Every entrepreneur is trying to grow their business, but it’s hard to rise to the top when every competing company has the same idea. In theory, business growth sounds simple, but the reality is much harder.
You might be passionate, but so are other entrepreneurs in your respective marketplace. And it’s so difficult to expand your company in a way that can be sustained on a long-term basis.
What could you do to stimulate meaningful business growth? In this article, we’re going to try to answer that question with five key ideas.
Put a stop to wasteful spending
First of all, you need to put a stop to wasteful spending. You might be impeding your company’s ability to grow meaningfully by investing your profits badly. So many businesses have scarce funding available for investment because they spend their money on unnecessary things.
For example, you could reduce your monthly electricity bills by insulating windows and walls in the office. This would trap heat and reduce energy consumption. You could also stop using paper and go digital. That’s a necessity in the modern age, but it’ll also save you a lot of money. If you put a stop to wasteful spending then you’ll have more money available for important investments. This takes us to the next point.
Make some smarter investments
Of course, reducing wasteful spending is a good way to grow your business, but that’s only possible if you start putting your available funds towards better investments. For instance, you might want to increase your daily output, so you’ll need a bigger team in order to achieve that.
However, instead of hiring an entire department of full-time workers, you could outsource certain tasks and operations. That way, your business will expand its output in the same way but at a cheaper cost. This is the key to making smarter investments. You have to think about the most cost-effective way of achieving your goals.
This was the main point being made in the paragraph above. Many companies waste money unnecessarily. You could make your money go further by investing it in more direct and profitable ways. With every aspect of your operations, think about the goal for growth and find the cheapest way to achieve it without compromising on quality.
That being said, you shouldn’t compromise on the quality of your services. As discussed in the previous point, you should cut back on spending at the expense of your company’s reputation and overall brand image.
You need to maintain a certain level of professionalism and offer decent value for money to each of your customers. If you’re struggling to find the money to make the investments you need (even after cutting back costs and searching for the most cost-effective options) then you might want to look at short term business loans.
Many businesses, both large and small, need small injections of money from time to time. It could be the boost you need to expand your company. In turn, you’ll increase profits and have the funding necessary to repay your debts.
You need to be bold and brave enough to take risks by spending your money if you want to expand your company. By taking the “safe route” and avoiding investments, you’re actually risking your business’ long-term profitability because you’ll be left in the dust by the competition.
Work on your brand image
A business also needs a strong brand image if it’s going to grow. Think about a message you could put out there in order to connect with the market. For instance, tying into the earlier point about reducing wasteful spending, you could go green to improve your business’ brand image. Not only will you save money by adopting more sustainable operations but you’ll also make a good impression on the target market.
The modern consumer cares about the planet, and they want to purchase goods and services from businesses that show an equal level of care for the environment. You could really stand out from other companies in this way. The point is that a unique brand doesn’t always need a revolutionary selling point.
Your USP could simply be that you’re the most eco-friendly business in the industry. Working on your brand image is all about focusing on the consumer. How are you going to connect with the target market? How are you going to relate to intended customers in a way that your rivals haven’t?
Create a passionate working environment
As discussed in the previous point, there has to be depth to your brand. You can’t fake passion and expect your customers not to notice.
A glitzy brand image can only get you so far. This definitely applies to your employees. You need a dedicated and motivated team if you want to stimulate meaningful business growth.
Your company can’t get anywhere without passionate workers. Not only will your productivity fail but your customer service will be uninspiring.
Your clients want to deal with professional and engaging employees. But what can you do to inspire your workers? Well, for starters, you could incentivise them to approach their work with passion by giving them bonuses and other rewards for doing so. That’ll show people how much you value them. It’ll give them a reason to do more than the bare minimum.
Of course, you can go beyond simply awarding the employee of the month. After all, you can only reward a certain number of workers; if you give rewards to everyone then they’ll lose their incentive to work hard again. You need to find other ways to maintain a passionate and exciting working environment. Improve the design of the office, for example.
Give workers ergonomic keyboards and chairs. Repaint the walls of the office with a fresh coat of white paint to create a modern and minimalistic aesthetic. This will also reflect light to create a brighter workplace. Maybe you should also put a ping pong table in the breakroom so that your employees have something fun to do during their lunch breaks. Give the office some life if you want to give your team some life.
Make your brand really shine online
If you’re going to stimulate meaningful business growth then you need to do so online. It’s 2019, and digital marketing is one of the most powerful and effective ways to expand a company. Even solo entrepreneurs can make a big name for themselves in the modern age; with great web content, small businesses can rise to the heights of large corporations.
It’s all about the right campaign and the right branding. SEO might be an overused term, but it plays a big part in making your brand really shine online. You need to be targeting people on search engines because that’s how you’ll reach your intended customers. When people search for things, they do so with intent. They’re browsing to find a specific good, service, or information.
You need to make sure your website shows up at the top of search engines because people aren’t going to scroll through endless pages to weigh up all the different results. And if you can climb to the top of search engines such as Google then you’re going to massively increase traffic to your website.
But you need to do more than simply pay for ad space so that your site shows up at the top of result pages. Any business can do that. You need to create engaging content. Otherwise, you’ll increase web traffic but fail to stimulate meaningful business growth because visitors will quickly leave your site.
So, how do you convert traffic into sales? Well, you need to view your website’s home page as the front window of a store. It needs to be captivating. It needs to convince people to step inside and buy something. Plaster your portfolio all over the front page. Show what you can do.
List testimonials from happy clients. Offer cheap deals or even free trials to first-time customers. You need to encourage your target market to give your business a chance. Once you do, your reputation will start to grow. In turn, your client base will start to grow.
You should also check out some of our digital resources. Packed with reports, webinars and marketing automation solutions they will help you navigate the digital marketing jungle.
