You have either just started your small business, or you have been at it for a while now. Congratulations!!! You make up the hard working class that drives local economy. The struggle that many small business owners have is growing their business. Getting your small business to a medium or large business is no small feat. This post discusses some key strategies that you as a small business owner can employ to grow your business today.
To break this post down here are the following topics that will be discussed.
- Utilize a customer relationship manager
- Understand you competition
- Create a loyalty program
- Start a referral incentive program
- Identify new opportunities
- Form strategic partnerships
- Leverage social platforms
- Invest in SEO
- Build a website
- Start a pay-per-click campaign
Let’s dive on in!
Utilize a customer relationship manager
One of the best tools that you can use to help grow your small business is a customer relationship manager, or CRM. A CRM allows you to keep track of all of your customers and their interactions with your company. This includes everything from contact information, purchase history, and even notes about each customer. Having this information at your fingertips makes it much easier to target those customers that are most likely to buy from you again, as well as identify opportunities for upsells and cross-sells. This information can also be used to help your sales team close deals with new customers, as it allows them to quickly assess a potential customer’s needs and identify where they are in the buying process.
If you don’t have a CRM yet, start by looking at some of the options available online. Many of these tools offer free trials that allow you to test out their features before committing long-term. Once you’ve chosen one that works for your small business, make sure all employees who interact with customers understand how to use it and what types of information should be inputted after each transaction or lead generation opportunity!
Understand you competition
In order to successfully grow your small business, it’s important that you understand who your competition is and what they are doing. This doesn’t mean just knowing the names of the other businesses in town, but also understanding their business model, what services or products they offer, and how they are priced.
Once you have a good understanding of your competition, you can start to develop strategies that will help you stand out from the crowd. This may include offering unique services or products that your competition doesn’t offer, pricing your products differently, or targeting a different demographic than your competitors. It’s important to note that you don’t have to do everything different than your competition; rather find the areas where you can be most successful and focus on those.
Creating a loyalty program
One way to keep customers coming back to your small business is by implementing a loyalty program. A loyalty program rewards customers for spending money with your company. This could be in the form of points, discounts, or special offers. The key is to make the rewards valuable enough that customers want to participate, but not so valuable that it’s too expensive for your business to offer.
Start by developing a program that works for your small business. Decide what type of rewards you would like to offer and how customers will earn them. Then create signage and marketing materials to promote the program. You can also add a section about your loyalty program to your website or include it in email newsletters. Be sure to remind customers about it regularly, as they may not remember to use it if they don’t see reminders often!
Referral incentive program
Another great way to grow your small business is by implementing a referral incentive program. This type of program rewards customers for referring your business to their friends and family members. The incentive could be a percentage off the customer’s next purchase, or free shipping on an order over a certain amount. You can also offer something like gift cards as incentives for referrals!
To implement this type of promotion in your small business, you’ll need to decide what kind of reward will work best with your budget and marketing strategy first before promoting it publicly through email newsletters or social media posts (if applicable). Then create signage and marketing materials that encourage people to share about the referral incentive program so they know how much money they could save by sharing with others!
Identify new opportunities
If you want to grow your small business, one of the best ways to do so is by looking for new opportunities. This could be in the form of a new product or service that your customers are interested in, but you don’t currently offer it yet – or perhaps there’s another market segment out there where people might need what you have!
To identify these types of opportunities, start by asking yourself questions like: “What do my current customers want? What else could be done with this product/service?” Once you’ve answered those questions then follow up on any ideas that come from them immediately because if someone else beats us to it first (and does well), we’ll miss out big time!”
Get involved with local events and organizations
One way small businesses can increase their visibility is by getting involved with local events and organizations. This type of strategy works well because it allows companies to build relationships with community members while also promoting themselves at the same time!
Local events can include anything from conventions or trade shows, farmer’s markets, festivals or fairs – even sporting events like marathons where people are looking for sponsorships (and maybe some free stuff too). The key here is finding something that aligns well with your company’s mission statement so they feel confident in supporting whatever cause might be represented during this event/organization.”
Form strategic partnerships
Forming strategic partnerships is another great way to grow your small business. This could involve working with other businesses in your area, or partnering with a larger company that has a similar customer base. By collaborating with others, you can pool resources and create marketing campaigns or special offers that are more likely to reach new customers.
When looking for potential partners, start by thinking about who would be the best fit for your small business – what do they have to offer that you don’t? And vice versa. Once you’ve identified some possible candidates, reach out and see if they’re interested in forming a partnership! You never know unless you ask!”
Leverage social platforms
Social platforms are a great way for small businesses to connect with their customers and build brand awareness. Leveraging these channels can help you grow your business by increasing engagement, generating leads, and building relationships! But before we get into all that let’s first talk about some of the pros cons associated using social media as part of an overall marketing strategy:
Pros: A platform like Facebook offers instant access to millions of potential customers who could share your content or even become paying clients themselves if they’re impressed enough by what they see on there (and trust us when we say this happens more often than not)!
Cons: You’ll need time/money invested in managing each platform separately which may be challenging depending on how many other tasks already demand attention during
Invest in SEO
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a long-term marketing strategy that can have a big impact on how your website performs online. By optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can improve your visibility in results pages which could lead to more traffic and conversions.
Although SEO takes time to see results (generally around six months), the payoff can be worth it if done correctly! Here are some tips for small businesses looking to invest in SEO:
Make sure all of your website’s content is high quality and relevant to what you offer as a business – including blog posts, product descriptions, etc.
Optimize your titles and meta descriptions so they accurately reflect what people will find when they click through from a search result listing (Hint: Try using the Yoast SEO plugin if you’re on WordPress).
Be sure that all images or videos used throughout your website have alt text attached so they can be read by search engine crawlers. You could also include captions below any media files to further increase their usability.”
These are just a few ways small businesses can grow their business using SEO. If you’re interested in learning more about how to optimize your website, check out our website championmarketingsolutions.com.
Build a website
Build a website for your small business if you don’t already have one. It’s an important step to take because this is where customers will come looking when they want more information or need help finding what they’re looking for on your site. A website will offer them everything from contact details and directions through reviews, pricing information about products/services offered by the company.
Start a pay-per-click campaign
Paid advertising is another great way for small businesses to reach new customers. A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, is where you pay a search engine like Google to place your ad at the top of results pages. When someone searches for keywords related to what you offer as a business, your ad will show up and they can click through to learn more about what you have to offer.
Although setting up a PPC campaign takes some time and effort, it can be very effective in reaching new customers who are already interested in what you have to offer! “
In Conclusion
These are just a few of the many strategies small businesses can use to grow their business. If you’re not sure where to start, don’t worry – we’re here to help! Contact us today and let’s discuss what marketing strategy would be the best fit for your business. Please post in the comments what you plan to do this following year to grow your small business.