Every entrepreneur wants to grow their business and is searching for the secret ingredient to make it work on autopilot. Just like you would not want your favorite airline to fly on autopilot, there is no simple press play and let it roll button; however there is a great system ready to be discovered with the right ingredients designed specifically for your business.
Business Growth Strategies
Growing your business requires increasing your exposure and getting your service or product in the eyes, ears, hands, and hearts of your potential customer. So you need to know first off who exactly your target market is and where you can find your customers. Growth requires the addition of new customers who purchase what you are offering. Exposures need to convert to sales in order for growth to occur. Are you tracking your exposures and conversion to customers?
A growth strategy is a plan of action you can implement in order to build your business. Do you have a growth strategy plan? If you did, you would have an exact number for the customers or products target goal for each month and for the whole year. It is a target, but without a target, we do not know where to aim. Having this target then enables you to create a plan of action to achieve it. Your whole goal is ‘new’ exposures or ‘upgrades’ for existing customers that produce new sales for your business. The tracking of your exposures to conversions will help you know where to focus your energy and resources that will become part of your successful business growth system.
7 Budget Friendly Business Growth Strategies
Who says you can’t build a booming business that is growing strong and steady without a lot of money? Do you believe that? Have you let that idea stop or slow you down from developing your own business growth plan? It’s time to twist that crippling thought programming on it’s back so you can start to experience a boom in business on a budget! Yes, below are 7 budget friendly simple strategies to grow your business.
Video & Viral Publicity
Well unless you are in a third world country or stranded on a deserted island, I know you must have a cell phone and I am hoping you have the ability to take video with that handy device that never leaves your side. If you don’t have the ability to take video, a friend or business colleague will most certainly help you out! Capturing a video moment of a happy customer, the experience your clients receive, or the service you offer with a story wrapped around it will gain you great exposure! If you are camera shy, you don’t have to be the star of the show. Let someone else shine and tell your story for you. People are watching more videos today on social media than any other medium and taking a 15 second clip for Instagram or a 1-2 minute clip for Facebook does not take long!
I was just reminded the power of video the other day when I shared a video clip of myself for the first time and within two days Facebook had sent me an update on the post that said, ‘your post on…. (the video post)..is performing 97% better than all your other posts, would you like to boost it?’
Tribe of 12
There is something really fantastic happening in business! Have you seen it or experienced it in action? Word of mouth and relationship marketing are the strongest source of referrals you can have to grow your business. I learned first hand the valuable impact of this phenomena before I had even launched my website; I had told a few former colleagues and friends who knew my passion and talent for helping entrepreneurs what I was going to be doing and before I knew it, I had two new clients prior to my official launch. Your tribe of 12 is creating a circle of twelve people either personal or professional that will, can or are actively promoting your business for you. They could be mutually beneficial partnerships set up here where you are in complimentary industries that allow you to cross refer to each other or it could simply be one of your personal cheer leaders that loves to talk, network, and connect people.
Here’s how the tribe of 12 works. You want to discover who your ambassadors are already and give them the tools they need to share with their contacts. These tools could simply be your website, your Facebook page, and or an introductory personalized email from you. If you do not already have a list or want to expand your list to include at least 12, then here are some ideas:
- Current customers that rave about you!
- Other business professionals that need to know about your service/product for their clients
- Business colleagues that have seen or experienced your excellent service/product
- Business partners that can benefit from you referring clients to them
- Volunteer or Freebie Customers that get your service/product free in exchange for promotion
- A community group, business group, or volunteer role you belong to that will share your services/products
- Potentially anyone you do business with and pay for your business services can refer to you!
Presentations
Offering to do a free presentation to businesses or community organizations that can benefit from your service or product will give you excellent exposure. Now I realize doing a presentation is not everyone’s first choice but if you can stretch yourself or have someone in your business do this for you, it is one of the best ways to build immediate growth in your business and awareness around your services and products. The key here is to pick the right venue that targets your market and to truly serve the people attending by giving them great value in your presentation. For those of you uncomfortable with self promotion or sales, remember at the end of your presentation, you must give them a friendly call to action that brings the spotlight to your business. It could be as simple as, ‘Come visit me or us after to learn more about our _________service’…, or ‘..on behalf of __________business we are happy to be with you today and invite you to ____________.” The challenge is on to book your first presentation now!
