Growing a business is tough work but there are a few solutions you can use to minimize the cost of expanding your enterprise while attracting a large following, both locally and from across the web. The most important principle of growing your business is making sure all of your ducks are in a row in terms of quality and commitment to consistency.
When branching out, make sure all of your designs and ideas are implemented with an eye toward quality and ease of use. Here are the steps you should take to grow your business.
- Make Your Website Functional And Well Designed
- Never Forget Your Target Audience
- Improve Your SEO Capabilities
- Create A Content Marketing Strategy
- Ensure Compatibility
- Don’t Ignore Social Media
- Look Around Your Industry
Make Your Website Functional And Well Designed
One of the earliest mistakes small business owners make is to assume no one will take their website seriously if it’s not designed by a professional. While you don’t need a professional to design and implement your website, you should still ensure it flows well and is easily navigable by your user base.
There are several free themes on WordPress to make great looking websites which impress potential customers while also being fun and easy to move around in. All you need to do is drag and drop your favorite options and you can build up the site from the ground up.
Never Forget Your Target Audience
To grow your business, you have to first ask yourself who’s going to use it when it expands. It’s smart to build up a customer profile, a list of attributes you can give to your potential customers before you show them your offerings. You need to write down a list of several key characteristics of your ideal and current customer base.
For example, are they married or single? Do they have kids? How much do they make a year? Why are they using your product or service and not on of your competitor’s? Once you have all of these answers, and many more of your choosing, answered, you can move onto the next step of critical expansion.
Improve Your SEO Capabilities
After you’ve established your website, you’ll want to focus on the ability of people to actually find it. This, in general terms, is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. Improving your site’s SEO is critical because the greater its capabilities, the more visible it will be when people use search engines like Google and Bing. Improving visibility leads to greater traffic, which, if those customers are satisfied, will lead to greater visibility, and the cycle repeats.
To increase SEO, you must know what your customers are searching for and where they are. Figuring out what questions they’re asking on the web is the first step to peppering in those questions in your content. Having a website which is easily navigated is also crucial for SEO.
Create A Content Marketing Strategy
One of the great things about the internet is that it allows for a variety of ways to market to those who don’t already know about your product. One of the most useful tools in this vein is a blog. Adding a blog to your website may seem trivial, but blogs are one of the most useful and important content marketing tools on the web today.
Simply put, blogs help you create intimacy between you and your buyer, as well as place you in a position of authority and trustworthiness within your industry. Helping propel your website into a place of prominence on the web thanks to a blog is one of the assured ways of garnering followers and positioning yourself as an expert in your industry.
Ensure Compatibility
Compatibility is simply the phrase used to demonstrate that your website works on both desktop and mobile platforms. Not more than ten years ago, compatibility was a non-issue because mobile phones were rarely used for serious business on the internet. Today, however, more people search for companies from their phones than they do from desktops or even laptops. Ensuring your site works on mobile phones and is as sleek and well organized on a mobile device is critically important to finding business in your local area.
Nearly sixty percent of those browsing the internet at any given time are using their mobile devices. To improve compatibility, you can remove flash video of your site, reduce the size of pictures, give your website some tappable elements, and improve functionality so that those using a smaller screen aren’t missing out.
Don’t Ignore Social Media
Once you’ve made sure your site is optimized for search engines and can hold the attention of both mobile and desktop users, it’s time to utilize social media to its full advantage. Social media attracts customers from all over the world, and, like a blog, can help you engage and interact with both prospective and existing customers.
Social media also requires minimal spending, unless it’s your primary method of attracting customers. Make sure each of your social media accounts are linked to each other and all of them link back to your website to improve synergy and keep your customers engaged.
Look Around Your Industry
One of the greatest ways to learn what works and what doesn’t for your company is to take a look around your industry and gain information from your competition.
Of course, you shouldn’t copy them outright, as your unique value proposal should always be front and center. However, if you want to learn about and implement best practices for your website and marketing strategy, it never hurts to draw on inspiration from your competitors.
