How to grow your home business

Posted on 12:00am Wednesday 6th Jul 2022

Starting a new small business from your home is relatively easy when compared to growing it once you have started it. No matter how hard it may be, however, it is necessary to learn how to grow your home business if you want to succeed and flourish and if you want your business to become well-known and profitable.

The more you work on growing it, the bigger it will become, and ultimately, the more money it will bring in. Therefore, you should have a plan that includes ways that you intend to grow your small business; there are many different options.

We’ve put together some ideas on how you can do it, but remember, what works for one person may not work for another, so there will be a lot of trial and error involved – but that’s what running a business is all about.

Read on for several ideas for how to grow your home business.

How to grow your home business

Know your customers

There are lots of profitable home business ideas, but to truly succeed, a small business owner and all their employees must know their customers. If you can do this, you will then be able to sell or develop products and services that these customers not only need but want, and they will choose to spend their money with you rather than someone else.

To get to know your customers, there are a variety of options, including:

Surveys
Questionnaires
Competitions
Asking for honest feedback
Taking note of reviews

The bottom line is that you need to ask questions of your customers to ascertain just what it is they are looking for and why they want to shop with you. Once you know what it is that you do that no one else does, whether you discover it through direct mail, workshops, or the above ideas, you can work on that and create a brand and a store that offers exactly what is required.

Better customer service

Sometimes the only thing that sets you apart from your competition is the level of customer service you can provide. If your products and services are the same or similar, then customer service must be the way that you grow your business. Great customer service is all about making your customers and clients feel special and as though everything they do makes a difference to your business. In many ways, this is the truth, and if you can bear this in mind when helping them, it will boost your positivity and help to grow your business at the same time.

When customers feel truly valued, they will enjoy the experience much more. They know that if they have any problems, they will be addressed immediately, giving them more confidence in obtaining products and services from you even if they have never used you before.

Create customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is what will boost your business like nothing else. If you can keep your customers happy, then their brand loyalty will mean they will always come to you, no matter what else is out there. The sense of trust with you should be so strong that nothing can knock it, not even a new company selling similar items for less money, or with a better guarantee, for example.

Loyalty does take some time to establish, but it is worth working on because once you have it, unless something disastrous happens, it is difficult for those who trust in you to want to look elsewhere. You should never feel complacent about your current customers because once you start to ignore them or stop showing them that you care about them, they might decide to start looking at other companies.

Keep offering discounts and loyalty reward schemes for those customers who have been with you a long time. You can even set up a referral program so that they will be more likely to have their friends and family buy from you too. Check out these refer a friend programmes if you need inspiration about what sort of offer to set up.

Get word-of-mouth recommendations

This follows directly from what we mentioned above. Word-of-mouth recommendations are invaluable. Individuals will always believe a suggestion from a friend or family member, therefore it's crucial to urge people to help you in this manner.

Although your excellent reputation will ultimately speak for itself and recommendations will come naturally, you may need to incentivise customers in the beginning as you attempt to build your small home business. Offer discounts or reward points, for example, or a discount on their next purchase if they refer you.

Don't worry about losing money by doing this; referrals mean you won't have to utilise your whole advertising budget, which you can balance with the discounts you're offering.

Go to trade shows

If you can't bring customers to you, maybe because you don't want to or can't have a store, you need to go to them. Trade shows and conventions can be just what you need. You will need to do as much research as possible to figure out which show will be best for your business and the products and services you sell.

You'll need to find a show that your target audience or clients will go to and where your products will stand out from everyone else's. This may take some time, but it will be worth it because once you find the right trade show, your sales can take off.

When preparing for the trade show, there are several things you’ll need to prepare. The first is gifts – by giving small items away, you can be more memorable and be seen in a positive light. Being generous with a useful freebie is a great way to impress clients. You can create merchandise with your business logo and web address so people won’t forget who you are.

You’ll also need business cards and flyers with your contact details and web address. Make sure these are easily accessible at the front of your stand and offer one to anyone interested in your products.

Finally, it’s well worth creating a presentation or engaging experts in PowerPoint presentation services to do it for you. You can have this playing on a loop so that anyone interested in your business can instantly see what it is you do.

Use social media

Social media is one of the best tools there is to grow your business, especially if you have a small budget, as you can use these platforms for free if you want to. There’s no need to use paid ads right away.

Using social media puts you in front of an audience of many hundreds of thousands, and the trick is to access those people. That means either paying to promote your posts and content or creating something that goes viral. Paying is always going to be easier than creating viral content, but for those on a limited budget or who simply don’t want to spend money when they don’t have to, it is always worth trying to create a viral post first.

Social media will allow you to engage with customers and potential customers too, allowing you to find out what their concerns are, understand what is going right, and show that your business is run by people who care. By using social media to show your human side, you can more easily find new people who want to buy from you and therefore grow your business.

Know your competition

You may be so focused on your own business that you don't believe there's time, or a need, to consider your competitors. Ultimately, the more your business grows, the less important it will be. That might be what you think, but it's not the reality.

What matters in business is that you know all there is to know about your competition. For starters, you need to know that you're at least keeping pace with them, if not ahead of them. To gain some inspiration for your own business, take a look at how they manage things and the sorts of promotions they give. To expand your company, you shouldn't imitate what they're doing exactly, but you can learn from their mistakes and take inspiration from their successes.

Build a team

As your business grows, you will need to build a great team about you; if you are doing everything by yourself right now, you certainly won’t be able to continue to do this once you have started to grow and become more established.

The idea of hiring people, particularly if you have never done so before, can be daunting, but it is crucial if you want to grow and become more profitable – if not, you will become overworked and overwhelmed, and you won’t be able to service your customers in the way they expect. If this happens, you will lose customers and gain a poor reputation, and combined, these are a terrible mix.

You can start by hiring freelancers who only need to be put to work and paid when there is work for them to do. This can save the worry of needing to provide a monthly salary even if work is scarce.

There are also services that can help save you time, so you can focus on your business and increase revenue, such as hiring a bookkeeper instead of trying to do all your accounting yourself.

Know the risks

There will be risks involved in running a business, but as long as they are calculated, they shouldn't be a problem. Whenever you have a choice, always think about what the worst thing that could happen is. If that risk is too big compared to the reward, you should probably not do it. If the reward is bigger than the risk, you can keep going.

Asking yourself this question about everything is a good habit that will help you make great business (and life) decisions.

Final word

There are many different ways to grow your home business and you should be using a combination. It's important to understand that for most businesses, even small home businesses, growth is a process that takes time and patience. But, done correctly, the rewards will come.

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