While every business is different there are some basic principles you can apply that can give you a solid foundation for business growth. The following tips are meant as a place to begin, not end. If you get these basics active, you’ll likely see good things happen with your business growth.
1. Keep Your Existing Customers Happy
Nothing does more for your business than a satisfied customer. Keep the customer first in everything you do. You may think it goes without saying but it is easy to forget the basics when time is at a premium.
2. Regain the Confidence of Unhappy Customers
You don’t have to let unhappy customers leave you. Address their dissatisfaction head-on and make changes in your business to regain their confidence. The cost of retrieving a current customer is far less than acquiring a new one.
3. Develop a Marketing Plan
Do you feel like you are swinging at any pitch that’s thrown your way? It’s time to develop a marketing plan and stick with it. If you can’t develop it on your own, no problem. There are talented marketing agencies that can help you. With the plan, you have the marketing strategy and the tactics to carry that strategy to your targets, all you have to do is implement it. Marketing Plans can be developed for any budget.
4. Stay in Touch with Customers and Prospects
Your prospects and customers aren’t making a career about keeping up with yours. So keep them informed – in a customer focused way. Develop a short newsletter or eBlast schedule that provides content of interest to them – for example, insights you gained on a recent project. In the course of explaining the insights they find most interesting, you’re sharing information about the job you just completed.
5. Share Your Expertise
Do you have valuable things to say about your experience in the industry? Speak at events where your targets gather, blog about it, create guides and checklists your targets can use. Reach out to applicable industry publications and arrange for guest articles or blog posts. Contact a Speakers Bureau and become a paid speaker. And as you gain a base of content, consider content syndication.
6. Optimize Your Website
Look at your web site. Is it an online brochure or an active marketing tool? Create opportunities to generate leads by providing content of interest to your audience. Connect your business to your prospects with case studies to show them what you can do. Check your Search Engine Optimization – have you optimized lately? Benchmark your keywords in Google, Bing and Yahoo – how far down the returns list are you presenting? Build inbound links from partners, vendors, customers and industry sites.
7. Stay Active on Your Social Sites
Make sure you are active on social presences with customer and prospect valued content. Follow your prospects and customers and share their good content. Link back to your site’s case studies and other valued to increase inbound links.
