How to Expand your Small Business
We are getting new business almost every day. With the rise of social media, luckily for us, we get to see them online each day more and more. During the lockdown last year, a lot of businesses failed, meanwhile a lot of businesses got a huge increase.
However, the main point of this article is to help your small business grow. We are going to give you some tips and tricks that you can use for your small business.
1) Get to know your customers
This one may be obvious, but knowing what your customers want and need for your business is such an important step. There are a lot of different ways of doing this, you can ask your customers for feedback on your business, what would they improve, change or bring something new. A very helpful tool to use nowadays is social media. If you are a social media user already, it is a good thing to have a page for your business and this way you can get even closer to your customers, because they can share their thoughts without even having to come to your store/company.
2) Do some research
If you still haven’t decided what business you’re going to have, it is such a smart move to do a little bit of research on the niche you’re trying to get a business. However, if you already have the business and you’re looking for ways to expand it, then research is very handy in here too. If you’re planning to outsource your business and expand it to different cities/countries it is very important to do proper research.
3) Use the internet
The internet is one of the most powerful things that we get. By using it the proper way, we can get informed about a lot of topics that are going around the world, we can get a lot of knowledge and we can make our business grow.
The question may be, how? Here are two simple steps:
Step 1: Social Media
Step 2: Digital marketing
Step 1: Use Social Media
When it comes to social media, they are really popular at the moment (this is being written currently in 2021, so if you’re reading this in the future, hi there, the social media is very popular at the moment). These platforms have changed the whole game on the internet. They were created for communicating, but nowadays they are used for a lot of different purposes, such as advertisement and branding.
Also, Facebook added a new feature to their platform such as e-commerce, you can now display and sell products on Facebook and Instagram. People who visit your shop can browse your products, make purchases, and get to know your brand. You'll create your shop in Commerce Manager, a platform you use to manage your inventory and sales on Facebook and Instagram.
During 2020, social media gained a lot of new users, and this way, a lot of new businesses as well. Even the businesses that were out in the game for a long time and they didn’t use social media, in 2020 this changed. Almost everything turned to the digital form.
We can use this as an advantage for our small business. As we mentioned before that social media can get you closer to your customers, it can also help you gain new followers. If you’re promoting your products online, using the right hashtags, posting constantly, will help your business grow.
Step 2: Digital Marketing
You’ve probably heard of marketing, because it has been here for a very long time. Traditional marketing has been one of the most famous way of advertising. Lately, with the rinse of social media and the internet, a new strategy of marketing has been introduced to us and that is digital marketing.
Digital marketing is basically online marketing that is tied mostly with the social media. There are a lot of advantages of using digital marketing to grow your business, here are some of the main reasons: It’s free and you reach a bigger audience.
4) Create a friendly website
Back in the days when we didn’t have smartphones and we didn’t have access to the internet either than the PC. Websites used to be our only sources for news and whatever we neeed, meanwhile now we have the mobile apps. However, a website is still crucial for a business, no matter of how big or small it is. Web development is a must.
But don’t worry, if you’re not a programmer, you can use different websites such as Wordpress, Blogspot, where you can create a website for yourself. But, if this seems so hard for you, you can either skip this step or hire a web developer or web development company to do all the work for you, it will be worth it in the end!