By Ashley Wilson

Scaling a business is hard work. It forces you to think outside of the box at every opportunity, take risks, and explore new strategies you never considered before. On top of that, you need to attract as many customers and as much revenue as possible.

However, the more your organization grows, the easiest it is to accomplish your goals. If you’ve decided that it’s time to reach more customers and earn more cash, there are various steps you can take to kick-start your company’s growth.

Here are some of the top tips we recommend helping you get started.

Research (and outshine) the competition

The last thing any business wants to do is copy/paste what their competitors are doing. Any effective entrepreneur will tell you that a unique strategy is often the key to success. However, when you’re trying to get your offer out to as many customers as possible, it can help to look at what your competition is doing.

Examining the competitors in your field will give you an insight into the strategies that are working for them. At the same time, it will also give you a chance to pinpoint areas where your competition isn’t doing very well. Those are your chances to jump in and fill the gaps. You might find that you can serve customers that your competition hasn’t thought of before. Maybe you can deliver a better customer service that makes your brand stand out.

An insight into the competition makes it easier to define what your business purpose will be, and how you will set yourself apart from the crowd.

Build your sales funnel

Another way to accelerate your company’s growth is to develop an effective sales funnel. If you don’t have a sales funnel, then you don’t know how to track your customer’s progress from the point when they learn about your audience to the time when they’re ready to make a purchase.

Evaluating and building a successful sales funnel will help you scale and grow more rapidly by ensuring that you can recognize the best opportunities for earning sales. You can even use sales funnels to automate parts of your business. For instance, you can set up email marketing tools that instantly send a message to your customers whenever they buy something from you to put their minds at ease and increase their chances of a future purchase.

One of the most important things you will need for a sales funnel is an effective set of buyer personas. Personas are representations of your ideal target audience that you can use to guide the decisions you make for your company. Do your research into the kind of customer you want to reach, then build a funnel based on what you know about those clients.

Create a customer loyalty program

Speaking of making the most out of your customer knowledge, your main aim as a growing business should always be to cultivate happy and satisfied clients. If you do this correctly by providing amazing products and fantastic customer service, you could eventually convince some of your buyers to become loyal advocates for your brand.

Remember, it costs anywhere up to three times more money to acquire a new client than it does to sell to existing customers. A loyalty program that allows your customers to sign up for discounts on follow-up purchases or be the first to know about sales can keep your clients coming back for more for years to come.

To increase your chances of a successful loyalty program, think about how you can gather insights on what your audience needs from your brand. A CRM system where you can track the satisfaction levels of clients might be a helpful investment. Perhaps you could place a review section on your website and encourage customers to give their feedback. Listening to your customers will help you grow a business that’s driven by happy clients.

Collect as much data as possible

Information is critical in the world of business growth. The more data you collect, the more you know which keywords you’re ranking for on the search engines, which strategies are giving you the best return on investment, and which customers are best for your bottom line.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you increase the amount of information that you have access too. Everything from CMS systems for your content marketing, to accounting tools that help you to keep track of your finances as your company grows, can be essential to your success.

Don’t forget to manage all your company’s assets and inventory too. Knowing when you’re about to run out of a best-selling item could stop you from losing potential customers and loyal clients because you didn’t restock fast enough.

Also, having a clear overview of your assets will help you allocate your resources more efficiently and reduce waste – be it of time, money, or human resources.

Identify and leverage new opportunities

Growth in a small business will always depend on your ability to identify the right opportunities and take advantage of them. When analyzing your competition, there’s a chance you’ll spot a market that they’re not serving – that’s a chance for you to reach customers that no-one else is targeting.

When you’re selling your products online, you may decide that aside from selling through your own website, you also want to set up transaction opportunities through social media or work with marketplaces like Amazon.

The key to success for most small business owners is knowing how to separate the chances to earn more money and a better reputation from the things that are going to stop an organization from coming out on top.

Ready to grow?

Growing a business is complicated, but it’s well worth the effort if you dedicate the right amount of time to it. The five tips above will help you get your company growing in no time!

—

Ashley Wilson is a content creator, writing about business and tech. She has been known to reference movies in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.