A home-based business can be an excellent way of changing your career and taking a shot at entrepreneurship. If you’ve got what it takes to be your own boss, then you can start thinking bigger. The next step is expanding your possibilities by entering the realm of small business.
A home-based business is easier to manage as you don’t have to rent an office or hire additional employees, but at a certain point when you grow your customer base, it will be inevitable to take things to the next level. However, there are some tips and tricks that can help you make a smooth transition.
1. Start a Blog
If you don’t have a blog, it’s a high time you created one. Content marketing is very important for building brand awareness, and that’s exactly what your main goal should be. It’s been estimated that content marketing costs 62% less than the traditional marketing.
At first, you can run your own blog yourself, but as your business grows, it would be best to hire a professional content writer. As for the content you, need to have at least a basic strategy. It’s true that this blog’s main goal is to promote your business, but it’s a good idea to offer your current and potential customers some useful content.
How-to guides and articles with some practical advice will help you strengthen your customer relationships and show your target audience that you care.
2. Start an E-Commerce Website
Yes, this sounds like a tremendously complicated undertaking, but the truth is that you can actually do it without any hassle. If you prefer a brick-and-mortar business, you should bear in mind that online sales are expected to rise by 56% in the next five years according to Forrester.
This means that online sales in the U.S. are expected to reach $523 billion. Another perk of having a website is the help you can get from affiliate marketing. In plain English, this means that you can find promoters, affiliate marketers, who will promote your products or services, by sending potential buyers to your website, and earn their commission if those buyers actually buy something. If you are still not exactly sure how this works there are many experts who can help you learn to make money in this matter or inspire you with some new business ideas, like these ones here.
3. Sell More to Your Current Customers
Customer retention is the cornerstone of any successful business. A mind-blowing stat says that it’s 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain a current one. This means that you need to keep your customers happy and motivate them to buy even more from you.
Discounts are one way of doing this. Other options include upselling and cross-selling. These two tactics mean that you need to keep track of your customers and their purchases so that you can suggest them more expensive products or services as well as complementary products. Amazon pioneered in introducing upsell and cross-sell methods back in 2006, and according to their reports, 35% of its revenue came as a result of these two strategies.
“Would you like fries with that?” is exactly the type of question that you should be asking your customers.
4. Start Networking
Don’t confuse networking with marketing. Although these are similar, it’s worth noticing that marketing is an active attempt to sell a product, while networking is a more passive way of promoting your product and exchanging information with others without actually focusing on selling. Building relationships is the essence of networking and it’s a gradual and subtle method of expanding your customer base.
Social media can help you increase brand visibility, so create accounts on various social networks and start sharing quality content. Your content should reflect your core values and goals. However, there’s a golden rule that you should stick to if you want your content strategy to be successful.
The 10-4-1 rule of social media marketing says that out of your every 10 posts, 1 should be leading to your landing page, 4 should be leading to your other blog posts, while 10 should contain useful and helpful information.
This is a winning ratio, as that’s how you’ll avoid being overly pushy in advertising your products, while you’ll offer your audience something that they can get for free. Social media can provide you with an excellent tool for researching your competition. Analyze their followers, the ways they interact with their audience and find out what their most engaging posts are.
Growing your business is quite a challenge, but don’t shrink from it. Focus on what’s important and get down to business.
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