7 Ways to Grow a Business

7. WAYS TO GROW BUSINESS Growing a company takes a lot of focus. After all, 25% of entrepreneurs log at least 60 hours a week. As a business owner, it's easy to feel overwhelmed amidst it all. When you get distracted, your company suffers. So to keep things on track, here are 7 growth strategies backed by data and actionable steps. MARKETING THE DATA Businesses with websites of 401-1000 pages get A 6X MORE LEADS than those with 51-100 pages. "Click Here" gets the HIGHEST % of clicks over CLICK HERE, "Go" and "Submit." HELLO JANE Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%. and conversion rates by 10%. Content marketing 37% generates 3X as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but of consumers are more costs 62% LESS likely to purchase on a mobile-optimized site. ACTIONABLE STEPS Determine how many Choose 5 great blogs to learn from. Study them and try to beat their standards. Invest marketing money in an epic blog, not a boring blog. leads / deals / customers each of your marketing systems provide to your business. Hubspot Write down common questions from your customers and answer them on your blog. Consider a marketing software like Hubspot. SALES THE DATA Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. The sales funnel is no longer linear. Prospects don't always enter in the top and work their way to the bottom. Now they enter the funnel at different stages, go up and down, and sometime never leave a funnel stage. ACTIONABLE STEPS CRM 10 MIN Connect your marketing software to your sales software for efficiency. Set up a CRM or Customer Relationship Management Respond to all qualified leads within 10 minutes Software. of form submission. Create a list of 10 questions Sign up for a sales training course this year – We you can ask leads to qualify recommend Marcus Sheridan and Jill Konrath. them. FINANCE THE DATA 40% 106,776 46% of entrepreneurs say that bookkeeping and taxes are the worst part small businesses were of small business audited last year. owners don't work with an accountant. of owing a business. ACTIONABLE STEPS Ignitet 2$ $ || Enter all of your data into your accounting software. Hire a bookkeeper like Ignite Spot or someone local to support your business. Learn to operate on 90% and invest 10% of your Create a weekly finance meeting to review performance with your income towards growth or savings. accountant. :4: INNOVATION THE DATA In the period 2006-08 about 22% of the manufacturing companies introduced product innovations. In comparison, about 8% of companies in the nonmanufacturing sector were product innovators. Of high patenting firms (15 or more patents in a four-year period), small businesses produced 16 TIMES MORE patents per employee than large patenting firms. ACTIONABLE STEPS Create a work Ask customers Write Your Idea environment that what's missing encourages change and innovation. from your product or service and then build it. Take your entire team off site once a Create an innovation budget - money year to brain storm innovations and how that's set aside for development of ideas only. to execute them. RECRUITING THE DATA Small firms accounted 94% of recruiters use, or NEW JOB! for 63% of the net new plan to use social media for jobs created between recruiting. This number has increased steadily for the last 6 years. 1993 and mid-2013. Employers who used social media to hire found a 49% improvement in candidate quality over candidates sourced only through traditional recruiting Companies that have formal candidate relationship processes (such as through software), and that track all their applicant communications are 40% MORE likely to be channels. "best in class". ACTIONABLE STEPS Create a recruiting Make sure social process that fits your culture and vets candidates to your media research is included for each candidate. needs Use recruiting software to track, Invest in a consistent recruiting process. review, and analyze each candidate. TRAINING THE DATA 110110 25% of employees would be more satisfied at work if they were given the opportunity to do what they do best. Research tells us that over Training and development spend has risen by 15% in the last year alone. 70% of learning on the job occurs informally. Last Year Today Companies that offer comprehensive training enjoy a 24% higher profit margin than those who spend LESS on training. 40% of employees who receive poor job training leave their positions within the first year. ACTIONABLE STEPS Traning Plan Outline the training needs of each level of employee in your organization. Invest in a new employee training plan. Invest in a long-term training plan for existing staff. CUSTOMER SERVICE THE DATA A typical business hears In the last year, 67% of from 4% of its customers have hung up the phone out of frustration when dissatisfied customers. they could not talk to a real person. In 2011, 86% of On average, loyal customers are worth up to 10X as much as their consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer first purchase value. experience. ACTIONABLE STEPS :: Create a reward system for when employees treat customers right. Get rid of your phone tree and let an employee answer the phone. Crown someone your chief happiness officer and have him or her teach service to your team. Let your employees see you giving great customer service on a daily basis. Send your company to a training seminar on customer service. 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