Top 14 Proven Growth Hacks to Grow Your Small Business

The owner of a small business must successfully manage a lot of tasks simultaneously. As an entrepreneur, you must overcome resource restraints and at the same time focus on growth.

Statistics indicate that growing your business at the initial stage is not easy. Nearly 20% of businesses do not last for a year and 50% of them don’t make it to the fifth year.

 It is a bit tricky to fight a battle on every front at the same time. You need help to boost sales and grow your business. That’s where growth-hacking comes in.

In the piece, we will see what growth hacking actually is and how it is useful for small businesses.

What is growth hacking?

Growth hacking involves quick experimentation across various areas of your business to identify the most efficient methods for achieving growth. The term was coined by the CEO of GrowthHackers.com, Sean Ellis after he found the absence of focus on growth in traditional marketers. In Ellis’s own words, “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.”

The use of word “hacking” in the term suggests that it’s a clever way of producing higher growth results through a few shortcuts. The main aim of an ideal growth hacking strategy is to increase your customer base by keeping investment to a minimum.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the proven growth hacking tactics that every small business owner should know to grow their business.

Best and proven techniques to growth hack your small business

• Prioritizing content marketing

Content marketing is one of the most valuable marketing strategies for businesses. Statistics cite that it’s 62% cheaper than traditional marketing and generates three times more leads.

Create a blog with content that is properly optimized with trending, high-volume, and low-competition keywords to present your business as an expert in the industry. These blogs generate heavy traffic on your website and produce more conversions.

Blog posts and other informative content is meant to educate readers with high-quality information. Users visit your website to gain important, helpful knowledge, which helps in building credibility and enhances brand awareness.

• Online reviews matter

Online reviews are essential when it comes to building brand credibility. According to a survey, 84% of users trust online reviews and testimonials when considering purchasing a product or service.

Make it easy for users to view and react to all the praise you have received online. Present the top quotes and testimonials on your homepage as comments from satisfied customers. It is helpful in encouraging your prospects to make the purchase.

• Integrating calls-to-action with your social media platforms

In order to boost growth, you need to encourage your prospects to take a specified action. Integrating your calls-to-action across various social media platforms is the best way to motivate your customers to take action.

Ask users to sign up for your product or share or like your posts. Ensure that your call-to-action is precise, clear and easy for customers to understand and take action.

• Requesting feedback

Listening to your customers is the best way for any brand to grow further. Ask users for their feedback on their experience your product or service. Improve your business accordingly to present a best-in-class user experience, which ultimately is helpful in boosting sales.

For better interactivity, use popups to ask for users’ comments after making a purchase. The aim is to capture insight and feedback from customers so you can improve the customer experience.

• Offer freebies

Offering free downloadable or viewable assets is one of the most effective ways of growing your email list quickly. You may try offering a free ebook in exchange for the user’s email address.

Ensure the freebies you are offering are aligned with your marketing strategy and the theme of the product.

• Use customer retargeting

Retargeting simply means bringing your customers back to your website in an attempt to sell to them again. The best way to do it is by showing targeted ads to customers who have been to your website previously.

Google and Facebook retargeting contains optimizations, which show targeted ads to your previous customers and encourage them to make the purchase.

• Offer discount coupons

Another effective way to build your email list is distributing discount coupons, which also encourages users to make the purchase. Adding the feeling of urgency in your deal also helps boost conversions as users don’t want to miss interesting deals.

You can use exit intent pop-ups containing information about your coupons. The system detects a visitor, who is about to leave your website.

Use pop-up creator tools to create best-in-class customized pop-ups, which instantly catches customers’ attention.

ADVERTISEMENT

Implement organic SEO strategies
Using organic SEO techniques is an effective strategy for engaging prospects. Data suggest that 70-80% of users ignore paid ads altogether. Moreover, organic traffic is the most effective way to drive traffic to your website.

Upgrade your SEO strategies and go organic as much as you can. Pure SEO techniques help you bring more traffic than social media outreach and helps in increasing conversions.

• Create an app

Having an app gives you a significant competitive edge over the competition. Mobile apps are becoming extremely popular as apps account for a whopping 89% of mobile media time.

Build an app with advanced capabilities with the help of a popular app building service in order to bring more visitors to your site.

• Take mobile optimization seriously

As 48% of users use mobiles to search on the internet, it’s extremely important that you optimize your website for mobile devices. 61% of mobile users won’t be visiting your website again if they have trouble accessing it. Considering its importance, Google also emphasizes making your website mobile friendly.

