9 Ways to Grow Your Startup Business Fast

Business growth is a business owner’s best friend, but how exactly do you grow your business fast when you haven’t got a lot of money, or time? Here are our top 10 ways to build a successful business quickly and easily.

1. Find New Customers

   The best way to attract new customers is to plan a marketing campaign because it’s all about finding strategies to get your brand in front of potential customers. 
   
   One of the cheapest and quickest ways to do this is to invest in some flyers! Flyers are a great platform for showing off your products or services because you can get a lot printed on a small budget. You can either hand them out or post them to a specific area depending on your target audience, making them a super targeted way of promoting your business to new customers. 
   
   And with our free design templates, you can make your own flyers at the touch of a button.
   
    

2. Nurture Existing Customers

   It might be tempting to focus solely on attracting new customers to your business, but the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, compared to just 5-20% for a new customer (Marketing Metrics). That’s why it’s so important to retain the customers you’ve already got!
   
   One way to do this is to introduce a loyalty program. Loyalty cards with rewards schemes on them are a fantastic (and, not to mention, extremely easy) way of doing this. Here are some clever loyalty card examples to get your creative cogs ticking.
   
    

3. Do Something for the Local Community

   Corporate social responsibility is becoming increasingly important for your brand’s reputation. Volunteering, donating to charity or taking part in fundraising activities are all great ways to boost brand positivity and appeal to more and more customers. Just make sure you shout about what you’re doing.
   
   Post pictures and videos of your fundraising efforts on social media, write a press release on how much money you’ve raised and help out a local cause – it’s a win-win situation!
   
   If you’re sponsoring a local event, make sure to print T-shirts with your logo on for participants to wear. It’s a great way to show that your business is associated with these kinds of events and gets your name into potential customers’ heads.
   
    

4. Host an Event

   Whether it’s a sale, a class, a runway or an offsite event for your store, events are a fantastic way to build your business and get customers to buy your products or service. It’s no secret that exclusivity sells, so why not make your event an invite-only opportunity or offer places on a first-come-first-served basis.
   
   If you’re not wanting to keep your event on the down-low, you’ll have to go the opposite way and shout about it from the rooftops. Creating signs for inside your store or outside on the street is your best bet for demanding lots of attention, which should lead to high attendance and rapid growth in terms of your customer base!
   
    

5. Get Feedback

   Found your business at a bit of a standstill in terms of growth? Maybe there’s a bigger issue at large. 
   
   Keeping your customers’ happiness levels high is essential for business growth in the long term, so it helps to set time aside to stop and ask what they want from you. Are you still identifying their pain points with your solution? Is your customer experience up to date? When was the last time you rewarded loyal customers?
   
   Depending on your industry, there are lots of review sites where customers will leave organic (and often brutally honest) feedback on your business, like Trustpilot and TripAdvisor. If you want specific feedback on a certain area, the best thing to do is ask customers to fill in a postcard that asks questions about the areas you want to improve in. 
   
   Once you’ve got your feedback, you can analyse this and looks for things you can fix in both the short and long term to make a plan of action.
   
    

6. Get Networking

   Making connections and meeting new people is always going to be the key for growing your business. Whether you choose to attend networking events or make connections online, there are loads of ways to use your communication skills to do some serious grafting for your business.
   
   Not a fan of networking? Check out our top network marketing tips for business owners who hate marketing.
   
   Remember to print business cards to take with you to any event you go to – having all your contact details in one handy place will make the whole process a lot smoother and easier!
   
    

7. Train a Team of Experts

   Some people will tell you to invest in the top talent. But as a company built on the belief that you can teach someone the skills to do their job in the way you want them to, but you can’t teach them enthusiasm or to have the right attitude, we’d be the first to disagree.
   
   We’re not saying to just hire anyone. But what we are saying is to try and find a diamond in the rough who, with a little training, will be a perfect part of your team based on their behaviours and attitude towards working and learning.
   
   You can put a workplace training strategy into place in no time at all and without digging into your budget. Follow our in-house Trainer Sean’s top tips here. And a well-trained team = great customer service = business growth!
   
    

8. Keep an Eye on the Competition

   If people are choosing your competitors over you, that’s sure to negatively affect your small business growth. Give the competition a run for their money by making sure you offer something unique – whether that’s better prices, more options, higher quality, or even faster delivery.
   
   Once you’ve found your unique selling points, promote these as much as you can to your audience – through marketing emails, on a poster, whichever way works best for your business. It could be the thing that tips them over the fence and into your loyal customer base.
   
   
    

9. Ask for Referrals

   Just assuming that customers are already suggesting your business to their friends isn’t going to cut it when you want to grow quickly. One of the most effective ways of doing this as a small business is by outright asking existing customers to refer you to other people. 
   
   Every time you make a sale, ask the happy customer if they know someone else who would be interested in what you’re offering.
   
   Or, for a more automated approach, why not set up a refer a friend scheme? That way, you can offer an incentive for existing customers to recommend you which will make them a lot more likely to do just that!

Now you have the knowledge on how to grow your business, it’s time to put it into practice! Pick your favourite ideas from this list to try and remember to track your growth to see what a difference it makes. Not every idea will work for every business, so take some time to find what works for you and watch the positive results roll in.