"This guy knows how to find revenue streams."
Today's marketing tip is on how to create a brand new revenue stream for your business in November.
(In other words a new source of income for your business that is up and running in the next few weeks.)
The good news about creating a brand new revenue stream is that it's often a lot easier than you think.
Here are two new revenue stream examples to get your thinking..
New Revenue Stream example 1:
Ice-creams from a supermarket
I live in Auckland, New Zealand and summer officially starts in December.
For the last few weeks the weather in Auckland has been a lot sunnier and finer.
My local supermarket has just taken advantage of this warmer weather and created a brand new revenue stream for their business.
A few days ago I noticed that outside the front entrance to their supermarket they have put a mobile display cabinet that was stocked with a variety of delicious gourmet ice-cream flavours.
They have a mobile cash register next to the display cabinet and they had some attractive signs offering delicious ice creams.
One of their staff members sits behind the display cabinet and takes orders and money.
A large number of people are handing over money for ice creams and the supermarket also offers customers the opportunity to buy cartons of the gourmet ice-cream to take away as well.
This staff member told me they were only doing this for summer.
(In other words they are creating a brand new revenue stream for the next few months.)
What I like about this example was how simple it was.
The supermarket used their own land, their own staff and probably hired the display cabinet that had the ice-cream in it.
They had some signs made (probably by their existing sign people) and bingo they have a highly profitable new income stream for their business.
What they have done is very clever.
They already know that people like to buy ice-creams in warmer weather.
So all they did was offer ice-creams from their supermarket and made it very convenient for people to buy them.
This will easily produce thousands and thousands of dollars of new revenues for this supermarket.
New Revenue Stream example 2:
Goal Planner from a digital printer
A couple of days ago I was chatting to one of my digital printer clients.
The owner of the business told me she had just created a helpful goal planning guide to help people achieve their goals.
She sent me a copy and I loved what she had done.
The guide was very convenient and easily fits in a pocket or purse.
It allows you to track and monitor your progress on an important goal for 12 weeks. And it only takes a minute or two to use each day.
I've been a huge fan of setting goals and taking action on these goals for many years.
And I realised that this goal planner would make an excellent added value gift that I could give to many of my key clients and contacts over the next few weeks.
My printer client made them very affordable and $15.95 (+GST) each with a minimum order of 10.
I also got a free personalised page with a message from me at the front of each goal planner if I ordered 20 or more.
Best of all my printer offered me 5 goal planners free for every 10 that I purchased.
I immediately ordered 30 goal planners and got 15 for free.
(This meant they cost me less than $11 each.)
I've just started sending these goal planners out to a number of my clients and key contacts.
And I've already had positive feedback from some of them telling me how much they appreciated my little gift.
I would expect this printer to have dozens of businesses order 20 or more goal planners in the next few weeks to use as thank you gifts for their customers.
Which will be worth thousands of dollars in new profits.
Which is a nice new revenue stream.
However it gets even better.
I told my printer client that this goal planner could also be licensed to other printers both in New Zealand and also in other countries as well.
If the license fee was very affordable (say $500 for 12 months) it would be fairly easy to get a number of digital printers to take a license to print these goal planners.
After all they could use this goal planner to quickly add thousands of dollars of new printing revenues to their business.
If she gets 20 printers to pay a license fee of $500 each that's another new revenue stream worth $10,000 for her printing business.
The main purpose of this message is to invite you to think about creating one or more new revenue streams for your business this month.
As I mentioned earlier, this is often a lot easier than you think.
'You'd be wise to have multiple streams of income flowing into your life.'
Robert G Allen
Action Step One:
Think about your own business and your existing customers.
What other products or services could you offer your existing customers in November?
What are they already spending money on elsewhere and how could you offer this to the customers from your own business?
Action Step Two:
What new product or service could you create yourself that you could then offer to your clients to buy?
What do you have on hand right now that you could license the use of to other businesses for a fee?
(Hint: There are dozens of possible answers to this last question.)
PS: If you would like some information on the Goal Planner I mentioned, (or if you have a digital printing business and would like to create new revenues in the next few weeks) just contact me using the email links at the top and bottom of this column. I'll give you further details without obligation.
Chris and Lee-Anne Minturn talk to Tom Raynel about the Jewellers Collective.