Ensure that your website and marketing emails are fully compatible with mobile screens to get the most out of mobile traffic.

• Gamify the onboarding experience

Gamification is used by various businesses as it makes the whole customer journey interesting. Gamifying the onboarding experience involves rewarding new users for using the product and referring it to friends and colleagues.

Incentivise users as they refer your brand to their friends and colleagues in order to increase your user base. Offer various milestones as the customers use your product.

Gamification helps to make the whole customer experience interactive and encourages to the customers to use and recommend your service or product.

• Use deep analytics for decision making

Data and analytics are at the heart of every business. Measured data helps in maintaining complete insight into the results of your business.

You can use data to trim all your unnecessary expenses, identify areas which need improvement and the places where you are committing resources without any results. Measure and use the data for intelligent decision making.

• Make freemium products

People like to use free products. Making a freemium product helps you attract a lot of attention from potential reviewers as they don’t need to buy the product to review it.

However, freemium does not mean the product lacks best-in-class features. A freemium product with amazing features is what you are looking for.

You can then encourage the users to go for the paid version of the product for more seamless support, additional features, and unlimited integrations.

• Keep experimenting

Experimentation is a scary topic for small businesses. Usually, small businesses don’t have enough room to experiment considering budget limitations.

However, experimenting opens new doors for new growth opportunities so that you can bring in more customers.

Sometimes, your strategies may fail but in the long run, your gains could be much higher and worth the time and amount you are investing into it.

Conclusion

Growth hacking is all about finding new shortcuts to grow your business and bring in more consumers. It is a completely ethical and efficient practice. Small businesses must try innovative ideas to make growth-hacking simple and easy.


Follow the tips above and get the most from your growth-hacking strategy. This will help in taking your business to the next level.


Source: https://www.business2community.com


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

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Perfectionism Can Stunt Business Growth: 5 Ways To 'Let It Go' And Grow

Have you noticed how some people seem to be proud to say that they are a perfectionist? Sometimes holding this up as a badge of honor, a flag to wave when trying to impress?

In actual fact, perfectionism is not something to be proud of because, if it gets out of hand, it can be a sign of mental illness, in extreme circumstances it’s a symptom of OCD.

To operate within the bounds of healthy perfectionism, normally you will have high standards but you will be happy to lower those standards if circumstances dictate, such as delegating to someone who does things differently to you. This is part of the profile of a high achiever and allows you to breathe with less angst, as long as the people you have delegated to are doing a good job in their own way.

If, however, you are never satisfied with the work others do or indeed your own, holding onto that piece of work or email until it’s “perfect,” you are stepping over the line into being a neurotic perfectionist.  Test yourself:

• Do you procrastinate and put off doing things because you are worried it won’t be perfect, only to find that you are tight up against a deadline and end up having to rush the job?

• Do you spend too much time thinking about what went wrong instead of what went right?

• Are you intolerant when people make mistakes or beat yourself up when you make mistakes?

These can be alarm warnings and a sign that perhaps you are not in as much control as you might wish.  If you recognise yourself here, these behaviors can even lead on to mental health problems such as depression, phobias, anxiety and even physical problems such as heart disease.

What is wrong with making mistakes anyway? That’s one of the ways we develop and grow and build a better business.

The reality is that no one will ever replicate exactly the way you do things; this would be ghastly in itself.  After all, their way may be better or at least different enough to make things interesting and progressive.

To do things well is always a goal. To develop and grow business is of course, a definite goal. To stay healthy both mentally and physically is an essential goal. So, taking some inspiration from the Disney film Frozen, here are five ways to “let it go”:

1. Don’t rush at hiring people. Wait for the right candidate for the role.  But don’t be put off if you think they may do things differently to you, but see this as a bonus as long as you don’t clash.

2. Realize that your way isn’t the only way. We all have flaws, accept it.

3. Mistakes are an opportunity for growth, embrace it.

4. Set realistic goals so that you and your people feel good about achieving them. If you have hired well, know that you are all good enough.

5. Focus on what went right and not what went wrong. Let it go.

It’s tough when you want to always do the best you possibly can, but don’t let it rule you. The important thing is to stay well and recognize that perfection is an illusion. Let it go.

Source: www.forbes.com

Image Credit: Shuttershock

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!

10 Small But Small Essential Ways to Boost Your Business

Giving your business a boost doesn’t have to be difficult or incredibly time consuming. In fact, there are some essential elements of building successful businesses that can sometimes get overlooked. These suggestions from members of our small business community include some small but important things you can do to boost your business right away.

