How To Grow Your Business
Starting a business is itself a difficult task to do. But, to grow your business is even more challenging task to do.
Growing your overall customer base and increasing your sales is very essential in succeeding in business.
Business success doesn’t come overnight. It takes long hours of planning, strategizing, preparation, creativity, patience, and consistency.
How To Grow Your Business
If you have started your business and your sales have started. Then take a look at our 9 methods on how to grow your business;
1. Research
When you are looking for different ways on how to grow your business, you need to do research for that. The research will let you know your current and potential customers, their preferences, and their demands.
You can identify new market trends and you can see how your business will grow and meet those market trends.
Similarly, don’t forget to research your competitors as well. From the research you will be able to identify your competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, and how can you take advantage over them.
This will also help you in identifying your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It will help you in developing more productive business strategies that can help you in gaining a competitive advantage.
Read more: How To Do Market Research
Read more: How To Do Competitive Analysis
2. Build sales funnel
The fastest way to grow your business is to build sales funnel. The sales funnel is the visual depiction of a customer’s overall journey from the stage of brand awareness to the end action. If you are missing the sales funnel, then you are making a huge mistake.
Sales funnel helps your business in automating, scaling, and growing quickly and smoothly. But, you have to make sure that your front-end processes are aligned and in place. Once they are in place, everything will be very smooth and easy for your business.
Let’s take an example, when a customer visits your store outlet or your website. They are on the top of that funnel. When they go to purchase from an in-store outlet or sign up on a website, they are in the funnel.
Now, there you have to play your role and come up with different ways to encourage customers to purchase something.
This can be through offering discounts, coupons, or any other. In return get their contact information, generate their database, and send them offers and updates.
3. Hire the right people & grow your team
Before you get started with your business idea, you need to hire the right people. They will help you in achieving your goals and objectives. The individuals, partners, and employees should have a solid character.
Remember that you can teach them skills, and give them knowledge, but you cannot teach them character.
Hiring the right people will help you in growing your business faster. Hardworking employees will help you in the continued growth of your business.
But, make sure you delegate tasks and authority to give them confidence and a sense of collaboration.
As well as, it will help you to free up your time and energy and focus on more important tasks. This will help you in perform at your best level for your own business.
Focus on hiring a diversity of employees so that can provide new, unique, innovative ideas and perspectives.
Having employees from different backgrounds, experiences, skills, knowledge, specialties, and beliefs will help in having different perspectives on the table.
Moreover, value and give importance to your current employees as well as their contributions and efforts towards your business.
Simultaneously, grow your team as well to grow your sales and customer base. Focus on giving superior quality services to your customer through superior and trained employees.
4. Know & Focus on your customer
First of all, know your customers, like who they are, and what are their needs and wants. You have already identified your target market during your business plan phase. But now it is time to engage more with your customers, increase sales, and grow your business.
Make sure you conduct continuous feedback from customers, through surveys, reviews, asking questions, or any other. This will help you in improving your product, services, features, designs, and other adjustments as well.
While only feedbacks are not sufficient. You need to conduct a market analysis to make yourself aware of the market and competitors.
Market analysis is the qualitative and quantitative research and analysis of a certain market. A process of collecting detailed information about a particular market in industry.
Simultaneously, focus on giving superior quality to your customers because quality customer service will help you in growing your business.
If you provide superior quality services to your customers, they will;
- become delighted
- leave positive review
- recommend it to their family and friends
- come again for a repurchase
But, customer perception about your business can make or break your business in the market. If they are delighted from your product or service, they will tell the whole world. But, if they are dissatisfied, they will tell the whole world even faster.
Rapid growths of businesses are dependent upon the satisfaction of their current and potential customers with the company’s products and services.
It is not enough to acquire new customers, but to retain the current ones is also important. You need to increase your customer retention and make sure they come back for repurchase. It will help you in building customer loyalty and increasing sales.
5. Focus on social media and email
Another, yet a great way to grow your business is to have a presence on social media platforms. Create profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
It is very simple to do even without any experience, open a business profile and start building your consumer base.
Active profiles allow you to communicate with your customers, engaging them, solving their problems, building trust, and marketing your business.
Keep your social media account updated so that your potential customers can find your business and share it with their circle.
Another effective way to grow your business is to build a list of emails.
Email marketing is an act of sending emails and promotional messages to current and potential customers of your business.
