How do you grow a business? The answer will depend on your stage of development, your sector and your goals. Here, we consider the top strategies for scaling your small business, with a focus on free and paid steps and different marketing types. From business plans to sales funnels, and from influencers to customer research, here’s our guide to growing your company.
- You need a solid business plan, but flexibility is key: regularly measure progress and be prepared to pivot.
- Assessing where your business sits on the five stages of business growth will help you set priorities.
- Core aims may include customer retention (via loyalty programs and customer service), innovation (based on feedback and trends) and sales funnel optimization (to boost conversions).
- Use a mix of free and paid marketing strategies, combining digital and print, for maximum reach.
- Focus on internal improvements by streamlining workflows, acting on feedback and investing in training and scalable solutions.
How to grow your small business in 7 steps
Growing a successful business is not easy, but these core areas are starting points that can kick-start your expansion.
1. Write a great business plan
To grow your business, you need a business plan. It should be:
- Actionable: Focus on specific things you can actually achieve.
- Shareable: So everyone in your business can collaborate on it.
- Based on real data: Whether that’s your current sales figures or market research.
- Measurable: So you can assess whether you’re hitting your goals and pivot as needed.
A good business plan generally begins with your mission statement and includes descriptions of your products, target market and competition. It also lays out financial forecasts and your strategies for marketing, operations and sales. Think of it as giving your company a blueprint for growth.
Source: AndrewLozovyi via DepositPhotos
2. Retain existing customers
Building customer loyalty is important. It’s easier to retain existing customers than it is to bring in new ones, making your current consumers a great place to start. You may already have a good relationship with your customers and an understanding of what motivates them. Use it! Hit them up with loyalty programs or special discounts, keep them in the loop with a business newsletter and engage with them on social media. It’s also important to make them feel valued with top customer service, which will keep them coming back.
3. Innovate your offerings
Core products and services that sell are the cornerstone of any business, but broadening what you offer can make your business more stable and profitable.
There are a few ways you can do this. To start, look at trends in product and design and encourage creative suggestions from your team. You can also use interviews with customers, sales data analysis, online feedback and social media to discover more about your customers. Are there new products or services you could offer that relate to things they already buy from you?
Finally, think about ways to offer existing products in different ways. Can you bundle your offerings together, offer subscriptions or change your distribution via next-day delivery?
Source: Terry Bogard via 99designs by Vista
Source: Terry Bogard via 99designs by Vista
4. Attract new customers
Perhaps the most obvious way to grow your business is to sell your products and services to more people. For that, good marketing is crucial.
First, you’ll need to drill into the needs and personas of your target audience. Consider using tools such as Google Trends to research hot topics and what people are looking for. You can also consider building surveys, checking out relevant social feeds and generating buyer personas to gather more research. Use these insights to improve the visual identity of your brand across products and promotions.
Digital marketing promotions such as ads, newsletters or social media posts can deliver easily trackable campaigns and rapid results, while physical and print advertising materials such as posters and magazine ads are longer lasting, tend to stick longer in viewers’ minds, can reach passive audiences and are often trusted more. You can also take an in-person approach by networking at community events or entering into partnerships with other neighborhood businesses. This can help you meet customers and clients and raise your profile in the surrounding area.
5. Optimize your sales funnel
Marketing can get customers into your sales funnel—whether by walking into your shop, visiting your website or seeing your advertisement—but you still have to seal the deal. Research or measurement may help you assess any points where prospective buyers don’t complete a sale.
Try asking for customer and staff feedback, using CRM solutions to track blockers, recording sales calls or observing shopper behavior. You can optimize your sales funnel by offering discounts and rewards, collecting contact details so you can follow up, selling products that meet their needs and testing different approaches to pricing and distribution.
6. Make internal improvements
Businesses—like any good Hollywood hero—need to find some answers within themselves. Without doing some internal reflection and self-auditing, your small business may not be reaching its full potential. That means:
- Creating better workflows, whether it’s hiring your first employee or investing in some project management software.
