Small businesses have an incredibly important role in the economy of the USA. In fact, a large majority of all companies within the country are classified as small businesses. These companies range from restaurants, top construction companies to IT firms and everything in between.
However, no matter what industry you’re in or what product or service you sell, one thing that many small businesses struggle with is growing. In fact, many small businesses will fail within their first couple of years of operation.
Thankfully, your company doesn’t have to simply be another statistic. There are several different things you can do to give your company a good chance of growing. With that in mind, this article is going to go over a few tips to grow your small business in 2020.
Customer Service Should Be a Priority
In order to have a successful company, you need customers. However, with so many different businesses in your space, there is a lot of competition for these customers. As a result, your customer service needs to be top-notch. You could have an outstanding product or service, but if your customer service drives people away, you will fail.
You need to take every step you can to make your customers feel special and valued. Be sure to respond to any issues and questions as soon as possible, and be as helpful as possible. Ensure your customer service staff is knowledgeable and well-versed, and also kind and friendly. The better customer service, the more likely your customers will recommend you to their peers.
Employee Engagement is Instrumental for Success
Another thing that is instrumental in the success of your company is your employees. If your team is made up of lackluster employees, your products, projects, and services are likely to fall flat. As a result, you need to make sure that your team is made up of high-quality employees capable of getting the job done.
However, hiring and retaining these types of employees is difficult, unless you engage them properly. Employees want to feel challenged, respected and want to be compensated fairly for their work. Be sure to appreciate all of your employees and also take what they have to say into account.
While all of this can take a bit of time and money for your company, the results will be more than worth it. Without helping your employees grow and mature in their careers, growing your business will prove difficult.
Use Technology to Your Advantage
In 2020, technology will play a bigger role in companies than ever before. There are dozens of different apps, platforms, and tools that can help nearly every business area at your company. There are tools to simplify HR, to speed up invoicing and accounting, to keep your business secure and even manage data.
Of course, the value of having your company on social media is still incredibly high as well. It is one of the easiest ways to reach out to potential customers. Also, things like automation and AI should also be considered, as they can optimize your processes and save you money. You could also use a virtual assistant to help you with your outreach.
In conclusion, the tips within this article will be able to help you successfully grow your small business in 2020. Some very experienced people would have very good tips and ideas:
Roundpeg – ‘In our 2020 Digital Marketing Study we see business owners gravitating toward platforms, which take less time such as Instagram but are also less effective than the less glamorous but significantly more beneficial, Google My Business.’
GreenRope – ‘Spend time testing out your emails. Testing a message across the most popular email clients (Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook, etc) allows you to see your email through the eyes of your readers. Check and double check that all links are working properly, images load correctly, and that there are no spelling or grammar errors. Using A/B testing is another great way to test variations of your message, different images or subject lines for example. A/B testing allows you to send the varying content to a smaller group of contacts in your list, then send the one with the best performing results to your remaining contacts.’
Lorenzo Gutierrez – Look for your best niche and stay with it.
As they say, the riches are in the niches. By focusing on your best niche it allows you to penetrate an industry deeper and better allowing you to be the expert rather than trying to be a jack of all trades.
Read In Brief – Continuously be searching for approaches to improve your business and to make it stand apart from the competition. Perceive that you don’t know it all and be available to new innovative thoughts and new ways to deal with your business.
Millennial Moderator – Social media can be leveraged by any size of the business, depending on what their objectives are. Looking for new customer leads means optimizing good social media funnels, spreading knowledge about your product requires actively engaging the relevant social communities that care about your cause, and addressing public feedback about your services will require confident and transparent, social messaging. A great (and easy) way for small businesses to benefit from social media is through social bookmarking, which I discuss more about in this article.
Axiomq – From learning the latest marketing strategies, it may seem like the high budgets that are needed to get exposure of your small business are beyond your capabilities. It couldn’t be further from the truth. You can promote your small business for little to no money.
Glenmont – For those not experienced in the space, marketing automation involves leveraging software and tools to automate different components of your marketing strategy. Often these are time and labor-intensive tasks that can automate through technology. These tools can also help you better manage your digital campaigns across email, social media, your website, etc.
