---

When you’re ready to ignite rapid growth for your enterprise, you need the right strategies to drive success. These 11 tips and tricks will help you grow your business, whether you own a startup ready for the next level or an existing company that needs a revitalized approach to sales and marketing.

Build a Sales Funnel

If you don’t already have a sales funnel, start by developing this powerful tool. The sales funnel provides a road map on how to grow your business. It includes marketing objectives, channels, and campaigns for each step in the process of transforming someone who is unaware of your business into a paying customer. These phases include awareness, interest, evaluation, commitment, and sale. Strong content will drive conversions in each phase of the funnel. 

Implement a Customer Relationship Management System

Customer relationship management (CRM) software allows you to distill powerful data from each interaction with potential clients, growing a small business into a thriving enterprise. CRM systems can target your messaging based on a customer’s position in the sales funnel, explore your clients’ pain points, and offer solutions that promote your products and services. Investment in this type of technology will strengthen valuable customer relationships (hence the name).

Research the Competition

If you’re wondering how to grow a business, you need to develop a comprehensive knowledge of your direct competitors. Understanding the landscape in your industry can reveal service gaps your business can potentially fill. It can also highlight differentiating characteristics you can play up to help your brand stand out from the crowd. During your research, document details about each competitor’s market share, strengths, weaknesses, target market, and barriers and opportunities for you to capture a percentage of their clientele.

Ceate a Customer Loyalty Program

Have you been searching “how to grow my business” without success? Keeping a customer costs much less than converting a new prospect. Retain your audience with a customer loyalty program that gives them a reason to return to your business. A study by Accenture revealed that 57% of customers who join a loyalty program spend more money on that brand than nonmembers. The most popular incentives as reported by members include rewards toward purchases, free gifts, and other bonuses. 

Build an Email List 

Email marketing can amplify the growth of your business. A 2021 report from Hubspot indicates that email campaigns offer a jaw-dropping 4,200% return of $42 for every dollar spent. Using a segmented campaign that targets users with content specific to their position in the marketing funnel can drive a revenue increase of up to 720%. In addition, 78% of marketers surveyed by Hubspot reported increased email engagement over the past year. 

Form Strategic Partnerships

Joining forces with another growing business can boost your brand’s ability to reach and convert customers. Smart ways to use this strategy include introducing a new product or service line, reaching a new geographic or demographic market, and increasing overall brand awareness. Conduct careful due diligence before entering a strategic partnership to make sure your missions, visions, and values align. Even if a partnership feels like a casual engagement, get the terms in writing to make sure it benefits both businesses. 

Entertain Licensing Deals

Are you curious about how to grow your small business with licensing? Licensing your brand can help your business expand if the demand for your product currently exceeds your capacity. With this strategy, you grant the rights to use your brand to a licensee who can make and market products or services under your business name and trademark. In exchange, you receive royalties and the chance to expose your company to a much larger audience, a new industry, or another geographic area.

Consider a Franchise Model

If you have a scalable business and are ready to expand growth even further, the franchise model is one of the smartest ways to grow your business. Most common in restaurants and retail, franchises are found across industries as a cost-effective growth strategy. With this model, a franchise owner purchases the right to own and operate a new location of your business in exchange for a share of profits. You provide your existing brand recognition as well as operational support. 

Offer New Products and Services

Expanding your offerings can grow your business by attracting new customers to your brand, dramatically increasing exposure. Solve new problems for your existing clients or find a new niche where you can engage in research and development without an excessive investment of resources. Harvard Business Review recommends devoting 20% of your operational budget to developing offerings and models with new capabilities for your current market. You should devote an additional 5% to new products for new markets. 

Build Passive Streams of Income

Instead of diverting resources to new products and features, this strategy focuses on creating passive streams of income. In other words, you’re earning money without devoting additional time after the initial setup. Some of the most common passive income sources for business owners include online courses, webinars, e-books, affiliate marketing links, resources customers can print on demand, podcasts, YouTube channels, blogs, tutorials, and membership programs. 

Acquire Another Business

Purchasing a smaller company can give you access to a new sector, whether you want to expand to a new client base or fill a void in your product or service lines. You can also pursue a merger with a company that has valuable intellectual property, talent, or physical assets. Merging with a competitor also provides the opportunity for economies of scale.

Trying just a few of these strategies for growth can have an unprecedented effect on your company’s ability to expand and scale.