How to Fearlessly Grow & Scale Your Small Business Using Marketing

Growing your business may seem scary due to a lot of unknown factors: will you be able to maintain your quality standards if orders increase dramatically? Will you be overwhelmed? Will you run out of materials or time?

As it turns out, growing your business and scaling your business are two different things. Growing your business implies an increase of sales and revenue. Scaling your business means to expand in a proportional and profitable way.

Scaling your business can come with a lot of unwarranted anxiety. While the fears we have are a natural part of growth, it’s important to realize that what we fear may happen stems from the factors that remain unknown.

To ease these fears, let’s dive into what scaling your business will entail, how to set goals, and prepare to transition to the next phase proportionally.

Scaling Your Small Business Will Not Be Easy

You will run into obstacles. There aren’t any successful businesses that have had it easy since the first day. There will be times when you have no idea what you are doing. Not only is that okay, it’s exciting, because growth brings learning along with it. You will make mistakes, and you will learn from them.

How to Scale Your Business Using Marketing

step 1. address & Ease your Fears

More often than not, fears are the only thing holding you back from growing and scaling your small business. Since most fears are rooted in the unknown, research and planning will help you to overcome them.

What are the things you’ll need if your orders increase by 50%? 100%? 300%?

Set a plan that gives you an idea of the specific items that will be required to scale. Determine the amount of time, labor, materials, and costs in order to scale up to the next goal percentage.

It’s important to differentiate your thoughts between unfounded, unrealistic fears and legitimate obstacles. Obstacles we can tackle, fears are rooted in imagination.

step 2. Set SMART Goals

Smart Goals are:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time-Based

Setting goals that embody all of the SMART qualities will give you a better idea of the timing and efforts required to accomplish them. SMART goals help to grow proportionally and intentionally.

step 3. Create an Inbound Marketing Strategy

An inbound marketing strategy involves developing content that will guide your potential customer to make a purchase. This includes introducing your product, explaining how the product is made, and describing what makes your product superior. Inbound marketing is meant to inspire long-term repeat customers.

The goal with inbound marketing is to automate as much as possible. The first thing you need is an awesome website that functions well and quickly while meeting all consumer expectations. From there, automated emails can guide people that sign up for your email list toward making a purchase. Take it further with Search Engine Optimization, so you can automatically lead searchers toward the information they are looking for, which should guide them toward making a purchase as well. Inbound marketing can also include paid advertising, social media, and community outreach.

step 4. Be and remain present online

By being present online everywhere, often, and consistently, you can create a loyal following and reach a broader audience. This will be more impactful and rewarding when your inbound marketing strategy is set up and automatically guides your new audience toward a purchase or conversion.

Take this one step further by, not only being present online but by participating in trends on social media. Recognizing and participating in trends can push your online presence even further.

step 5. Bootstrap marketing avenues and tools

There are a lot of free marketing tools out there, especially from Google. Finding valuable tools at the lowest cost can help you to grow your inbound strategy further, and provide data that lets you know which efforts are actually working.

step 6. Re-Invest Profits into the business in line with your SMART goals

If your goal is to turn over all of your current inventory, it may be time to invest in paid advertising. If you’ve already sold all of your inventory, it’s time to reinvest in more supplies. Would hiring or contracting personnel to help with production, or any area of your business, help in the future?

To improve the parts of your business that you don’t fully understand (like accounting, legal services, data management, or marketing and advertising), consider hiring a professional 3rd party.

Investing and re-investing in your business will promote long-term, healthy, proportionate growth!

At the End of the Day

This is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. We hope this gives you some ideas about what you could do to grow your business quickly and efficiently. Only you know what’s best for your business, so do your research, set SMART goals, and prepare accordingly to move fearlessly in the direction of growing and scaling your small business.

Feel free to reach out and let us know your exact situation and we’ll give our best recommendations.