5 ways SMBs can increase revenue streams during Covid and beyond

In our recent survey on the impact of Covid-19 on businesses, 34 per cent of tsoHost customers told us that they were experiencing a lower volume of sales or orders because of the pandemic.

Plus, dozens of customers revealed that they were hoping to bounce back from the crisis by trying to find new revenue streams.

The good news is that you don’t have to completely compromise your business model to diversify.

Here we’ve outlined some of the simpler solutions that can help you bridge the gap Covid-19 has caused, and that could continue to help your business make money in the months to come.

Gift cards

Gift cards make it easy for customers to buy a future experience for their loved ones or themselves while helping businesses with cash flow.

They’re ideal for cafes, restaurants, bars, beauticians, hairdressers, tattoo artists, pet pamper services, hotels, spas, boutiques, gifts shops and more.

There are multiple ways to sell gift cards online. If you have a Facebook for Business page, you can sell gift cards through one of several partners, including VoucherCart, sumup and Up and you can also add a Purchase Gift Card button to your page.

Alternatively, if you have a WordPress site with the WooCommerce plugin you can sell gift cards through the PDF Product Vouchers extension. This extension is one of dozens that are included for free as part of tsoHost’s WordPress Ecommerce Hosting plan.

Merchandise

Merchandise isn’t just for big brands. If you’re a small business with regular customers, it’s for you, too.

Think t-shirts, hoodies, reusable cups, caps, stationary, bags, even badges.

We can learn a lot from the companies that started selling merchandise during the pandemic.

Check out Gran T's coffee shop in Altrincham, Cheshire, for example – this independent business started selling hoodies, beanies and bags during Covid-19 and it’s made their brand even stronger.

At home options

If you run a food or drink business, it won’t have been hard to think of ways to offer an at-home product or service for customers – tasting kits, finish at home meal boxes, and food parcels have been popular since the first lockdown.

It might not have been so easy if you run something like a tattoo studio.

Whatever you do, start by thinking about your skills. A tattooist, for example, is also an artist. They could consider offering art classes of some form online for a fee.

As lockdown eases, it’s also worth brainstorming any ways your products and skills could be used or implemented in a garden or park setting, too, for example.

Product add-ons

Thinking about the reasons your customers buy your products and services can help you come up with additional revenue streams.

Are they buying for themselves or others?

If they’re buying your products as gifts, why not add gift wrapping or special messaging to your online offering.

As with the gift cards above, if your website is run on WordPress with the WooCommerce plug-in, you can get an extension that allows your customers to add multiple extras into an order.

Impulse buying options

Just as service stations and seven/elevens place chocolate bars and bags of sweets near the till to encourage last minute impulse buys at the point of sale, the owners of ecommerce stores can set their site up to nudge customers to be more impulsive.

Enter another WooCommerce extension.

Cart Add-Ons lets you display cross sell and upsell items at the checkout stage. The items can be showcased with the phrase ‘You may also like’. And if customers agree, they can quickly add that item to the order to which they have already committed.

Shipping

Google reports that convenience has been one of the deciding factors in whether a customer has bought from a company or not during the pandemic.

Whereas once, consumers were happy to wait for a purchase to be delivered, they’ve become more impatient during Covid-19.

So, if your orders have decreased during the past months, it might be worth taking a look at your shipping options or at least the information you convey to customers about your shipping.

Are shipping rates clearly displayed? Can customer track their order with you? Can they request local pick ups for goods? The more options and details you give clients, the more you can show them what a convenient option you are.

Again, WooCommerce has a great range of extensions that allow you to showcase shipping details. Many of these are available free as part of tsoHost’s WordPress Ecommerce hosting plan

Looking for more tips on how to bounce back from Covid or thrive throughout the restrictions? You’ll find more articles under the Covid-19 category on the rest of our blog.