What are the best ways to grow your business without spending a dime? Experts suggest that you focus on the basics if you want to enhance your business portfolio. Working on better customer service, enhanced marketing and greater logistics management will increase the scope of your business instantly.
You can find many savvy ways to grow your business effectively and compete with incumbents in critical spaces. Entrepreneurs need to invest significant time and resources into these areas to yield maximum benefits from these avenues. Bootstrapping can be an excellent way to create a well-managed business that is valued at a higher number than low-profit alternatives in the space.
Online marketing (social, search, content)
Entrepreneurs who want to bootstrap their way into the marketing domain do so by investing time and resources into online marketing. They have many platforms to explore within the online marketing space, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google. Depending on the audience demographics, entrepreneurs can target specific platforms to reach out to new customers.
Content marketing is a key component to growing your business as well. It’s a critical tool used for traffic generation, which then ultimately leads to more customers. In fact, research from Aberdeen group shows that traffic is on average 7.8 times higher for content leaders in their industry. Content marketing also costs 60 percent less than other marketing avenues and generates three times more leads as well.
SEO is a critical area that all business should invest as well. It works well with existing PR activities and can significantly affect the traffic and brand position of the page on relevant keywords. Even in the most technical niches, competitive keywords are higher in demand. Using best practices in indexing, web architecture, keywords, and deep linking, your business can grow instantly.
Managing an effective CRM
Having a scale-driven business relies on enhancing existing customer relationship management systems. This includes using a sophisticated servicenow contact center to leverage AI-driven customer support. Having a digital-first approach works well when dealing with larger numbers of customers.
An effective CRM will have an immediate impact on the bottom line, especially when it comes to expanding into new business areas. Customers are key to the success of any business, and managing their relationship well is essential to developing long term contracts. CRM is also effective in connecting different teams that are focused on enhancing the sales of a certain product or service line.
A well-run CRM also enhances upselling and deep selling as well. Entrepreneurs can reach out to older clients and connect with them about new product launches and new areas of service delivery. There is also a higher conversion rate of after-sales services if entrepreneurs have adequate insights stored within the CRM system.
Digitizing core processes
Digitization has an instant effect in the growth of your business. This is because key processes and functions can be enhanced by the implementation of technology. Using tools such as Slack, Skype, Evernote, and Dropbox can instantly change the way that your business is run. This also gives you more flexibility as you manage day-to-day operations and focus on the bigger picture.
Digital tools can give entrepreneurs much needed support when it comes to iterating on new ideas and launching different service lines. Added to that, these tools save cost in terms of accounting, HR, and financial management. Using apps and modern web platforms, entrepreneurs can grow their business without having to worry about overheads and variable costs that come with scaling up. With the help of the cloud, there is also inherent security designed around growth at zero extra cost.
