Revenue generation isn’t just a buzzword in the world of business. Achieving healthy revenue generation is something that all businesses, no matter their size, are concerned with. Revenue determines growth, reach, and impact more than any other factor. After all, if you’re not constantly pushing the boundaries of how much money is coming in, you’ll be stuck in a plateau.
The good news is that there are a few ways that you can boost your revenue generation efforts. I’m not talking about vague examples like “Sell more”, or “Upsell every customer.” We will assume that you’re already trying to do those things.
Instead, we’re going to share 20 examples of revenue generation. These will all be techniques and ideas that you can use right now to increase those revenue streams and encourage growth in your business.
What is revenue generation?
Revenue generation is the process of planning, marketing, and selling in a business to generate stable income across the business.
This process typically involves many tasks spread across multiple roles and departments.
Here are some example tasks that you can expect someone in revenue generation to work on:
- Set business goals and milestones for the financial year – Monthly, quarterly, or yearly revenue targets.
- Align sales and marketing to match the revenue targets.
- Create and organize structure so that the revenue goal can be met successfully.
- Review, adapt, and change sales and marketing procedures so that best practices are always being applied.
- Establish and use metrics to measure revenue generation progression and adjust as needed.
- Provide training and education for colleagues to maximize revenue generation.
Of course, you can add many tasks to this list, but these six help summarize the core of the purpose of revenue generation.
20 revenue generation examples
Trying to figure out which avenue to go down in revenue generation is tough. There are multiple techniques that you can use. In many cases, combinations of said techniques can really give your revenue a boost.
Once you’ve determined your current standing, asked all the right questions, and made a conscience decision on which direction you want to go, these 20 revenue generation examples will start to make a lot more sense.
1. Increase your investments in marketing
The biggest revenue driver for any B2B business is lead generation. Investing more into marketing can help bring in new leads on a larger scale and increase the revenue stream.
It’s important to note here that investing in this way and generating more sales opportunities is only viable for companies with the sales staff needed to keep up. If you flood your pipeline with leads and don’t have the staff necessary to nurture them, you could ruin your investment, reputation, and brand very quickly.
Marketing and sales teams need to communicate together and work towards common goals. Just as much as the marketing team needs to be ready for the increase in investment, the sales team needs to be prepared for the influx of leads.
2. Experiment with sales compensation
It’s no secret sales reps who aren’t compensated tend to underperform. This can leave a lot of money on the table and little to no revenue generation.
Experimenting with sales compensation plans can really turn up the heat and get sales reps selling. If there’s a surplus of leads, incentivizing the sales staff with financial, social, and other incentives can result in some impressive revenue generation.
You want to be very careful with the compensation you put into place. For example, some sales representatives might lean towards selling high volumes of short-term contracts for immediate compensation rather than improving the lifetime customer value for the long run.
3. Focus on brand awareness
You know what they say: you can only sell to customers who know about you. Branding. Brand awareness and overall public relations all play a big part in being noticed, and if you’re not achieving the desired results, you might not be focusing enough on it. Although this is a very long-term technique, it still helps boost recurring revenue generation.
4. Consider your positioning
One of the best ways to improve revenue generation is to reposition your brand. This doesn’t necessarily mean a total rebranding but changing how people think about your product and how it’s positioned in the category.
For example, over the last few years, we’ve seen a massive shift in the way people shop for groceries. 50 years ago, most people didn’t care if the eggs they were buying come from a free-range chicken. All they wanted was to get their dozen and leave. Now, people are much more concerned about this, and the companies that sell eggs (as well as other food products) advertise and market themselves as free-range.
Sticking with the food example, look at what McDonald’s did with their “Healthy” campaign. Many people were growing concerned about what they put in their bodies, and McDonald’s saw that it needed to change. They didn’t change their logo, colors, or main operations. They did, however, introduce things like yogurts and salads to appeal to the health-focused crowd.
5. Implement a premium pricing strategy
Although raising prices is typically viewed as bad in the customers’ eyes, it can positively affect revenue generation. You must make pricing adjustments and justify the value through marketing and sales support. Of course, you can also grandfather existing customers to the old pricing.
This low-hanging fruit revenue generation technique has proven to work for many as it requires little effort.
6. Consider discounted pricing
Most price discounts, like holiday sales or customer loyalty offers, aim to increase conversions and loyalty, not just to be kind. They also help beat competitors and boost short and long-term revenue. A smart strategy is to add more value to a single price: offer rebates, bulk deals for physical products, discounted shipping, or extra services. You can even modify existing plans to attract customers who want less.
7. Expand your distribution channels
The more people you can reach, the higher your conversions will be. But, it’s not always cost-effective to expand your reach as far as it goes through irrelevant distribution channels. On the other side of the coin, you could be missing out on some serious revenue potential if you’re not in enough distribution channels.
