Working to grow your small business is exciting and daunting at the same time. On one hand, you work hard and spend countless sleepless nights.
On the other hand, you get the satisfaction of witnessing your hard work pay off with your business scaling up.
However, when it comes to the growth of a business, there’s no easy way out. Here are some quick tips that you can follow to escalate growth of your small business:
1. Get to Know Your Customer Base
You may already know who your customers are, but there’s always room to learn more. Some good areas to look at are:
- How did they find you?
- How many are first-time customers vs. repeat business?
- Do your customer base share anything in common? (i.e. age, demographic, geographic, interest, or behavioral factors)
- What is the average lifetime value of your customers?
A complete understanding of your customer base can help you attract similar prospects through personalized marketing campaigns, improve economics, and extract insights to improve customer retention.
2. Always Try to Learn from your Competitors
Michael Corleone from The Godfather once said, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
This is especially true in business. in order to grow your company, you need to understand what your competitors are doing and either beat them at their own game or choose a different strategy.
Even if you run your business with different strategies and tactics, you should still look out for your competitors’ approach towards things.
- Research on free tools like Google, Amazon, Alexa, Keyword Spy, Hoovers, Ahrefs, WHois.net to figure out which companies are your biggest competitors in the industry, ranking them from direct threats to the ones who can be potential threats in the future. Find some strengths and weaknesses, compare their pricing strategies to yours, details like their registration date, server statistics, or employment funding. These examples will help a lot in the analysis later on.
- Dig deep into their social media channels, websites and other communities. Gather information about customer experiences and product reviews from their websites or social media channels.
3. Focus on After-sale Services
After sale services can greatly affect your customer retention rates and create a positive brand image. After all, the quality of the product or service isn’t the only factor that contributes to customer loyalty.
The key is to make them feel valued and special. Therefore, above all focus on good customer service, especially after the sale.
It’s also necessary to reward your most loyal customers. This can be done either with a point-based-discount system, special gifts, or exclusive offers among various other options. With a customer referral program, you can reward your existing customers for bringing in new customers via positive word of mouth.
4. Get Feedback from Your Customers
Your customers know what you don’t – what you’re doing right and especially what you’re doing wrong.
Every so often, consult or survey your existing customers and identify which aspects of your products or services they love, as well as the areas of your business that have room for improvement.
You’ll find multiple free tools for surveying online. Google Forms, Type form, Survey hero, Zoho Survey, Survey Planet are all first class online tools you can try out.
The survey tool with the finest offer that caught our attention is- Survey Monkey. Their advanced version is $99/month. But you take their offer it comes in a $34/month offer package.
Once you have a sizable Intel regarding that, assess the opportunity and input costs and improve your business and tactics accordingly.
5. Delegate!
Let’s face it – no one really is a one man army! For this very reason, delegate some of your tasks to others. If your business lacks the capacity to perform such relevant tasks, hire a consulting firm to act on your behalf.
It’s also a good idea to have some goals set for your company and employees. Short, intermediate and long-term goals of your company can give your employees a collective will to work towards them, keeping those on track and determined.
If someone achieves these goals you’ve set for them, don’t let that go unnoticed! Reward them on the basis of their performance, behavior, or their efficiency in building team spirit.
6. Expand your Business’s Online Presence
If you are a conventional brick-and-mortar business that hasn’t gone online yet, you could consider taking your business to the World Wide Web.
Building a website would be a good idea to get started – there are lots of free and paid options to do so such as GoDaddy, Wix, or Squarespace to name a few.
Update your website regularly with the latest news, promotions, and offers.
It’s proven that social media advertisements can drive sales. There are many companies out there who have multiple social media pages across various platforms. Using the information collected in step 4, creating a social media account on the correct platforms to reach your target audience is a fantastic way to drive business.
Related article: How To Build And Improve Your Business Website
7. Think about Expansion
Whatever products or services you’re providing, there’s always potential to attract more customers. One way to do so is by offering products or services that’ll appeal to people you hadn’t enticed earlier.
Using the information collected in step 4, finding the audience you have is crucial to developing the correct products or services. A diversified product line or service portfolio can propel your small business into a medium one – provided you do your homework!
8. Meet Others from your Industry
Networking is always a good idea, especially within your industry. Meet other business owners whenever possible and discuss strategies with them.
When thinking about growth, strategic alliances can work to your advantage. There are quite a few options for that. You can merge with a similar small business, or acquire it provided you have the appropriate funding.
A good way to meet your contemporaries is by attending industry events. Keep an eye out for such events, and ensure you commit some time there. A business can gain significant exposure from such events, so a great way to promote these events would be through your social media audience you have just created.
It’s not easy growing a small business. But it really is a lot of fun if you do it right. The tips provided can help you grow your business.
So, which of these are you going to use? Let us know in the comments section, and let us be a part of your journey!
About the Author:
Marc is a content writer at FeedFond. He suffers from wanderlust and occasionally complains about life. To read more of his articles, visit FeedFond.com.