Small business growth strategies are comprehensive plans designed to help a small business achieve its objectives, often boosting revenue, profits, and market share. These strategies involve pinpointing key opportunities such as expanding the product range, investing in effective marketing channels, or tapping into new markets.
Interestingly, 23% of U.S. consumers are planning to start a new business in 2024. To steer your business towards success in 2024, consider these ten expert-recommended growth strategies for small businesses.
Source: Intuit
Best Small Business Growth Strategies in 2024
1. Know Your Value Proposition
In today’s competitive business environment, it’s easy to get sidetracked by new growth opportunities and lose sight of what makes your business unique. However, it’s crucial to maintain a clear focus on your value proposition, which sets you apart from your competitors and attracts customers. Your value proposition could be based on pricing, quality, value, service, sustainability, or another unique aspect of your business. By staying true to your value proposition, you can establish a strong brand identity and secure a significant position in the market. This not only benefits you but also your customers and employees.
Align each choice with your unique market role to make your value proposition a guiding star for business decisions.
2. Go Online!
Everything is going online, and so is small business.
As digital interactions dominate, enhancing your online visibility goes beyond just maintaining a business website. Nowadays when 25% of business is online, where online platforms significantly influence consumer choices, your website must serve as an active, engaging hub for your visitors.
Transform your website into an interactive showcase for your products or services. Incorporate high-quality images, videos, and client testimonials to depict your offer vividly. Design your site to be user-friendly, allowing visitors to easily navigate, access necessary information, and engage with your business through making a purchase, scheduling a service, or reaching out for more details.
Producing and publishing valuable content regularly positions you as a thought leader in your field, enhancing your audience’s trust. This content should be relevant, instructive, and tailored to meet your audience’s needs, whether it’s articles, blog posts, how-to guides, videos, infographics, or social media updates.
By developing a dynamic website, engaging actively on social media, and implementing targeted digital marketing strategies, you can establish a robust online presence that connects you effectively with your ideal customers.
3. Optimize Your Sales Pipeline
A sales pipeline serves as a visual representation of a prospect’s engagement stages with your sales and marketing teams, providing insights into the actions taken by your team to facilitate purchases. Unlike a sales funnel, which primarily tracks conversion rates, a sales pipeline details the specific steps and tasks involved, breaking down larger sales objectives into manageable, trackable components. Typically, a sales pipeline includes five key stages, but customization is essential to maximize its effectiveness.
It is important to regularly evaluate and update your sales pipeline with the help of senior management and sales leaders. This involves updating the buyer personas, targeting new prospects, addressing their specific challenges and pain points, calculating the number of opportunities at each pipeline stage, and initiating lead generation. You should establish clear and measurable targets and KPIs for each stage to monitor progress and effectiveness. You can also assess the viability of each deal and identify actions that can help prospects move to the next stage.
4. Streamline Repetitive Tasks with Automation
Automation offers a practical solution for businesses to optimize repetitive tasks, enabling employees to concentrate on broader strategic goals.
Consider automating any labor-intensive processes currently occupying significant amounts of time for you or your team. Automation enhances the accuracy of tasks such as data entry and reconciliation and liberates your staff to focus on more critical activities, such as business expansion and exploring new markets. Here are some tips before considering automation:
- Analyze each process in detail before automating. Identify inefficiencies and redundancies to ensure effective streamlining and enhance overall performance.
- Design automation solutions tailored to specific, problematic processes rather than fitting processes to pre-built automation applications.
- Evaluate automation’s return on investment (ROI) to ensure that the costs do not outweigh the benefits, making the process more cost- and time-efficient.
- Plan for the long term when streamlining processes, considering future growth and changes. Focus on strategic changes that yield significant improvements.
- Leverage existing automated solutions that fit your company’s needs to avoid reinventing the wheel. When possible, use pre-built apps and templates.
5. Improve Your Sales Training Methods and Goals
While many organizations have a basic sales onboarding program, focusing on continuous training for your sales team is crucial.
Source: Qwilr
Research shows that regular training can increase a sales representative’s net sales by up to 50% and significantly boost their motivation—provided the training engages them and adds value. It’s essential to avoid monotonous seminars that fail to contribute meaningfully to their skills.
Start by revisiting your training objectives and establishing clear goals for your training modules, including how their effectiveness will be measured.
Here are some effective strategies for ongoing sales training:
- Identify and Address Skill Gaps: Set specific training goals to close these gaps and communicate them to your team.
- Ensure Accessibility and Relevance: Make training sessions affordable, accessible, and tailored to meet the needs of your target audience.
- Offer Continuous Feedback: Replace annual reviews with regular feedback, making monitoring performance and development more effective.
- Incorporate Gamification: Introduce elements like badges, challenges, and leaderboards to make learning engaging and enjoyable, enhancing motivation and skill acquisition.
- Support Personalized Learning Plans: Cater to individual learning styles and needs to maximize training efficacy.
- Allocate Time for Learning: Ensure employees have designated time within their schedule to focus on training.
- Encourage Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing: Build an environment where team members can share insights and learn from each other.
6. Introduce Innovative New Products or Services
In a rapidly changing market, one of the most effective strategies for securing a competitive edge is innovation. Developing new products or services that meet the evolving needs of your target audience can set you apart and position you as a leader in your industry.