Include These Essential Features of a Small Business Website

Your small business website serves as the online face of your business. And it can also provide any number of important functions. While each small business website should be different, there are some essential elements that can make them great, like the ones outlined in this post on Techlofy by Prince Kumar.

Entice Customers to Binge Watch Your Product Videos

Videos can really enhance your product pages with additional information, views and storytelling elements. But for them to really work, you need to get customers to actually watch them. This post on the Kissmetrics blog by Shayla Price includes some tips for getting people to binge watch your product videos.

Find a Fundable Startup Market Opportunity

There’s a lot that goes into finding a great startup opportunity. But one of the essential elements of any idea is its ability to get funded. Martin Zwilling of Startup Professionals Musings explains more in this post about finding fundable startup opportunities. And BizSugar members discuss the post further here.

Use a Digital Marketing Strategy to Increase Marketing Impact

A digital marketing strategy can help you keep all of your online and mobile marketing goals organized so that you’ll be better equipped to actually reach them. For that reason, Erik Newton of the BrightEdge blog suggests that using a digital marketing strategy can increase your marketing impact overall.

Achieve the Ideal State of Marketing

Marketing is an essential part of running any successful business. The actual activities that go into marketing can vary from business to business. But there are some elements you can include to find the ideal state of marketing for your business. Scott Rayden discusses the idea in this Marketing Land post.

Get Mind-Blowing Traffic From Pinterest

Pinterest has been steadily gaining popularity among consumers for a few years now. And that popularity means that it can be a great tool for businesses looking to attract online consumers. This Mostly Blogging post by Janice Wald includes some thoughts on the potential power of Pinterest. 

And the BizSugar community also weighs in here.

Learn How to Write Effective Web Content

Communicating with your customers online is becoming increasingly important. And content marketing can help you get those messages out effectively. But you need to understand how to write content that’s actually effective first. Jireh Gibson shares some tips in this Media Shower post.

Nurture Email Leads in Your Digital Marketing Funnel

Once you gather leads from your website or opt-in forms, you need to have a plan for actually converting those leads into customers. Nurturing leads is a huge part of that, as Mike Gingerich discusses in this post. He also offers tips for how to actually craft your emails.

Get Started With Facebook Instant Articles

Facebook has become such a huge part of how many businesses interact with their customers. So new or changing features like Facebook Instant Articles can have a big impact. In this post, Rebekah Radice explains Facebook Instant Articles and how they can help small businesses. You can also see discussion about the post over on BizSugar.

Take a Weekend Business Break

Hard work is an essential ingredient for any small business. But working hard constantly without ever taking any breaks can be draining and ultimately hurt your business in the long run. In this CorpNet post, Nellie Akalp challenges entrepreneurs to take a break over the long weekend, and explains why that is important.

Source: http://www.smallbiztrends.com

Photo Credit: Shuttershock

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!

Proven Secrets to Email Campaigns That Convert

Email marketing campaigns are a key tool for businesses to connect with potential and existing customers. Along with building better relationships with contacts, email is one of the most effective forms of marketing for your business, generating 4,300 percent ROI.

Done well, email campaigns can create a very positive feedback loop from returning customers.

Done poorly, they can push people away.

So how do you create an effective email campaign that turns fresh leads into die-hard fans of your business?

Strike a Chord with Your Audience

Your prospects and customers have thousands of emails in their inbox. In fact, an email statistics report from the The Radicati Group estimates that by 2018 users will receive an average of 140 emails per day.

To cut through the noise, you’ve got to be hyper-focused on your ideal buyer. If you haven’t created a buyer persona for your ideal buyer yet, you’re already letting interest slip away.

Getting to know your ideal buyer intimately will help you tune in to the topics the resonate the most with your audience. Uncover those issues that keep them up at night, and develop content that solves them. Put your audience’s agenda first to get their attention in a crowded inbox.

Get the Timing Right

Now that you’ve got their attention, how do you turn that interest into sales?

Not every contact on your email list is ready for a sales pitch. At the same time, if you never ask for the sale, you’ll never get it.

Effective email campaigns take contacts on a journey – raising general awareness of your business, generating interest in your products and solutions, converting sales opportunities into customers, and instilling loyalty that creates repeat business.

The content grid infographic below, from small business CRM provider, Hatchbuck, helps explain how to strategically release content to contacts based on the stage of the sales funnel they’re in:

For instance, a contact in the “Awareness” stage isn’t ready for a detailed pricing sheet. Instead, send them a helpful how-to guide on a topic of interest to establish trust and brand awareness.