Expanding your distribution channels is a well-researched revenue-generation tactic that most people are too scared to dive into. But the reality is selling directly via distributors, retailers, eCommerce stores, mail, and even wholesalers can cover most of your distribution channels and significantly boost revenue.
If you’re a purely online tool or store, a good idea would be social selling. Going directly to where your customers and leads are interacting with your brand the most, and pitching them your solution is a great idea for revenue generation.
8. Change up your offers
This idea is simple but highly effective for brick-and-mortar and online stores or products. Simply put, you have to adapt your offers to meet your clients’ needs. Finding advantageous offers that complement your product or services can be an astute way to improve revenue generation.
Identifying your customers’ needs and filling the gaps where your current offers and competitor’s offers have left them desiring more, sell your main revenue drivers. These offers can be in the form of up-sells, additional services, special paid onboarding, or other add-ons. This will increase sales across the board and increase customer lifetime value.
9. Reposition your offerings
Often, businesses offer solutions that cover a wide variety of needs and use cases. A good way to increase revenue is to reposition these offerings and target each one of these uses and their given audiences separately.
By separating these offerings and dividing them amongst the most affected audiences, you can highly personalize and customize your marketing and sales messaging. You can directly address specific needs and wants and speak genuinely to those who might be apprehensive.
10. Modernize your legacy offerings
In business, a legacy offering is a traditional product or service that has been unchanged for a long time. Updating or changing these offerings is a good idea for increasing revenue.
You can take the basis of previously successful offerings and update them to meet modern standards. These new legacy offerings can be used to launch growth strategies and act as a safety net for any potential failures.
A good example of this comes from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and many other big names in the beverage industry. Every so often, these brands will re-release a legacy drink. Coca-Cola has done it a few times with Coke Classic and Vanilla Coke. Pepsi has done it with Crystal Pepsi. These are all legacy drinks that have been around for a while, but they’re updated to meet modern standards.
11. Solidify recurring revenue streams
Securing subscriptions or renewable contracts is another way businesses use existing offerings to drive revenue. By removing the customers’ responsibility to decide again if they want to purchase, you remove any friction that could arise in the process.
Many SaaS tools and online services already implement such a tactic, but many organizations can create recurring revenue streams in the same way. Look at how video streaming services did it. Not too long ago, you used to go to your local grocery store, stand in line at a box, pick your DVD, and return home to watch. Now, you can simply pay monthly for the convenience of having a ton of choices at your fingertips. Not only did they add value, but they removed the friction.
12. Target product penetration
You have market penetration and product penetration. Both are viable tactics for most industries and businesses, but they approach sales differently.
Market penetration relies on penetrating the market to sell more things to more people. It’s the idea of finding consumers who are interested in your product but haven’t purchased with you yet and selling them something.
Product penetration takes that same idea and reverses it. Instead of looking outward to sell, you look inward to people who have already converted: loyal customers. You want reliable customers to purchase more, upgrade, or make another purchase based on their knowledge of your business.
A lot goes into this revenue generation technique, but it certainly pays off. You need to create and offer complementary products and services. Look at what Amazon does with the “People also bought” section in the checkout cart. A SaaS, for example, might offer a certain tier subscription but offer add-ons for an extra fee.
13. Focus on customer retention
We’re all familiar with the information that retaining a customer costs less than converting a new one. Some might view this as saving money, but it’s actually revenue generation. Sounds great, right? Well, the reality is that customer retention requires a bit more effort than simply thanking the customer and offering them more things to buy.
Customer retention for revenue generation requires more marketing, sales, and customer support effort. Typically, marketing and customer support are already set on retention, but sales teams oppose the idea due to a lack of compensation.
A good idea here would be to revisit your compensation structure and see that sales reps are rewarded for increases in customer lifetime value. This will ensure that sales teams focus on customer retention and act independently to protect their deals and interests.
That being said, when buy-in is achieved on a collaborative level, the customer retention immediately drives revenue growth and secures sustainable future growth by developing a relationship between the company and the customer.
Read more: 7 Tips to Boost Retention with Automated Onboarding
14. Optimize your mobile experience
Optimizing for a high-performing mobile experience is essential no matter who you are. If your brand has any sort of presence online, the mobile UX needs to be just as clear and easy to navigate as the normal desktop version.
10 years ago, optimizing for mobile wasn’t all that important. Sure, plenty of smartphones and tablets were out there, but many people used full-sized devices or preferred to shop in stores. However, more than half of all internet-shopping traffic is mobile only today.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, what you’re selling, or your target audience. Optimizing the mobile shopping experience for your brand is unavoidable.
15. Nurture your brand advocates
We’ve discussed brand image and loyalty and how they tie into revenue generation, but we haven’t discussed how nurturing brand advocates can help. Think of a brand advocate as your MVP. They are more likely to defend your brand simply because they like you.