- Requesting and acting on feedback from staff and customers (this is important!).
- Keeping your skills fresh with industry-related courses, certifications or seminars.
- Continuing to do regular market research and make sure you are aligned with what your customers want.
7. Measure and pivot
Perhaps the most important internal step is to regularly take stock of your business plan, comparing its goals to your progress and changing your strategy as needed. You can measure the success of your growth strategies by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, website traffic, sales revenue and profit margins. Regular analysis will help you make changes based on data-driven insights, not hunches.
Source: VistaPrint
What are the best free ways to grow my business?
These ways to grow your small business may sound great on paper, but what practical steps can you take on a budget? Let’s consider how small businesses can use these tactics.
Be streamlined
Use whatever metrics you already have and perfect your ability to interpret them. If certain leads and transactions are particularly profitable, put those at the heart of your sales and marketing efforts. While you’re at it, remove the roadblocks that are limiting conversions. For example, you could offer customers a limited number of choices (avoiding “choice paralysis”) or remove distracting page elements from your online checkout page. These are examples of streamlining strategies that can boost sales.
Speak to customers directly
Newsletters are a great way to offer discounts, access to early sales and loyalty deals. If you’re operating on a shoestring, a simple monthly email can help customer retention, while if you’re looking for something more sophisticated, tools like VistaCreate can help you create a professional-looking newsletter for free.
You could also consider starting a blog to speak directly to your customer base. While hired writers can add polish, the best blogs are often raw and come from small business owners’ hearts. They can shape your brand perception, position you as a thought leader and boost your search ranking.
Keep it local
If your business is local, your marketing can be local, too. Handing out leaflets is as close to free as you can get, and while collaborations with other local businesses or micro-influencers may not go global, they can help you build crucial neighborhood buzz. Creating location-based content, optimizing your Google Business Profile (responding to reviews, adding information and images) and getting backlinks from other local companies can all help with local SEO.
Use social media
Your social media strategy needn’t rely on ads or fancy tie-ins. As with blogs, straightforward, authentic posts delivering real news, offers or tips can build social proof. In other words, your social media presence will resonate with customers and the general public, driving clicks and brand recognition.
Build relationships with influencers and use social media to get your name out there and understand your customers. But social media isn’t just about promotion: It is also a critical research tool. Follow rival brands to assess their marketing game or check your followers’ interests to dig deeper into your target market.
Source: VistaPrint
What are the best paid ways to grow my business?
If you have the room in your budget to spend, growing your business is easier—but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be inventive. There are plenty of ways you can grow your business for free.
Digital marketing
Digital marketing is a critical tool for boosting sales, promoting brand awareness and connecting with your audience. Classic display ads, which usually mix imagery, copy and a CTA, can drive sales almost instantly if your advertising message is right.
Users don’t always welcome digital ads, though, and to reach your target audience more persuasively, other digital advertising approaches are worth considering. For example, paid search gets your content to relevant users, social media ads can target particular users and sponsored content uses external creative to drive your messages home.
Traditional marketing
Digital media may be all around us, but physical media can also spur your company to new heights. A recent VistaPrint survey on traditional marketing shows seven out of 10 businesses still use it, and for good reason: Tangible assets are highly trusted, can be locally targeted and can help with brand recognition. You might choose billboards and posters as your strategy—they’re great for local promotions or even for use in-store.
But there’s a huge range of other traditional marketing materials to consider. Business cards are a proven ace for networking, with space for key details and a CTA (QR codes work well here), and handing them out is a great personal touch. Print advertising can be used to target certain groups of readers, and branded apparel is a great way to get your branding seen.
Source: VistaPrint
Branding and tools
Your brand is a huge part of your business’s value. Professional consultants can help you shape your presentation, or a professional designer, such as those with 99designs by Vista, can create designs that tell your brand’s story.
