Negosentro | 5 Ways to Scale Your Growing Business | For those unfamiliar with the term, scaling a business simply means growing a business. It’s great when a company does fine and breaks even, but doing fine isn’t the point of owning a business. If your business isn’t growing, it’s not living up to its potential. Even in tough economic times, there are certain strategies that stand the test of time when it comes to boosting an enterprise. Here are five effective ways to scale your company.
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Determine Your Scalability
Far too many business owners know far too little about their own operations. Business analytics is the science and skill of determining where your business is headed based upon past performance and current statistics, and it should be the cornerstone of your planning process. Analytics includes everything from statistical evaluation of your general ledger to sophisticated modeling of future potential based on demographic data. The end result is that your path forward becomes clearer by taking stock of the status of your operation as a whole.
Another important determinant of scalability is modernization. In other words, make sure that your infrastructure is up to date, including digital tools like high-speed internet and security programs as well as physical assets such as appliance efficiency, machine parts and filing systems.
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Leverage Multiple Social Media Platforms
Social media is an inexpensive method of expanding the reach and scope of your business. We live in an age of ever-expanding niche markets, and social media has diversified in response. This means that you can (and should) tailor your online presence based upon the products and services that you offer as well as your company vision. For example, if your products are visually appealing, use sites like Instagram and Pinterest that are designed as visual platforms. If you have an engaging sales team, get a YouTube presence and let them connect to the market personally. There’s no such thing as too many options here.
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Elevate Your Website
It’s important for your company to have a professional website that communicates to the public what the company is about and does so in a manner that makes the business feel legitimate and reliable. There is an actual science to the psychology of website creation. Ideally, the website should have a layout that’s simple and clean. This captures the attention of viewers much better than the “flashing billboard” approach, which is great for drawing eyeballs but horrible at keeping them there. Using cool colors like blues and greens has actually been shown by research to calm people, while unexpected (also called “disruptive”) color schemes aid in getting people to pay attention.
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Use Digital Marketing Strategies
Two of the most powerful marketing strategies are available at the push of a button. The first of these is text message (SMS) marketing. It may seem counterintuitive to think that SMS marketing could be anything but annoying, but the numbers don’t lie. Almost half of consumers prefer to be notified of brand updates via SMS. There’s a similar groundswell of support for text-based customer service. The second great digital marketing strategy operates through email. For email marketing, the return on investment (ROI) reaches a staggering $42 for every dollar spent. That’s because emails are cheap to create and remain an omnipresent means of communication for both business and the consumers they’re trying to reach.
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Network Aggressively
Connecting with media influencers in your industry is a powerful way to expand your business. Reach out to popular influencers online and see if they’d be willing to become a brand ambassador for your particular product. In that way, their audience becomes your audience. Don’t forget that the most universally respected method of getting your message out there is through word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM). According to Nielsen, over 90% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over any other source. The bottom line? Make your business a part of people’s lives.
The art of scaling requires some serious decision making. Any plan that you choose has to be aligned to both the internal and external dynamics affecting your business. These five tips should help get you off to a positive start.
