You are the proud founder of a successful small business. But you don’t intend to stay and foresee your business as “small” in the long run, right?
So what are some of the most successful strategies and ways that your business can follow, so you can upscale and grow your small business?
According to Entrepreneur, business growth strategist Roland Frasier, who builds and scales seven, eight, and nine-figure businesses, says there are only a few hand-picked fundamental methods that will significantly impact your bottom line and are essential to growing your business.
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Signs That It’s Time To Grow Your Business
So, how do you know at what stage of your business life cycle you need to expand and grow your small business now?
Using the example of American Apparel. They opened roughly 300 locations within the first six years of business. They declared and filed for bankruptcy and closed all of their brick-and-mortar outlets, opting to fully become an online business.
What is the lesson learned from this example? Make sure that you know it’s the perfect moment to grow your business before you put too much time, energy, or other resources into it.
Below are a few pointers to take note of that are merely signs indicating that it might be the right time to start thinking about how to expand your business.
How to Expand Your Business
- If your market or sector is expanding, it may be time to grow your small business as well
- Ensure that you are strong in your cash flow and financially stable to be able to support the business expansion and the costs that it brings
- Your customers want more from you. Listen to their feedback to expand your product ranges or services.
Once you have identified the signs to grow, it’s time to get into action and implement.
Listed below are 12 pointers that you can use for your business as an aid:
Strategies To Grow Your Business
1. Connections and Networking
Networking is a great approach that allows business owners to meet people who may assist them in their business’s growth. This will enable you to meet potential customers, the potential talent you can hire, and investors.
Use social media sites and apps like LinkedIn, Twitter, and online networking communities to expand your business network. For example, send LinkedIn invitations to connect with professionals in your industry and grow your network more effectively
Attending business meetings, conferences, and tradeshows is an excellent method to strengthen bonds with colleagues, network, and meet new people.
For a good reason, website blogs are quite renowned. If you publish a personal blog on your corporate website, customers and prospects will learn more about you, your business philosophy, and your organization, products, and services. Blogs also allow for discussion and participation.
2. Provide Customer Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are an excellent method to boost sales. The cost of getting new customers is likely three times more than selling your products and services to your existing customer base.
A customer loyalty program will help in client retention. It will also guide you in the process of attracting new customers. Build a compelling loyalty programs, make it available to your current consumers, and watch your sales soar.
This may include offering discounts after a point system accumulation, rewards and vouchers for your existing customers, and so on.
You can find a brief guide on how to understand your customer better.
3. Have Great Customer Service
Let your consumers know how much you cherish them. If they have issues, make sure you address them as soon as possible. Take the time to answer their inquiries if they have any. Use a client portal or call center platforms to address your client’s questions and provide support effectively. Consider closely monitoring call center metrics to proactively identify and resolve customer issues and queries.
If they raise specific difficulties, they should not feel as if things are tough for them. Listening to your clients on social media is a terrific approach to understanding them.
Using a customer relationship management (CRM)system is one of them. CRM software aids in the management of client connections, both current and potential. They assist in the direction of client information, as well as the discovery of potential sales opportunities.
One of the most important benefits of using this is that the data is stored in one place. This way, it is available to you and the relevant departments that may need to use it. Shared inbox is also a tool that supports you in managing customer relations.
If satisfied with your customer service, they may even suggest your company to others.
4. Emphasize Social Media Marketing
Social media is, without a doubt, a tremendously strong instrument. It can reach hundreds of thousands of people all at once. Ascertain that your company is active on social media.
This allows you to keep current. Listening to individuals and reading their feedback will help you figure out how to make them happier.
You’ll also be able to comprehend their actions and discover a solution to accommodate their requests. Advertise your business with Facebook and Instagram Ads – their powerful algorithms will ensure the intended target audience sees your ads.
Engage with your online community via interactive posts requiring their feedback, giveaways, and short videos and reels to retain their attention span at the same time.
5. Conduct Market Research
It would be best to investigate the competition before thinking about how to grow your business further. Market research is something that should never be overlooked.
Because successful business owners perform ongoing market research to understand their target market, uncover consumer concerns and potentially new demographics and discover realistic competition, many businesses enjoy longevity and expansion.
This will allow you to find any room for improvement in your existing products and services as well as to be able to find any gaps in the market and be able to target those efficiently.
6. Diversify Your Product/Service Portfolio
Another area to grow your business can be expanding your portfolio of products and services. When you consider expanding your offerings, you may ask yourself the following key points:
- What are some new features that you can add to your existing products? Or what are some new products altogether that you can introduce?
