There are over 33 million small businesses in the United States alone. But unfortunately, a big part of them are likely to fail eventually, as around 50% of all companies don’t make it past five years after opening.
If you’re a business owner who wants to be one of the success stories, you must make an effort to utilize every growth opportunity that’s available to you. And that includes always being on the lookout for new ways to improve your processes, create new avenues for lead generation, and provide top-quality experiences for your customers.
But what are some of the best ways you could improve your business this year? And how can you ensure that your business is set up for success next year and beyond?
Let’s explore a few practical strategies you should implement below.
Maximize Employee Productivity
Employees are the backbone of every successful company. Even the best ideas will only matter if your team can execute them and turn them into a reality. But while it’s easy to blame employees for lack of effort or results, in most cases, it’s actually the employer that fails to put their team in a position to succeed.
But how can you make your team better?
Well, one way to provide an instant boost to your team’s performance is to use a work time tracker that analyzes how your employees spend their time. This type of solution can help you gain insights into how your employees spend their time, what tasks they focus on, and how they allocate tasks between one another.
And when you have that information, you can then use it to find data-driven solutions for working through tasks faster, eliminating bottlenecks, and boosting efficiency across the office. For example, you may discover that your employees are spending a significant amount of time on tasks that aren’t creating much value for your business.
You could then provide feedback to your entire team, making them aware of the issue and even offering a process that could automate the task, freeing up a lot of time for more productive activities.
Embrace Paid Advertising
It’s hard to argue against the advantages of using paid ads to grow your business. It’s a guaranteed method of instantly reaching thousands of highly-targeted prospects, allowing you to display your messages and get them into your funnel. A well-executed paid ads campaign can launch a company virtually overnight, bringing it in front of people who are very likely to be interested in the products and services.
However, the biggest drawback of using paid ads is the upfront cost, which comes without any guarantee of results. Therefore, to improve your chances of success, you should leverage the expertise and best practices of an experienced PPC agency, which can create effective campaigns that suit your business, audience, and current goals.
When you work with an agency, you can avoid some of the common pitfalls companies succumb to, maximizing every dollar in your budget and finding the campaigns that generate a positive return on investment.
Ask Customers for Feedback
Sometimes, finding the right strategies for growth can be challenging. As a business, you may have a rough idea of the most significant changes you could make, but that idea won’t necessarily be a good representation of what your customers really want.
And that’s why an excellent way to cut through the clutter and get to the heart of the best growth opportunities for your business is to talk with your customers, asking them what they would like to see changed and how you could provide them with a better experience.
By organizing one-on-one interviews, running offline surveys, and encouraging people to leave reviews, you can discover pressing issues you weren’t even aware of that were getting in the way of a long-lasting relationship with your buyers. Addressing these issues can become the most powerful driving force for your business, providing you a massive advantage over the competition and positioning your brand as someone who cares about customers’ opinions.
Build Your Email List
Even though there are countless ways to engage your audience, email remains one of the most promising methods for developing lasting relationships with your audience and making repeat sales for a long time.
Email marketing is very easy and cost-effective to get started on, but it can quickly grow to become the most powerful marketing method that sets you up for a steady stream of sales long-term. You can use emails to educate your audience, provide tons of value through content, run various promotions, introduce new products, and even gather feedback to learn about your audience’s preferences.
To ensure you’re always getting a stream of new subscribers, you can create content upgrades, organize webinars, and provide value through the newsletter itself, enticing people to join for the information you share in the emails.
Bottom Line
No matter the stage you are in with your business, there are always strategies you can use to make improvements and become better. In fact, being willing to push your company to improve is one of the critical factors determining your long-term potential.
By focusing on employee productivity, investing in various paid advertising strategies, and discovering what your customers want, you can gain an advantage over the competition and establish your place as a leader in your market.