9 Ways to grow your small business

Growing a business can take time and energy but it’s always worth it. Around 20% of businesses fail within their first year and 60% in their first three, but implementing some of the strategies below could be just the boost you need to ensure your dream business, that you have built from the ground up, continues to thrive. So, here are 9 ways to grow your small business and achieve your goals.

1. Create new products or services

Talk to existing clients about their needs to find out what problems it is they need help solving. Work out the minimum investment that ensures you can create something to meet that need and ensure you seek customer feedback along the way. If investing in new products and services isn’t financially viable, you could seek to improve and enhance current services by following a similar process and then sell them at a more premium price.

2. Contact old customers

It is much more expensive to find new people who need what your business is selling and convince them to buy from you, than it is to get people who’ve already bought from you to buy again.

So, find ways to get in touch by email or social media. You could even give them a call and offer them some of those new products and services you have just created or improved! 

3. Sell internationally

Why restrict yourself geographically? If you haven’t already done so, exporting is a great way to grow your business. It’s not necessarily easy but it’s a good way to reach new markets. There is a lot of help on offer from the government too so, if this is something you’re interested in, look for some help. 

I used to be an Export Manager for 15 years, so there is a lot of advice and help I can offer and I have advised many of my clients around this area in the past.

4. Use Social Media

This is one of the best marketing tools out there; any product or service can be sold via social media. My top tip is to pick one main channel, whether that’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok, and do that really well. If you spread yourself too thinly, it can be a lot to keep a track of and your impact will be diluted.

I’ve written a guide on how to do Social Media in 7 minutes a day, so if you’re worried about spending too much time on this, it might be worth checking that out. 

5. Write a book

You become the expert when you write a book. You can really elevate your reputation in the market and stand out from your competitors. Potential clients will come to you, instead of you having to look for them through ads, social media or PR. 

Joe Wicks is a great example. He was a very ‘ordinary trainer’, but it was only when he started to write books (and found a great publicist) that he levelled up.

6. Upsell

Upselling is a strategy that involves customers buying a premium version of your product rather than the one they had initially set out to purchase. Either that or buying something extra that they didn’t initially think they wanted. McDonald’s “Do you want fries with that?” is a classic example, as well as Amazon’s “Customers who bought this also bought….”.

Around 20% of customers will buy the premium version if it’s available. You can also create upgrades that your existing customer base can access.

7. Have a membership programme

This is a great way to grow your business for the long term as well as sustainably. By having a membership programme, people will pay a monthly fee and get the content they want or your support. Hosting a membership online also allows you to sell ‘one to many’ and shouldn’t be too time consuming for you.

This is not necessarily an easy thing to do and I would highly recommend that you get specialist help with this (and not from me in this case).  

8. Create online courses

Teach others how to run your kind of business. It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in, whether you’re a florist, a hairdresser, a writer, or a coach. Other people will want to have what you have for themselves and want to learn from someone who has been there.  

9. Create partnerships

Partner up with other small businesses who offer complementary services, products or services to yours. You could create packages or experiences that you couldn’t offer by yourself, and it should be a win-win-win for everyone (you, your partner and the customer).

An example

If we take a florist as an example, let’s explore how they could use some of the above strategies to help their small business grow:

• They partner up with a potter and/or graphic designer
• They create a membership programme where people get a plant delivery every month.
• Through this membership, they offer different services such as over a 12-month-period, people receive six bunches of flowers and six plants.
• They contact their old customers to tell them about this new membership and even put it on social media.
• They start to offer a new calendar reminder service where they email customers with important dates like anniversaries, birthdays and special occasions like Mother’s Day.
• They can write a book about how to arrange flowers or how to successfully look after potted plants in the home.
• Finally, they create an online course about how to run a successful floristry business for people who share the same passion as them. 

So, there you have it; nine ways of how to grow your small business and ensure it delivers everything you wanted it to and more.

After all, your business should always serve you and not the other way around.