Begin your email campaign for contacts in the awareness stage with articles, videos and discussions around trending topics to get their attention and provide value.

As your email campaign progresses, you can add content that drives contacts closer to the sale. For instance, send a link to a webinar, or an article on how one of your customers solved a problem with your product. Finally, ask for the sale with a promo or offer.

Let Contacts Choose Their Own Path

Email campaigns are a great opportunity to learn more about your contacts. As they open your emails, click links, and head back to your website, you can focus in on what’s most relevant to them.

You may start new contacts on a general email campaign, but as they clue you in to their interests, you can stop a general campaign and start them down a more specific path.

For example, if you manufacture train parts, you might have a general campaign that drives contacts back to your website. Once a contact visits your “Passenger Train Parts” page, you stop the general campaign and start them on a campaign that focuses on passenger trains, rather than freight trains.

Pro Tip: Many email marketing tools contain drip functionality, meaning they can send a sequence of emails over time. But, if you want to have more control over gathering data and segmenting your contacts, you may want to look into marketing automation.

Calibrate Email Frequency

Building business relationships is a bit like dating. Come on too strong, and you seem desperate – which is a total turn off to prospects. So, even though you just met an awesome new lead that gives you butterflies when you think about the huge deal you’re going to land with them, resist the urge to send a barrage of emails.

Instead, step back and take a look at your sales cycle. How long does it typically take for your leads to make a buying decision? If your sales cycle is only 60 days, you might email more frequently – like once a week. On the other hand, if your sales cycle is closer to 12 months, you might want to lay off the gas a bit and email once a month to avoid email fatigue.

Optimize, Test, Repeat

Finally, when it comes to optimizing your email marketing campaigns for conversion, testing is your best tool. Monitoring your email open rates, your click-through rates, and your conversions can help you gauge where you’re being successful and where you can improve.

A/B test to optimize individual emails. Test changing up the frequency of a campaign. And test the types of emails you send in your campaigns.

With the right email campaign recipe, you’ll be able to make the most out of every lead you capture, nurturing every new relationship with email to turn more of them into paying customers.

Source: http://www.smallbiztrends.com

Photo Credit: Shuttershock

ABOUT WNFP

Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!

5 Influencers Share How They Used Networking to Grow Their Personal Brands

Your personal brand is how the world perceives you. With that in mind, it’s smart to control the way you build your brand so nothing is left to chance or interpretation. As people begin to recognize you based on your interactions and the content you share, they’ll be able to identify your brand with a certain level of expertise.

The challenge is getting your brand to the point where it’s immediately recognizable and your name is spread through connections without your direct influence. There are a number of ways to build a personal brand, and one of the most effective methods is direct networking.

Networking, whether in person or online, is one of the best ways to improve your brand perception and visibility while maintaining careful control over how you’re perceived by the public. It’s a valuable, one-on-one interaction that other methods lack, such as guest posts or community discussions.

Most professionals prefer networking over other methods of connecting with their peers and audiences: 85% of business professionals say that they are able to build stronger, more meaningful relationships during in-person business meetings and conferences.

Here is some great advice from five influencers who used networking to grow their personal brands.

1. Become a Connector

“The best way to expand your network is by introducing people in your network with each other,” writes Syed Balkhi of OptinMonster. “You will quickly realize not only does this help you improve your relationship with existing folks in your network, but the reciprocity factor of introductions will help you grow your network a lot faster.”

Growing the connections of others and introducing them to people you believe can bring them value shows that you’re interested in more than just yourself. Your connections will be far more likely to remember you, recommend you, and keep you in mind when they need work after you’ve helped them grow or provided a good contact in a pinch.

2. Don’t Spend All of Your Time in Industry-Specific Groups

“I attended an event where one of our prospective clients was speaking,”writes Gay Gaddis, CEO and Founder of T3, the largest woman-owned independent advertising agency in the country. “I sat on the front row and after his speech, I was the first person to meet him after he spoke, which gave me a chance to hold a meaningful conversation based on the speech he just gave. Within a week, we got a call from him and today his company is a major client.”

An industry-specific group is a great way to meet others who you could collaborate with, but don’t spend too much time there. Diversify the events you attend and go outside of your industry. There are likely other markets where your audience is waiting. When you get into those spaces, there is far less direct competition, which means you’ll have more opportunities for uninterrupted one-on-one engagement.