Boxes and packaging, meanwhile, are a great opportunity for low-cost marketing. They make your products themselves an advertising piece, and branding can stretch even further—if you deliveries, for example, a sticker on your vehicles can target relevant neighborhoods with real precision.
Remember to measure and manage your performance with pro tools. Customer relationship management (CRM), accounting and HR platforms such as Zoho, HubSpot and Salesforce can give you visibility into opportunities and roadblocks.
Source: tale026 via 99designs by Vista
The 5 stages of business growth and why they matter
Given the wide range of marketing strategies and growth measures out there, it can be hard to know where to start. Understanding your business and your target market will shape your approach to learning how to grow your company—which is where the five stages of business growth come in. First introduced four decades ago by researchers Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis in the Harvard Business Review, the concept offers a useful way of assessing where your business is at and what its priorities should be for growing further.
Stage 1: Existence
At this early stage, your business is a startup that needs to identify customers and make money. As the owner, you probably manage all activities.
How to grow:
- Undertake market research via customer feedback and competitor analysis.
- Build the results into an actionable business plan.
- Work out your target audience and start marketing to them.
- Stay agile—you’re still figuring out what works.
Stage 2: Survival
Your business is now established and is seeking sustainable growth. The owner may still manage most activities, and planning is limited. Many businesses never leave this stage.
How to grow:
- Profits are crucial—track and manage cash flow and control expenses.
- Retain existing customers via good customer service, loyalty programs and listening to their feedback.
- Test different marketing and business growth strategies and measure their success.
Source: VistaPrint
Stage 3: Success
The company is now mature, with a sizeable customer base and more staff, with the owner perhaps joined (or even replaced) by other managers.
How to grow:
- Some businesses settle for what they have, but for true growth, you should innovate to maintain momentum via new products and services or by targeting new customer demographics or markets.
- Empower decision-makers through the business with training and clear organization—the founder can no longer cover everything.
- Streamline and automate systems—consider CRM systems and accounting and HR tools.
Stage 4: Take-off
The last two stages of business growth see successful companies grow from small businesses to corporations.
How to grow:
- Operations are dramatically scaled up, making funding (via investment or mergers) easier to obtain.
- Sustainability and social responsibility initiatives can build trust and lift your brand.
- Regular audits help ensure resources are being used optimally.
- Planning is long-term and looking at the big picture.
Stage 5: Resource maturity
By this stage, you’re no longer a small business! Your company is a market-dominating giant that must manage resources and ensure a return on investment for owners or shareholders.
Source: VistaPrint
FAQs about how to grow your business
How do you grow a business in its early stages?
To grow your business in its early stages, through “existence” and “survival,” build a strong foundation with a business plan. Focus on understanding your target market and acquiring customers while using your profits to invest in marketing and optimize your operations.
What are the most effective marketing types for small businesses looking to scale?
The most effective marketing for small businesses looking to grow often includes a mix of digital and traditional strategies, such as content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing and targeted local advertising. These methods allow for focused outreach and measurable results.
How can small businesses identify their target market for effective growth?
Identify your target market by conducting market research, analyzing existing customer data, creating customer personas and understanding your competitors. This helps you define your ideal customer and tailor your marketing and sales efforts accordingly.
How do I determine the best growth strategy for my business?
You can determine the best growth strategy for your business by analyzing your current business state, market conditions and goals, and by understanding which of the five stages of business growth your company currently occupies. You should define clear objectives and explore growth strategies like market penetration, market expansion, product development or diversification, and select the strategy that aligns best with your resources and long-term vision.
How can small businesses measure the success of their growth strategies?
Small businesses can gauge growth strategy success by tracking key metrics such as revenue growth and increased customer acquisition. Specific metrics can also show the success of individual strategies: customer retention rates show loyalty, conversion rates and return on investment (ROI) show marketing success and website traffic and social media engagement reflect online growth.
