Developing a business into a successful business is the dream of every businessman. However, the steps to achieve that dream are often very steep, especially for small business owners. Therefore, having a guide to grow your business becomes very important.
Competition in the business world is getting tougher. How can a small business survive the big companies that are growing bigger and bigger by the day?
The presence of digital technology is one solution for small companies, especially in the form of digital marketing. With digital marketing, small businesses can reach a wider range of potential customers than ever before. Of course large companies can also take advantage of this technology. However, for small business owners, utilizing digital marketing can be the first step to building a solid business.
Here are some tips for growing your business by utilizing digital marketing.
How to Grow Your Big or Small Business in 2022
To be able to enter and survive in the market, both large and small businesses need an effective growth strategy.
This strategy will then determine how big your company’s marketing efforts should be and what marketing tools you will need.
Here are some tips that you can make part of your business growth strategy.
1. Invest in Social Media
The first way to grow your business is to Invest in Social Media. There are 3.5 billion social media users worldwide, so you can imagine the scope of potential growth. You will be surprised that marketers spent over $89 billion in 2019 alone on social media paid ads. This is how effective and relevant this alternative digital marketing channel is. On Instagram, 60% of users report that they have discovered a product on another person’s profile.
Direct relationships with influencers will help to drive sales and business. Influencer marketing is reaching 89% of marketing professionals ranking it as a comparable or better return-on-investment than other marketing streams. Social media provides great opportunities to build profitable relationships. And though organic social efforts can help kindle connections with your followers, you need to layer your social strategies with paid efforts to expand your reach even further.
Through social media, we can be listening what customers say about you or about your brand, this can also help your company customer service. This is a good thing to build your customer base and help your business success.
2. Search Engines With Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is the process of making changes to your website design and content via blog posts, landing pages, and optimization to make your site more attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your site is for search engines like Google, the more likely your site will be to rank on the first page of the search engine results for keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business or product/service offering. You must ensure that your website is developed properly, includes the proper keywords and topics, meta descriptions, header tags, and more so it has a better chance of ranking higher in search results. With SEO Brands will be visible in the places people need them for a worthy connection to be made because SEO techniques can increase the visibility and lets potential target customer find the answers, and the businesses providing those answers or information. And SEO is work to grow your business and beat your competitors.
Read also: Tips To The Success Of An Ecommerce business
3. Virtual Events
Offering virtual events can help boost your brand awareness and shows your existing customers and new target market your commitment to reach them proactively and also creating networking events to get to know more of your new customers. Especially in times like the COVID-19 pandemic when it is impossible to meet customers in public, virtual events can give your business a new lifeline. Your business gets to save expenses such as venue hire, human resources, equipment, and arrangement; your customers get to avoid the hassle of travel and save too. This event can help you to get to know more about your customers and built a relationship with them. Invite your existing customer and the general public to join this event. You can literally sit in your office chair, log on to your laptop or mobile device, put on your hands-free (a headset with microphone), and go live at your will. All major social media platforms offer “go-live” features for free for businesses like yourself to interact with your audience live. Some of the platforms you can use are:
- Facebook Live
- Instagram Live
- Zoom webinar
- Skype Webinar
- LinkedIn Live
4. Give Attention to Your Photo!
Product photography is important. It’s a huge aspect that you need to think about when trying to convince or approach people to buy or use your product or service. Online shopping is apparently growing more and more these days. In fact, it’s so important it might be the difference between making a sale and losing a lot of customers. Your site visitors will always be drawn to an image before they read the text on the page, which means you need to be sure that your images look awesome. For this, you can easily contact us for getting your images edited by our professional photo retouching services to help your business growth.
Read also: 7 Reasons to Trust Your Post Production in Third Party Hands
5. Elevate Your Company Culture
As a business owner, sending out surveys to your employee to complete anonymous surveys can provide good insight into the areas that need improvement. Also having one-on-one meetings can encourage people to talk to their leaders about any issues/concerns regarding their roles and last but not least is pairing new hires with mentors can set your employees up for success and improve the overall experience and quality of their work. You can also ask for advice from them such as effective marketing strategies for your products or services, or a way to improve the office.
6. Work Smarter, Not Harder
Working smarter is about leveraging the talents of people and collaboration. That translates to being able to produce more income with the resources you have. You likely will see a boost to team morale and fewer daily fires to put out. Time tracking and management tools can keep employees on a schedule that is built to increase efficiency and productivity, creating opportunity to be better. Of course, certain tasks require more time than others, but it is important to keep in mind that your time may be better suited for a more time-sensitive or high-priority project.