3. Consistently Work to Build Your Network

“A friend of mine used to work at a large research hospital; it was a sprawling institution with countless divisions and initiatives,” writes Dorie Clark, marketing strategist and speaker, and professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. “She made a simple commitment: each week, she’d ask a person from a different office or department to lunch. Often, she’d meet them initially at company meetings or through project work; if the suggestion to have lunch together didn’t arise naturally, she’d tell them about her project, and they were almost always intrigued enough to join her. Within a few months, she had begun to build a robust network inside her organization – on her own, quiet terms.”

Building a personal brand is an ongoing process. In addition to social engagement and online content production, you need to fill your calendar with a constant stream of events to attend. These can be huge events like the annual Content Marketing World, or smaller local and regional events.

If you can’t find an appropriate meetup or event to attend, then start your own to bring more attention to your personal brand.

4. Focus on Helping Others

“The most common rule in the book that we were taught when we were young is to be nice to everyone and keep your ego in the back seat,” says Kelly Krause, publicist for SXSW. “I truly take every meeting … I never go into a scenario thinking, ‘How can this person help me?’ It’s just keeping the person in your back pocket so that you can call them any time. You just really never know when you’re able to help somebody or when they’re able to help you.”

If you want anything from your customers, you have to give them something first. When you provide a lot of value to a customer or solve their problem, then they’ll shout from the rooftops for you. The same concept applies to building your brand.

Your focus should always be on how you can help your connections. Don’t just view them as potential sources of revenue or stepping stones to connect to other people. When people see that you’re more interested in helping them, then they’ll be more likely to put you in touch with others in their network.

5. Be Kind and Share Great Content

“You need to be careful, as you go up in your career, of how you treat people,” says Lorine Pendleton, angel investor and director of business development for Dentons. “I will talk to our receptionist or the person who picks up our trash…it doesn’t matter. It’s really important to treat people with respect because you don’t know where they are in the totem pole and people remember how you treat them.”

Pendleton also tries to step up the value she provides to her connections by sending or suggesting articles when she reconnects with them. The content is usually based on their interactions and conversations they’ve had: “I’ll say, ‘I came across this great article…can I pick your brain on this topic?’ People are pretty receptive to that.”

Sharing content is a terrific way to improve your networking outreach and make you more memorable. It shows your new connections that you’re really paying attention to them. It also speaks volumes about your character that you took the time to find content specifically for them.

The human connection derived from networking is extremely powerful. The growth marketing dinners that I’ve hosted have been immensely successful as part of my brand-building strategy. I’ve met amazing people and developed some great friendships along the way. Now, many of those people support my messaging and spread my thoughts and ideas across many channels.


You can only take your personal brand so far with traditional marketing and branding efforts. If you want to see real growth, you’ll have to take the time to nourish real human connections through networking.




Source: http://www.forbes.com


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!

5 Ways Growing Fast Can Cripple Your Business (and How to Fix It)

Business growth is a sure sign of success. Ergo, the faster your business expands, the more successful you must be, right?

But in the midst of all the potential and excitement promised by a wildly successful business, owners often neglect to consider the drawbacks of rapid expansion. That is, until they are swirling in the whirlwind.

The truth is, fast business growth isn't all popularity and financial bliss. There are numerous unexpected pitfalls that could stunt your growth before you even get a chance to enjoy the prosperity. Here are some of the most common growing pains you should watch out for.

1. The Unraveling of a Standardized Process
As you begin to rapidly grow, you'll need to improvise to meet increased demand. The higher demand climbs, the less time you'll have to redesign workflows to account for volume and new employees.

At this point, your old processes will stop working effectively. This is right about the time businesses enter a state of free fall.

The Fix

• Start by addressing operations that directly affect customer experience (like ordering and order-processing systems).
• Turn away customers if you must. Don't over-promise and under-deliver.
• Leverage technologies that will help streamline and automate. This will free your management and employees to focus on more pressing areas of business.

2. The Dissipation of Your Company Culture
When you grow fast and hire quickly, you run the risk of losing the spark that ignited your explosive growth.

Businesses often bring on too many contractors to keep up with growing demand, and these people may not be as invested in the company and end up walking away with insider intel. And demand is so great, there is no time for proper training and onboarding.

It's "sink or swim," and company culture often gets compromised in the riptide.

The Fix

• Define yourself. Is your company young and trendy, or professional and sophisticated?
• Expound your mission statement and values.
• Set cultural expectations for your organization.
• Build enthusiasm behind your company's mission and values. Lead by example.
• Do not hire outside your company culture. Make adequate time for hiring and recruit the right people.

