Starting your own business and working for yourself is a fundamental aspect of the American Dream. However, being successful isn’t as easy as materializing a great idea. In fact, even with outstanding products and services, small businesses continue to fail at an alarming rate.
Whether you’re a traditional local business owner, an online entrepreneur, or an MLM entrepreneur, the key to growth and success is all in how you market yourself.
Keep reading for a proven growth strategy being used by successful business owners around the world. It’ll take some time and no small amount of effort, but there’s no reason you can’t join their ranks.
1. Start With an Amazing Website
First, you have to establish a professional internet presence. Studies show that 92 percent of consumers look to the internet when it comes to researching potential products and services and pulling the trigger. If you’re not online, you may as well close down shop.
However, it’s not enough to just have a web address and a product page. You need to have a user-friendly website that loads quickly and looks pretty. If your website is hard to use or ugly to look at, consumers will go elsewhere.
Use the creation of your website (whether you do it or you hire it out) as a chance to bolster your brand. After all, it’s going to be most people’s first and most important impression of you.
2. Lock in Your SEO
Now that you have a website, you’ve got get people there. One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website is by locking in your SEO. It is also mandatory for any online growth strategy.
Search engine optimization is the algorithm search engines like Google use to find your website when users type in keywords or keyword phrases. The higher your SEO ranking is, the more likely users will find you because your website will come up before others.
You can improve your SEO ranking by starting a blog on your website and filling it with relevant articles full of keywords and keyword phrases. You should also embed metadata within various forms of media including headers, images, and videos. Finally, make sure you have plenty of internal and external links within your articles, it projects certain credibility when it comes to the SEO algorithm.
3. Build a Following on Social Media
No growth strategy is complete without a massive social media presence. The more followers you can obtain, the better. This is one of the most effective and far-reaching MLM strategies for those looking to create a thriving business.
However, a strong social media following can be incredibly impactful for small local businesses as well. One of the biggest reasons small businesses fail is because the public doesn’t even know about them.
A great place to start is on Facebook – build a business profile connected to your personal profile (assuming you’re one of the 2.45 billion FB users). Then ask all of your personal followers to like and follow your business page. It can all be done with the click of a button, you don’t have to send a message to each individual follower.
Then start posting great content that is both relevant to your business and highly engaging. Don’t fall into the trap of being the Facebook salesman who does nothing but pushes products every day. Even though that’s what this whole thing is about, being heavy-handed is guaranteed to lose a ton of followers.
Instead, post competitions, raffles, and other contests that encourage group interaction. Your goal here is to get people to like, comment, and share your posts to their own followers to help you grow.
4. Get Involved With the Community
Next, get out in your community and make yourself known. Connect with a local charity and organize an event. This can be a movie night in the park, an art gala, silent auction or 5k race.
Once you have a plan, start advertising the event and inviting people through social media, emails, and fliers to attend. To ensure maximum attendance, you’ll want to start advertising months in advance to build hype and optimize your outreach.
Finally, reach out to other businesses (not ones similar to yours) and invite them to participate, donate, sponsor, and get publicity for themselves.
5. Start Networking With Other Businesses
Another effective growth strategy involves working with other business owners to build an affiliate relationship. By working together, you can encourage customers to use the other’s services and vice versa.
You can also set up referral deals with your affiliate that offers a small percentage of revenue to them for any clients or customers that come in based on their referral. There are networking agencies that work to get groups of business owners together to form mutually beneficial relationships.
6. Try Your Hand at Traditional Local Marketing Strategies
In terms of a tried and true growth strategy, you can see how traditional marketing works for your business. This includes things like radio, TV, newspaper, and local magazine advertising. There’s also direct mailing and posting fliers.
Depending on your business, community, and method of marketing, these strategies can be largely effective, even though some consider them outdated.
7. Never Stop Learning
Finally, when it comes to the entrepreneurship of any business (brick and mortar, MLM, or online), knowledge is power. Your growth strategy needs to be well-rounded and meticulously researched.
Plain and simple – never stop learning. Pay attention to how well each marketing strategy does and take notes. Figure out the best method for your business and specific audience.
Want to Boost Maximize Your Growth Strategy?
If you want to be as successful as possible as a business owner, you must have a solid growth strategy. The above information is the basic layout to extend your reach. However, there’s a lot more to running a business than getting your name out there.
For more advice and information, be sure to check out the rest of the articles in our blog!
