As any business owner knows, sustaining a business is much harder than starting one. Long-term success requires daily business planning, process managing and client satisfaction.
That said, if your business has made it through 2019, your chances of succeeding in 2020 aren’t guaranteed. A new year for business means having to come up with new ideas to stay relevant for clients. Normal business processes such as product brainstorming and financial management will require more attention than the year before.
On top of all of this, all business niches are sure to see huge increases in competitors trying to take over. Understanding the realities of business is not to intimidate you for the new year. Instead, they serve the purpose of giving you an idea as to how you can guide your business for growth.
Even above starting and sustaining a business, scaling a business will be the most difficult challenge to overcome. The reason for this is that scaling a business requires one key quality that the most experienced businesses have a hard time acquiring. That quality is none other than consistency.
Up to the Challenge? Let’s Grow Your Business in 2020
Day by day, your business has to have a plan of action that will ultimately lead to a larger goal at the end of the year. What makes this difficult to pull off is that one small mistake along the way gives a competing business a window of opportunity. In most cases, a small window of opportunity is all a competition business may need to surpass and stay ahead of your business for the entire year.
Taking into account the challenges of sustaining and scaling a business, we can now discuss the specific plans of action your business can use to grow. As a disclaimer, not all of these ideas will work for your business as effectively as it would for another. This is due to small but significant factors such as business size, niche and market size. However, that shouldn’t stop your business from trying as many ideas as possible. After all, the more ideas you try, the more opportunity for business growth in 2020.
1. Launch A WordPress Business Website (If You Don’t Have One)
For 2020, if you’re business doesn’t have a dedicated website, just know that you are playing from way behind the curb. Building a website today is one of the first things to do when starting a business. On the other hand, if your business already has a website, the CMS or platform that powers your website can make a big difference in how your business can grow both online and externally.
For the most part, the website builder WordPress is one of if not the most trusted platforms for running a business website. WordPress has everything from niche-specific themes to choose from, free plugins to add additional functionality to your site (such as e-commerce or membership) and a thriving community of fellow WordPress users. Plus, you’ll find a ton of WordPress training courses that help you expand your skills.
2. Run Pay-Per-Click Online Advertising
After you make sure your business has a WordPress website up and running, the next logical step is to advertise it online. The only problem is that online business competition is just as competitive as traditional business competition. This is because businesses are fighting for a virtually endless supply of online clients.
This is where pay-per-click online advertising comes into play. This strategy is effective in that it gives your business full control as to when and where to advertise. Perhaps the best part about it is that any business can set up an advertising campaign for as low as $5 a day. At that price, this strategy is a no-brainer to implement.
3. SEO-Optimize The Business Website
Next to pay-per-click advertising, another effective online marketing strategy can be seen in SEO optimization. Otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization, SEO works by bringing relevant traffic to a website organically. In other words, it doesn’t require a dedicated campaign budget. SEO is essentially a free marketing strategy.
That said, SEO strategies can get a bit technical to work on. However, they are easy to learn over time and can result in thousands of free qualified traffic to your business. As a pro-tip, consider mixing the pay-per-click and SEO methods to get a well-rounded coverage of online business growth.
Ready to improve your SEO? Check out SEO Bootcamp and these free SEO training courses.
4. Regular Product Launches
Even if all other business processes go according to plan, product launches can put a stop to any progress made. This is what makes the product launching process difficult for businesses. Product launches need to be high-quality, creative and unique enough for a client to buy.
More importantly, you need to make sure product launches happen regularly. A good rule of thumb is to have at least one product launch every month. They don’t have to be big, they just have to be consistent enough to make your business stand out.
5. Run A Competitive Analysis Campaign
Running a competitive analysis campaign is one of the most important processes your business can use to grow. The way a competitive analysis works is by researching the pre-planning and post-planning steps of competitors. The purpose of this is to give your business an idea of what work needs to be done to surpass the competition.
There are tools your business can use to gain insights on what strategies your competition uses and how they are implementing them. In the grand span of things, by staying ahead of the competition competitively, your business will naturally receive more clients that can then help it scale.