Marketing Sparkler – When creating a small business marketing strategy, it is important to understand what “content” means in this digital era, and who the content is for. Content includes your company blog, social media posts, and articles on websites. In addition to the good old written word, it is also based on graphics, videos, and quizzes that get your readers to actively participate in the content.
Then, you want to take into account how each generation communicates. Put simply, different generations have distinct preferences. In order to persuade them to buy your products, you need to provide information relevant to them, through the communication channels they appreciate the most.
Then, you want to take into account how each generation communicates. Put simply, different generations have distinct preferences. In order to persuade them to buy your products, you need to provide information relevant to them, through the communication channels they appreciate the most.
Cooler Insights – The best strategy for small businesses to do is to build your brand in a specific niche, and be known as an influencer in your communities. In a world where social media is now ubiquitous, small business owners and their staff need to be viewed as experts in their chosen field. This can be done cheaply and freely by constantly creating helpful content around your niche. If you run a cafe, you may want to talk about how to select the best beans for your cuppa, and if you operate a bookkeeping service, you can offer tips on managing your cash flow during crises.
For more strategies on how you can grow your online communities, read my article here.
Yokebay – There are many lessons to learn in business. Therefore, a business owner needs to develop his/her inner mind set to see a bigger picture of the business. By doing so, you are giving yourself the opportunity to succeed. Additionally, create a good marketing strategy that builds your brand around your business; at the same time, build a supportive network around yourself.
EZOfficeInventory – Agility is going to be critical in 2020. Business technology is enabling small businesses around the globe to become more flexible and adaptable. Find out what kind of automation your workflows require and invest in management solutions to lower administrative burdens. Small businesses are already short-staffed – get yourself the right software so you can focus on strategy-building and scale your business effectively.
CloudLGS – Hands-free search is a rising trend nowadays. With Voice search, businesses will see more success. Alexa’s preferences, Cortana, Siri, and other voice apps are bringing voice search closer to home.
P2P Marketing – Every person has become a media company with a social media profile and online advertising has become harder than ever. You cannot underestimate the social reach and advertising capacity of each of your customers. In fact, you need to learn to turn this capacity in your favor. Turning your customers to promoters can 10x your company’s growth. Focus on your customer base, and identify potential brand ambassadors. These are your VIP customers, harness their reach to truly grow your brand.
ReferralRock – Knowing your customer isn’t just about getting their name and contact details. The more you learn about those using your product, the better you can deliver what they want. Take the time to talk with some of your most loyal customers (of course, offering a little incentive helps!), and consider their actual challenges and needs. This goes a much longer way than building your business for a fictional buyer persona.
InterPages – If you have recently ventured a small business and looking forwards to its meaningful growth in 2020, then it is crucial to follow some appropriate tips for the purpose. The first and foremost milestone to grow your small business through an online platform is to reach your customers. Generally it requires more efforts for small businesses to make the consumers aware of a business, especially when it is a new venture. Have a sight on some unique and effective tips to grow your small business in 2020 given below.
Here are a few relevant and marvelous tips and ideas that will help you to grow your small business in 2020.
1. You must have an exclusive website for your business which is more users friendly.
2. Hire some professionals of digital marketing to rank your website on search engines through SEO and other techniques of online marketing.
3. Do not forget the importance of social media for the growth of your small business.
4. Data collected from consumer behavior analysis will help you to take relevant decisions for your business by keeping the needs of customers in mind.
5. Set an active channel of conversation with your customers to address their complaints.
6. Keep some lucrative offers and loyalty points for those who are your regular customers.
7. Sending customized newsletters according to the customers’ previous purchasing history can also work very well for the growth of your business.
If you will hit these tips for the growth of your small business venture in 2020 then you will definitely be able to flourish your business to a certain height.
Botsify – And if you are worried about having a high cost in marketing to promote your small businesses don’t worry at all there are many awesome low budget Content marketing ideas for small businesses. Writing for marketing is all concerned with helping the people. What the customers want is their questions answered as fast as possible. What you should do is find a question that is bothering your clientele and answer it. It helps you a lot to promote your small business.
TechSpective – Let some things go and don’t try to do it all yourself. Focus on what you’re good at and building your business and outsource functions that are necessary, but outside of your skillset.
