For business owners, it is common to become entirely consumed with the day to day activities of running a business. Because of this, most are left with very little time to think about the long term growth their business. Planning for the future growth of a business is a mandatory part of maintaining the survival of a company. However, in today’s fast-paced environment, finding time to enact on those plans effectively isn’t always easy. Want to stay ahead of the curve and hack your business growth time spend in half? Then keep reading because today, we’re here to give you these 5 business growth hacks to ensure continued business success.

Hack #1: Enact A Referral Program

 When something goes wrong with your house or car, you are probably more likely to take the recommendation from someone you know over a Google search. Proven over and over again, consumers often choose a service or product that has been referred to them by a family member or friend. A referral program is a great way to get people to refer your business to others. 

To create a referral program, you should offer an incentive. Make sure that the incentive is easy to accomplish and worth the trouble for people to go through. An incentive such as a discount off a next order or maybe lower membership fees to your existing customers is an easy way to get them immediately referring business to you. This is also a way to create customer loyalty with existing customers. Enacting a referral program for customers continues to prove to be an extremely successful strategy for companies of all industry types.

 Hack #2: Strategize Your Social Media

The best way to utilize social media as a business is to, first and foremost, learn your customer base. Being able to specifically pinpoint your target audience, you can create effective social media campaigns that generate business. Where does your target audience get their information? How do they like to be talked to? What help do they need? What other companies are they interested in? By knowing as much as possible about your target persona, you can strategize your social media by providing your potential customers with the stellar content they want. 

Second, you should make sure that each social media platform has its own strategy. The same strategy spread across all platforms will not work. Creating a funnel for each platform will allow you to correctly determine if your social media strategy is working or not. You should aim to creatively repurpose your content from your blog to your Instagram to your LinkedIn. Doing this requires time, energy, and resources. Social media tools help keep your efforts across multiple channels streamlined and consistent. At Paymentsmith, we use Canva and Unfold for quick designs, Planoly for scheduling (There’s a free, less-buttoned-up version of this called Preview), Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for photo editing, Unsplash for free photos and Bitly for link shortening. 

Once you’ve strategically planned your social media funnel by consistently pushing relevant and specific content for your audience, you will start to see your engagement skyrocket. Each social platform has free social analytics that you can utilize to see which types of content work and which do not. Leads that come directly from engagement through social media are likely to convert over to customers, because they’ve identified themselves a customer based off your content, AKA they’ve done the heavy lifting for you!

Hack #3: Trend To Mobile Users

As smartphones continue to advance, so does the way individuals consume information. When almost all American adults are carrying around little computers in their pockets, it’s easier than ever to retrieve information quickly. Knowing this, it would only make sense to tailor the way your company shares news as well. To do this, make sure that your website is optimized for mobile viewing as well as desktop in order to keep up with the mobile trend.

Consumers want convenience, and that means if they can’t access your website from their smartphones, they will most likely move on to a competitor whose site they can more easily reach. Website builders like WordPress, which is what we use for Paymentsmith, allow you to optimize for mobile and desktop while building yourself, so you don’t have to pay a developer top-dollar to do it for you. Building a beautiful mobile site is a simple way to achieve business growth. 

 Hack #4: Optimize Your SEO

Your customers want genuine, helpful content. You can create amazing, organic pieces all day long, but the question remains: How do you get that content in front of them? Some companies utilize PPC (Pay Per Click) ads. However, a majority of users actually skip over paid ads altogether in search for more organic results, because most understand the way Google Ads versus organic research works. This is why optimizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most important elements to business growth. Without SEO, your marketing efforts are not even close to reaching maximum capability. 

Indirect searches on Google or other search engines are usually responsible for the majority of website traffic, so it is paramount that your content stands out in any search results.  SEO is simply the process to help the content you are producing be as appealing to search engines as possible. Following the process of using very specific keywords, Meta titles, backlinks and social media, you can ensure new potential customers are reaching your site. 

We use Yoast, a WordPress plugin, as an excellent tool for SEO optimization. It’s a lot more cost effective to learn simple tricks of SEO than to hire an SEO consultant to do it for you.

 Hack #5: Collect Customer Feedback

The existing customers you have are a huge resource that can actually help you gain new customers too! Listening to your existing customers is the first step in learning necessary information about your product or service. Learn the ins and outs of not only what your clientele thinks of your product and service, but what they think of your company as well. Many companies fail because they fail to listen. This seemingly obvious step in business growth is one that’s often overlooked.

Once you have listened to customer feedback and concerns, find out the areas of improvement within your business. One common denominator we always see within successful businesses is the ability to change and adapt quickly. Times change. Wants and needs of people change. New competitive products and services are released. It is up to you to stay up on these changes and act quickly.

Lastly, you should take your positive customer feedback (hopefully you have some… if not you definitely need to refer to the paragraph above) and share it with the world! Customer testimonials and case studies are a powerful marketing tool for your business. It is one of the strongest ways to gain potential client’s trust in your business. Just like gossip, a positive experience can spread like wildfire. Not getting feedback organically? Go ahead and ask for it! Don’t underestimate the power of your customer feedback.

In Summary:

Business growth does not have to be difficult or particularly time consuming if done efficiently. Remember that to achieve business success for the long-haul, you must enact a referral program, strategize your social media, trend to mobile users, optimize your social media and collect customer feedback. By putting these 5 business growth hacks into effect, you can efficiently tackle your day to day while also planning for the future.

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