When you first start your business, your end goals seem a million miles away. Even in your first few successes, you’re looking to make things bigger and better. The only issue is that growth takes time.
However, with the help of the latest technology, better communication systems and global connectivity, it has never been easier to scale your small business into the empire you always dreamed of.
So how do you do it?
The following growth hacks are simple-yet-effective solutions to help your company thrive in the current climate and reach for the stars. It’s all about remaining focused on your goals, without draining your resources.
Tip 1: Efficiency is key
When starting your own business, you can expect to wear multiple hats. For an hour on a Monday you might be a team leader, while the afternoon is spent in customer service. Head into Tuesday and you’re navigating the world of payroll while learning the ropes of marketing.
It’s not just you that’s usually expected to wear all these hats, either. New businesses often lean on their employees perhaps a little more than they should to help with the difficult work of establishing the brand. You’ll likely have limited resources and will be working long hours.
All of this means you – and your employees – could find themselves suffering from burnout after taking too much on all at once. Burnout can seriously slow down productivity, increase job dissatisfaction and cause your employee turnover rates to skyrocket. None of this is going to lead your business into the growth spurt you’re looking for.
Growing your business is all about efficiency; it’s quality over quantity. While you may have big plans, it’s important to avoid pushing yourself – and your staff – too much.
While some business owners swear by the effectiveness of multitasking, others think it’s the efficiency killer.
But there also needs to be a strong sense of collaboration; if you can see that your employees are struggling with too many tasks, it’s your responsibility as a leader to re-assign jobs and manage the team’s workload.
Tip 2: Take advantage of outsourcing
Anyone can have the passion and determination to start their own business, but that’s not to say you’ll know how to do everything yourself – let alone have the time to do it all!
Being a business owner is all about knowing where you can let go of the reigns and where you need to stay focused. Which is where outsourcing can help.
There are plenty of jobs you can outsource for your small business. A popular job to outsource is HR consulting Nashville as the world of Human Resources is a lot to get your head around. So, rather than spend all your time trying to understand what others spend years studying, outsource it.
If your business doesn’t have the capacity to employ different departments, outsourcing is a great way to manage your budget. Rather than paying a marketing, HR and IT department full time wages, you can use them as and when you need. That way you can focus on your growth, rather than the administrative side.
Tip 3: Attach emotion to your product or service
Emotion can be attached to just about any product or service with the right marketing approach.
As humans, we can easily be swayed into a decision or purchase through emotion, so use psychology to your advantage.
If you want to grow your business, you need to understand what makes your target audience tick, and how you can make your company appeal to different audiences.
It’s a good idea to invest time into what your competitors are doing, to really understand how they advertise themselves, how they speak to customers and how they frame their offering.
All you need to do is understand how you can do the same, but better.
To start with, you can use competitor review pages to understand what they’re not doing, and what weakness their services or products have. This will help you with shaping or improving your services – which you can then market as your unique selling point.
Another good tactic for adding emotion to your brand is to create exclusivity and hype. Everyone wants what they can’t have, so why not make your product something that’s seriously sought after. Alternatively, you could create a countdown till a new product release or event.
With clever marketing, you can grow your business into an empire basically overnight.
Tip 4: Always find ways to improve
Even after you’ve built hype or a loyal following, you need to keep them coming back for more.
Lucky for you, there are always ways to improve your business. From launching new products, implementing a customer reward system, or boosting your office morale, there are so many projects you can take on to make your business bigger and better.
There’s no end to your business growth – there’s always room to grow and expand. With automation and the latest technology, you’ll also be able to take tasks off your workload to make time for others.
Tip 5: Ask for help
You never know who might have a friend of a friend in high places. One of the biggest things people miss out on when starting a business is free help. Family, friends and even your customers are willing to help lift your brand off the ground. Whether it’s helping with answering emails, or putting you in contact with a better supplier, don’t be afraid to ask for help.
In order confirmations or service emails, don’t hesitate to ask customers to review your company on top review sites, or to give you a shout out on their socials. If you’re selling physical products, customers are a great tool to get user-generated content that can help hype up your brand for other prospective customers.
Extend your help requests further by reaching out to other small business owners via LinkedIn. You’ll find that people are more than willing to help out others – especially if you can provide value to them in return.
With the passion to always grow and learn, and the willingness to let go of control for certain jobs, your business will go from strength to strength.
Interesting related article: “What is a Startup?“