Small Business Expansion Strategies

Running a small business takes a lot of time, patience, and determination. If you’re looking to scale your business, that takes an even greater level of effort. The task doesn’t have to be daunting. There are several pro strategies you can consider when expanding your business—preparatory items that will make it easier to accommodate that influx of customers you’re aiming for! Let’s dive in…

Automate What You Can

Whether it’s an accounting program or marketing platform, automating as much of your current manual tasks is prime way to make sure you’re prepped to scale. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems can also help take some of the pressure off. Platforms like Salesforce are designed to assist in managing your customer relationships across their entire customer journey, from marketing to sales to customer service.

If you’re a small business owner who also functions as the company accountant, looking toward accounting automation is critical. From tracking sales to archiving receipts, these platforms are designed to make that manual data entry nearly obsolete.

Know Your Neighbor

You have competition (don’t we all?), but you also have the ability to learn from them. To effectively scale your business, get to know your competition inside and out. Performing a competitive analysis allows you to understand what works for your competition and where the opportunities to outshine them are. No time to dive in yourself? Consider one of the many automated systems available, such as Brandwatch.

Enhance Your Email List

Email is still the best way to reach customers, but if you don’t have a solid list of contacts, you might be sunk. Constant Contact is one program that offers list-building capabilities without you needing to lift a finger. If you want to explore additional tactics you can do on your own to build your email list, consider adding a sign-up form on your website, creating incentive campaigns, or embed a signup link to your social media channels.

Create a Partnership

Learning across the aisle and building relationships with other similar businesses can be a great way to expand your competitive reach. You’ll get to dip your toe into new markets, so long as you choose your partnerships wisely—be sure to find businesses that offer solutions that don’t directly compete with your products and services.

Open to New Markets

Moving your business to new markets, whether it be through opening a new location or branching out to a new demographic, is a great way to expand. New customers also serve as great referrals and can offer tremendous growth potential just through word-of-mouth marketing.

Once you have your expansion strategies outlined, you may want to think about having some extra cash on hand. A line of credit, like the ones offered from ARF Financial, could be your best line of defense against unexpected costs. Our line of credit can put up to $50,000 at your fingertips. You’ll be able to use the funds as needed and pay only for what you borrow. Plus our approval process happens in just 48 hours! Visit us today to learn more about how ARF Financial can help fund your business goals.