It’s crucial to consider ways to expand your business as a small-business owner. The growth strategies are as simple as hiring new employees, or as complex and involving as buying another company.
Here are 10 ways to help your small business grow.
Table of Contents
1. Concentrate on your strengths
To grow your small business you must focus on your uniqueness in the industry. If you have been working in the same field for many years and already have a large customer base, it’s not necessary to expand your business into new markets. There are only a limited number of opportunities to grow within a single industry or geographical location.
2. Hire people who can make the best of their talents
Consider hiring part-time staff instead of permanent employees. They will become full-time workers over time, if they are able to prove themselves. You can save money by hiring more people when needed, while also increasing your productivity.
3. Improve customer service and satisfaction
You can build customer loyalty by focusing on the satisfaction of your customers. They will become repeat buyers. This is also important, as it increases customer acquisition costs (CAC), directly impacting your revenue growth.
There are many ways you can improve your customer service. Asking your customers to provide feedback will encourage them to share what they have experienced. You will be able to determine which aspects of customer service need improvement.
You can also be accessible through various channels of communication, including live chats and emails, as well as phone calls, Twitters and discussion forums. Show your customers you care by sending them personalized messages. Finally, give your customers discounts and incentives to make them happy.
4. Trends are always changing.
In order to stay competitive on a market that is volatile, you need to keep up with the latest industry trends and technological developments. It’s important to be in touch with what is happening around you, so you can adapt your strategy if needed.
5. Focus on customer acquisition
You should focus your business on acquiring more customers and not just keeping the ones you have. You need to be constantly thinking of ways to acquire new customers, and improving your service or product to achieve this.
6. Retention is the key focus
It’s important to retain customers, but this is often neglected due to the time it takes and the difficulty of measuring results. Focus on improving customer retention so they don’t leave your business after just a few months, or even years.
Customer activation comes into play here. Customer activation encourages active, repeat and/or returning customers to take a desired action in order to keep them engaged during their journey.
Customer activation can be a cost-effective method to increase sales and customer satisfaction. It also extends the customer’s lifecycle.
7. Regularly measure your results
Tracking key metrics like revenue, cost per sales and customer satisfaction on a regular schedule will help you to see if your strategy is working or not. This could result in your failure to achieve your growth goals.
A data management program is required to accurately measure your results. Data management allows you to protect your data, and then use it for decision-making.
8. Social media is a great way to connect with others.
Social media is not something to be scared of. Social media can be used for marketing and branding, but also for customers to share their opinions and interact in new ways with brands. Social media, if used correctly can be an integral part of your marketing plan and grow your business through organic growth as well as word-of-mouth recommendations from satisfied clients.
Use hashtags to increase your content’s reach and visibility. Your posts will appear in the hashtag feed and users who follow hashtags can see them.
Diversify your content with product videos, testimonials, promotional videos and other types of content.
9. Tell us your story
Tell your story. It can be difficult to find the right words, especially if your product or service is unique. Using the right words can make a huge difference in getting your company noticed by potential clients.
10. Plan your growth
Before you can grow, you need to have a plan. Create a simple document of one page with the following: Your Target Market, Backup Software (if you have it), Your Product/Service Offerings and How to Reach Your Target Market. Include machine learning and cloud computing.
