How can you use your brand to grow your business?
Find your uniqueness!
Starting a business is a difficult and complex task. And as daunting as it sounds, it’s only the beginning of an entrepreneur’s career. Whether you have a service agency or an online store, you’ll certainly agree with us when we say that the real challenge is to grow that business permanently and at a reasonable pace to start turning a profit as soon as possible.
This series of business tips will help you develop a business strategy to achieve your short and long term goals. Take note of these 10 tips that will show you how to grow your business:
1- Divide the year in 4:
Instead of creating an overall or very long-term business plan, divide the year into four quarters and prepare a specific business strategy for each quarter that is both achievable and ambitious. This way, you will be able to track the progress of your business to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. Because it is a quarterly plan, it will be easier for you to implement decisions.
2-Diversify your marketing strategy:
When you devote all of your resources to one marketing tool, you may one day find yourself in a no-win situation. If you are looking for strategies to grow your business, it is best to combine online marketing tools and platforms with traditional marketing and advertising techniques within your budget. This way, you can reach a wider audience and increase their growth potential. If you don’t know where to start, you can check out the best digital marketing blogs to get informed about current trends and tools.
3-Focus on customer retention:
Many companies make the mistake of neglecting their existing customer base because they believe that growth is about focusing resources and energy on finding new customers. This is a major flaw. Customer retention – or as many strategists call it: the art of getting your customers to come back more often – is a key component of sales growth, so a satisfied customer will bring new customers with him.
4-Join the local conversation:
In the globalized world, local movements began to emerge long ago with the goal of supporting local production and local businesses. As you develop your business plan, think about what you can contribute and how you can support the local community and vice versa. In addition to participating in business forums in your city, sponsoring community events or collaborating with other local businesses, if your business has a store, office or studio, local SEO is a tool you can’t forget: search engines provide results based on where the query comes from. So, optimizing your website by following local SEO best practices will help you attract new customers from your geographical area.
5-Stay informed:
Regardless of the industry you work in, business owners should always be aware of the latest trends and market developments. Attend business forums, business conferences and subscribe to industry blogs to stay on top of important developments.
6-Know your target audience:
To reach your customers and increase loyalty, you have to know them well, know what they think. Find out their habits, their ambitions, their way of speaking, their needs and what they think of your brand. In this step, a fundamental tool will be the social listening, which will help you to know everything that is said about you in the social networks. Don’t forget that you need to perform these analyses continuously. Consumers change and, therefore, what you offer them must change or evolve accordingly.
7-Enterprise outsourcing:
Sometimes, to get ahead, it is necessary to transfer responsibilities to other professionals. At some point, the time and effort that entrepreneurs dedicate to the creation and growth of their business is no longer enough and, in order to continue growing, it is necessary to outsource. Hiring the services of experts in different fields will help your business succeed and grow.
8-Improve your brand image:
Your brand is a kind of business identity card. It’s about how you communicate your business and how you want your customers to see you. To define your brand identity, you not only need to choose the right colors and tone of voice, but also create an actual logo.
9-Take into account the calendar:
Christmas and New Year’s holidays, special events or national and local holidays are not only important dates on the calendar, but also translate into great ideas for growing your business. Use these days as opportunities to organize special sales, promotions, contests, new product launches or any other marketing campaign. Take advantage of special days or important events to launch an email marketing campaign, tailoring the message to the occasion, to make your brand more visible and increase your sales.
10-Create a professional website:
It is now common knowledge that any image-conscious company must have an online presence. Today’s consumers are searching the Internet for what they need. So if you want to reach your own audience, you need to get organized and start creating a professional website with a design that conveys your brand message and invites visitors to stay and see your products.