Nowadays, running a small-medium enterprise can be a real challenge. The fact of the matter is that you have to compete in an ever-growing market that’s highly competitive.
That may seem next to impossible with your current operational level. In that case, it’s time to consider expanding your business.
However, business growth can be quite difficult for many SME owners. The main reason is that growth doesn’t happen overnight and if you don’t scale your company properly, you might put it at risk of failure.
That being said, business growth needs to be planned accordingly and executed well, in order for it to become a profitable decision that will take your enterprise one step closer to the success in the market. Proper business growth can be a major advantage not just in terms of profitability but also in terms of competitive advantage.
With that in mind, here are a few business growth tips for SMEs.
Invest in research
Market research is one of the most valuable assets when it comes to business growth. As mentioned before, growing a business must be conducted properly, as well as planned accordingly and research can help you do that.
If you don’t know what’s required for a successful expansion, good chances are that you’ll do something wrong. On the other hand, if you back your decision with information, you can avoid inconveniences and ensure you’ll make the right moves.
Therefore, invest both time and recourses in research that will help you get a better understanding of your customers, which includes their needs, preferences, expectations, and demands.
In addition, learn as much as you can about the market itself, as well as your main competitors. A competitive analysis can help you understand how your competitors grow their business and how you can leverage similar strategies for your own business expansion.
Obtain proper capital
It’s no secret that business growth strategies require a worthy investment.
In other words, you must have a good capital to support business growth. Finding enough funds for that endeavor can be challenging for a lot of business owners.
The main reason is that if your business isn’t as currently profitable as it could be, you’ll have difficulties allocating proper funds for growth opportunities. However, just because financing business growth is difficult, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. There are many ways that can help you find proper funding without relying on a bank loan.
For instance, you can explore whether or not your SME is eligible for venture capital or angel investor support. Moreover, you can opt for a crowdfunding campaign if you have enough customers willing to support you.
Last but not least, you can consider asset finance, especially if your SME has enough property or equipment to fund against. In any event, ensuring a proper capital for business growth is crucial, regardless of the method you choose.
Improve your marketing methods
Online visibility and exposure are vital for competing in an overcrowded market these days. What’s more, those two factors are also crucial for business growth. Obtaining proper visibility and exposure can be easily achieved by stepping up your marketing game.
Marketing serves another purpose aside from helping to promote your business or your product and services. That purpose is to give you insight into customers themselves. More precisely, how they react to certain offers, what influences their behavior, as well as their purchasing decisions.
More importantly, marketing can help you understand how to meet consumer demands. With that in mind, when improving your marketing efforts, you should strive towards strategies that are more focused on consumer interactions, such as email marketing, social media, content marketing, SEO etc. As an example:
- Social media marketing allows you to interact directly with your target audience and helps you establish a meaningful relationship with them. Through various interactions and activities on social media platforms, you can learn a lot about your audience’s demands.
- Content marketing allows you to deliver value to customers through educational, informative and entertaining content. That way you can improve customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, which is very important for business growth.
- Email marketing is still considered one of the most effective strategies today. With one of the highest ROI (Return On Investment) in the marketing world, email allows you to send personalized messages to leads based on their interest and, therefore, greatly improves your conversion rates.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become more of a mandatory marketing strategy rather than simply optional today. The main reason is that SEO is essential in building online visibility, authority, and awareness, among other things. Furthermore, SEO focuses on other aspects that are important for both business growth and customer satisfaction, such as website performance, quality, and relevance of content, customer engagement and so on.
Focus on customer service
Today, customer service has become one of the most important factors for business success that can have a major impact on your business growth as well.
The point of fact is that the majority of consumers are more focused on the overall customer experience a company can provide, which includes customer service and support, than on the quality of products.
With that in mind, improving customer service can help your business grow naturally and organically by attracting more customers.
For instance, customer satisfaction can be a major outbound promotion for your business. Satisfied customers are more willing to give positive reviews and promote your business further through word-of-mouth recommendations.
If you manage to ensure customer satisfaction by providing an exceptional customer experience, you’ll also be able to scale your business accordingly over time.
Final thoughts
Business growth is an important activity that shouldn’t be taken lightly. The fact of the matter is that the growth can either make or break your business depending on how successful it is. That’s why it’s important to plan well and engage in activities that will make the entire process more seamless.
My name is Raul, editor in chief at Technivorz blog. I have a lot to say about innovations in all aspects of digital technology and online marketing. You can reach me out on Twitter.