6. Set Competitive Product Prices
Another benefit of running a competitive analysis campaign is that it shows the product price range that your business is using to stay competitive. This gives your business a general idea of what prices it should set to also stay competitive. However, coming up with a product price isn’t that simple. Pricing strategies also require balancing client satisfaction with market value. In other words, your business needs to find that sweet balance between profitable prices that help you stay competitive and prices that aren’t too high to scare away potential customers. Worth noting, finding the perfect price range doesn’t come without some trial and error.
7. Create An Email List
An unspoken rule in traditional and online business says a client needs to be shown a product or brand at least seven times before they trust it. This is why some businesses will spend thousands of dollars on the same local TV or radio ad several times a day.
Your business can also use this strategy, but it doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. It can be as simple as creating an email list. By setting up capture forms on the web pages of your business, you can then incentivize clients to give your business their information in exchange for a reward (also known as a content upgrade). While email marketing may require immediate costs, such as the cost of the platform, the long-term gains of getting a client’s email information are much more valuable.
You can then set up a series of email campaigns to provide helpful information about a topic related to your products or services with a special offer at the end of the series.
8. Integrate Website Analytics
Website analytics aren’t often associated with strategies for growing a business. Instead, analytics are seen as a technical skill that only data wizards can master. However, this simply isn’t the case. Website analytics are designed with businesses in mind. That said, the way your business can take advantage of analytics is by taking the time needed to properly integrate tracking on your website and learning how to interpret the data. Doing so will give your business access to metrics such as client interaction, amount of visitors, and other metrics that can be used to increase business growth from the website.
Learn everything you need to master Google Analytics for WordPress in this Google Analytics training course.
9. Up Your Social Media Presence
Given how large and popular social media platforms are today, it’s no surprise to see how they can also be used to grow a business. Social media is effective because it allows businesses to build personal and trustworthy relationships with clients.
On top of that, the amount of potential clients your business is exposed to through social media is unmatched. Needless to say, make sure your business has dedicated social media handles on several different platforms. You may decide to focus on one platform that best matches your target market. This will raise your chances of finding a valuable client that contributes to scaling your business.
Need some help upping your social media game? Check out this online social media marketing workshop.
10. Build A Thorough Sales Funnel
One of the more obvious strategies that can be used to grow your business in 2020 is having a sales funnel. However, the mistake that many businesses make is not making their sales funnel thorough and informational. The result of this is that a client is more likely to bounce from the funnel without making a purchase. To get around this, make your sales funnel as detailed as possible. This includes anything that will help keep a potential customer engaged, including ebooks, infographics, video tutorials and webinars. By making these changes, you can increase conversion rates which then leads to business growth from a financial standpoint.
11. Integrate A CRM System For Client Relationship Building
As mentioned before, building client relationships is one of the most important factors in scaling your business. Without it, your business can only benefit from immediate purchases that can only last for so long. This is where the importance of integrating a CRM system comes into play. Also known as a customer relationship management system, a CRM tool allows your business to centralize client relationship processes to retain new and current clients. To make things better, it also helps cost-effectively acquire purchase-ready customers.
12: Create A Client Loyalty Program
People will do a lot of things if it means they can get rewarded for it. Unsurprisingly, this idea also works for growing your business. This strategy is known as a client loyalty program. The way it works is by giving clients a reward of some sort for subscribing or joining a program of your business that shows their loyalty to it. It’s that simple. Even better, the reward can also be simple. A reward as small but valuable as a product discount or cash-back option is enough to convince clients to buy more products.
13: Go To Local & National Networking Events
From a traditional business standpoint, networking is still effective. The only difference is that businesses now have the option of networking online. Nonetheless, it will benefit your business tremendously by going to as many networking events as possible. Networking events can be at a local or national level, such as conferences, trade shows, meet-ups or workshops. Attending a new event will allow your business to form new business partners and clients.
