6 easy tips for maximising your cashflow during a busy trading period

Are you experiencing a busy trading period? Having a steady stream of customers making purchases is great news for your business’ cashflow but are you making the most of the opportunities available? Are there avenues you’re not currently exploring? As a business owner, you can’t afford to rest on your laurels. You must be constantly on the lookout for more and more ways to increase and retain customers, outshine the competition and maintain your business’ cashflow, even during busy trading periods. So if you’re searching for ideas on how you can increase your business’ cashflow even further, here are 6 useful tips you may want to consider.

1.  Reach out to customers online

Engaging with your customers online is an invaluable way of drawing the attention of both existing and potential customers, increasing both your cashflow and public reputation. There are a variety of tools and techniques available to make it easier to target and service your customers online, including:

• Social media ads - Social Media is an invaluable tool for any business that wants to get noticed by their target audience and increase cashflow, and still relatively inexpensive compared with more traditional forms of advertising. By creating advertising campaigns with tools such as Facebook ads, you can get your brand and products in front of a highly targeted audience.
• Chatbots - An innovative way of converting enquiries into sales is by installing chatbots on your business’ website. Chatbots are handy AI programs that allow automated messages to appear whenever a potential customer visits your website, enabling them to ask questions directly to you or a member of your team. If you’re looking to install a chatbot, some of the platforms available include Deeson, The Bot Forge and Drift.
• Retweeting - Encouraging customers to retweet your online content is great for getting your business in front of other potential customers, spreading your message more quickly. But as well as promoting your own content, don’t forget to share what other businesses (who aren’t competing with you) and industry forums are uploading as well.   A single share could earn you a retweet in exchange, which might go a long way.
• Respond to social media comments - In addition, try to respond to all the comments your customers are making in regards to your content. You might discover enquiries that could be converted into a sale, providing you act fast enough. Besides, customers love to know that they’re approaching a company that has a genuine interest in their individual needs.

Could your cashflow be working harder for your business? Or do you need help staying above your bottom line? Apply for Cashflow Finance and learn more about how your business could benefit.

2. Proximity marketing

In addition, if you operate from a location such as a busy high street, you could maximise your business’ footfall by taking advantage of Proximity Marketing. Proximity Marketing works by you installing a Bluetooth hub inside your business. So if a potential customer, who has Bluetooth enabled, comes within the vicinity of your business, a message will be sent to their smart device. As such, this can be a great way of advertising your business locally and generating awareness of any promotions you might be offering. In fact, you could use it to take a leaf out of what online businesses are doing and advertise limited time coupons and flash sales.

3. Enticing offers

If there’s one thing that your customers are bound to love, it is the sight of a great deal to make their money to go further. Offering customers access to promotion schemes and limited time offers can drive sales and prop up your cashflow in the process. To give you some inspiration, some of the most popular schemes that many UK businesses are using include loyalty points cards, coupons, discounts, free samples and community competitions. However, regularly monitor such schemes since you want to drive up your cashflow and not give away more than you can afford.

4. Keep customers happy

It is also important that your business is able to accept and acknowledge customer feedback. Though trade might be busy at the moment, you don’t want a situation to arise that could change that. Of course, receiving a complaint from one of your customers is never going to be nice, but by taking heed of it you can tackle the issue and avoid the matter escalating. One way of achieving this is by installing an EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) sale system in your business that has a feature which enables customers to post compliments/complaints quickly and easily through their smart devices. If using such a system is of interest to you, there are a number of EPOS providers on the market, including Eposnow, Wowpos and Lightspeed.

5. Manage your inventory

Another way of bolstering your business’ cashflow is by exercising careful management over your inventory. Though you might be experiencing a busy trading period, you need to be aware that this also puts increased pressure on your business’ inventory levels and supply chain. As such, you might run out of certain items of stock, making your business unable to deliver certain goods and/or services until they’re replenished. Naturally, this can result in disgruntled customers heading over to your competitors, instead, causing you to incur a loss of potential revenue. However, you can avoid this by installing an inventory management system to enable you to monitor and replenish your business’ inventory levels in real time, amongst other useful features. So if your business stands to benefit, just some of the systems available to your business include Orderwise, Cin7 and Freshservice.

6. Accept electronic payments

Finally, you need to appreciate that each of your customers has different preferences when it comes to their choice of payment method. Although cash is still popular, especially outside of London, more and more UK residents are choosing to pay for goods and services using their credit and debit cards, regardless of whether they’re shopping in-store or online. Plus, electronic payments are also becoming much more popular on account of the speed and convenience that they offer. As such, if you’re not able to accept a variety of payment methods you could be depriving your business of a valuable source of revenue and key opportunities to further increase your cashflow.

Need help supporting your business’ cashflow?

Keeping a close watch on your business’ cashflow is a vital responsibility. Though you may be experiencing a busy trading period, you need to be aware that the situation can easily take a turn for the worst if you’re not paying attention. However, whether you’re looking to increase or simply support your business’ cashflow, there is a wide range of business finance products available that could help. But with so many to choose from, making a decision that’s right for your business’ needs can be a challenge in itself. Fortunately, that’s where we can help.

At Rangewell, we’re an Access to Finance specialist who’s mapped over 400 lenders to offer you an overview of more than 23,000 business finance products, from supporting cashflow to easing the burden of exporting or covering unexpected bills. Our services are free to use and we’ll also guide you through the application process. So if you’re looking to reinforce your business’ cashflow and need additional funds to do so, apply for Cashflow Finance today or find out more with Rangewell.