As a business owner, pushing for growth is always top of mind. Growth can mean a lot of things such as building out awareness, generating leads, growing sales, and referrals. In order to consistently push for growth, it’s important to have the following in place:
- A strategy that outlines specific goals you want to achieve.
- Tactics that align with the overall strategy you will implement.
- A solid campaign testing schedule.
- Valuable content that’s going to help your target audience.
- Simple outreach, not for sales, but to start a conversation that will lead to sales.
All of this may sound easy, however, the amount of work that goes into making it all work seamlessly isn’t. In other words, don’t expect to yield successful results overnight. Instead, make sure that you are in the mindset that pushing for growth is more of a marathon, not a sprint. This will change the way you approach how you run your business and how you build relationships as well as connections with your target audience.
Before we dive in, let’s check out the following stats around business growth:
- Millennials and Gen Z are 48% more likely to say they started their business because they were passionate about an idea.
- 29% say their motivation for starting a business was to be their own boss.
- Compared to baby boomers, millennials and Gen Z are 188% small business owners are more likely to have a side hustle.
- 38% of small business owners say discipline is needed to have an entrepreneurial mindset.
- Over 500,000 businesses open every month.
- There are 30.2 million small businesses.
- Small businesses employ 57 million workers.
- Poor cash flow accounts for 82% of small business failures.
- Most small businesses, 61%, invest in social media.
- About one third of businesses do not have a website while 64% do.
- If a site does not load in four seconds 25% of visitors will leave.
- Inbound marketing delivers high ROI, reports 53% of business owners.
- A website is the most effective marketing tool, according to 92% of business owners.
Let’s get started…
1. Read industry-related articles and write every day
Read for at least 30 minutes a day about industry-related articles. To be able to stay ahead of the curve, the constant yearning of just wanting to learn has to be a priority. I will be the first to admit that I am never the smartest person in the room nor would I ever want to be, and on top of that, I don’t always know everything. However, when it comes to my subject of expertise, I am well-informed. Understanding even the smallest changes and trends are helpful when it comes to delivering stellar results for the businesses that work with me.
Another important aspect is that you also make time to write. You can write about your experiences with running a business all the way to what you’re seeing work, and even push for thought leadership type content.
Doing so will help with the following:
- You’ll be able to publish the content on your website and give people a reason to keep visiting your website.
- You’ll be able to use the content to build meaningful and valuable connections with your target audience.
- You’ll be able to leverage the content you produce and disperse it on other platforms to grow engagement that will likely contribute to sales.
2. Care about the people you’re selling to
Something I’ve noticed is a ton that separates businesses that actually see a ton of growth compared to those who don’t come down to the investment of their time and money. It’s true, it takes money to make money.
For instance, I’ve been taking a ton of sales calls for my business and the companies I know I don’t want to work with are the ones that want a quick solution that’s going to help them go from 0-100 overnight. On top of that, they want it done inexpensively. This shows me that they aren’t serious about implementing strategies and tactics that will contribute to sustainable growth but are more concerned with transactional growth.
What’s the difference between sustainable and transactional growth?
It all boils down to how you view your relationship with your clients/customers and how much you care about the lifetime value. More specifically, if all you want are quick transactions, then you may find that your retention suffers and therefore, have a higher churn rate. Sustainable growth is more focused on actually caring and building for the longer term.
3. Outreach, outreach, outreach
Did I mention you should do outreach? Whether it is to create connections on LinkedIn or do a simple email outreach, this is a must-do.
What’s fueled my business’s growth has boiled down to just doing sales outreach and building relationships. This can sometimes feel taxing and can be one of my least favorite things to do, but it is in the conversations that take place once the outreach is made and a response takes place that I love the most. I live for that. The ability to really connect with other professionals who are facing challenges that I have solutions for.
Doing outreach is about creating your own opportunities. If you don’t build your own doors, then no one will be able to walk through them to meet you. Be optimistic, but do so with a higher sense of reality to ensure you are racing out to the right personas/businesses that will align with your overall growth initiatives.
Wrapping it up
Remember running a business (similar to building a brand) is a marathon, not a sprint. The initiatives you put in place to foster growth goals should be looking at both short-term wins that will serve the longer-term plan.
Make the investment with your time and money. Care about the people you’re selling to just as much as you care about making your business grow because these are the same people who stick with you and refer your business to others.
