The pandemic has affected everyone in the world, especially businesses. In fact, 22% of small- and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. had to close temporarily in February 2021. 

One of the biggest consequences of temporarily closing your business is a significant decrease in revenue. Since you’re operating for lesser days in a year, you’ll have lesser opportunities to accommodate customers, which translates to lesser profits. 

Fortunately, there are several ways to recover from financial losses. If your business revenues decreased in 2021, the tips below could help you recover. 

          1. Utilize Revenue Marketing 

Marketing your offerings is likely one of the first ideas you’ll have to improve profit. Marketing plays a vital role in the success of any business, but you should be wary of how you create campaigns and where you’ll market your offerings. Marketing will only cause you to lose more money if you pay for different channels without knowing which one works best. 

To get the best results from your marketing efforts, utilize revenue marketing. This holistic process aims to identify specific marketing channels that offer the best revenue growth for your business, and it aligns sales and marketing efforts to generate more revenue. 

You may want to go through different recommended reading materials on revenue marketing to get a basic understanding of it, and then you can take on these steps to implement the concept for your business: 

• Understand your buyer: Revenue marketing starts by developing a deep understanding of your buyer—who they are, what they’re expecting from your brand, and what their common problems are. You can know more about your customers by conducting market research or creating buyer personas. 
• Align marketing and sales: Ensure that your marketing and sales teams are working on the same goal: driving more revenue to the business. If they currently have different goals, adjust their KPIs or key performance indicators and run several workshops for them. 

• Execute marketing collaterals: This step requires insights from your sales team to ensure that your marketing team comes up with winning strategies to attract customers. Once your marketing team is equipped with knowledge from the sales team, they can create and distribute marketing collaterals in the form of content, automated email marketing, and other marketing strategies.
  

  
  2. Find New Customers 

Acquiring new customers is a great way of earning more profits. New customers come with purchasing power, which means that your margins can significantly increase after the new acquisition. In short, the more customers you have, the more you’ll be able to sell.  

Here are easy yet effective ways of getting new customers for your business: 

• Ask for referrals: Give discounts or free samples to your existing customers if they can recommend someone to buy from you. If you have an e-commerce site, send an email asking for a referral once a customer receives an order. 
• Network: Join events and organizations that’ll expose your business to another target audience. You can host seminars, sponsor events in your community, or make donations to your local charities and organizations. 
• Offer discounts and promos to new customers: Offering discounts and promos, such as a free product sample or 50% off on your services, can entice new customers.
  

  
  3. Increase Your Conversion Rate 

The pandemic urged customers to do their shopping online. Buying goods and services through the World Wide Web is a safer option, as customers don’t have to make physical contact with the sellers, reducing their risk of contracting and spreading the virus.  

If your business already launched a website pre-pandemic, it might be best to make some changes to increase your conversion rates. In marketing, a conversion rate indicates the percentage of online users who completed a desired action on your website. If you have an e-commerce site, increased conversion rates can mean an increased number of buyers.

Changing your website to increase conversion rates is an achievable task. You just need to do the following: 

• Add testimonials: Adding testimonials and reviews to your website will make your business more trustworthy, encouraging users to buy from you. Positive comments on how previous customers loved your products and services will also put online users at ease, knowing that your business is legitimate. 
• Remove distractions: Users may leave your website if it has too many design elements. Prevent this from happening by using headlines and subheadings on your content and showcasing the benefits and features of your offerings. The simpler your website looks, the better your conversion rates will be.  
• Add live chat to your website: Remove any hesitations users might have about your offerings by adding a live chat to your website. With this feature, users can get answers to their questions in real time, which can speed up their buying journey.
  

  
  4. Review Current Pricing Structure 

Customers’ buying behavior also changed because of the pandemic. Today, customers have become more health-conscious as they’re spending more money on products and services that can improve their wellness. This has caused them to be more careful with other purchases to ensure that their health is always prioritized.  

If you want to improve profits, take the time to review your existing pricing structure. As mentioned, customers’ buying behaviors have changed, and your pricing structure should adapt to these changes. Customers may have second thoughts about buying from you if your offerings are too expensive. This is especially true if you’re selling products and services unrelated to health and wellness.  

When reviewing your business’s existing pricing structure, don’t forget to ask for feedback from your customers. You can conduct surveys through email, post a link to a survey on social media, or use Instagram stories to collect information on whether your prices are still reasonable. 

Can your existing customers still afford your offerings? Or are your products and services too expensive for them? If you receive comments siding with the latter, consider updating your pricing structure to better suit your customers’ needs.  

Start Slow  

There are many ways to improve profits post-pandemic, but this doesn’t mean you should implement all of these at once. Ideally, you should pick one or two strategies first, use them for your business, and assess if these are giving you the results you’re expecting. 

Starting slow will enable you to allocate your resources to specific strategies and lessen the chances of losing more money. Quality still outweighs quantity, so as long as you implement one or two strategies properly, your business can eventually recover from the pandemic.