Essentially, devoting valuable time, money, and effort to growing your company is the only way to ensure long-term survival in the competitive and cutthroat world of business.
Here are eight tips to maximize your business’s time, money, and overall growth.
1. Pay Attention to Your Existing Customers
The first thing non-business professionals would suggest when asked how best to encourage growth within a business would be to expand your customer base as much and as quickly as possible. False economy springs to mind here, and it makes far more sense to focus on the customers you already have. It’s far more effective to retain your existing customers than it is to try and acquire new ones.
There are a plethora of ways to improve your customer experience, such as becoming significantly more active and interactive on social media and implementing a genuinely rewarding and exciting customer loyalty program.
2. Engage in Thorough Research of Your Competitors
Not only is it incredibly beneficial, but one would also argue, almost necessary, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of your market and your competitors, to attend a networking event.
The benefits of attending a networking event are astounding and, if possible, it would be even more advantageous to hold such an event on your own business premises. This will not only provide your business with much-needed exposure but will also establish your company as a market leader within your specific industry.
One of the main advantages of hosting the networking event is it will afford the opportunity to choose the ‘guest list’, manipulating the types of attendees by choosing companies that are most likely to help grow your own. It is vital when hosting your own business networking event to maintain a good group dynamic and to ensure there are no gaps in the flow of the evening.
3. Outsource Your Telephone Answering Service
Every experienced business professional thoroughly understands that managing their own and their employees’ time correctly leads to a greater level of efficiency and subsequently a higher level of profitability which naturally leads to expansion.
It is, therefore, logical to outsource such elements as your call answering service to a professional and established telephone answering service company. Such a decision will transform your customer relations and significantly improve your new and existing customers’ level of satisfaction and overall experience when questions or issues arise regarding your services. Outsourcing your call answering services means that your business can provide after-hours service, phone calls are handled more efficiently, and it is far easier for your customers to arrange appointments with your employees.
4. Utilize Your Social Media Platforms to Maximum Potential
Social media platforms are fast becoming the most effective way for businesses to expand their customer base and to promote and cement their brand name, logo, and accompanying slogans.
Utilizing your social media platforms to their maximum potential means creating regular, consistent, entertaining, and engaging content that reflects the tone, style, and, most importantly, the products or services your business provides. This also includes boosting your search engine optimization, and your social media posts that receive comments and ‘likes’, for example, will ensure your social media appears higher in searches relating to your business. Social media is also a fantastic and exceedingly affordable means of improving public relations.
5. Be Constructively Critical to Your Employees
Obviously and, unbelievably importantly, good business management is about identifying problems and issues ideally before they arise or at least before they escalate. Nipping such issues in the proverbial bud will save your business valuable time, money, and effort and essentially increase your efficiency and subsequent profitability.
One of the most effective tools good managers can employ is the art of appreciation to their employees, as appreciation costs nothing but makes a supreme difference in employee motivation and productivity. It is important to continually strive to improve and expand your business management skills, one of the most effective ways is attending a business manager’s weekend or management course.
6. Promote Your Business in Online Industry-Specific Directories
In the same way that potential and existing customers ‘google’ their needs, studies show that a growing number of people are using online, locally specific industry directories to source their products and services required. Essentially, online directories are an internet-based, modern version of the yellow pages and list businesses under type and service. Fortunately, there is a plethora of online directories that offer listings for free, which clearly means there is simply no reason not to pursue this suggestion.
7. Business Sales Funnels
A business sales funnel is essentially a method of converting potential customers into actual paying customers and is most applicable to online businesses.
There are four essential stages of any business sales funnel, regardless of industry.
- Knowledge
- Curiosity
- Choice
- Action
Every time a potential customer accepts each stage, they are naturally moving closer and closer to becoming a paying one.
During the ‘Knowledge’ stage, the potential customer becomes aware of your business from an internet search they conducted pertaining to the products or services you provide. Next, attracted by enticing and informative online content, they start looking into your business more thoroughly, half out of curiosity and half out of a desire to fulfill their needs.
Thirdly, enticing sales offers to new customers come into play, as well as email and telephone communication where appropriate, all with the goal of the potential customer deciding you are the one for the job. If you have managed to coax a potential customer through your business sales funnel to the fourth and final stage of ‘action’, they are more than likely about to make a purchase, and you may well have just gained a new customer.
8. Be Authentic!
The importance of authenticity as a business manager can never and should never be underestimated, and this authenticity applies to your dealings with your employees and customers alike. Authenticity ensures your products and services are elevated above your competitors, relatable to customers, and, most importantly, portrays your business as a trustworthy and reliable one.