Business in Gambia – In a time of uncertainty and slowing economic conditions, cashflow management continues to be the key tip to survival. As a small business manager, you need to assess the cash flow needs of your business using multiple business case scenarios. If your scenario plan shows cash flow issues, start to engage the financiers or government agencies in advance. Do not wait for liquidity challenges before preparing for alternative financing sources.
The Total Entrepreneurs – One of the best tips Small Business Owners can take advantage of to grow their business is using case studies. Using case studies is another strategy of content marketing for your business. All you need to do is make a list of most of your successful customers or clients and share with your target audience how working with your business or using your product or services benefited these customers or clients. Start with the problems these customers faced before using your product or services, then tell how your product or services addressed the problems. Make sure to use social proofs like testimonials from satisfied clients. A case study will not only show potential customers what you have to offer but also give them confidence that you can deliver what you are promising as you have done for others.
Global Marketing Alliance – There are endless marketing tools that small businesses can use to help grow their business. It’s easy for small business owners to get overwhelmed by all the options and potential action points available to them. So, focus on those marketing areas most important for growing your business and make sure you have a clear plan of action – clearly time-scaled – which builds upon your business objectives. Finally, make sure you have a means of recording how effective your marketing efforts are.
Anthony Gaenzle – As a small business, you can really boost the presence of your brand with a well-executed content strategy. People want to feel a connection with the brands they follow and ultimately buy from, and content is your chance to forge that connection. Through engaging video content, articles, infographics, and other types of content, you can create a persona for your brand that showcases your brand’s values and the value you bring to your customers. By creating content for each part of your customers’ journey, you can position your brand and your team as thought leaders, highlight the value of your products and services, help your target audience solve problems, and ultimately close sales. Your content marketing efforts shouldn’t stop after the sale. After the sale, you should continue to create content aimed at keeping your customers engaged, maintaining your thought leadership status, and helping your customers get the most out of your products and services. – Anthony Gaenzle
Postfity.com – An easy (and cheap!) way to grow your small business in 2020 is to increase organic exposure on social media through employee advocacy. You can use a social media scheduler for employee advocacy on LinkedIn to boost organic reach and conversions for free. One of our users, Shortlist recruitment – linked all their employee’s (15) accounts to one Postfity master-account, and shared all the company updates automatically to all their employee’s profiles. This helped the IT recruitment agency to leverage its employees’ networks and to boost their organic views on LinkedIn by a whopping 2,666% in just 4 months! According to their marketing manager, Helen Finnan – LinkedIn has been the main source of leads for them ever since. This simple strategy is very cheap compared to paid ads and very easy to implement.
Fannit – For small business seo to really make an impact you need to focus on local map rankings and be able to see the impact you’re making at a granular level. This is difficult if you are using a normal keyword tracker like SEMRush or Ahrefs since they don’t have this capability – even though they are great for other areas. Even though it’s more expensive to track, use a tool like agency analytics because it provides the deep data you need to manage keyword growth for Google Maps (user IP zipcode, the keyword the user is seeing in that IP specifically, and the map ranking) and lead generation in those targeted areas.
Blackandise – If you are starting out, you need to focus on creating good content. After you have the content, then you can decide on one social network to master. Do not try to juggle multiple networks. Master one and grow fast. Our suggestion for 2020 is Pinterest.
Give it a few weeks, review your Pinterest data along with your Google/Bing Analytics data to learn more about your audience without spending any money!
Give it a few weeks, review your Pinterest data along with your Google/Bing Analytics data to learn more about your audience without spending any money!
FundThrough – With businesses reopening around the country, small business owners will be eager to get back to work and fill orders for larger companies. But we’re seeing large customers extending their payment terms from 30 and 60 days to upward of 90 to 120 days. If you’re waiting three to four months for your customers to pay you, you might feel like you’re shut down all over again waiting to get paid for work you’ve already done. Invoice factoring gives small business owners the option to self fund their growth and get working capital within 48 hours for outstanding customer invoices. This is the fastest way to fund your business, pay expenses, and not have to deal with the hassle of small business loans.
LoveUMarketing – In this worldwide pandemic situation of Covid 19, where the entire world is at stand still, ‘Customer Management’ is the only way to grow your business. Boost your customer base and try to make them happier. Remember, only the happy customers will give you more sale opportunities. If you have loyal customers (who will not prefer doing brand switch), your business will definitely grow.
