If the last two years have proven anything, it’s that having multiple income streams is incredibly important for businesses that want an increased level of financial security. Rich Elms, the MD and Founder of BabyBallers – a football and multi-skills children’s franchise – has developed a range of additional income streams to ensure BabyBallers’ franchisees have supplementary income to their class subscriptions. Rich shares his advice on innovating for additional income streams.
Creating additional income streams for your business can help you achieve greater financial stability, scale faster and allow you the chance to explore your creative side. Of course, it’s vital to ensure your core business is developed thoroughly before you start focusing on additional income streams. However, business owners should always be ambitious and seek new sources of growth. At BabyBallers, we offer great additional income streams that bring exposure for franchisees to reach clients they may not have reached by just providing classes. There’s three things I would recommend you consider when developing new opportunities to boost income.
Talk to your clients
Talking to your customers is the only way to find out what they genuinely need. Whether your business is B2C or B2B, if you want people to buy your products or services – and keep buying them – you need to find out what they want. Open a communication line with your customers and connect with them through your various online platforms. Or you could do it the good old-fashioned way and ask them face-to-face!
Many of BabyBallers’ additional products have evolved through conversations we’ve had with our customers. For example, from October we’ll be providing entertainment at kids’ birthday parties because of conversations we’ve had with parents who attend our classes. Due to the significant number of enquiries we received, it was clear there was a market to provide this additional service. We also offer a range of branded merchandise, such as kits, toys, footballs and scooters for parents to buy their children. These additional products create a sense of belonging to our team and mean that the kids can practice and keep active at home.
Concentrate on adding value to your customer base
Once you’ve talked to your clients, the next step is to brainstorm how your additional revenue streams can add practical value to your customer base. Remember, customers’ needs are constantly evolving, so your products and offerings should be too. When deciding how to add value to your services, start by asking yourself, “How well are we currently meeting the needs of existing customers?” and “How can we make our services more valuable to our customers?”.
Adding value could be anything from improving the packaging or the design of your products to simplifying how someone can use your product or service. For example, if you own a restaurant franchise, you could offer free local delivery or special offers for repeat customers. Creating these additional services and products that add value to your customers won’t just help you increase a customer’s satisfaction with your brand, they’ll also enable you to generate more income – which is exactly what you want if you’re creating additional revenue streams.
Turn your ideas into reality
To turn your ideas into reality, you need to plan a development process. Creating a development process starts by putting in place a timeline of activities to follow. This will help you complete the process in a timely, cost-effective manner. Next, estimate the resources you’ll need. This will give you an idea of the types of resource strains you can anticipate throughout the project. It will also serve as the basis for developing a budget for your development efforts. Finally, establish a budget. Budgeting your resources (time, money and people) will allow you to maintain fiscal responsibility during the development process. Personally, I would recommend planning your development process before you become too attached to a product. Why? Because if you fall in love with a new idea before you have a development plan, you may make poor business decisions as you work through the development process.
Once you’ve completed the development process and released your additional products, arrange times to review your revenue streams and remove the ones that are not performing – this will save you both time and money if something simply isn’t working. To do this, track the product’s sales, market share, profit or loss and all other key measures once it’s released.
Developing additional income streams can be a great way to pivot when other income streams aren’t performing as well. However, to ensure they don’t become a time consuming and expensive ordeal, you need to understand what your customers want. So, whether you’re looking to repackage and repurpose existing services to better suit your clients’ needs or if you’re looking to expand your product offerings, following this advice will help you develop additional income streams that will help your franchise thrive.
