5 Strategies for Growing a Small Business

Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, providing employment opportunities and spurring growth in almost every industry. At the same time, running any business requires planning to succeed, and this includes knowing how to expand your company as you grow its customer base. There are countless strategies for growing your small business, so here are five essential ones that you’ll want to be sure to include as you plan ahead with your small business growth strategy.

Evaluate your current strategy

As your company grows, it’s important to evaluate whether your current strategy is still working. An effective way to do that is by measuring your company's key performance indicators (KPIs). If you can’t measure it, it will be difficult to manage. Before you make any major changes to how you work, review KPIs across all departments and make sure everyone on your team understands their role in supporting them. Remember that scaling isn't just about increasing numbers—it's also about improving the quality of output.

Determine your main goal

This is critical to success. Remember, goals aren’t meant to be easy, they’re meant to be worth it. If you don’t have clear objectives that are all in line with your overall vision, then don’t expect your small business to have any measure of focus or direction either. If you’re not sure what goal(s) you should be striving for with your small business, take some time and think about what you want most from life in general. The answers to those questions will help guide your decision-making when it comes to growing a successful business. To make things easier on yourself though, we recommend keeping it short with three goals: revenue growth, profitability, and scalability.

Identify your target audience

Before you can take your small business to scale, you’ll need to identify and understand your target audience. Who do you want to serve with your product or service? What challenges and problems do they face? Once you’ve figured out who your customers are, it will be easier to decide how and where you should market your offering. After all, certain marketing channels might work better than others for serving different customer segments. Targeting different markets also allows you to develop unique solutions that really speak to each segment's needs. Understanding these needs can help grow revenues in existing markets while opening up opportunities in new ones. Creating a strategy that breaks out of geographic or functional constraints will likely increase profitability long term.

Keep track of what works and what is not working

When you start hiring new employees, you'll want to make sure everyone on your team knows what's expected of them. And when you're looking at how your business is performing, it's important to know which strategies are working and which ones aren't. Make sure you have systems in place to record results so that when something isn't working, you can adjust accordingly.

Use Payroll Software

Some entrepreneurs think payroll software is reserved solely for big businesses. However, you can take advantage of these services if you’re a small business owner. Payroll software will simplify your pay cycle and eliminate common mistakes that many entrepreneurs make when writing checks and calculating taxes. If you feel that your time would be better spent serving clients, then consider outsourcing payroll duties to free up time in your schedule. You can outsource as much or as little as you want, whether it’s just having someone manage paychecks or hiring professionals to manage every aspect of payroll. Just remember: You’ll have to complete any necessary documentation or tax filings related to outsourced tasks so make sure to weigh those responsibilities before delegating work.

Many of us want to grow our small businesses. We want to take on more clients, bring in new revenue streams, offer more options, and put ourselves out there as thought leaders. But how do we accomplish all that? There are dozens of strategies you can use to scale your business—hiring new employees, adding products or services, outsourcing some tasks—but above are five tactics you should focus on first