Hippo Video – With social distancing in place, it is time that businesses embrace the new normal by including videos inside their business activities. By this, we just don’t mean online streaming and meeting sessions, rather a more defined, scalable approach by including videos that can be recorded, personalized, and easily distributed. Using videos inside sales activities, teaching, training and even fitness will help bring the humane element into communication and make people feel REAL. Hippo Video is one such platform that can help you do this without hassle at a very reasonable price target.
OnlyInfoTech – Study your audience based on the platforms, if you are looking for B2B business deals, marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn would be the preferable platforms, but if you are in search of B2C leads, platforms like Instagram would be worth investing your time.
Analyze your response on these networks and opt for the paid promotions options, plan your campaigns keeping in mind the goal you want to achieve through it and the audience that might be interested to know about your business.
Analyze your response on these networks and opt for the paid promotions options, plan your campaigns keeping in mind the goal you want to achieve through it and the audience that might be interested to know about your business.
Clever Ads – You can do all your ppc campaigns on your own, but probably, if your business is small or you are starting in this sector, it will be tough and time consuming. You should facilitate work for yourself by looking for some helpful tools like keyword planners or personalized banners creators. You can find all of them on the internet and save time (and also money).
Digital Ducats Inc. – Content and backlinks are deeply rooted in the success of every website’s ranking. In order to enhance both ranking factors, small businesses should establish a clearly defined content schedule. This means clustering your content topically and assigning a regular schedule for content that gets published on and off-site. For example, when it comes to SEO Toronto, local companies have been able to benefit by appearing more frequently in localized search results by posting regularly to Google My Business.
On average, only 17% of companies post content to Google My Business on a weekly basis. By posting weekly, you’re doing more for your business locally than 83% of all businesses.
Planning and scheduling the content you publish is one of the simplest ways to enhance your website’s search visibility.
Supercool Creative – The key to growing any business is sales – getting new customers.
- Start by knowing exactly who you’re selling to.
- Develop a content marketing plan designed to inform, educate, entertain, and inspire consumer actions that eventually result in sales.
- Focus on video content – blogs, video ads, social media sharing like updates, photos, memes, ads – and include CTAs for connection and engagement where appropriate, like follow, sign up, tell us what you think, contact us, and of course buy now. Decide which content to share organically (free) and which to share via paid channels like Facebook, YouTube TikTok, Instagram, Twitter…
- Optimize your website for conversions, for a smooth customer experience.
- Track results, determine what’s working and not working, and do more of what’s working!
Splento – A great way to gain business growth is by implementing new content marketing strategies. Develop several approaches with fresh content for your blog and on your website and give special attention to visual, mobile-friendly content.
Videos and photographs on these pages are proven to attract more visitors, will improve your bounce rate, and can have a dramatic effect on your Google ranking over time. It needs monitoring and some experimentation to find the right content that works for you. Stay agile and analyze the data you get after your experiments – but keep going and you’ll soon discover what is working best. Then – scale it!
Magnificent Marketing – Before you spend any marketing or advertising dollars on spreading the word about your products or services, you need to know what’s important and to who… And although the human creative element is important, it will be out of order if you don’t know exactly who your target customers are and what is most important to them. This is where predictive marketing and analysis comes in. You must go deep before you define your messaging and targeting. It takes a bit more time and investment at the beginning, but this time and money will be made up 100 times over as you decrease marketing to the wrong people with the wrong messages.
QuanticMind – Know Your ROI! The return on investment from the budget you have spent on marketing can be difficult to prove. As an example, around 60% of small businesses continue to report challenges proving the value of their social media efforts (HubSpot). Calculating the ROI of your digital marketing initiatives empowers you to deliver stronger results by shining a light on what works best for your business while providing tangible proof of contributions to the bottom line. But how do I do that? Set SMART goals for your marketing efforts and go beyond vanity metrics when gathering data.