7. Practice Corporate Social Responsibility
Consumers are smart enough to sort and choose the products they consume. Sneaky companies that only care about profit are common knowledge and, of course, people don’t like such companies, including their products.
People nowadays don’t just care about the quality or the packaging of your product; people also pay attention to how your product is made and your company values. Consumers now don’t just want to consume; they want their consumption activities to be useful for those around them.
This is where you can enter bringing the aspirations of your consumers to make a difference for the surrounding environment. You can practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a form of your concern for consumers and the people around you.
Through CSR, you can demonstrate your long-term commitment to a cause or values that your company or business believes in. That way, you are not only inviting consumers to consume goods blindly but also inviting them to make changes.
8. Attending Networking Events
Networking is one of the strongest weapons you’ll ever have as a businessman. Having acquaintances or friends, whether in the same line of business as you or in other businesses, will open up many opportunities for you; either in terms of material, information, or human resources.
One way to find connections you can rely on is to attend networking events. Networking events are generally attended by people who have more or less the same mindset. By meeting other business owners in the same field, you can exchange ideas to discuss the future of the industry which will certainly be invaluable information.
9. Create Customer Loyalty Program
In this era of increasingly fierce competition, you can’t just focus on getting new customers; You should also focus on retaining your old customers.
Having a strong and large customer base is one of the crucial elements for growing your business. In order to create a strong customer base, you must focus on reaching the widest possible range of potential customers and retaining existing ones, or improving customer retention.
One way to retain existing customers is to create a customer loyalty program. For example, you can create a member card that will then give consumers access to discounts, promos, or special purchases every month. You can also implement a point system where consumers can exchange the points earned according to the value of their transactions for special prizes.
10. Franchise Your Business
Franchising can be a powerful growth strategy. In simple terms, you allow someone to buy the rights to use your business assets, such as your name, products, etc., to start their own business. You have often encountered this technique in food businesses.
However, this strategy is certainly not effective or even applicable to all types of businesses.
When Should You Start Growing?
Growing is a must for a business. However, growing too fast can also destroy a business.
As your business grows, the complexity of your business will certainly get higher. The bigger your business, the more resources you will need; both capital, human, and others. If you can’t keep your business balanced in the growth phase, then it’s not impossible that your business will go bankrupt.
Therefore, it is important that you choose the right time to develop your business furtherr. Yes, your business must not only grow, but also thrive at the right time. So, when is the right time to develop your business?
1. When The Industry is Getting Bigger
One of the things you should keep an eye on at all times is the state of your industry. If your industry is getting bigger, like there is a lot of demand, many new small businesses are emerging, or the trend is on the rise, then that could be a pretty strong signal for you to develop your business further.
As the industry gets bigger, you have additional opportunities to earn more capital which can then help you turn your business bigger more securely and more stable.
2. When You Have a Steady Cash Flow
From the internal side, you must ensure that your business has the sound financial strength to grow further. A strong financial aspect can also be a sign that the demand for your business products is stable and is likely to have an increase over time. This can be a strong signal for your business to grow further.
3. When You Have More and More Customers
One of the important steps before deciding to expand your business is to pay attention to your existing customer base.
You can see if they need more from your product; either in terms of quantity or additional features. Interview some of your existing customers to get an idea of what they want from your business.
If the pattern of their answers shows that they want more, both in terms of services and products, this can be another strong signal for you to expand your business.
You can also learn about people who are likely to become your new customers. Learn about their needs and why they chose your competitors over you.
Because, if you can meet the needs of consumers, both existing and potential, more and better than your competitors, it is not impossible that you will get more profits which will then be able to support your growing business.
Those are some tips to grow your business. Utilizing digital marketing can be an effective strategy for developing a business, whether it is a large business or a small business. In developing a business, you also have to pay attention to the right time to grow. Because, if you force to grow when your company or industry is not ready, then your business may go bankrupt.
Almost every business needs a photo for their product. It will give a nice little touch to your business vision and create a better image for your company. And, if you need any assistance with image editing, you can easily contact us here for getting your images edited by our professional photo editing services. Our Professionals Image Editor will happily help you enhance your product photo. Let us do the post-production process while you make bold moves that advance and protect your business, so you can welcome a successful year ahead!