- You must be mentally prepared to grow your business. This includes all your prerequisites to be met and fresh opportunities explored.
- What else can you offer your customers? Where else in the exchange can you add value?
This may include introducing fresh and new products or adding complementary products or bundles that match your existing products so they are bought together. Become the all-under-one-roof for your market, so they do not need to purchase from your competitors.
7. Hire The Right Talent
As your question hovers over how to expand your business, hiring the proper individuals today can lower the number of employees you’ll need to hire tomorrow. Candidates enthusiastic about and invested in your company will be willing to expand their responsibilities as your company grows.
Employees capable of taking ownership of their job and their position within your company will not only help your firm expand but will also work to stabilize and improve it at all stages of development.
Make sure you hire the applicants with the right skill set: meeting deadlines, how fast they can deliver the task, accountability, responsibility, etc.
8. Create A Funnel of Sales
What is a sales funnel, and how will that help you grow your business?
Let’s use the concept of a funnel to walk through a customer’s journey. The customer is at the top of the funnel when they consider purchasing from you. They are said to complete the funnel for your product or service when the purchase is complete.
This helps you think of new ways to get your customer to walk down the funnel so you can complete your sale. This can be achieved by giving them vouchers and discounts, obtaining their contact information to follow up after the sales, informing them about new product launches, and providing exclusive content.
9. Explore New Opportunities
Analyze new business opportunities by better understanding your population. This can include everything from distribution routes to direct competitors as well as an examination of overseas markets (discussed in the next point) and other possible industries, which should be understood.
With the right amount of research, you might probably find dozens of fresh and new options to explore right now.
10. Open to Franchising Opportunities
When expanding your business, a huge leap can be considered to extend to new ways of getting your products and services out to the customers. With the increase in awareness of e-commerce these days, this may not be a challenge.
There’s no denying that franchising allows you to grow your business and customer base on a much larger scale.
Although franchise expenditures are substantial, and transitioning to a franchise model is complicated and requires a lot of marketing know-how, it could be the difference between success and failure if you’re searching for rapid development.
To operate as a franchise, you must license your business model and processes, including your branding (logos, colors, packaging, etc.), to the franchisees.
The franchisees will then sell your products under your brand and business name. This model will allow you to expand to multiple locations, get more recognition for your brand name, and generate new revenue sources.
11. Consider Partnerships and Alliances
Creating a strategic alliance with another company can help you access a larger consumer base or match your growth with your business plan’s strategic goals.
You may even develop a white label partnership with a vendor, which can be an effective way to expand your offerings without the need for significant investment in new products. It’s critical to manage business partnerships and maintain good vendor relationships, regardless of the type of collaboration you make.
Acquiring other businesses could be a straightforward way to grow your business. If you can find them, you might be able to use competitors or companies from different industries as platforms to scale swiftly.
However, this option is only viable if you have the cash flow that supports this acquisition. Look both within and outside your industry to determine if there are any prospective opportunities, whether a merger or a buy.
12. Keep Your Costs Under Control
As you work on strategies that will help you grow your business, you might want to pay extra attention to your cost centers. Carefully lowering your costs can give your business the additional flow of cash that it needs. From the many options, two approaches can be used:
Discontinue your low-earning products and low-performing services
Use better inventory management systems and improve your inventory turnover
Avoid When Expanding Your Business
While you, as a business owner, can get carried away amid following strategies that will expand and grow your business, at the same time, it is important to look at the DON’Ts of business growth. Below listed are some of the key areas and mistakes that business owners often tend to overlook while expanding their businesses:
- Don’t Rush The Hiring Process: You will most likely need to hire more personnel as your company grows. However, you should not accelerate the hiring process to have positions filled. You risk employing the wrong people if you speed up the hiring process.
- Don’t Neglect Customer Feedback: Please make sure you know who your consumers are and what they require. Make no intentions to grow depending on your tastes. Carry out thorough market research, get customer feedback, and determine what improvements your customers would want to see in your existing product/service.
- Don’t Underestimate the Cost of Expansion: It’s usual for small firms to underestimate the expense of expansion. Make sure you consider all your cost areas, such as renting space, recruiting personnel, marketing, and other expenses, and how you’ll pay for them.
On A Final Note
You’ll know which of your strategies worked best. Please make a note of these strategies and apply them again. To help your firm move forward, you must eliminate failing tactics. The goal is to stay relevant. Refine the strategy and place a greater emphasis on those that provide positive outcomes.
