How to Grow a Business

Growth is often one of the primary goals for most new businesses and in this article, we’re going to dig into proven methods to grow your business starting today.

Utilize Your Existing Customers

Your existing customers are a great place to look for additional business, and the insight you need to scale your company. A loyal customer base can make or break your business. People who have purchased from you before are likely to do so again if they’ve enjoyed their experience with your company. Thus, it’s crucial to form connections with customers and clients who are interested in investing in your business. According to the New York Times, interviewing your existing customers can give you insight as to what makes them want to buy your products or services. Ask them questions about interest in new products or their overall satisfaction with your business, then look for patterns in their responses. This can help you pinpoint which marketing strategies are successful and which are not working. Furthermore, it can help you target your marketing correctly. Additionally, actively seeking referrals is a great way to make sure your customers are getting the word out about your business.

12 Tips to Grow a Business with Social Media

Social Media is an often under utilized business growth tool by the average small business. We’re going to detail how to use it to aid your business growth. According to Hootsuite, there are 4.2 billion active social media users. This creates many opportunities for businesses to use these platforms to build brand awareness, develop customer relationships, and most importantly, increase revenue. Here are some more ways you can use social media to market your business:

Create a plan: Setting up a social media plan beforehand will help ensure that all your efforts on these platforms support your business goals. Set goals and objectives, research your competitors for inspiration, and create a calendar for posting content.
Choose your platforms: Decide which platforms will best help you reach your audience. For example, if you’re target market is young adults, you may want to put most of your marketing efforts towards Instagram and TikTok as opposed to Facebook.
Know your audience: To use social media effectively, it’s important to understand how to speak to your audience online. Compile data on your current customers, dig deep into social media analytics, and create buyer personas to get a better understanding of the people interacting with you over social media.
Widen your audience: Once you’ve determined your audience, look for ways to reach more people like them. You can also use social media to expand your audience locally. Tools such as Hootsuite geo-search streams can help you reach potential customers close you to geographically.
Build relationships: A unique benefit of social media marketing provides small businesses with the opportunity to talk directly to their customers and other followers. You can create a Facebook Group, connect with other entrepreneurs or influencers who share your niche, shout out your followers in posts of Stories, or use built-in interactive tools to spark specific interactions with your followers.
Keep up with the trends: Paying attention to social media trends can give you insight into what content users are looking for, helping you to tailor your content to their preferences. The top five reasons people currently use social media are: to stay up-to-date with news and current events, to find funny or interesting content, to pass the time, to keep in touch with friends and family, and to share photos and videos.
Stay Active and Updated: Update your account regularly on the major platforms, so that customers can easily find your business and share it with their friends and family. According to Business News Daily, an active profile on all of the major social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc…) will create more opportunities to interact with potential customers and allow you to market your company more effectively. Furthermore, this will keep your audience engaged, allowing them to build a deeper connection with you and establish trust.
Sell your stuff online: Social commerce, the ability to sell products directly from social media platforms, is a huge part of social media marketing today. You can use social shopping tools to sell products and services even if you don’t have a website.
Mix up your formats: Switching up your post formats from time to time can help you learn which formats work best for different types of content as well as for different social networks. For example, if you usually post images, try a video.
Quality over quantity: It’s much more important to create quality content on a few key channels than produce sub-par content on every single platform. Most importantly, make sure that your posts offer value so that network users have an incentive to follow you.
Use the right tools: Taking advantage of automated tools (or tools that simplify the work) can make your social media marketing experience easier. For example, Canva can help you create eye-catching graphics while Hootsuite can organize your analytics.
Track and refine your performance: Keeping track of what works and fails as you’re implementing your social media plan can help you fine-tune your efforts and produce better results. Analytics tools can give you a sense of how your social media strategy is working and track whatever metrics are most important to you.

Cash Flow

You must be financially prepared for business growth. Make sure you have several years of steady revenue and a steady flow of new customers before taking your business to the next level. Poor cash flow can lead to your business lacking the funds to pay suppliers or cover important needs. According to Quickbooks Small Business Center, you can determine your current cash flow by looking at how much money you have coming in as well as how much money you have gone out. If you have customers or clients who haven’t yet paid back the money they owe you, don’t consider this part of your cash flow. “Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise,” said Peter Drucker, management consultant, educator, and author. “But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters most.” For small businesses, mitigating costs is particularly important. If you expand your share of the market but keep increasing your costs, you won’t have any money left to invest in your business or make a profit. While you’re figuring out growth strategies, make sure to keep track of the costs of running your business and getting your products or services to customers. You can do so by 1.) liquidating low-earning products or eliminating low-performing services and 2.) implementing new marketing and sales strategies to improve your inventory turnover. Both tactics can help give your company the cash flow necessary for growth and stability.

Email List

Building an email list is a great strategy for growing your business quickly. Make sure you have a lead magnet to give customers or clients an incentive to subscribe. You can build trust and loyalty with your subscribers through email marketing that is tailored to their interests. Additionally, you can automate your email campaigns and newsletters, freeing up your time and creating more opportunities for higher open rates and sales. Check out companies like AWeber for more information about building and managing your list.

Research Your Competition

Researching your competitors can help you pinpoint how to set your business apart and find your unique brand identity. This will help you effectively market your products and services to a wider audience. Consider using platforms like Similar Web or AdBeat that provide competitive intelligence and provide you with top access to all landing pages, ad copy, and other parts of your marketing. This enables you to dig deeper into advertisers’ online strategies. Finding the ads that have been running the longest and imitating them is a quick way to scale your business: if it’s worked for your competition, it will probably work for you as well.

A Diligent Mindset

Within the human heart is a desire to do wonderful things. Many important characteristics can bring professional success: diligence preparation, commitment, integrity, enthusiasm. Hard work done with vigor and integrity can lead to professional success and other benefits that business leaders can experience in their own lives. Thus, it is important to emulate these traits when trying to grow a business. Additionally, entrepreneurs should consider how to use the abilities they’ve been given to live out their professional purpose. How can they exercise them and channel them toward their business in a way that will enable them to carry out their work successfully? This is an important question to consider when building a business in today’s competitive and rapidly changing world.