Creating groundbreaking offerings typically requires more than luck; it demands an in-depth understanding of the market. If you’re aiming to elevate your business, consider leveraging virtual assistants. They can conduct extensive research into market trends, customer needs, and competitive strategies, which are essential for crafting a feasible plan for a new product.
With the help of virtual assistants, you can focus your efforts on what truly matters—perfecting your product. This approach saves you time on market research and ensures that your energy is invested in enhancing the quality and appeal of your new offering.
7. Use the Freemium Model to Attract Early-stage Customers
The term “freemium” combines “free” and “premium” to describe a business strategy in which basic services are offered at no cost while advanced features come at a price. Global software developers widely adopt this model as a robust growth strategy.
Under the freemium model, users can access essential software features for free but must pay for upgrades or premium features. The structure of the freemium plan encourages users to become familiar with and engage regularly with the product.
In fact, the prevalence of freemium apps in the Apple App Store increased from 25% in 2009 to over 80% in 2022. Subscription numbers rose significantly, from 745 million in 2021 to 900 million in 2022.
It’s essential to understand your customers beyond surface-level knowledge. Are your customers technically skilled in your field, or are they novices seeking simple solutions? The freemium model tends to be more effective for the latter group. Consider offering a simplified version of your product; the success of the freemium approach often hinges on this “light” version. This version should be straightforward, requiring minimal training and no sales intervention, allowing users to operate independently.
Plus, it is crucial to differentiate between the free and premium offerings. The free version should be compelling enough to showcase the product’s value. If users need to access all features to recognize the product’s worth, then the freemium model may not be suitable. Packed with comprehensive features, the premium version should solve more complex problems and offer significant added value.
8. Leverage AI and Machine Learning Tools
Numerous experts are advocating for small businesses to adopt advanced technology solutions in 2024. These tools aim to phase out outdated processes and automate routine tasks.
With the widespread shift towards remote and hybrid work environments, robust platforms facilitating communication and promoting collaboration among team members are crucial. Consider utilizing project management software such as Trello, Wrike, or Asana for efficient planning, scheduling, and managing operational tasks. These tools help streamline workflows and improve team productivity.
9. Follow Omnichannel Approach
As mentioned, the online footprint is growing, and the distinctions between online and offline shopping are slowly fading. Consumers now expect a seamless brand interaction regardless of whether they shop online or in-store.
Over 55% of consumers visit physical stores before making online purchases. Another study indicates that 73% of shoppers favor a hybrid shopping model, which integrates in-store experiences with online transactions.
Source: Intuit
Brands must ensure consistency across all platforms, from websites to physical stores. This includes uniform branding, promotions, and customer service. For example, a discount offered on a mobile app should also be valid in-store, maintaining a consistent brand voice and customer experience regardless of the customer’s touchpoint.
Here are some practical omnichannel strategies:
- Provide real-time chat support through your app or website, offering assistance similar to what a customer would receive from a sales associate in-store.
- Prioritize mobile accessibility as more users shop on smartphones and tablets, risking potential sales losses without a mobile-optimized e-commerce site.
- Using tools like live chat ensures rapid response to customer inquiries to maintain high engagement and satisfaction, which is vital for effective omnichannel communication.
- Implement marketing automation software to manage your omnichannel strategy efficiently, scale up campaigns, and personalize customer interactions across various platforms.
- Equip your stores with tablets or interactive kiosks that allow visitors to explore your full catalog, read reviews, and order products unavailable on the shelves.
- Analyzing demographic data and customer preferences can help you identify your audience’s most effective communication channels and streamline your marketing efforts.
- Enable customers to order online and pick up their purchases at your physical locations, capitalizing on your online presence and in-store foot traffic.
- Create loyalty programs that users can access from any channel. Allow customers to earn and redeem rewards whether they shop online or in-store.
- Utilize customer journey mapping to understand and enhance touchpoints, identifying gaps in your omnichannel marketing strategy to improve customer engagement.
- Maintain uniformity in customer service quality and tone, whether the interaction happens via X (formerly Twitter), email, or face-to-face.
A well-executed omnichannel strategy ensures that your branding, promotions, and customer service are consistent and effective, enhancing the customer experience across all channels.
10. Avoid Unprofitable Products or Services
While expanding your product line is essential, it’s equally important to phase out services and products that aren’t profitable strategically. Conduct a thorough analysis of the revenues and costs associated with each product to determine which ones are not yielding profits.
It’s only sometimes necessary to immediately discontinue unprofitable items. Consider reevaluating them to see if there are ways to reduce costs and make them viable. In some cases, products that incur slight losses may still be valuable if they lead customers to purchase other high-margin items. However, such scenarios should be cautiously approached and analyzed carefully to ensure they contribute positively to your overall business strategy.
Conclusion
As we move forward in the ever-changing business landscape of 2024, it’s clear that small businesses need to adapt and innovate in order to thrive. It’s important to prioritize growth strategies that are tailored to current market trends in order to achieve long-term success. To achieve this, businesses should focus on developing a clear value proposition, building a strong online presence, optimizing sales pipelines, and streamlining operations through efficient automation. Additionally, investing in ongoing sales training, introducing new and innovative products or services, and leveraging models like freemium can further enhance competitiveness and drive growth.
To meet consumers ‘ changing expectations, businesses must adopt advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning and an omnichannel approach. Additionally, it is crucial to manage product offerings wisely to ensure profitability and strategic alignment. By implementing these top 10 small business growth strategies, businesses can set themselves on a path toward success in 2024 and beyond.