The basic motive behind it is to increase brand awareness, generate sales, enhancing engagement, and generating leads.
Read more: How To Do Email Marketing
6. Identify opportunities for expansion
For the expansion of your business, you can do several things like,
- forming strategic partnerships,
- franchising your business,
- licensing deals,
- expanding to new markets
Strategic partnerships will help you in reaching more and more customers quickly. Strategic partnerships with the right partners and the right strategy will help you in growing your business.
You can look for other companies that have similar objectives, contact them and ask them for collaboration.
Franchising your small business is a very common strategy of growth for small businesses. You can do this by selling your business rights to another independent owner. They open, operate, and sell products from their franchise of your business.
Business franchises help in covering more locations and customers, resultantly generating more revenues. But, it is costly, complex, and takes a lot of marketing knowledge.
Licensing deals are a great way to grow your business rapidly and quickly without making much effort. For that purpose, you need to have a unique product or service that you can license it other parties, and get revenue against it.
Identify different growth opportunities in your business. You can do it by understanding your current market, demographics, distribution channels, competition, and foreign market expansion as well.
There are a number of opportunities that lie in every business to grow but it requires proper analysis.
7. Practice CSR & support community
Many customers prefer to buy from those businesses that practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) and match their values. Corporate social responsibility means you identify the impacts of your business on the overall aspects of the whole community.
Consumers like those businesses that make the world a better place to live.
Your business should also contribute towards CSR and community and share it with your customers. It can be through supporting cancer research, supporting non-profit organizations, or any other.
This will help you in developing your overall brand reputation as a sustainable and responsible business towards society and the community.
Furthermore, you can also;
- donate money and offer services to charity organizations,
- spend time in fundraising for a cause,
- offer sustainable products and services to improve the overall environment
- collaborate with other businesses in similar causes for a greater change in society
- host and sponsor community events
8. Diversify & develop additional income
If you have achieved your desired success from offering your core product or service, now it is time to diversify. Diversify your offerings that will grow your business, as well as help you in getting more customers.
To grow your business, you need to think about expanding your current business. Identify untapped demands of customers, any new opportunities within your niche. Look for ways to add more and more customers and add value in exchange.
You can do this by;
- offering a current product or service in a new way, or
- offering a completely new product or service after doing research about its demand and market feasibility
If you are having problems growing your core business, try to develop some additional or passive income. That can be from a new product or service, offering discounts, subscriptions to loyal customers, or having sponsorships and ads.
9. Network
To grow your business, it is very important to make the right partnerships and know your overall business community. Spare some time for it to grow relationships that will help you in building your business.
Strong networks will help you in gaining new customers, partnerships, employees, investors, and lenders. Secondly, this will also help you in sharing, generating new ideas, emerging trends, and best practices for the industry.
For that purpose, you can take part in industry networking events that will help you in increasing brand visibility.
Attend local events to better communicate with like-minded people and other parties. It will help you in meeting business owners and promote your business. These relationships will be very beneficial for your business for many years.
The Bottom Line
To grow your business you need to take some calculated risks. Your business will become grow if you grab the right opportunity at the right time. Otherwise, it will be in deep stagnant waters.
Prepare a proper business plan, add correct forecasts and details, and what strategies are you going to use.
Continuously monitor your business, and make necessary changes and updates with time to have a successful business. Always look for new growth opportunities and be open to new ideas.
How To Grow Your Business FAQ
1. How I will make my business?
9 methods on how to grow your business;
- Research
- Build sales funnel
- Hire the right people & grow your team
- Know & Focus on your customer
- Focus on social media and email
- Identify opportunities for expansion
- Practice CSR & support community
- Diversify & develop additional income
- Network
2. What are 4 growth strategies?
4 growth strategies are;
- Market penetration
- Product development
- Market expansion
- Diversification
3. How do I make my small business thrive?
How to grow your business;
- Research
- Build sales funnel
- Hire the right people & grow your team
- Know & Focus on your customer
- Focus on social media and email
- Identify opportunities for expansion
- Practice CSR & support community
- Diversify & develop additional income
- Network
4. What are 3 ways in which a business can grow?
The 3 ways in which a business can grow are;
- Increasing your overall customer base through acquiring new customers
- Increasing your sales through new customers
- Increasing your customer step-ins, frequency of purchase and repeat purchases
