Grow Your Small Business: 7 Key Considerations

You can't take anything for granted when you own a small business. If you fail to grow, you’ll fall behind. The market is constantly changing and you won’t expand by sitting on your hands. To grow your small business, you need a thoughtful and strategic plan. 

Of course, growing your business isn’t a simple task. You can’t just make more products or hire more staff and expect everything to fall into place. It takes time, effort, and expertise. 

There are a lot of different factors involved in growing your company, from the customer base and products to your staffing and marketing costs, and all of them are important. The bright side is that there are many angles you can take to grow your business. Here are 7 key considerations to keep in mind as you develop a growth plan.  

1. Hire the Best People for the Job

As a business owner, it’s up to you to invest in top talent. Train and take care of your staff so they are empowered to take initiative and add value to your work. They should care about the success of your company and have a voice in its direction. 

A business depends on its staff. Doing everything yourself means wasting time and energy and could result in burnout. If you don’t or can’t trust your staff to carry out the work of the business with skill and dedication, whether or not you’re there to supervise, then you need to make a change. 

2. Grow Your Business and Reduce Risks

Scaling up your operation takes care. There are many things that can go wrong, so do what you can to manage the business risks you’re taking. Don’t pour money into a new product without a backup plan in case it doesn’t sell. You should carefully control your cash flow so you don’t find yourself caught on a limb. 

Even the healthiest company can be crippled suddenly by the right mix of unforeseen circumstances. As you plan for sustainable growth, you need to plan for stability. Keep a diversified range of product options so you don’t rely on one thing, and make sure you have ample insurance for all your biggest assets. 

3. Outsource Small Business Accounting

As your business footprint grows, so will your administrative and accounting overhead. Bookkeeping and taxes will become complex and time-consuming once you hit a certain size. 

It may be easy enough to do this all yourself while your business is still small, but it will quickly take up more and more of your time. As your business's leader, you should spend your time on big-picture thinking to move your company forward.  

You can save time and improve overall efficiency by outsourcing your accounting needs to an external firm. This gets you the dedication and expertise of a full-time professional accountant at a fraction of the cost. Try working with our team here at 1-800Accountant to file your small business taxes and find out what an accounting expert can offer. 

4. Grow Your Small Business’s Social Media Presence

To grow, you need to reach more people. What better way to do so than with social media? In the current digital environment, an established website and a consistent social media presence are no longer optional. Over time, you can reach more people by investing in the quality and quantity of your social media posts. 

An effective social media presence doesn’t mean posting about your products daily, either. You should develop your brand with truly valuable content that invites engagement on its own merits. Explore creative content ideas for your business social media accounts, and work on developing the identity and voice of your brand online. 

5. Exceed Customer Expectations

Doing the same thing over and over is not likely to keep your customers engaged or expand your client base. If you want to build loyalty, you need to show your audience that it’s worth sticking around. Don’t settle for satisfactory; try to improve and outdo yourself consistently. 

You should always look for ways to improve the customer experience, upgrade your services, and streamline your processes. This will lead to more engaged and committed clients who care about your brand, and their loyalty will naturally expand your reach through word-of-mouth.  

6. Invest in Yourself

You are your own greatest resource. Every time you acquire a new skill or expand your knowledge on a topic, you are giving that gift to your business. Take the time to invest in yourself and build up your own skills as well, even if sometimes it feels like you can’t afford to step away. 

Keep yourself up to date on the competition in your industry, and continually expose yourself to new ideas. When new technologies or skill sets might be useful to your business model, either pay to send a staff member to a training or send yourself. If you use every last bit of your energy doing things the traditional way, you’ll never have the energy to learn any other way. 

7. Adapt, Adapt, Adapt

There is no sure-fire universal recipe for growth. Every business will eventually face some consistent truisms and logistical problems, but every industry and existing business is unique. Effective and sustainable growth, in the end, will require understanding and harnessing what sets your company and your context apart.

Attend to the developments in your industry and the market, and be prepared to do what it takes to adapt. Having a plan is good, but sometimes the best thing to do is throw out your plan to pursue a new strategy. Stay on the lookout for unique opportunities and sudden shifts, and don’t be afraid to take a risk for a worthwhile reward.