2021 was a weird year for small business owners, for countless reasons. It directly or indirectly affected us. Looking on the brighter side, it made us cope with abnormality and rise higher than ever. With the New Year [2022], comes new obstacles and better opportunities.
To vanguard your small business towards ultimate success in 2022, we present you with 9 growth strategies.
-
Creating Business Plan and setting Goals.
As we glance ahead, this is the right time to create business plans and set goals. The strategies and the tactics are more important than the goal itself.
You need to create effective and efficient plans to work on. Only then the goal becomes achievable. Working on the pointers below will help you reach your goal.
-
Analyzing competitors
You do not have enough time to learn from your own mistakes in 2022. The best way is to study and analyze your competitors. Competitor analysis opens up a window for you to see things from various perspectives. You learn to distinguish the patterns that are working well from those [that] aren’t.
You can apply those patterns in your business and discard the rest. You have an edge over your competitor to exploit their weakness and refine them as your strength.
-
Identifying New Opportunities and Solutions
You should always keep up with the new trends and be familiar with the changes. This, in turn, provides you with insights and new opportunities. You can exploit them and grow your business.
New opportunities give rise to new obstacles that require new ideas for successful execution. You should be able to figure out the need of those opportunities. If you can do so then you can correlate your ideas and solutions to overcome the obstacles.
Overcoming the obstacles means finding the best way of implementing the new opportunities in your business.
-
Organizing and Simplifying
You should make a habit of organizing your business. Doing so will let you have a clear status of your business. You can simplify your hectic tasks into simpler stages to achieve your goals. Pointers below will help you understand in detail.
-
Reducing Operating costs using cloud telephony service.
The use of cloud telephony simplifies your total investment as well as the effort you put into your business. You can subscribe to a suitable package, get as many virtual phone numbers as you want, and make telephony conversations from any corner of the world.
You can dedicate your time and energy to your business, and let the vendors handle the operations. You do not have the burden of maintenance, upgrade, or whatsoever. It comes with abundant features to simplify your business.
-
Tracking and Monitoring Expenses on Weekly Basis
You can monitor and track your business transactions on weekly basis. This will provide you with the true state of your business in terms of the economy.
It helps you understand and formulate better ideas and solutions for the upcoming week. You will have an idea of how to reduce your expenses keeping your productivity intact.
-
Go Digital
If you aren’t available on the digital platform in 2022, then you are falling behind. You have to digitalize your business to keep up with time as well as your competitors.
You can still build a website for your business today. Any business should be able to complete all kinds of sales transactions with their customers.
-
Building a Website
Building a website for your business is mandatory in 2022. Some experts have predicted that more than 90% of sale and transactions will happen online by 2040. You need to create an online presence, which will help your business grow in the long run.
Business websites with good SEO have dominated the market and SERPs. Building a website and making it customer-friendly can help you grow your business faster.
-
Digital Payments
Integrating digital payment systems within your website and physical stores is a vital aspect of growing your business. You should be able to make sales by any means of payment, only then you can overcome your competitors.
No potential customer or lead should return empty-handed from your store due to payment issues.
Most people do not carry wallets and purses these days for cash payments. But they have their mobile phones with them all the time. Now you think about it.
-
Joining Masterminds
It is always a good idea to share ideas and learn new ones. Joining masterminds or creating one for others to join in and pitch ideas and solutions, is the best way of growing yourself and your business as well. Joining masterminds can be of the following types.
-
Attending Networking Events
Networking is one of the oldest and most effective ways of growing a small business. You should be open to all the opportunities for seminars, webinars, and other events. You can create networks with people, which provides you with new ideas and leads.
You can work on those ideas and obtained leads to grow your sales. You can always grab better ideas to deduce effective plans. Knowing businesses under the same or complementary niche is very important in the long run.
-
Partnership Marketing and Collaboration
Your intention should be to grow your business by any means, even if it means partnering with a competitor to promote each other. This is fruitful to expand the audience base of your business and complement each other’s products.
Collaborating with complementary businesses or rival businesses will lead you upwards with time. Their loyal customers and leads will know about your business and services, which is free marketing.
-
Social Media Marketing
Social Media has a huge impact on the modern society. These days’ people spend their leisure time on the social media. They even buy and sale stuffs on the platform. The content available on the social Medias have a direct impact on the users.
-
Content Marketing
Small business can create contents to answer the queries of the leads and consumers. If the contents are reliable, timely, and interesting the ultimate result is a “successful marketing” of your business.
People tend to share the contents they like on every social platforms, which results in more visibility of your product as well as the business. Quality contents with values are the pillars of building loyal customers [visitors].
-
Video Marketing
This is an emerging marketing strategy, where you can create videos that mesmerizes the audiences. The video contents can be of products or brands. Especially short videos tend to capture attention of viewers.
“Video informs and entertains people and, good or bad, today most people prefer to watch a video rather than read a page or text.” Said Lisa Lubin.
You can generate huge sales of products via video marketing. A survey shows that 84% of the viewers are convinced that the products advertised via video marketing are worth buying. It is an effective tool that you can use for your business.
-
Trying different Business Models
“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not taking risks, and that means you’re not going anywhere. The key is to make mistakes faster than the competition, so you have more changes to learn and win.” said John W. Holt, Jr., Xochi manufacturing.
You should be open to trying different models of business and see which fits the best for you and your business. Some may not work for your business but you learn from it and try others.
Experimenting is the only way to find out the best result. The core value of the business should not be altered while doing so.
-
Working with freelancers and contractors
You will be free from hiring and training employees if you work with freelancers and contractors. You can work with talented and effective freelancers to get the job done. They may cost comparatively less but they come with experience and expertise.
Once the job is done you both can go your ways of business. You have the freedom of reuniting and working on a project if needed. Some small businesses can take advantage of this model or system of work.
-
Working with micro-influencers
Influencers have a huge impact on the market these days. You cannot compete with the giants in the market to work with big- influencers.
All you can do is you can target your audience through the micro-influencers. They are effective and the main thing is they are willing to work even with the smallest of businesses.
Working with the micro-influencers can boost your sales and marketing of your business. They cost relatively lesser than big-influencers. They might not have a huge audience but can of great help in marketing your business to the targeted group.
-
Connect with your customers
Customers are the king in any business. You should learn to satisfy your customers. Tracking, monitoring, analyzing, and reconsidering the customer needs is the best way to grow your business. Customers should have the last say in your business. They are always right.
You should be open to feedbacks, criticism, and suggestions. You should take them all in a positive way to formulate new schemes and plans to meet the expectations of your customers. Only a satisfied customer can be a loyal customer, so your business should be able to satisfy customers both online and offline.
-
Trying Paid Marketing
Paid Marketing can of great help for exposure of your business to targeted audiences. You should be able to reach your target audiences fast and convert them into customers. Let us be clear, that paid marketing is a temporary process and it only works within your budget.
Once your budget runs out, the SERPs first page exposure also goes away. PPC marketing is great for time-limited exposure and [is] inexpensive, so why not give it a try.
-
Grow with Socially Responsible Initiatives
What do I mean by socially responsible initiatives? It simply means you can involve your business in the betterment of your locality or society. You can work with different organizations, groups, or alone with an intention of helping the community.
This doesn’t go unnoticed. In the era of social media and new technologies, people from around the world notice these deeds and contribute in growth of your business in one way or the other.
