As a business owner, growing your company will be one of your top priorities. But, as a small-business founder/ owner you know what a challenge it can be! You may lack the budget for big marketing campaigns or the time to focus on growth when there are so many other aspects you have to manage. While it is hard, it is not impossible to accelerate growth.
1. Use Facebook and Google Ads
Targeted and retargeted social media ads can put your brand right in front of your potential consumers. Facebook is the best option for highly specific and cost-effective social media advertising. Use the retargeting feature in Facebook and Google to reinforce your business to your potential consumers. Ensure that your ad is designed in a way that focuses on the problem that your product/ service solves and gets their attention.
2. Show social proof, Ask for feedback
Don’t shy away from asking for testimonials and feedback from your consumers. They are the social proof for your products and customer service. Testimonials are the best testament you can get for your business. They help create a more personal and deeper connection with your brand. Apart from creating trust and credibility for your business, they can also be a good place to find out your pain points and solve them. Share the testimonials you get across social media channels and your website.
3. Focus on content marketing
With your modest budget, create a content marketing strategy that focuses on attracting the right audience, building a community, producing relevant content, creating shareable content, establishing the values and problems solved by your product. The aim is to engage your prospective audiences so they keep coming back for more. The more they engage, the closer they feel, they are more likely to become loyal customers.
Concentrate on building a good content marketing strategy and remember, it’s not always the volume that counts. Quality matters the most.
4. Focus on employee satisfaction
A happy and satisfied employee is a more driven and active employee. It is imperative that you maintain a positive atmosphere in your workplace. Employees are more likely to work for the success of your business, deliver a better customer experience and constantly improve the overall quality of the work when there is a sense of camaraderie. It is time-consuming and draining to train the replacement of a lost employee. So, make employee satisfaction a priority.
5. Build a social media community
Dive headfirst into social media. Leverage the power of reach and connectivity of social media platforms. Promote your business, interact with industry influencers, engage your audiences, listen to their feedback. Here are few tips to get you started:
- Join social media groups/ business communities and share valuable insights to grow your reputation and position yourself as a thought leader
- Share any content – marketing or otherwise – across all social media platforms regularly
- Incorporate call-to-actions or tie-ins in your posts
- Run contests and encourage dialogue with your audience
- Interact with other industry influencers
- Make useful, concise and shareable video content
- Throw in some freebies in the form of newsletters, free seminars, ebooks etc.
- Monitor what kind of posts and content resonate with audiences and work on your strategy
The end goal is not just to increase your follower count, but also to get a good ROI for the time spent on it. Remember, it takes time to develop content, establish your tone, build a brand and audience. The important thing is to be regular, being relevant and listening to your audience.
6. Use deep analytics for decision making
Consumers shop online for coFor any small business and bootstrapped business, decision making – even the smallest ones – is vital. The future growth and direction of your business is totally determined by the decisions you male. For optimal decision making leverage on up-to-date data and metrics. Analyze all your social media metrics, ad data and more to find the weak points and see what parts require patching. You will be able to judge where you need to put in more time, human resource, energy and money. It is never a wrong decision to invest on data analysis tools, techniques and personnel to firm up your business.
7. Follow your biggest competitors
Analyze and acknowledge your competitive landscape, see where you stand. Once you have worked that out, figure out your USPs and in which way your business has an advantage. It is then important to to display and market your USPs. A good plan to would be to keep up with your competitors’ blogs and social media posts. Keep track of their activities, learn what you can and fine tune those learnings for your target market. Make sure you are also aware of the market trends and changing factors in the field to quickly adapt.
8. Work with influencers
Collaborating and working with influencers is a powerful and effective way to reach out to a wider audience. When done right, influencer marketing can help any business – big or small – to grow by leaps and bounds. They not only help in terms of increasing awareness but also grow your business. Don’t choose them according to the number of followers, but according to their personal values and expertise. Using influencers’ following, trust and authority is one of the best and cost-effective growth marketing hack.
9. Keep experimenting
Last but not the least, keep experimenting. In such a competitive environment, you can only grow your business if you take some risks, experiment creatively and implement the above mentioned hacks. Bear in mind, that we have covered only the tried and tested methods. There is no single hack that tackles are the issues. So, don’t hesitate to practice and experiment with new growth hacking strategies.
