Ways To Grow Your Small Business

As an entrepreneur, you may have been driven by different factors to “start your own thing”, such as the need to own your hours, create your own environment, solve a societal problem, meet new people, build a team, financial independence, gain recognition or entrepreneur experience, and the list can go on and on. The core of your entrepreneurial journey should be to scale, become profitable and positively impact lives by meeting a need.

However, scaling your business isn’t easiest thing to do as it requires considerable effort, knowledge and passion — It is easy to become overwhelmed with juggling the sales & marketing, regulatory bodies, taxes, corporate compliance, customer service, feedback, book keeping daily every single day and a bunch of other things.

So what do you need to thrive?

You will need to put your hands to the plough, get a clear head space and put things into proper perspective while focused on the light at the end of the tunnel. If you are determined to stick it out and you are thinking of the next step to grow your business beyond it’s current state, there are numerous ways or strategies to explore depending on the type of business you run and your resources.

Here are some suggested ways to grow your small business:

1. You need to know your customers

Getting to know your “who you are selling to” requires that you understand your buyers, study their behaviors, interests, frustrations, motivations, goals and so on, and then group into a unique persona. This persona will give you better insight into your customer needs, the best possible ways to meet these needs, also ways to enhance your products/services.

2. Provide great customer experience

In most cases as a small business, you as the owner may also be customer service person and in other cases, you may have a team handling this for you. In both cases, ensure your customer service is exceptional and empathetic yet professional. The thing about a good customer service experience is that it helps “word of mouth” marketing for your product or service.

3. Adopt digital marketing

In a world where everything is going digital at a very fast pace, where every other person is on one social media site or the other; it is pertinent to promote your business to potential customers and stay on the top of mind of your existing customers. With different solutions like Instagram & Facebook Business and others like Google SEO, you are able to grow your business depending on whatever budget using as little as $5.

4. Attend networking events

While this may not directly impact your business revenue immediately, it is essential in helping you build your network — “its not what you know but who you know sometimes”, and grow your brand.

When you network, you open yourself to new opportunities. You build relevant relationships, hear success stories of similar businesses to improve on your strategies going forward as a business. Plus, you could potentially meet a mentor or an investor.

5. Design reward and loyalty initiatives

Customers want to feel valued, not exploited. Offering incentives rewards them for using your product or service, increases customer satisfaction. On another hand, it is also a good strategy for customer retention — Keep in mind that the cost of replacing a lost customer could be five times more than keeping an old one. Incentives are also a way of collecting customer data.

6. Give back to your community

Building brand awareness in your immediate community by sponsorship or participation in a community event or a course is a way of connecting with people on an emotional basis and a way to build your business profile and engage in corporate social responsibility.

7. Always conduct a business audit

As a growing business, you are most likely to be experimenting with different strategies or approaches. It is always important to measure successes and identify what has worked, what hasn’t and what could be better in order to adapt those strategies going forward, and drop those that didn’t produce the desired outcome.

Exploring these tips should help in growing your small business and we are wishing you all the best in your entrepreneurial journey!

Paga remains your simplest and most convenient way to pay and get paid. We offer convenient means for small businesses to accept online payments using a customized URL called the “PayMe Page” and we also leverage our 15k agents to accept offline payments in all 36 states across Nigeria. If you have a payment need you think we can be of help, feel free to reach out to us on business@mypaga.com.

Making Life Possible is our ethos at paga, and it is what keeps us committed to our mission of providing inclusive financial services for all Nigerians. With over 15,000 agent outlets and 8 million+ customers, we are inspired by the stories of the community we are building and the people we are empowering by making life possible every single day.