Advocates of your brand are invaluable assets, but they can’t be created through simple purchase incentives and other frivolous tokens of appreciation. Instead, creating said advocates takes a lot of nurturing and a carefully interwoven unique strategy.
Building brand advocates involves meeting them on their own terms. You have to meet them where they’re at and interact with them in their own comfort zone. Asking anyone, much less a potential advocate, to come to you is exhausting and fruitless. It might take a lot of effort on your part, but every experience, from marketing and sales to support and billing, needs to be curated for the advocate you want to build up.
16. Seek out and develop new partnerships
One of the biggest revenue absorbers is in-house development. Yes, for many people it can end up saving you money in the long run, but one-off projects that require expertise outside of your organization can end up costing a pretty penny and eating up your budget.
Seeking out and developing partnerships with other organizations expands your in-house capabilities as well as enlarges your sphere of influence. Many people shy away from this idea simply because they do not want to give up power, but the key is to find strategic partners that complement what you’re already doing.
Remember, the idea is to generate more revenue. You can do that by aligning yourself and your brand with another organization that can boost you up. Of course, this means that you will have to put in equal work helping them, but establishing a strong network of powerful organizations can turn a low-earning business into a revenue machine faster than you might think.
17. Try engaging with industry influencers
Influencer marketing has been a very hot topic in recent years, and it’s for good reason. All things considered, influencer marketing has the potential to be the best bang for your buck. For a single set fee, you can reach thousands of people that are relevant for your product or service.
With that said, you definitely have to be careful with influencer marketing. True, the followers of said influencer will see what you’re promoting, but if the industry doesn’t fit the audience, then your dollar goes to waste.
For example, let’s say that you’re selling an email marketing tool, and you decide to collaborate with a fitness influencer. Odds are that the audience of that influencer is also going to be into fitness and not so much into email marketing.
Like anything in marketing, working with an influencer poses some risks. It’ll be up to you to determine who you want to collaborate with, what you’ll pay, and what they’ll say. It could either work well and improve revenue generation or produce zero results, meaning you wasted time and money.
18. Diversify your geographical reach
Expanding into new geographical markets is potentially one of the simplest ideas on this list. After all, more people means more revenue, right? Yes, and no. if you start selling in different regions and countries, there are a lot of legalities and logistics that you have to consider.
Considering these geographical complications is a goliath task by itself. Expanding your team to keep up, or starting over in a new location from scratch is a whole other story.
But don’t let this scare you! If you sell something like a SaaS tool, it becomes much less complicated. Instead of physical products, you simply give users access to your tool. In this case, expanding into a new location makes a ton of sense but still comes with challenges. You have to worry about language barriers, currencies, and audience interest.
All in all, you want to research thoroughly before diversifying your geographical reach. If executed correctly, you could be looking at some serious results in revenue generation.
19. Offer numerous payment options
Speaking of currencies and audiences, you’ll want to make sure you offer a number of payment options if you want to see better revenue generation. Typically, there are just a few industry standards, such as credit cards and PayPal, but that’s not enough for some users.
Remember when we talked about avoiding friction above? The same can be said about payment options. Your goal in revenue generation is to give potential customers few reasons to bounce, especially at the last minute. If they get to the final stage and don’t see their preferred option of payment, then you’ve wasted valuable resources to get them there with nothing to show for it.
The key here is to know your audience. If the payment methods that you’re offering are so obscure that only a few people ever use them, then it really is a waste to implement. Put some feelers out there, get a sense of what your audience wants, and then give them those options for payment methods.
20. Avoid bad customer relationships
This one goes without saying, but avoiding bad relationships with customers goes deeper than the surface understanding here. I mean that you want to avoid any relationships with customers that aren’t profitable, whether monetarily or otherwise.
It may sound controversial, but you’ll want to fire the customers holding you back and costing you money to maintain relationships with. Some companies have a lot of these customers, and some stay on top of pruning the dead weight.
One of the best and most successful examples is when the mobile phone service provider, Sprint broke off relations with high-maintenance customers in 2007. For them, it all boiled down to the fact that they couldn’t maintain profitable customer relationships and support them efficiently while supporting what they called “bad customers”.
Your case might not be severe, but removing just a few “bad customers” can free up room for some good ones. You might turn a situation that’s losing revenue for you into a profitable situation once again.
Conclusions and takeaway
Well, we’ve made it to the end of the list. Remember that these 20 revenue-generation examples and techniques are just a few of the many out there.
You’ll want to pay close attention to the results of each test you make with revenue generation. If something you’re doing looks promising and produces some results, spend more time optimizing it for your specific use case. If things are looking bleak after you’ve implemented something from above, you might want to take a step back or cut the rope completely.
Either way, revenue generation is something that all companies are looking for, but few seem to maximize their potential within their market and industry. Test out some or all of the examples above, and no matter what, always look for ways to improve, even if it’s the slightest change.
