You've established your business — but it hasn't quite grown to the scale you'd like. Growing a business can be a difficult and time-consuming process, regardless of the specific industry in which you find yourself. Successful scaling will take a great deal of careful planning, marketing, strategy, and much more. And while there are no magic formulas for scaling your business overnight, there are some strategies you can follow to ramp up your business growth quickly and effectively.
From roping a customer into visiting your website to finalizing that sale, your business needs an identifiable revenue or sales funnel that carries prospective customers through the buying process. If your business doesn't already have a scalable sales funnel established (that is, one that can grow with your company), now is the time to make this a priority. Having an effective sales funnel in place is one of the best ways to ensure quick growth because once it's established, you'll be generating more-or-less automated sales.
Is a lack of capital preventing your business from growing at the rate you'd like? If so, then it's time to prioritize raising additional capital as a means of growing your business. This is also a good time to step back and make sure you have a comprehensive business plan in place that you can send to investors, as this is something they're going to want to see. Depending on your business model, you might also consider raising capital through other means, such as crowdfunding, or even forming partnerships with others in your industry.
These days, there is no shortage of viral tools at your disposal that can be huge in boosting your business reputation and credibility while also helping you establish brand awareness. If you're not already taking advantage of social media platforms (such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), online reviews, and video/media to build your brand, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your business quickly.
Aside from social media, remember that other viral platforms can help you grow your business as well. If you're not doing so already, be sure to start encouraging your happy customers to leave reviews of your business so you can build your reputation. Furthermore, don't be afraid to experiment with different forms of media on your website, such as video. The more "share-worthy" your content is, the easier you'll be able to spread word of your brand.
Speaking of building your brand, don't be afraid to focus your efforts on establishing a brand that truly stands for something. Focusing your offerings can be a scary prospect, but you're better off narrowing your focus to a specialized target audience than trying to appeal to everybody. Not to mention, today's consumers prefer to give their business to brands with messages and goals that truly resonate with them rather than large corporations.
In order for your business to stand out among its competition (and therefore be able to grow and scale successfully), you need to define and focus on your unique competitive advantage. What does your business have to offer that others in your industry simply do not? If you cannot identify a competitive advantage, then it's time to get serious about coming up with one.
Whether it means implementing a recurring subscription service for one of your products/offerings or simply finding ways to bring customers back for more on a cyclical basis, your company needs recurring revenue streams in order to see any kind of significant growth. Not only does having these recurring revenue streams increase your confidence as a business owner, but these sources of ongoing revenue will actually increase the value of your company as well.
If you ever want your company to scale big time, you'll eventually need to stop trying to manage every single aspect of it yourself and start hiring a "dream team." This will allow you to delegate responsibilities so that you can free up your own time to focus on scaling and growing your business. Otherwise, you'll end up spending all your time just keeping up with the day-to-day tasks of running your business and you'll never have a chance to take things to the next level.
Any time your brand can get your clients and customers doing the legwork of selling for you, this is beneficial to your business and will help with quick growth. That's because user-generated content is cheap (and often free) to create and it's extremely effective. Furthermore, user-generated content can:
There are plenty of ways to curate user-generated content, but utilizing social media is likely to be your best bet. Consider, for example, holding a video contest or creating some other type of challenge/contest on your business social media page. From there, users can submit their content and you can select a winner either randomly or based on submissions.
It's not rocket science: if your business isn't bringing in enough revenue, you're not going to make a profit. And as a result, your growth will be stunted. If you're making sales but aren't making enough from your sales to turn a substantial profit and grow your business, then it may be time to take a serious look at raising your average transaction fee or raising your prices altogether. Of course, these are decisions that should only be made after extensive market research and revisiting your complete business plan.
This last strategy is only recommended if your company is already doing well from a revenue and profits standpoint, as spending more money on acquiring a new business or even new customers is not going to bode well for your business if you're barely keeping your head above water right now. However, if you have the capital to do so, it may be worth allocating some of it to new customer acquisition.
It's no secret that the cost of acquiring a new customer can be very high, but at the end of the day, new customers are going to help you grow your business at a substantially higher rate. Not to mention, there are some steps you can take to reduce your customer acquisition costs as well.
In some cases, you might even consider buying out another company (perhaps a member of the competition, if possible) to significantly scale your business practically overnight. In acquiring another company, you will also have the opportunity to acquire and retain their customers — which is a win-win for you.
Scaling your business is something that will take some time and dedication; it's hardly ever something that happens overnight. Still, by following these strategies and applying some of them to your own unique situation, you can begin to ramp up your company's growth as early as today!
Martinez & Shanken, PLLC writes for CountingWorks, an accounting news and advice website. Reach the firm at [email protected]
About Martinez & Shanken, PLLC
Martinez & Shanken, PLLC is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firm based in Gilbert, Arizona. We provide a full range of accounting, bookkeeping, consulting, outsourcing and business services. Partners Deborah Martinez and Earl Shanken work to ensure your business accounting is done with integrity and to your satisfaction.