We Are All Connected – Today, few things are as vital to business growth as a well-designed website. It is your handshake, and in many cases, the first impression you make on a potential client. What’s more, it is the only digital home that your business actually controls and a key success factor in social media and ad campaigns. Your SEO efforts, email campaigns, Google ads, many of your posts on social media, will all lead people back to it. So, when they arrive on your site, it needs to offer a positive experience, whatever stage of the buying journey they are at.
A well-designed website prioritises the user experience (UX). It clearly signposts the routes that can take your user from interested visitor to signed-up customer through the thoughtful use of calls to action and links to helpful content. It is easy to use across devices; it is structured in a way that supports SEO to help your rankings in search engines; its design represents your unique brand personality and appeals to your audience; it showcases and surfaces your high quality content that makes your target audience feel heard and interested in finding out more about your products or services. In essence, a well-designed website takes time and resource, but it will more than repay the investment.
Zoek.UK – Ensure your customer service is exceptional and go the extra mile when you can. Loyalty is rooted in trust. Customers can trust humans more than the ideas and image of a brand. By interacting with your customer service team, customers will develop and maintain life-long relationships with your business much easier. In doing so, they won’t only remember great service, but it’s also more likely they’ll refer others to you. Great customer service is a unique way to differentiate your company from competitors, instead of simply relying on the exciting features of your products or service.
AutoConversion.net – Business growth occurs by acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones. So keeping customer churn low and new customer acquisition steady are key. Depending on your product offering and your industry, acquiring new customers for your small business could be a short simple process or it may be a long one. Regardless, you need effective ways to create awareness of your product, spark interest in your company, and generate demand with decision makers. One effective way to do all these things with both existing and future customers is with a media strategy that engages not only customers but also employees and strategic partners. An effective media strategy is one akin to a traditional or new media publisher. Avoid thinking and acting like a vendor trying to sell something, and instead think and act like a publisher offering up dynamic engaging content that appeals to your prospective buyer.
Adlibweb – Before you start out, make sure that you have a DIgital Marketing Strategy in place. Wildly firing off PPC or Social Media campaigns might work in the short term but if you don’t tie it all together in a logical way, in alignment with the overall objectives of your small business, then you are setting yourself up to fail.
The process is to set your goals, aligned with your business objectives, define your audience, define the channels you are going to use such as Organic, Social Media or PPC, make a business case (to make sure you make margin on your campaigns), implement and measure. If you follow these steps your small business will grow.
IED – Apply a reward system for your employees. Employees as the backbone of the business. The harder they work, the better the results. Employees that love the place they work, will want to help it grow. By applying a reward system or a bonus system for hard work or good results, you will be encouraging your employees to work more and gain more. Plus, by doing so you will start creating a great reputation for your business. More people will want to work for you and even more, will want to buy your products or get your services.
Omniconvert – Prioritize Customer Retention and stop focusing all your resources on customer acquisition. The eCommerce market is getting more competitive than ever and the consumer is becoming very picky. If you don’t find a way to differentiate your business, to make your customer remember you, your business won’t thrive in this environment. The way you can do this is to put more resources into Customer Value Optimization, segment your customers using the RFM model and start monitoring vital KPIs such as NPS, Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Retention Rate.
Tech Patio – Having the right technology can unlock possibilities to make your business stand out from any other. Not only can you spur on communication but with the right tools you can bring in the right audience. Here are 5 ways that the right tech can help you quickly grow your business.
ReturnOnNow – One of the biggest oversights we see small businesses make is trying to build a “one size fits all” marketing strategy. There are a couple of concepts you can immediately adopt that will help better connect with your customers via marketing efforts:
1. Customer Personas – How well do you know your customers? Can you build a profile of a typical customer and then target all of your messaging toward catching their attention? This works, so try it for yourself.
2. Buyer’s Journey / Customer Life Cycle – Have you mapped out your marketing efforts across the full customer life cycle, from awareness of your name/brand to familiarity, then consideration of your solution and finally a decision that will hopefully go in your favor? If all of your messaging jumps right to “buy” messaging, you’re missing the opportunity to nurture customers properly and may come across as over eager or too salesy. This will help balance that disconnect.
1. Customer Personas – How well do you know your customers? Can you build a profile of a typical customer and then target all of your messaging toward catching their attention? This works, so try it for yourself.
