Growing a small business is vital for every business owner. The difference between growing a small business or just floundering around comes down to a few different aspects.
How much planning do you do? Growing a small business needs a lot of planning, A lot of regular planning. The most successful businesses all take planning very seriously. Being able to have access to the vital metrics of your business on a regular basis is how you stay on track. What metrics to monitor is something that is different for every business. There are some core items like your P&L and a balance sheet that all businesses should keep an eye on. Others might be profit per customer, profit per employee, referral rate, complaints per customer and complaint resolution time. This is a very short list. Start figuring out what metrics will be most beneficial to your business.
Every business has finances, expenses, profit margins, money lender and what you need to do is start monitoring them very carefully. Keep track of the sales you make monthly, how many customers return to you, how many customers don’t return to you, how are customers finding your business, which advertising methods are getting you the most traffic and so on. If you keep track of all of these stats, I guarantee you will find many areas where you are underperforming and where you can maximize your approach to maximize profits.
Another Tip that brings more traffic is to search Google keyword tool for all the different keywords phrases and different combinations your customers may be searching for. Download them and paste them into the ad along with the zip codes to maximize your chances of being found. Always post your websites URL in the ad using the http. This creates an incoming link to your main website which will help increase your search engine optimization rankings. Always title your ads with your main keyword in mind.
One of the fastest ways to acquire more customers for your business is to be tracking the ways your business is successfully obtaining customers currently, and then simply do more of that.
Another good way to grow your business is to be creating a mailing list of your current customers, and then mailing to your customer list and giving them special offers or special promotions. Perhaps even give them limited time coupons or incentives for making referrals to your business.
Research has also shown that customers buy based on perceived value and not on price. So look at ways to increase the value of your products or services. A quick way to find out what kind of value you should be offering is to ask your customers. Calling them or asking them to complete a survey about your products and services will help you to find out what your customers are wanting, demanding or wishing for. This information can help you to add value, improve or develop products to keep your customers happy and buying more.
Every time you finish a job and have a satisfied customer, give them a few of your company leaflets or cards with their name written on them. Ask them to give the leaflets to people who may be interested in your service and tell them that if you receive one of the leaflets back, which subsequently results in an order, then you will pay them a commission on the first sale. Your satisfied customers who are already recommending you will go out of their way to spread the word.
How to Grow a Small Business
Once you have started your own small business, there are some ways you can grow your business larger.It is possible for your business not only to survive but to thrive in a bad economy.In fact, many of today’s largest and most successful businesses were started in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930’s. So you should have no trouble increasing the size of your small business, and hopefully also increase your profits.
There are only three ways to make more money with any business. They are number one: Get more customers. Number two: Get your customers to purchase more. Number three: Get your customers to purchase from you more frequently.The size of your small business is directly proportional to the number of customers you can acquire, and the number of goods or services you can provide.
It does no good to vastly increase the number of customers your business receives if you are unable to supply their demand. Conversely, it does no good to increase the number of goods or services you can source if your customer pool is not growing as well.Therefore, while the only way to grow your business is to get more customers, you must also grow your ability to supply those customers at the same time.
Only if you can do both things, which is to get more customers and build your supply while still maintaining a positive return on investment, will your business be able to grow.Now then, if you already have a small business or large business for that matter and have grown it to a particular level or reached a plateau and now you wish to grow your business even larger, you stand in very good stead.
Assuming your business is profitable it is a simple matter to redirect a portion of your profits into avenues that will help you to acquire more customers and to build your supply of products or services. Much of this can be done with outsourcing, and if you develop effective systems for customer acquisition and streamlining your supply chain, then simply increase profits and finance even further outsourcing, which will even further increase the size of your business.
That said, it is possible to develop a system for your business which will allow your business to continue to grow while you have to do less and less work.One of the fastest ways to acquire more customers for your business is to be tracking the ways your business is successfully obtaining customers currently, and then simply do more of that.
Another good way to grow your business is to be creating a mailing list of your current customers, and then mailing to your customer list and giving them special offers or special promotions. Perhaps even give them limited time coupons or incentives for making referrals to your business.Another way of growing your business, which is often overlooked, is to encourage your current employees to offer ideas on business growth and ways to improve your current business.
Doing this has the positive effect of generating positive morale on the part of your employees. They feel like a more important part of your business. Who knows, maybe some of their ideas will help your business to grow even faster and bigger than you could imagine.
