Effective Strategies to Try When It's Time to Grow Your Business

It is a good but stressful day when you discover that you need to expand and grow your business in order to meet current demands. On the one hand, you can see that you have a great product that is jumping off the shelves, but on the other hand, you realize that you need to make major changes in order to expand successfully. Here at News Letter Journal, we love to see our local companies succeed, so we have some tips for how you can make the necessary adjustments to help your business grow.
Retool Your Website
The first step that you should take to expand your business is to work on your website to make it as user-friendly as possible. You will want to advertise all of your products on the site and make it easy to navigate. If your customers have to click more than three times then you probably need to streamline your navigation. On top of that, you will want to make it easy for your customer to place an order at a moment’s notice, which you can do by offering multiple payment options.
When you create a website, you need to ensure that it is SEO optimized with proper keywords, vivid images, and good links so you can be found on search engines like Google. If you are unsure of how to do that, then work with a professional web designer or use an online website builder that allows you to create your site easily step by step.
Optimize Your Processes With Business Process Management
Since you will have a lot on your plate as you deal with your new expansion, you likely won’t have a lot of time to worry about the smaller tasks and minutiae of everyday work life. A great way to improve efficiencies is to use Business Process Management (BPM) to take a deep look at your processes and determine which steps you can automate so you can set and forget them and focus on the bigger picture.
During this process, you will look at how your employees and your systems interact with your data and determine if there are any places where you can take the human element out of the equation. In addition to being more efficient, you will also reduce costs and errors and reduce your cycle times. Just remember that even though you implement new automation, it doesn’t mean that you are done. Instead, you need to continuously monitor the effectiveness and continue to make tweaks as your company grows.
Hiring Additional Staff
If you plan to expand then you will need to bring on at least a few more employees to help with everything from simple tasks to your evolving accounting needs. When it comes to finding help, you can look online at websites like Indeed and CareerBuilder. If you would like to target your efforts, then meet people at career fairs or network with people with qualifications on LinkedIn.
Create a Referral Program
Now that you have the staff and the website, it is time to create a referral program so you can bring in more customers and make the profits that will fund your expansion. Advertise your referral program on your website. Mention that if customers spend a certain amount or meet another threshold where they will get a gift card, a discount on a future order, or another perk that you choose.
Even better, you can create a loyalty program where you reward your current customers for referring other people to your company. Studies show that 83% of customers trust the recommendations of family over corporate marketing, so this is a win-win.
As you can see, there is a lot that you can do to expand your business to new heights. Retool your website, hire great employees, and optimize your work with business process management, and you have a great chance to see success. If you would like to learn more about the great stories in News Letter Journal, then subscribe here.
Amy Collett is the creator of Bizwell.org, a website that helps professionals and entrepreneurs build and strengthen their personal brand. She is also the author of the upcoming book, You, Exemplified: The Role of Personal Branding in Your Professional Life. When she’s not busy with helping her clients she enjoys coaching her daughter’s soccer team and is training to become a yoga instructor.