14. Build A Niche Online Course
One alternative way you can grow your business is by building a online course. The course could be about anything that adds value to a customer. What’s interesting about this strategy is that virtually any business in any niche can implement it. For example, if your business sells pies, it could make a course about the best ways to make homemade pies. The possibilities of what to include in this strategy are endless. Plus, you can take advantage of the stell WordPress LMS plugins on the market to offer your course directly from your website.
15. Consider Rebranding Your Business
The brand of your business is most times the first impression a client gets about it. For this reason, your brand needs to be professional enough to create transparency for a client but unique and creative enough to stand out. As we can imagine, finding the perfect balance with a brand rarely comes on the first try. With that said, it might not be a bad idea to consider rebranding your business. The upside of this strategy is that it can make your business the most recognizable brand in your niche.
If rebranding isn’t an option, maybe a website redesign will do. A “redesign” can be as simple as freshening up your logo or home page colors or photography.
16. Diversify Website Content
Going back to a digital idea that your business can use to grow, having diverse website content is more important than business owners realize. The reason diverse content is important is that content truly plays a role in preventing customers from bouncing too quickly from your site. By having a nice combination of content to keep visitors engaged and interacting, you can better lead them to an effective sales funnel to purchase a product. As for what type of content to use specifically, consider ebooks, white papers, reports, videos, infographics, surveys, webinars, downloads and more.
Leverage your content with a WordPress content upgrade plugin to also grow your email list and build a landing page with a WordPress landing page plugin.
Get 10 tips for better landing pages. Download the new ebook: 10 Keys for Great Landing Pages
17. Use Business Communication Software
We can’t take about digital and traditional ideas to grow a business without discussing some internal business strategies. That said, using business communication software has shown to be one of the smartest investments a business can make. Overall, this tool helps to speed up how your business departments communicate with each other. The idea behind this is that it leads to an efficient workplace that leads to collaboration and easier business processes. However, keep in mind that you don’t want to force this tool into your business if it doesn’t need it. For example, there is no need to use this tool if your business doesn’t yet have teams or departments to use it.
Examples could include moving away from email to a more live chat system such as Slack. You may also want to adopt a project management tool such as Asana, Basecamp or Trello.
18. Take Advantage Of Influencer and Affiliate Marketing
Back to a digital strategy that your business can benefit from, influencer marketing has made a quick rise in popularity for a variety of reasons. Above everything else, what has made it so attractive to businesses is that it is the most natural way to attract clients. The way it works is that a social media influencer will promote a product of your business through their brand. The benefit of this is that your business gets access to the influencer’s followers through a trustworthy and relatable approach.
In the same way, affiliate marketers promote your products from their websites, social profiles and email lists for a commission on any sales generated from their efforts. Affiliate marketers can be a great way to expand your customer base as everyone has an incentive to make sales.
19. Take Advantage Of Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is yet another digital strategy that has managed to stay relevant for some time now. The way this strategy works is that your business rewards people if they refer other clients to purchase a product. This creates a win-win situation that helps both the referral client and the business. As we can imagine, this strategy can lead to business growth is that it helps spread awareness through numerous avenues.
20. Use Personalized Direct Mail Marketing Methods
Last but not least, just because the business industry is making a switch towards digital approaches doesn’t mean that traditional ones don’t work. A great example of this can be seen with personalized direct mail marketing. By building a marketing campaign with free stickers, samples, birthday cards or invitations to customers, your business can come off as more approachable and creative by providing this “surprise.” The only trick to this strategy is finding a way to get a customer’s information to send them the mail. However, when you have a strategy in place to do just that, direct mail marketing can be a way to help grow your business in 2020.
Wrapping Up: Growing Your Business in 2020
The benefit of the new year is an opportunity to refocus and evaluate your 2020 goals. Use this time to commit to growing your business by trying a few new ideas. Who knows, even one could have a huge impact by the end of the year!
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Keep reading the article at WordPress News and Updates from iThemes – iThemes. The article was originally written by Kristen Wright on 2020-01-22 13:06:43.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.