This article is contributed by Jason Dirkham.
Business owners can spend a long time trying to make their business profitable and sustainable, yet often overlook a crucial detail: that there are different degrees of success. Just because a company is turning a profit, that doesn’t mean that they should sit back and enjoy what they’ve achieved. Instead, they should aim higher, and try to take their success to the next level. Jeff Bezos didn’t sit back once he had made Amazon a profitable book business; he looked for ways to expand and improve. Below, we take a look at fifteen actions for growing your business, and cementing your success.
Hone In On Your Target Customer
You may have targeted anyone and everyone in the early days of your business, but after a while, you’ll likely begin to develop an idea about the kinds of people who are interested in your business. They might fit a particular demographic, or income, of lifestyle, or anything else. Once you have this information, you can begin incorporating it into your business, such as into your marketing materials, the products you sell, the language you use, and so on.
Update Your Look
You were learning as you were going along during the early days of your business. What you thought looked good design ways back then may seem slightly amateurish now. By updating your look, you’ll be boosting the professionalism and sophistication of your business. Customers are drawn to things that look good; it gives a company instant credibility, and drives your price perception in the right direction. You don’t necessarily need to overhaul your entire look — just refine and tie up any loose aspects.
Make Payments More Straightforward
How much profit might you be missing out on just because you have an over complicated payment process? This is more of an issue for online business, but does affect regular brick and mortar stores too. In the online world, much revenue is lost because of “shopping cart abandonment,” which is when a customer decides to buy something, but then changes their mind between that decision and clicking the pay button. In the real world, it could be because of limited payment options (not accepting certain cards for example) or long waiting times. Take a look at your payment processes, and make sure that there’s nothing about them that might make a purchase fall through at the last minute.
Online Space
You most likely created a website when you first set up your business, but is it as useful for your business as it should be? Some business owners make fundamental errors when it comes to their online space. You can’t build a website without SEO experience, for example, because otherwise it won’t be indexed correctly by Google and other search engines. The fewer the number of people who are pointed towards your website, the fewer the opportunities you’ll have to sell your products — it’s that simple. A well-designed, fast-loading, SEO-friendly website can make all the difference to a business, so make sure you’re putting enough energy and resources into making sure your site is watertight on all these fronts.
Social Media Channels
Your website is only going to be the beginning of your online presence. While you’d like to think that everyone is going to visit your website, the truth is that you’ll only grab a small portion of the people who search for the products or services that you provide. As such, you’ll need to make yourself as visible across the web as you can, and on social media channels in particular. If you’re active on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, to name but three websites, you may find that you’re able to appeal to people who weren’t actively interested in your business but who, over time, develop an interest.
Automate Repeat Processes
Think about how much you could achieve if you could only have more time. Running a business sure does keep you busy! But perhaps there is a way to free up some time, so that you’re able to dedicate time to other areas of your business. There are plenty of software tools that you can incorporate into your business that’ll help you to streamline your more time-consuming tasks, such as keeping tabs on your cash-flow, making orders, and following up with your customers after they’ve made a purchase.
Outsource Complex Jobs
It makes sense to automate the time-consuming but straightforward tasks, but what about the time-consuming but complicated tasks? Those ones are too complex to be automated, yet positively need to be handled — we’re talking about things like your accounting, legal matters, marketing, and so on. These tasks eat up your time, yet in some cases don’t even push your company forward; they just make sure that everything is “ticking along.” It’s best to outsource those tasks to a third-party company. They’ll be affordable, will free up a lot of your time, and, crucially, they’ll do a better job of the task than you would, since they’re much more experienced.
Connect With Other Companies
Everything is easier when we work together. Always keep in mind that humans benefit much more from cooperation than they do competition! And that’s as true for business as it is for anything else. Now, of course, you’re not going to do away with competition altogether — it’s the nature of the great game that you’re apart of. However, you probably do have more opportunities to cooperate than you realise. Have a think about businesses who would complement what your company offers, and see if they want to collaborate. It’ll be a win-win for both companies, who will be able to offer new products and services, and also gain access to another bank of customers.
Attend Trade Shows
And following on from that idea, are you attending trade shows? They’re a fantastic way to grow your business. They’ll help to spread the word about your business and get people interested, of course, but one of the most powerful aspects of trade shows is less direct: it shows you what is possible. You’ll see companies operating on a level above you, companies who are more experienced, innovative, and stronger than you are. This should not be intimidating — well, it can be, but if you change how you view it, you can use as a source of inspiration, as a loose pathway to create bigger and better things.
Continue Learning
Time might be at a premium, but it’s important that you carry on learning, if for no other reason than the more you know, the better you’ll be able to manage and direct your business. What they say is true: knowledge really is power! No-one has all the knowledge they need to develop a grade-A business, and part of what makes the most famous entrepreneurs so successful is their willingness to remain open-minded about possibilities. Don’t think you have everything figured out — you don’t! Read books, be open to criticism, and take on board the suggestions of others, it might just be a game-changing piece of information.
Repeat Business
Some companies religiously try to seek out new customers, but this is a mistake. While you will, of course, want to bring new people on board, the more sensible approach is to make your existing customers use your business more. It costs a lot less more – and is all-around easier – to market to people who you already know are interested in your business. If you don’t currently have marketing to your existing customers as part of your marketing strategy, then now’s the time to start.
What Are Your Competitors Doing?
You’re just one fish in a sea of fish. Aren’t you curious about what those other fish are doing? While you don’t want to be obsessed with your competitors – you should always be doing your own thing – and you positively shouldn’t blindly follow their lead, you can get a lot of useful information (about your own company and how to proceed) by studying their strategies. In so doing, you’ll gain a better understanding of your companies strengths and weaknesses — you don’t need to think very hard to figure out how this information could be useful!
Get Smart About Your Quiet Periods
As much as you’d like it to be otherwise, you’re not going to be selling your products and services like hot cakes at all periods of the year. You’re going to have dips where business is a little slower than usual, or slower than you’d like. While you might be caught blindsided by the quiet period in the first year, you should be ready for it come your second year. When you’re entering the time of year when things are slow, run promotions and other campaigns to boost business. You’ll hopefully have factored the reduced revenue into your projections, so anything that you make will be a bonus.
It’s a cliche to say that the sky’s the limit when it comes to your business, but it’s also true. So long as you refuse to settle and continue to move forward, you’ll never know where your business could take you!
This article is contributed by Jason Dirkham.
