Starting a business is among the biggest challenges many people ever take on, but any entrepreneur knows that it’s just the first step. If you want your business to truly succeed and thrive, you have to start growing it. Reaching the point where you finally recoup your expenses and start turning a profit is certainly a milestone, and one worth celebrating, but you’ll still have a long road ahead to meet your real goals. Gone are the days where businesses could stick to tradition or strategies that served in the past. In a market where customer behavior can change almost instantly, it’s all about your ability to adapt. Here are some of the best things you can do to expand your business and beat out your competition.
Organization
If your business is far enough along for you to worry about expansion, you probably already understand the importance of organization. There are ways you can take things beyond your basic lists and checking off tasks, however. There are plenty of great record-keeping tools that can help you track your profit margins, prepare for tax season, and easily process payments. This makes it easy to create backups of client records, organize a useful list of contacts, and focus more of your energy on other areas of your business that you can improve.
Diligent Market Research
If you want to stay ahead, you’ll need to be up to date on changes within your market, and you’ll need to keep an eye on your competitors. Think of your business as a solution to people’s problems, and see what you can do to solve that problem better than your competitors. This could be through something as simple as better pricing, or you may find a way to improve your service. Think about who your target market really is and how you can reach them.
Product testing is a great example of important market research. This lets you gauge customer interest in new product ideas as well as work out any issues your testers may face with the products. You can also find ways to improve your current products by collecting customer feedback from surveys or questionnaires.
Local Marketing
It’s impossible to discount the importance of local marketing, even for online retailers. Creating a Google My Business profile will prioritize your business in search results for users in your local area, and it makes for a great platform to connect with your current customers. You can also try geofencing marketing, which makes it easy to target your audience based on a local radius around your location. These services will show you which mobile devices that displayed your ad actually entered your store, which gives you greater insights into your marketing strategy and results.
Customer Support
A great way to stand out from your competitors is to go above and beyond with your customer support. You need to retain your current customers and provide an exceptional experience for new ones, and your customer support efforts can do just that. Customers are likely to be frustrated before they even contact your support team, and they’ll be sure to remember and report a bad experience. If you’re lucky, however, they may also share a good experience with others, giving you a positive word of mouth.
One way you can offer great customer service is by using cloud contact center software. These convenient solutions allow customers to contact your agents through any preferred method whether that’s a voice call, web chat, text, SMS, and more. Omnichannel solutions are particularly great since they allow customers to seamlessly switch from one communication channel to another when needed. Even if a customer is transferred to another agent, that agent joins the conversation with the full context of the situation. This way, each customer gets a personalized experience that’s as easy as possible.
