Do you know in America each month 543,000 new businesses are created and most of them can’t survive? A recent study shows that within 2 years 7 out of 10 new companies or business shut down. I guess if I am not wrong you are reading this article or came here either you have started your business or thinking to launch your business in a competitive marketplace. But don’t worry there is very little difference between successful and unsuccessful companies. In this article, we will discuss how you can grow your small business like an expert. Your business can be from any niche.
7 Ways to Grow Your Small Business
Research your competitor:
Before doing any business you need to do proper research. You have to do SWOT analysis which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You have control over your strength and weakness. Opportunities and threats are fully external. I recommend you give enough time in doing a SWOT analysis and if you are in a team then include them. I know analysis word made you frightened but don’t worry the following example will help you to understand it easily.
Suppose you have decided to launch a new shop in your local area. Now let’s do a quick SWOT analysis.
Strength: Location of the shop is very good where you get huge customers. You have an exclusive collection of products that your competitor does not have.
Weakness: You have no brand recognition. You have no investors by which you can make your business bigger.
Opportunities: You sell only locally and if you make an e-commerce site and advertise you will get foreign customers.
Threats: There are other peoples who have started selling the same thing close to your shop. Your loyal customers can be converted to him.
It’s important that you keep researching while you are doing business. Don’t take this lightly.
The customer wants to win:
Everybody wants to win so when a customer sees discount offers like 30% 40% off or buy one get one offer they feel that if they buy now they will save money and get more value than they spend. But the truth is no one sells products at loss. People tend to buy on various occasions like black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and on other holidays. Make your stock ready for those days and give promotional offers.
Customer satisfaction:
“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.” – Roy H. Williams, Author & founder of the Wizard Academy Institute.
You have to make sure your customers are happy with your service. You need to know what they want and give them the best solution. No matter how you are good at marketing without client satisfaction you can’t get success. Sometimes it happens that your customer is not happy or you made a mistake or gave them poor service. Its natural big brands also do mistakes but you can directly contact with the customer and refund or can give better service. You should keep in touch with your customers and get feedback from them from time to time.
Use of social media:
Make sure you have all the social accounts like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram. You need to grow your followers and use those social accounts in the right way. For example, you can use YouTube to demonstrate your service or product. You can create a FB group where all your customers can contact you and get updates about your service. Many new business owners start spamming when they find difficulty growing their followers. But in the long run, this will make a bad reputation for the growing company. If you don’t have the experience and don’t know what you are doing make sure you hire some marketing person.
Create a website and logo for your brand:
Many businesses are not online based but having a website for any business is mandatory. Make sure your website is dynamic and mobile-friendly as most of the internet users are from mobile. You need to do SEO to get organic traffic from Google. To make a logo, website and other tech-related work I suggest you get help from an expert. List your site to local and international business directory listings with your phone number and email.
Marketing in the right way: Grow Your Small Business
As your brand is new people will think twice before buying service from you. To get a brand value you need to market your brand properly. There are various ways of marketing and it’s free and paid. The free promotion will take time and I suggest you go with paid marketing. Now, most people will think I am telling about Google ads, FB ads or ads in newspaper like this. You can use these for paid marketing but some people who do the same thing differently get much more value. Nowadays all people give ads on Facebook but few do ads on TV. If you can promote your product on TV than the brand value you will get is huge. There are many companies that give you the opportunity to take your brand to millions of users. One of them is TALK BUSINESS 360 by which your company will get featured on American Airlines and Fox Business Network.
Grow Your Small Business: Sponsor events
Now as you are growing day by day you can make a good reputation on peoples mind by sponsoring an event. There are many organizations, school clubs and NGOs do many events like health awareness, road safety, blood donation, etc. You can sponsor them and for this, you will get your business featured in the event. Make sure the event reaches to mass people.
Attend trade fairs:
Don’t miss the opportunity of joining trade fairs as it brings enormous opportunities for you like you will get brand recognition, meet with other parties, new customers and can even get an investor for your business.
You need to be always positive and stay strong when you face problems. Motivational speaker Anthony Robbins said – “Every problem is a gift — without problems, we would not grow.”
Every big company like Amazon, Facebook, Samsung, Apple, and many others started from zero. Even founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma had no investor for his business in early days. But he was confident in his work and worked hard though many people couldn’t understand what he was doing. But now we all know he is our role model. You can be one of them also just believed in yourself.