Want to know how to expand your small business? Follow these useful business growth strategies!
Andrea launched her health and wellness media platform two and a half years ago. Although it was a struggle to grow the business at the beginning, the platform now attracts more than 5 million readers per month and is a leading online publication for wellness, nutrition, and exercise.
Yes, that’s an amazing story, but how did she grow her business in such a short period of time? Well, it turns out that conducting research, maintaining good company culture, and investing in management systems have been key factors in her small business’ success.
If you’re an enthusiastic entrepreneur like Andrea and are wondering how to grow your business fast, here are the top business growth strategies that will take your business to the next level quickly and efficiently.
1. Conduct Thorough Research
If you want to know how to expand your small business, start by conducting thorough research. You need to look at your resources available, all the analytics, stats, and accounting records. This will help you analyze your business and see how you were performing yesterday, how you are performing today, and make projections of how your business might do in the future.
Growing your small business requires talking to your accountants, business advisors, and lawyers. They’re experts in their respective fields and can help you make smart decisions about the future of your small business. Although it might cost you a great deal of money, having professional support can steer you in the right direction.
You also might want to research your competition. This will help you get insight into their online marketing strategy. See what type of marketing ads they have been running for the longest time and match them. See how they’re building their leads list and incorporate those strategies yourself. If it worked for the competition, it’ll work for you as well. Some great tools for researching the competition are Similar Web and AdBeat.
2. Gain Insights on Your Customers
As a small business owner who wants to know how to expand a small business, you need to gain insights into your customers. You have a website and social media pages, so now you want to see where your traffic comes from, what’s your target’s age, and what are your most popular pages on the website.
To analyze your visitors, there’s a wide range of tools you can use, such as Google Analytics. This tool can show:
- Your bounce rate
- Users over time
- Number of new users
- Users by device
- Users by country
- Page visits
- Average time on site
- How your audience is arriving at your website
3. Invest in Your Staff and Company Culture
Expanding your small business is impossible without the right people. And what are the best people drawn to? Great company culture!
Employees love working for purposeful companies who respect their employees and invest in their personal and professional development. Positive company culture will attract the best talent who will be motivated to work for you and grow with the company.
Here’s how you can build a great company culture your employees will love:
- Offer a great benefits package that includes healthcare, dental, and vision coverage.
- Give your employees flexibility (this can be remote work, part-time, or more vacation time).
- Reward accomplishments. This can be a simple “thank you” or a gift card.
- Encourage open and transparent communication. Get to know your employees and make them feel like they can trust you.
- Give your employees a sense of purpose. They need to know that they’re contributing to the greater good of society.
4. Have a Blog Page
Did you know that blogs can drive traffic to your website? Statistics tell us that 60% of businesses who have a blog page acquire more customers than businesses that don’t. For this reason, having an insightful blog page on your website that will give relevant information to your visitors is crucial to your business growth strategy.
Using a tool like Google Analytics, having an experienced SEO person on your team and a high-quality content writer can be a winner situation. You’ll produce insightful content on relevant topics and over time, your blog will establish a reputable online presence.
If you want to successfully expand your small business, this is what you should be mindful of:
- Be unique. Make sure your content is 100% original if you want to establish yourself as a reputable website.
- Spice up your blog posts with relevant stock photos.
- Select the best plugins for your blog. They can add additional functionality to your blog.
- If you want to receive feedback and directly engage with your readers, set up a comments section.
- Share your content on social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.
- Publish one blog at least once a week so you can build your audience.
5. Don’t Forget the Importance of Annual Strategic Planning
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” – Alan Lakein
Annual strategic planning is one of the most crucial business growth strategies. If you want to know how to expand a small business, the answer is: don’t forget the importance of annual strategic planning.
The goal of the annual plan is to keep your team aligned about the priorities. Once you complete those priorities, the company will be able to move forward to its 3-5 year targets.
A great annual strategic planning involves:
- Identifying the purpose, mission, and core values of your business.
- Analyzing past results to develop a context for future annual priorities.
- Talking about anticipating big challenges and spotting important trends.
- Debating and agreeing on the details. Make sure that the most relevant people are involved in the debate.
- Putting in place a system to measure and monitor your progress to enhance the impact of the planning process.
6. Time to Expand Your Small Business
Expanding your small business requires effort, dedication, strategic planning, and creative thinking. Although there’s no recipe for success, following these business growth strategies can dramatically transform your business and convert your company into a reputable place to work and buy services.
Yes, growing your small business is scary. You can decide to stick with the status quo and not take the risk, but at the end of the day, you know you’re ready for this. Just like Andrea and her platform, your company will soon become another successful business story for future generations.