3. The Downfall of Great Customer Service
Rapid growth means less face time with customers. It also means an onslaught of new customers who easily distract businesses from their current customers--you know, the patrons who helped them get where they are today, and are fully capable of making or breaking your reputation.

The Fix

• Set a company-wide standard of excellence in customer service.
• Address customer issues and questions quickly and thoughtfully.
• Actively ask for feedback from customers.
• Listen closely to customers and use intel to refine operations.

4. High Employee Turnover
Fast business growth will undoubtedly test the endurance and loyalty of your staff. For them, your success means facing a lot of changes. If they feel over-worked and under-valued, you risk veteran employees jumping ship faster than you can replace them

The Fix

• Incentivize hard work; give bonuses and positive reinforcement.
• Invite them to be a part of the process. Ask for their input as you reshape your brand and processes.
• Invest in your employees. Equip them with the tools they need to succeed.

5. Spatial Challenges
As you hire more employees, expand departments and prepare to meet heightened demands, you will inevitably outgrow your space.

But the answer isn't necessarily to expand office space. First, you need to understand how your employees are using their workspace, and whether all areas of your office space are being optimally utilized.

The Fix

• Listen to your employees and the requests they make.
• Be present on the floor.
• Utilize space management software to monitor employee usage of space and assets, and to forecast future needs.
• Expand accordingly.

With the right tools and practical knowledge, it is entirely possible to grow your business with grace. Keep these pitfalls in mind so you have the insight necessary to navigate your business in the right direction--even at full speed.

Source: http://www.inc.com/
Image Credit: Getty Images

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!

10 Unsuspected Secrets for Growing Your Business to Ridiculous Success

Once you’ve started your business and got all the basics covered, you still need to work to constantly improve. Whether you need a little push when it comes to finances, marketing or time management, there are some unsuspected secrets out there for growing your business to ridiculous success. Check out the tips from members of our small business community below.

Find Out How Lenders View Your Tax Returns

Tax returns are part of most loan applications. But what exactly are those lenders looking for? In this Fundera Ledger post, Gretchen Schmid provides an in-depth look at how lenders view tax returns. You can also check out the discussion surrounding the post over on BizSugar.

Use These Project Management Tools to Support Your Team

Managing projects requires more than just staying on top of emails from team members. With the help of some actual project management tools and processes, you can actually support your team and their projects. Sebastien Boyer outlines some of those tools and techniques in this Nutcache post.

Manage Your Time Spent on Business Emails

Managing email can be a huge time suck for business owners. But some have found a good system for managing inboxes without requiring a big time commitment. Let Small Business Trends know all about your own email habits in the poll included in this post by Joshua Sophy.

Learn About Display Targeting
When it comes to online advertising, the way you target your ads can make a huge difference in the success of your campaigns. Display targeting can be effective, but only when used correctly. This post by Zoe Liang of Reef Digital includes information on different types of targeting and how to get the most out of your ad dollars.

Consider Hiring Temporary Employees

If your business is growing and you need some help getting everything done, but not necessarily on a long-term basis, you might consider looking into temporary employees. This CorpNet post by Rieva Lesonsky includes some tips for bringing on temporary help. And BizSugar members share thoughts on the subject here.

Keep an Eye Out for These Things When Hiring a Business Coach
A business coach or mentor can really help you take your business to the next level. But you need to know what to look for to make sure that your business coach is going to be a good fit. Stephen Moyers shares some tips for finding a great business coach in the SPINX Digital Blog.

Get More Online Reviews

You can only tell people how great your business is so many times. Sometimes, they just won’t hear the message unless it comes from someone else. That’s why getting positive online reviews is so important. Here, Aaron Weiche of GetFiveStars shares some tactics for getting more online reviews.

Understand What Good Customer Service Means

Providing good customer service isn’t just about making service staff members available. You also need to actually build relationships with customers, as Tony Paull of Tony Paull Consulting discusses in this post. The BizSugar community also discusses the post here.

Create “Big” Content

Just writing simple content for your business can only get you so far. If you want to take your content to the next level, you need to work on longer, more involved content. John Stevens of the Ahrefs blog shares how to write big content, even for non-writers.

Overcome These Mobile SEO Challenges

Marketing to mobile consumers is no longer optional. But that means you need to SEO specifically for mobile devices. In this Search Engine Journal post, Shane Barker outlines some common mobile SEO challenges that businesses face along with some solutions.


If you’d like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please comment below.

Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/
Image Credit: Shutterstock


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!