One day or another every entrepreneur gets to the point when their business starts to stagnate. These moments are great for introducing creative changes that will make your small business more efficient and functional. In this article we present you with some of the ideas that can ensure your company’s growth in the future.
Use Your Customer’s Feedback
Successful CEOs know the importance of their company’s statistics, but sometimes they want to seek answers from their clients directly. There are numerous ways how companies can acquire valuable opinions from their clients and these are the four most common and the most effective ones:
- Surveys are the easiest way to get feedback. Most of the surveys today are done online and they can be long or short. Long ones provide more detailed information, while short ones give fewer answers but are much easier to carry out.
- Feedback Boxes – here clients can leave their suggestions and remarks about the company and its line of products or services.
- Direct Approach – asking clients about the company’s products or services in person. This can be done on organized events like promotional meals or giveaways.
- Usability Tests – these are especially useful for companies that produce apps and software. There are plenty of companies that offer testers for hire, but real customers that are part of company’s targeted audience can provide more valuable feedback by doing usability tests and providing longer reports on product’s functionality.
Customer’s feedback is very valuable for business development. It provides an insight on customer’s satisfaction and innovative and down-to-earth suggestions on making company’s offer more functional and appealing to consumers.
Today, it is easier than ever to get feedback from your customers through social media and other online platforms. There are also many new tools which you can use to gauge their satisfaction with your brand and your company.
Improve Employee Satisfaction
Satisfied employees are more loyal and productive. Increasing benefits is one way to make your employees happy, but there are also lots of smaller and less expensive changes that can boost the company’s moral on the long run.
- Encourage Social Connections – When employees are socializing it means they talk about work even during their free time.
- Build Ownership among Your Team – This is important because it makes employees feel responsible for company’s ups and downs and makes them work harder for achieving company’s goals.
- Always Give Support to Employees in Need – Don’t be stingy when it comes to off-days, benefits etc for the staff members who really need them.
- Listen to Employee’s Suggestion and Creative Ideas – People who are closer to the work process have the best insights and ideas about how to make it more efficient.
Of course, you will also want to do the “technical” stuff in order to keep your employees happy. You will ensure that they have all the benefits that you can afford as a business owner. You will also want to make sure that they have the proper equipment that they need to do their job properly.
Invest in Online Marketing
Internet marketing is the thing of the future. Lots of companies turn their whole marketing strategies viral, which is not strange at all considering that Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance research done in 2012 by IPSOS determined that 59% of people interviewed in 24 countries use internet to manage their personal finance, 48% use it for shopping and 41% for finding jobs. These numbers are staggering, and they continue to grow and the same goes for popularity of internet marketing. Now there are plenty of platforms that can be used for promotion and these are some of the most popular ones:
- Google AdWords
- Facebook Ads
- Twitter Ads
Think About Relocating Your Business
Business Relocation is not as difficult as it used to be. Lots of successful mall businesses changed their location in order to make it closer to their customer base. Smart relocation can boost company’s sales and when deciding for this option entrepreneurs should have these things in mind:
- Finding the Right Employees – relocating inevitably comes with loosing some of the best company employees and finding an experienced and skillful team on the new location is one of the most important criteria for the future success.
- Be Ready for Additional Costs – relocation always comes with one or few additional unplanned costs for moving, adapting new office space end so on.
- Plan Ahead – before you make a move, it is absolutely essential that you get everything in order before you make the actual move. For instance, you should ensure that the infrastructure is in the place and that your people will be able to hit the ground running. In addition to this, you will want to take care of all the legal and organizational matters before you actually relocate.
Seek Help from Outside
Many business owners believe that going outside for help is something that only big corporations can afford and that only makes sense for businesses that are already as successful as they can be. This is a mistake. Small businesses can also benefit from outside assistance, especially in certain areas.
- Legal Advice – the business legal field is an extremely complex one, and we are not only talking when you are making certain moves. Most small businesses can benefit greatly from professional business legal advice that can help them plan ahead and avoid mistakes that business owners can always make.
- IT Services – there are innumerable ways in which informational technology can help small businesses, but unfortunately, most small business do not have the people who can utilize them properly. This is why outside IT services can be of huge help, ensuring that your company is fulfilling its full potential online.
- Outsourced Marketing – approaching an outside marketing agency may sound like something expensive and out of reach for small businesses. These days, however, there are many marketing agencies that have packages aimed at small-to-medium businesses that cannot afford their “full” services.
Making a small business grow is never an easy thing to do. If it was, then all small businesses would be super successful and make millions. The advice that we have shared with you is not a literal guide to small business success, but we are also certain that it has given you a few ideas on how you may improve your small business and that is what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Images: “A regular-sized businessman is looking at the giant legs of a competitor. Digital illustration./ Shutterstock.com“
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