Do you want to grow your business but do not know what to do? You have come to the right place. Get comfortable because we are about to dish useful tips that will help you grow your business before the end of the year.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Create a user-friendly website for your business

Gone are the days when the only way for people to find out more about your business was physically visiting your office. These days, as soon as you tell someone about your business, the next thing they do is run a search for your business on the web.

If you do not have a website, they would either assume that you are a fraud or a rookie in your niche. I am very certain that you would not like your business to have either of those impressions on a potential client. Below are 4 reasons why owning a website for your business is very valuable;

• Your competitors all have company websites.
• It provides social proof.
• You get to showcase your products and services.
• You get a business brochure that is always available when people search for your business.

A user-friendly website is one that is simple, well organized and easy to understand. If your website is not user-friendly and well designed, it would amount to a waste of time and effort as people who visit your website will bounce.

With only N25,000 you can get a beautifully designed and user-friendly website that will be available on the internet in 72 hours. Learn more here.

Ensure your customer service is efficient.

You may not know it but if you run a business that requires you to resolve issues your customers might have with using your product or service, you need efficient customer service.

If you don’t have enough resources to hire your in-house customer service, we strongly recommend that you outsource, get interns or use a stay at home mum who can work from home before you can afford to bring your customer service in-house.

Below are the five major things efficient customer care service requires.

Knowledge – Your customer service team must have in-depth knowledge about your product or service and how they work.

This is because your customers expect to have all their questions answered and all their issues resolved when they contact your business via your customer care channels. Extensive knowledge of your product and service will create a sense of trust and confidence in your brand. Extensive knowledge of your product and services will also help your customer service team adequately resolve customer complaints. Inability to properly educate or resolve client inquiries/issues about your brand’s products and services will immediately put off any customer as well as instil a lack of trust in your brand.

Customer service personnel should be friendly yet professional – How do customers feel when they interact with your brand?

Do they end most conversations feeling better than when they first contacted your brand? Your brand should have a warm, friendly tone because, above all else, this is what your business will be recognized for. If more than 60% of your customers leave every interaction feeling frustrated, you will lose customers to your competitors faster than you get them. Statistics show that
80% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer experience. So, if I were you, I’d pay more attention to how your customers are being treated.

Your customer service team must be patient – Communication skills are an essential part of any customer service team.

If an angry client has to repeat his/her complaint more than twice, they will likely get more agitated than they were when they first contacted you. Regardless of a customers’ tone or choice of words, your team has to be patient enough to listen to their complaints, appease them and proffer a solution.

Resolve client issues/inquiries in a timely manner – Being able to resolve customer issues as quickly as possible will endear them to your business.

However, it is important that you do not leave a client in the dark when resolving their issue is taking longer than expected. Constantly follow up with the client until the issue is resolved. After resolving the clients’ issue, use the opportunity to get feedback about the service they received so you can know your customers’ pain points and how to improve the service you offer them.

Be consistent – After implementing all this and your customers are rating your customer service agents 5 stars while referring their friends and contacts to your business because they love the service they get from you, ensure you maintain the standard you have set. Never take your eye off the ball. Rather than relapse, improve upon your customer service and your customers will love you for it.

Grow your business with a strong social media presence

Social media is not just for fun and catching up with friends who are not close to you.

Businesses now leverage the large volume of social media users to their benefit. Businesses use social media to monitor what is being said about their brands online and use them to gather feedback. This feedback is used to improve their products and service. Businesses also use social media to ensure they control what is being said about their brand.

You stand the risk of having a bad reputation if you do not monitor and control what is being said about your brand on social media (especially if an irate customer who has had a bad experience with your brand leaves a terrible review about your brand on social media).

While there are various paid tools you can use to manage your social media presence like  Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Hubspot, there are also free social media management tools such as IFTTT, Buffer and TweetDeck.

You can also grow your business with a strong social media presence by following these tips.

Come up with a growth strategy

To grow your business and ensure that it keeps growing, you need to come up with a growth strategy. As the saying goes, “if you do not plan to succeed…” well you know the rest.

To establish a growth strategy, you need a value proposition. Determine what makes your business stand out from that of your competitors and use this to draw more customers to your business. Everyone might need the product or service you offer but you have to sieve through everybody to figure out who your real target audience is. Once you can determine who needs your products and services, tailor your business to satisfy their needs.

Don’t be shy to look at what your competitors are doing well. You do not have to copy exactly what they are doing. You can tweak it and make it better. Do not be afraid to take risks. Test different things to determine what will work for your business, implement those that work and discard those that do not.

Whatever you do, invest in marketing

If you do not talk about your business, who will?

How will you grow your business if nobody knows about it? You may be running a great business but if you do not tell people about it, nobody will patronize your business. There are various marketing channels you can invest in that will inform people about what you are selling. You can utilize video marketing, search marketing, display marketing, social media marketing, flyers, banner ads, radio jingles and so much more.

The more people know about your business, the more likely they are to visit your website and make purchases. Online marketing is the goldmine most marketers utilize to drive traffic to websites. Compared to regular marketing, online marketing is more measurable and is thus more preferable.

Do you have more tips that can help business owners grow their businesses? Share your knowledge in the comment section. Do not forget to help educate others by sharing this blog post. If you need more tips on how to grow your business, read this post.