Growing your small business is incredibly exciting, but it’s often a nerve-wracking experience at the same time. Growth requires you to invest a significant amount of time and money, and it can take a while before you begin to reap the rewards. This article contains powerful tips to accelerate the growth of your small business so that you can expand at a steady rate without running out of funds. By putting the right strategies in place, you can propel your business towards success and create the company you’ve always dreamed of. Let’s dive in.
1. Prioritise Content Marketing
In order to grow your small business, customer acquisition is crucial, and that means investing in marketing. However, a strong marketing strategy doesn’t have to break the bank. Enter: content marketing.
According to a study by DemandMetric, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates three times more leads. Therefore, if you want to scale up your business, you can’t overlook this method.
Of course, content marketing only works when you do it right. Posting a blog once in a blue moon won’t cut it. Good content marketing means showing up and sharing value every day so that you stay at the forefront of your audience’s mind. Furthermore, it’s important that you don’t make your content all about you. Focus on solving your audience’s problems and they’ll think of you when they’re ready to buy.
It’s important to be consistent with content marketing. If you stop and start, your business will enter a cycle of feast and famine that makes growth very difficult. However, if you stay disciplined and post content every day, you’ll enjoy a steady stream of new customers that allow you to grow.
2. Hire the Right People
Growing your business means growing your team, too. The right team will propel your organisation towards success, whilst bad hires will slow your progress and damage your bank balance, too. Steer away from cost-based hiring; it’s not the smart financial decision it may initially seem to be.
A survey by CareerBuilder found the average cost of a bad hire to be between $25,000-$50,000. In addition, bad hires slow your growth by impacting the productivity of other team members and damaging staff morale. Investing in the right team members will see a much better payoff in the long run.
When hiring, focus on attitude. You can teach your employees how to do things your way, but you’ll struggle to change the way that they think. A negative attitude is a much bigger obstacle than a lack of experience.
3. Update Your Website
Your website is your virtual shop window, so it needs to look good. If you want customers to trust, respect and admire you, you need a website that’s functional, user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing.
You don’t need something super fancy and complicated; in fact, less is often more. A slick but minimalist website will work perfectly.
On top of this, make sure that your website is content rich. It should contain more information than just your opening hours and contact details; that’s what business cards are for. The more videos and value-packed blog posts your site contains, the better.
4. Customer Feedback
Don’t underestimate the importance of customer feedback; it’s actionable data that you can use to greatly improve your products and/or services. However great your business may be, there’s always something you can work on, and providing the best possible customer service is a surefire way to accelerate your business growth.
Email surveys and popup forms are a great way of asking your customers for feedback. If your response rate is low, incentivise your customers to give you feedback through competitions, discounts and loyalty points.
Summary
Whilst there’s no such thing as overnight success, employing the above strategies can help you to achieve a steady and predictable rate of growth that won’t put your business at risk. By focusing on customer experience, investing in great team members and staying front of mind through content marketing, you can make sure that your business continues to grow and thrive.
