a special deal you have on them in case they don’t win (and offer to refund if they do) and want to get it right away. The benefit here is that you can get dirt cheap clicks and leads when advertising this way (on places like Facebook), all while building up a very targeted list (we’ve built up some big mailing lists and businesses this way at a fraction of the cost of what our competitors pay for ads).

You can also use contests as a way to build up your testimonials. Offer to enter customers into a contest when they submit any testimonials or feedback about your product. People love contests, which is why it can be a great way to get them to take action.

So consider using contests to get lots of cheap traffic and leads to check out your offers. Or, alternatively, use contests to encourage testimonials or feedback on your products.

For more help getting targeted leads, check out the WebFire tool here Web Fire.

How Creating A Sense of Urgency Can Help Improve Sales: Reducing/Offering Free Shipping Within A Certain Time Frame

Don’t you hate it when you’re searching for an item, find it at an amazing price, then see that shipping is going to cost you an arm and a leg? One way to increase your sales, especially over a short period of time, is to reduce the cost of your shipping, or offer a sale period time where shipping is free. By putting a time limit on when you make free shipping available, you add a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, as opposed to at a later date. It’s also a good way to encourage customers who may have been on the fence to make a purchase now.

For example, say you have a business that sells gardening supplies online. Reach out to your customers and let them know that for any supplies ordered by midnight on Sunday, you’ll offer free delivery. If you have regular customers that place large orders with you, you may even want to reach out and call them. On your website, make sure it’s clear that you have this offer available for a limited time - it may be a pop up on your website or the first thing your customer sees.

So consider, for a limited time, offering reduced or free shipping on your products. The limited time frame creates a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to purchase now, as opposed to at a later date, and encourages customers who may have been on the fence to make the purchase.

For more tips on boosting sales within your business, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How to Add Value to Your Customers and Make Money Doing It

To take advantage of this marketing strategy, look at how you can bundle your service or products together to create a package deal. This can be a great way to move more products and services and add value to your customers. Customers feel they are getting a great deal, as they are paying less than if they bought each item separately, and you get the benefit of a higher dollar sale per transaction. Bundling can also help you move slow-moving products and give you an upsell to offer to customers that may have been looking at purchasing an individual item.

For example, if you own a travel agency, offer a package deal where accommodation, flights, several meals and an attraction are all included. For another example, if you own a beauty salon, offer a pampering package, where a hair styling, manicure and massage are offered together. While a customer may have been considering purchasing one or two of these items, if you offer a great deal, they might be persuaded to purchase the whole package.

So think about how you can bundle several of your services or products together to create a package deal. This creates another offering for your customers, with great perceived value, and gives you the opportunity to upsell, move slow-moving products and increase your dollar value per sale.

For other ways to offer upsells and value adding offers to your clients check out this tool that helps you maximize your sales funnels: BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer

How to Improve Your Marketing and Create Hot New Products That Your Customers Already Want

How can you improve your marketing and create new products - products that your customers already want? Simple. Ask for feedback from your customers and see what the common themes are. What do your customers like most about your product? How can you focus on that more in your marketing? What do they believe that your product/service currently lacks? Think about how you can use their feedback to create a new/improved service and offer that to your customers.

For example, perhaps you have a business that creates websites and the common feedback that your customers give is that they wish you also helped rank their site on search engines. You could create an additional service, where for a monthly fee you help rank their website. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, you could always outsource this part, but white label it as your own service - you still make a profit on the service, but don’t need to do any of the work. You can offer this to your current customers, saying that due to their feedback and the demand, you’ve created this service to help them with what they want most.

Ask for feedback from your customers, specifically on what they like most and what they dislike most/wish you offered. Use the feedback, on what they like most, and highlight it in your marketing. With what they like least/wish you did, create an additional or improved service/product and offer it to your customers.

For more great marketing ideas to improve your business check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!

How To Optimize Your Content For On-Page SEO

Search engines remain one of the most common tools users are utilizing to find things online, Google of course being the most prominent among them. Search engine optimization is therefore key and making your site visible and getting your content on more eyes. You need traffic to build an audience, and an audience to build conversions. That starts with search engine optimization. There are different types of search engine optimization including off-page and on-page, and the rules vary a little by search engine.

For the sake of this post we will focus on practical ways you can create your written content in a way that optimizes your on-page content for Google.