Old Fashioned Personalized Phone Call Piques
We have all had to make new friends at one point in our life and we have all had the either awkward or playfully bold moment where we ask someone if they would like to play with us, right? Well, the very thing we learned as kids applies in business today and for the few that still use this old, tested, and true technique, they can really create some outstanding business growth results. Are you afraid to pick up the phone and make an introduction? Here is something that may comfort you: you are calling this new person because you truly believe they could benefit from knowing about and using your service or product! It could rock their world, make their life easier, improve their business, and give them something they need, but just do not know about yet.
This technique can give you highly targeted leads and I believe can build strong lasting relationships that make you stand out against the competition. I also believe the results from this method can also give you speedier results if you ask for a meeting and follow up in a timely fashion. Take a moment to write down a list of people or organizations you could call that not only gives you access to your target market, but also gives them benefit from knowing about your business.
Events
Do you love attending events and are you a social butterfly or does the thought of having to go to events make you want to run for cover? Whether you love them or loathe them, there is no doubt about it, events help you grow your business by meeting who is already in the spotlight and by having to let some of that spotlight shine on you just by meeting people. You see the big vision of events is that you may think your exposure at an event is limited to the 30 people there, but what you may not see is that one person that you connect with there may have a network of 1000, 10,000 people or bring you a valued ongoing customer worth $100, $1000, or $10,000 a month.
Some local Meetups only cost $10 to attend and if you volunteer or give a gift of your service or product by being a sponsor may even allow you to attend for free. I challenge you to select a few events to go to every month preferably at least one a week while you are growing your business and find one that you can be consistent with so they can get to know you and refer to you!
Social Media Consistency
I know we are all using social media, but are you being consistent? Being consistent on social media keeps you front and center in your customers minds. If you think of the biggest brands out there, part of their success is the advertising that we always see and experience. That key word there is… ‘experience’. What experience are you giving your potential customers on social media? Have you thought about that? The more you give them value and an experience they enjoy, the more likely they are to visit you.
Social media allows people to get to know, like, and trust you. So not only is it important to be consistent, but you also want to provide them with what they need or want on a daily basis. My best recommendation for social media is to choose 1-2 platforms to focus on and build your brand there. Consistency does not need to mean posting a gazillion times a day; it is more important to post valuable content and a good goal would be to do that daily. Remember to engage your customer, connect with them, and build a conversation and community.
Your Essence, Energy, Excitement
Did you notice anything about the first 6 business growth strategies? They all have to do with doing! Yes, we need to take action in our businesses to see them grow, but amidst all our doing, we cannot forget our very being. If you get lost in a sea of doing, it may dwindle your passion.
I have to share a story with you about a business women I met only once at a networking event and then connected with over tea to learn more about what she does. From our one tea together I knew what she did, but what stood out even more was her absolute love and passion for what she does and how excited she was to share it all. She left her mark on me, not due to the statistics of what she could do for people or the results she brought, but because she was literally loving what she did. I did refer business her way and it just so happened that she got business from it and my main message about her to my client was this, “I know one thing for sure, that girl loves what she does and can’t wait to share it with people, why don’t you give her a call.”.
Who are you being to your customers and when you are networking? Do you have energy and excitement around your business when communicating it to others? If not, what can you do to change that or how could you improve it?
Your energy, excitement, and essence will grow your business more than anything else you can do on a daily basis!
If you are so caught up in striving, producing, grinding, hacking, and building, you could lose the essence of why you are doing what you are doing or why you began. You may need to reconnect to this and know if you had to choose one strategy here, this is the one you need to begin with! As Simon Sinek says, ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’ Reconnect and recharge your why and then share that excitement and energy with the world.
Your Business Growth Strategy Plan
To begin creating your plan for growing your business, start with 3 strategies here and number them in order of importance or impact for you. Then track the amount of exposures you get and the results. Be consistent with your actions in each strategy for at least 6 months and then if the results are growing keep the strategy or decide to employ another one. After one to two years of testing, tracking, and adjusting you will have your very own system of strategies to grow your business that you can then just continue to engage with until the next desire to grow hits!
To create your own business growth strategy in detail with action plans, contact Jody here: Business Growth Strategy Session
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