You had a great product in mind. You thought that you did enough marketing to gain attention and gather a customer base. Apparently, you were wrong.

You end up spending more money on manufacturing and advertising the product than you can make back. What did you do wrong? How can you grow your business? Fortunately, there is the answer to questions like these. You know that growing a business is often messy as every day brings new challenges. In order to lead your business in the right direction and grow it confidently, you can think about business coaching. Do your research and find the proper business coach who will navigate every stage of your growth and will eliminate the barriers to scale. Also, he will help you overcome the challenges, be more confident, run your business well as well as enjoy work/life balance.

It’s harder than you might think. You’ve got to come up with a good SEO strategy and write social media posts on a normal basis. You’ve got to do some research on your competition and work on your company culture.

These are only a few areas you should improve on.

Check out this guide for a few key business growth tips

1. Work on Your Corporate Culture

You can have the best product in the world, but if your workers aren’t happy, you’re not going to get too far. Wronged employees quit, and when they do, they drag your name through the mud with bad reviews.

It will make it difficult for you to attract other workers to your cause, and if you have a bad reputation, customers will avoid you as well.

We know that you have deadlines, but you need to offer flexible hours that allow your employees to have a good work/life balance. Ask them to fill out happiness surveys and make changes to your business based on the feedback you get.

Open yourself up to getting marketing advice from your employees. You’ll be surprised at some of the creative ideas you’ll get.

2. Don’t Ignore Your Social Media

Billions of people use social media every day. If you ignore your pages and refuse to post, it will be difficult to expand your business. You’ll be missing out on so many marketing opportunities.

All it takes is one successful post to get things going. At least one of your customers will share it. When they do, there’s a chance that some of their followers will share it and so on and so forth.

If you don’t have a lot of followers yet, fear not. Other people have plenty that you can pull from. You can reach out to these people via influencer marketing.

Essentially, you’ll team up with a powerful influencer. This person will film themselves using your product and post it to their page. Their fans will see it and maybe give you a follow.

You can ask your followers to take pictures of themselves using your products and give them incentives to post them. Maybe hold a competition of some kind. People love free stuff!

3. Come Up With a Better Value Proposition

The thing about customers is they don’t want to be sold to. They don’t want to hear a rehearsed list of features that your product comes with.

Instead, they want to know about how your product can solve a particular problem in their life. An easy way to show them what your goods can do is to write a short headline.

Your headline is a small pitch that grabs interest. If you can’t come up with a good headline, you might have a different problem on your hands.

That indicates that you have no idea what direction your marketing is going. You might need to visit the professionals at https://miller-ink.com/ to get back on track.

4. Research Your Competition

You need to know more about your competition than you do yourself. Do research before you establish your company. You don’t want to set up a barbershop in an area that already has 7 of them.

You can also get a lot of good marketing ideas from your competition. Find out what’s working and isn’t working for them and use that research to polish your own advertising strategy.

Granted, you shouldn’t copy them. That can get you into a ton of legal trouble. Getting a little inspiration from your competition isn’t out of the question, though.

5. Listen to Feedback

There’s such a thing as getting too caught up in your business expansion. You want everyone to love your product and get some use out of it. It causes you to spend too much time on production.

You want to fix every minor detail and polish your product to a shine. That’s the wrong way to go about things. You’ll never release anything if you get too caught up in the little things.

No matter how much work you pour into a product, it’s not going to satisfy everyone. Go ahead and put it out there on the shelves once it’s ready.

Getting the product in the hands of your target audience will give you some feedback that you can work with. Pay attention to any complaints and compliments that your goods get.

Make changes based on the comments you read. Doing so will make your audience feel heard and you’ll get some great ideas for how to make your products better.

6. Build an SEO Strategy

There are not many people that will go past the first page of Google when they’re searching for goods and services. That means you need to work on your rankings.

The best way to do that is by building an effective SEO strategy. The first step is filling your website with quality and relevant content. Choose keywords that will bring people to your site.

If you’re unsure of what keywords are and how they work, they’re phrases that search engines pull from when people look for businesses like yours. You’ll have to write frequent blog posts. If you don’t put content on your site or go a long time without writing anything, customers may get the wrong impression that you’re not in business.

