For small businesses, growth is essential. If your business has hit a growth slump, it might be time to shake a few things up. We looked at all areas of the business and found 10 simple, inexpensive, and effective changes that can help grow your business.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
One thing you might not be doing but you really should be is SEO. Search Engine Optimization is key to getting traffic to your website. If you use SEO properly, your pages will rank higher on the search engine results, making it easier for prospective clients to find you. To expand your reach, lay your pages out in a way that search engines can understand. Add your long-tail keyword (a phrase that captures what your page or article is about) to the title and the content. Write about what is important to your clients and think about the problems they are trying to solve. All of this will help you with your SEO. You can also add alt tags to your images. Search Engines cannot read an image, so if you add an alt tag to it to help the search engine out, it will help.
There are many tips to helping your SEO, but search engines evolve quickly, so make sure the tips and tricks you are using are still relevant.
- Process & Automation
If your small business is struggling to grow, updating in the areas of process and automation can have a real impact on your bottom line. Updating processes can create efficiencies that were not there before. This could mean huge change in your business. Setting up automation isn’t as hard as it might sound. Automation helps your business scale and therefore, grow. You can automate invoicing, workflows, payments, and more.
- Target Audience
I’m sure you have a target audience, but is it the right target audience? Are those individuals buying from you? Updating your target audience can help you create a tighter buyer persona. If you take a look at who is buying and compare that to who you are trying to sell to, you might find there are discrepancies. So what should you do? Try to better define your ideal customers by creating buyer personas including their typical attributes and the problems they are trying to solve with your product. Once you have this nailed down, you can better sell to them.
- Technology
Updating technology can create huge changes in your business. If you are working with outdated tech, you could be sucking the efficiency right out of your business. Are your employees able to easily work with their tech without issue? If not, they can become frustrated and less productive. You may also find this helps you to create new processes and automation opportunities.
Learn More: Small Business IT Support.
- Networking
You may think at this point in your career, you are done with the networking stage. That can’t be true because you should never be done networking. Get your face out there in your business community and meet people who can become a resource for you and you for them. Building these relationships can be a great source of new business. The more visibility you have, the more often people will keep you top of mind. Referrals can be a powerful way to grow your business and networking will help with that.
- Customer Service
All small businesses should have a special emphasis on customer service. It’s part of the reason people are attracted to small businesses in the first place. Customers feel like more than just a number. In this instance, I am referring to more than just the way you and your employees communicate with customers, I am talking about the little extras. Small things can make a huge difference for your customers. This might mean a hand written thank you letter, waving a fee just because, or following up to make sure they are happy.
- Keep an eye on the competition
It’s easier than ever to stay up-to-date on what your competitors are doing. A quick Google search and you can know how the market, what specials they are running, and who their newest employee is. Keeping an eye on your competitors ensures that you won’t lag behind and miss a big opportunity.
- Gain insights from existing clients
Your existing clients know better than anyone what you could stand to improve on. They have an experience of your business that is uniquely different than yours. Meet with them over coffee to talk about how their experience was and in what ways you could improve. Listen to their criticism and think of ways to better the experience for future clients. Learning from your clients This short meeting could have a huge impact on your growth.
- Attract Top Talent
A great way to keep your business growing is to add talented employees who want to be a part of your organization and its future. These creative, hardworking, self-starters are the kind of people who see the change and take it upon themselves to make it happen. They are worth the top dollar they demand and will help your company grow much more than 2 or 3 mediocre employees. There are several ways to attract the top talent in your industry including job perks and culture.
- Reevaluate your strategy
As the leader of a small business, you surely have a long term strategy and goals that align with it. Take a look at this strategy, especially if you made it more than 12 months ago. You may need to update the goals you have for your business and the way you plan to get there. Reevaluating your strategy does not mean you have failed, it means you realize being agile is as important as being determined.
