5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Grow Their Small Business
Small businesses are the backbone of our economy.
In the UK, small businesses are defined as privately owned organisations with no more than 50 employees and up to £6.5 million in turnover.
Typical examples of small businesses are services and retail operations like grocery stores, medical stores, tradespeople, restaurants, photographers, and small manufacturing units.
Technology has revolutionized businesses and allowed small businesses to compete with the bigger ones. Technology allows companies to reach new international markets and customers. With prospective consumers all over the world now having access to your product, increasing your sales could be as simple as offering service in a new language.
Below are 3 tips to improve sales volume, focus your marketing efforts, find new sources of revenue and build even stronger relationships with your existing customers.
1. Concentrate on income generation, outsource the rest
Work only on things that make you money. You can split your to-do list into two columns: “Things that make you money” and “Things that don’t”, and then only do the side that directly makes you money and outsource the rest to subject matter experts.
Below are 3 most outsourced services for a small business:
Marketing
Similarly, you should outsource marketing. Outsourcing allows entrepreneurs target potential customers with laser precision, resulting in increased sales and revenue while focusing on other aspects of their business while still ensuring that their marketing is in good hands.
Once you’ve selected the best marketing channels, it’s necessary to figure out which marketing methods can assist the business to grow in a short period.
You should diversify platforms and expand its visibility to reach a larger audience. It’s also important to consider which platform would best fulfill the target market’s needs.
For example, you can use social media marketing to harness the power of word-of-mouth and brand awareness. Social video is very efficient in terms of scalability across all social media platforms. Any small business can use a free video maker to create videos for different marketing goals and social media channels.
If you need to convert speech or audio into written text, you can hire transcription services – it’s an affordable and quick way to complete these tasks professionally without spending hours going through the material and doing it yourself.
There are agencies like SLG that offer measurable marketing solutions, so you know exactly what activities lead to sales and which aren’t. A great marketing agency can help you grow quickly by improving your customer acquisition and retention techniques.
Web and mobile app development
The average person spends a whole day a week online, and with the Coronavirus pandemic, this is ever-increasing.
As a result, the internet is now the biggest and most competitive marketplace in the world. Your website is effectively your marketing and sales teams all rolled into one – it needs to actively sell your business.
It’s become increasingly common for small businesses to build mobile apps that offer their customers convenience. Mobile applications are a great way to increase the connections you have with your customers, which leads to an increase in sales.
Take your time when choosing the right team to help you. Read this guide on how to choose a web development company that will produce results.
IT support
If your business relies on the internet to generate income, either through direct sales or bookings, then it makes sense to outsource IT support. I highly recommend https://mactribe.co.uk/small-business-it-support-london/ – an agency with more than a decade of small business IT support experience. They offer customised automation on web and mobile apps, regular security updates, and much more.
Aside from this, many other IT support companies are experts in various information security frameworks, including the ISO 27001 certification. They can help you to improve your business’s information security operations. However, knowing the ISO 27001 certification cost is necessary when starting your journey to becoming certified. The cost may include everything, including implementation and certification, to ensure your business is protected amid heightened cyber security threats.
2. Automate your customer service
Customer relationships, customer happiness, customer support, customer satisfaction – however you want to call it – it is huge business! Automating tasks can save time and money, both of which are essential for small businesses.
61% of US Millennials will happily pay more for products and services with better customer service.
Building customer relationships means really listening to what they need and making every effort to satisfy those needs.
Investing in customer relationships now means reaping the benefits of loyal repeat customers later.
Here are some ways you can achieve this:
• Answer frequently asked questions (FAQ) and offer live chat for immediate problem-solving. Customers will always have questions about how things work or why it isn’t performing well. The last thing they want to do is wait around for you to answer. Outsourced customer services providers can lead to faster response times and reduce staff hiring needs, freeing up precious resources for core competencies and strategic initiatives. Furthermore, outsourcing vendors often come from areas with lower labour costs which translates to significant cost savings for businesses.
• Consider a 100% money-back guarantee. Offering a money-back guarantee makes it easier to shop online. Offering refunds will show your customers their satisfaction more than profits.
It will definitely increase your online sales.
• Offer extras for loyal customers. It costs three times more to get a new customer than to sell something to an existing customer. Invest in a loyalty program to help retain existing customers.
• Use management software. If you are a mechanical engineer working with cars, using a garage management software to automate your customer service can significantly improve your efficiency, reduce errors and increase customer satisfaction by providing instant and accurate information about their orders, repairs, and appointments.
3. Do smarter, more innovative marketing than your competitors
Apart from standard marketing like PPC, SEO, email, and social media marketing, what else can you do to stand out?
Here are seven tips to increase your small business’s growth:
• Be a guest on popular webinars and podcasts in your niche. This is the easiest way to get in front of a large and targeted audience quickly. And they are a great way to improve business sales. Teach something related to your product or service and then include an irresistible offer at the end. This is also a great way to collect email addresses to boost your mailing list.
• Partner with other non-competing organisations. A strategic partnership could really boost your business. Find another company that’s complementary to yours and work together to increase your customer base.
• Explore passive income streams. Passive income will help supplement your small business’s cash flow during lean times. Examples include affiliate marketing, selling digital products like eBooks, renting out a space in your premises, and more.
4. Focus on scalability
Small businesses require large investments to be pumped in various resources to expand. However, few businesses invest so heavily that they do not have sufficient financial resources to deal with unanticipated challenges or are unable to generate consistent profits.
For the business to be scalable, it must increase its revenues without raising its operational expenditures.
You can do this with the help of several approaches to achieving scalability, including forming the right relationships with your customers and suppliers, investing in the right technology, outsourcing intelligently, or hiring qualified human resources.
As a business owner, the relationships you have with customers and suppliers will significantly influence the scalability of your business. A Salesforce development company can help you automate processes and improve communication with customers, ultimately leading to higher sales and better relationships.
Additionally, outsourcing non-essential tasks to experts can free up time and resources for you to focus on your core competencies and increase profitability. Finally, hiring talented individuals who are passionate about their roles and can add value to your company will set you up for success in the long run.
5. Take calculated risks
The bigger the risk, the greater the gain. It’s hard to think of growth without taking some risks.
Taking a calculated risk will never completely remove the likelihood of bad consequences, but it will help you balance a degree of risk with the plausible probability of profit.
You may quantify risks for your business by doing risk analysis and analyzing measures to reduce potential hazards and then making choices accordingly. This will assist your business in properly managing risk and enable it to earn larger profits by capitalizing on great opportunities in the future.
Summary
Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, but to survive they need to constantly improve their services and products.
The key to growing your small business is to continually look for new growth prospects and experiment.
By following these simple tips above you’re bound to offer more value to your customers which will result in better word-of-mouth marketing, increased customer satisfaction, and ultimately higher revenue for your business.