2. Buyer’s Journey / Customer Life Cycle – Have you mapped out your marketing efforts across the full customer life cycle, from awareness of your name/brand to familiarity, then consideration of your solution and finally a decision that will hopefully go in your favor? If all of your messaging jumps right to “buy” messaging, you’re missing the opportunity to nurture customers properly and may come across as over eager or too salesy. This will help balance that disconnect.
Masterful Marketing – Today every small local business is looking at ways to change the way they market their business. The best way to successfully grow is to move your marketing online. When people need local services, they will go online to find a suitable provider. Which means, you need to do what it takes to be found in a crowded local market.
In order to be successful, you need to build a strong foundation and a powerful web presence to make an impact. Don’t take shortcuts in this important area as people will judge your business by what they see. At a minimum:
- Have a professionally developed, responsive website built in WordPress
- Implement local SEO strategies
- Claim and verify your local business listings on Google My Business (GMB) and Bing Places for Business
- Select your social media platforms based on where you can connect with your target audience
- Research other industry directories and claim your business listing on those that make sense
- Ask for reviews and testimonials from happy customers
- Create content that educates your audience and shows them you are the expert they are looking for
Your social media platforms and local business listings in conjunction with your website can create a powerful information network that makes it much easier for you to be found. Promoting your content on these social platforms can get you more visibility with the right audience.
For local small businesses, changing the way you reach your target customers can have a big impact on your bottom line.
Hoot Design Company – Investing in culture is one of the best ways that small businesses can grow. If your organization is strong internally, clients and customers will be more likely to want to work with you. Businesses are built from the inside out, so never overlook your team.
CAD Pro – Grow your small business with CAD Pro. CAD Pro has helped thousands of small businesses’ such as realtors, builders, contractors, and remodeling companies streamline their business. CAD Pro is used by NARI professional remodelers and contractors and the NRCA roofing contractors as well as the National Home Builders Association. Cad Pro is an affordable and easy alternative to other more expensive home design software and will help any small business with budget limitations.
BizEpic – If you’re low on online marketing budget, I’d suggest you to do ‘guerilla marketing’ on Facebook. It’s effective in driving traffic to your website and/or generate inquiries that can potentially lead to sales – and it’s free!
What you should do is to join several Facebook Groups related to your business niche (don’t join a general business group.) Make sure that the Groups are active and heavily moderated (you don’t want to join a spammy Group!)
Your first post would be introducing yourself and what you do in a new post/discussion. Then you should participate in the conversation – responding to other members’ posts with your opinions and insights, be helpful, etc. Don’t sell anything just yet, but when the opportunity presents itself (i.e. Guys, where can I find… ?) You should answer the call.
Best Social Media Management Tools For Small Businesses by Social Champ – You can use it to strategize your social media posts and screen the analytics to see what works best. You’ll discover enormous players and little players here of the social media marketing tools, with an assortment of fortes and capacities, so there’s something for everybody. The portrayals of best social media management apps are short, just to give you a general thought of each tool’s essential qualities.
FounderJar – If you are not using email marketing for your online business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity and potentially leaving thousands of dollars (perhaps even millions) on the table. If you ask most bloggers and other online business owners, most of them will tell you that building an email list is the most important thing you can do to ensure the success of your online business.
IdeasPlusBusiness – Growing a business is not a one-time thing. It is a process. It is a journey. One strategy that has worked well for us over the years is that we focus on the core products of our business and refine the production process until it is almost perfect. It is by refining our processes that we discover new ways to scale our business to the next step. The aim of any business is to make a profit and the big profits come from your main products. And in the process of refining your main products, you will discover the magic that will push your business to the next level.
The Grable Group – COVID-19 has created an imperative for organizations in every sector to reassess and redesign their operations.
One way organizations have been rising to the challenges of the pandemic is by pivoting events to virtual platforms and organizing more online meetings to handle their work and communicate. With more and more organizations shifting their planning into an online-meeting mindset, new virtual meeting trends are emerging as well.
Cayenne Consulting – Figure out the one important and difficult thing you can do that nobody else in your market can do as well, and build your business around that. That is your core competency, your value proposition, your competitive strength, and the center of your marketing message. Refine it. Perfect it. Delight your customers with it. Craft your business plan around it. Soon, you will be outdistancing your competition.