The search engines also can’t reward you for your amazing content if you don’t put anything out. All your blog posts will need to use catchy headings and have an eye-catching meta description attached.

We understand that it’s a lot. It can be hard to manage on top of keeping your company afloat. That’s why many business owners outsource their SEO.

7. Balance Your Prices

One of the hardest parts of putting a product out there on the shelves is deciding on a price point. You want to be able to make money off your idea, but you don’t want to make it so expensive that sends buyers away.

We recommend once again, studying your competition. Look for products like yours on the market and find out what they’re going for. That will give you some numbers to work with.

8. Customer Loyalty Programs Work

If you’re looking for a quick way to increase sales, do yourself a favor and establish a customer loyalty program. Give your clients a card that they can use every month to get money off their purchases and send discounts to their email inboxes.

Doing so will help you stand out from your competition that doesn’t have worthwhile loyalty programs. It will also provide customers with incentives to spend more money. You might even be able to attract new clients to your company.

9. Pay Attention to Trends

You want your product to have some lasting value. That means staying on top of the latest trends and appealing to the young folks. That’s true even if your target demographic isn’t teenagers.

Sixteen-year-olds might not be interested in your products right now, but that could change in a few years. You want to go ahead and reach out, so they’ll remember you later.

10. Host Virtual Events

Not everyone can make a physical event. Customers might not be able to travel to your location, and with COVID-19 still around, going virtual is much safer.

Virtual events are cheaper. You won’t have to spend money on food or a venue. Not traveling means less hassle, and you’ll get the chance to learn more about your clientele.

Virtual events are easy to get ready for. All you need to do is put on a headset, sit in your office chair, and pull up the video program on your computer.

Speaking of programs, there are a few options that you can use as far as hosting goes. There’s Instagram Live, Facebook Live, Skype, Zoom, and LinkedIn.

11. The After Sales Experience Is Important

The after-sales experience is about as important as the sales experience. Customer service doesn’t end after someone hits that big checkout button.

You should follow up with them by sending them an email. Ask for customer feedback. Sometimes a product comes in and it’s not what you thought it would be.

Don’t make the return process difficult. That’s a good way to ensure the customer will never shop from you again. Make it easy for customers to contact you and ask questions about their purchases.

12. Create an Email List

Creating an email list is a simple way to bring in new customers. Don’t try any funny business with getting people to sign up for it. A simple prompt on your website will do the trick.

If you buy your email list, there’s a good chance that the recipients will mark your messages as spam. If someone’s never been to your site before, they’re most likely not interested in the products you have to offer.

It’s not legal or ethical to buy your list. Google will penalize you for doing it. When you do things the right way, you’ll bring previous customers back to your site.

Emails will keep you fresh in their minds. They can also be personal and humanize you in the eyes of your clients. Providing coupons in the messages will create customer loyalty as well.

13. Show Off Real People

People don’t like stiff advertisements filled with corporate suits. They want to see people like them using your products. Get some of your average joe employees in on your marketing.

Again, you can have your actual customers post videos and pictures of themselves interacting with your goods. Showing off real people will humanize your company and create loyalty.

14. Product Photography Is Important

Never post a product on your site without providing a picture of it. Nobody is going to buy something that they can’t see. Using stock images is as much of a no-no.

Take quality pictures of everything in your stock. Grainy photos shot with your smartphone won’t do. They need to look professional.

If you have some extra room in your budget, we recommend reaching out to an actual photographer. It will cost you, but the business growth will make it worth it.

15. Work Smarter

You’ve hired all your employees for a reason. They have something that they can bring to the table. Let them do their job and don’t micromanage.

Hovering over your workers will make it hard for them to be productive. They also can’t do the things you pay them to do if you fail to delegate tasks to them.

Use technology to your advantage. Productivity and time management software will make a world of difference. Technology can also make it easier for your employees to work collaboratively.

Grow Your Business to Be the Best It Can Be

Is your business not where you would like for it to be? Are you having trouble pushing your products? It might be time for you to rethink your marketing strategy.

It’s hard to grow your business if you don’t use all the tools you have available to you. Don’t forget about your social media page, do what you can to humanize yourself in the eyes of your customers, and take care of your employees. You’ll be surprised at what these small changes can do for your company.

For more tips that will help you keep your company going strong, visit the Business section of our blog.