Choosing Your Keyword

The first step in optimizing any content you write is going to be choosing your “keyword” the keyword is the main word in your text, which you want to stick out to search engines. In other words you want to try and think of a keyword that users searching for what your page has to offer, would type into a search engine. You then must attach that keyword to engaging and relevant content to draw people in.

It's important the keyword is related to the content, makes sense, and provides useful and accurate information, don't use “click-bait” and other deceitful tactics or Google, along with your users, may view you as untrustworthy.

In general, you should try to use “long tail” keywords, or keywords that are written as common phrases or terms people might input into a search engine, that usually consists of four words or more. Before you choose a keyword you'll want to do keyword research. Keyword research involves finding a keyword that is relevant to the content you want to promote, is a popularly used search term, and is easy to rank against the competition. You can use Google keyword research tool or a an automated programs like Web Fire which also tells you how you rank against the competition for your chosen keywords.

Headings, Subheadings, and Plain Text

All of your titles and subtitles should try to include your keyword. Most importantly it should be included in your main heading, and as many subheadings as you can. Your keyword also needs to be incorporated naturally and somewhat frequently (but not too frequently) throughout the body of your main texts. You need to use the keyword as much as you can but essentially without seeming like you're trying to. Because google may penalize you for “keyword” stuffing you don't want to overdo it. In the old days SEO experts used to tell to put the keyword in every paragraph and every sentence that you could, but this is no longer the case.

Many experts recommend a keyword density of 1% or 2% of your entire text bodies, but others say there's really no real rule of thumb.

Images and Alt Text

All content should contain imagery, it makes a post more engaging and for many it just feels more accurate when there's picture in front us to support the text. Relevant images are very important in search engine optimization as well. The “alt text” for instance should be considered. The alt text of in image is simply that let little text caption that pops up whenever you hover your mouse over an imagine.

The alt text of an image plays a role in search engine placement as well and should include the keyword you want to optimize.

Links for Trust and Click-Through

For the sake of search engine optimization every post should have links. There's just something about them that make a page more appealing visually, but they also boost your search engine ranking. Every post, if possible, you should include at least two or three linked references to high authority websites to establish trust.

As you develop more content on your page you'll also want to create links to that as well. Try writing your content in a way that may loosely relate to something you've produced before, and include a link to it. Whenever possible try to get at least two or three links on your page to content you've produced before, as long as its loosely similar subject matter to your current post.

Using Optimized Tools

Optimizing content for SEO is anything but easy. Many times the devil is in the details and it's a lot to remember, but you should get the hang of things in time as you learn more and more. Luckily, there is an easier way. You can also create original, already optimized content using automated programs like Robot Author to save you the time and headache.

How Listening to Your Clients Wants and Needs Can Help You Land More Sales

Business owners often do more talking than listening. When it comes to making sales, often it’s best to do more listening than talking. Instead of overthinking and brainstorming what your prospects might want, why not just ask them? You’d probably be surprised at how easy it can be to sell them what they’re already telling you they most want/need.

For example, if you’re selling a variety of online marketing or web services, instead of trying to force them to buy a particular SEO package to help rank their site, why not ask them what they think their biggest issues are right now with their business? You might find that they really don’t care much about their ranking but might instead be focused on their social media, e-mail list management, or some other service that you could easily do for them.

Once someone tells you what their issues are, ask them what they think that would do for their business if those issues were solved, and then ask them how much more they think they could make with all of those things being fixed and running smoothly. This lets THEM tell YOU the value those services mean to them rather than you trying to convince them of the value that you can bring to the table. The more you talk about yourself or your services instead of just listening to what their needs are, the less likely you are to typically land those sales.

And, as an added bonus, this method works well both for prospects who’ve never bought from you, as well as for existing customers that you could sell other things to.  For instance, you might find that all of your clients of one service are practically begging to buy a different service if only you offered it! And this might be incredibly easy for you to either offer or outsource.

One of our clients once was able to nearly double his net income just by finally asking what his current clients also wanted … and then simply offering them that after years of not selling them anything else! It’s amazing how much money is often left on the table by most businesses out there (even we’re guilty of that from time to time). You also might be surprised at what your customers say that they want, as it might be completely different than what you think they’d want.

So ask your prospects and clients what their needs are and what would help them the most and then provide them with a product/service that fulfills that need. Do more listening than talking to land the most sales.

For more help mapping out your upsells and sales funnels, so you can look at how you can increase your business, check out this software that helps you build out your sales funnel. BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer.