Best Tips On How to Start and Grow Your Small Business in 2022.

by Syl Tamanda

Anyone can turn their ideation into operation with the right education, experience and finances. The good thing about small businesses is that, they often have the potential of growing into large corporations like google, amazon, etc.

What is a small business?

A small business is defined as an independently owned and operated company that is limited in size and in revenue depending on the industry. A local bakery that employs 10 people is an example of a small business. Similarly, a manufacturing facility that employs less than 500 people is an example of a small business(Yourdictionary.com).

If you are Cameroonian, here’s How to Create A Private Limited Company In Cameroon(SARL).

source: bing.com

What does it mean when a business is growing?

A business is said to be growing when it is bolstering in one or more ways. There’s unfortunately no single formula to measure business growth because the determinant of growth is directly related to the goals and objectives of each business or company. Some growth milestones for most businesses would include an increase in;

  • Revenue
  • Sales
  • Company value
  • Profits
  • Number of employees
  • Number of customers

Whatever a business has on its balance scorecard as a growth measure, the ultimate objective of every business is to increase its market share and make as much profit as possible. This can mostly be achieved through an increase in sales and a reduction in cost.

Deciding on a growth strategy for your business.

According to this model, a business can grow in an existing market through market penetration to sell its own existing products, or by developing a new product. it can also grow by going into a new market by identifying a new target or niche or by diversifying into different products or services.

In order to achieve growth, the company must employ a strategy. Most times the different growth metrics are completely unrelated. For example, your strategy can be to target existing clients to buy more, which will see a growth in revenue without an increase in new customers. It is also possible for revenue to fall, whilst sales increases (common with sales and promotions).

Action points for growing your business whether new or old.

1.Study and pay close attention to your target market.

source: bing.com

In order to penetrate the market profitably, you must ask yourself these questions;

  • who is already in the sector or industry?
  • who are my potential customers?
  • what do they care about?

Answering these questions will allow you to group your target customers into categories in order to best serve them with your offering.

2. Lay emphasis on your speed to market.

The world has gone digital, therefore, staying in the analog age will not be very feasible for your business. You must pay attention to your digital presence strategy like a website, and a business Instagram and Facebook accounts.

source:smartinsights

As of 2021, the number of social media users worldwide are over 3.96 billion, with the average user having 8.6 accounts on different networking sites. The most popular platform with a daily usage rate of over 66.09% is Facebook. What this means is that there’s a massive target audience within reach, if you make proper use of the available data and platforms.

3. Sell a story to your customers.

There’s a popular saying in marketing “people don’t buy your product, they buy your story”.

The four primary story elements are a unique market position, emotional promise, authentic personality and compelling purpose (businessstory.com).

Story marketing is a strategic marketing approach that creates a brand experience through audio, visual and immersive storytelling, whereby the customer becomes the centre of the story to drive profitable engagement. In order to win the hearts of your customers, pay attention to how you communicate with their emotions through the story of your product or service.

4.Capture the attention of the target market.

The way you brand your offering should be as original as possible. Proper branding will occupy the customer’s share of mind with your product or service.

If you make your brand pleasant and diverse enough, people are most likely going to want to be associated with it. Nowadays, businesses ripe-up their brand names through social media influencers, public figures, or general media promotion.

5. Maintain your target market’s attention.

It is often said that a customer needs to hear or see the advertiser’s message at least 7 times before they’ll ever take action to purchase the offering.

business writing

You can either do this yourself as a small business owner through short videos, podcasting, and writing about your product as often as possible. Make it fun and enticing. Business owners who can afford to pay someone for such a service should not hesitate to do so, because the rewards are palpable.

6.Learn from the best in your sector or industry.

Nothing in the world is reinvented under the wheel. Most successful individuals and businesses benefitted or continue to enjoy the advantages of mentorship. Don’t be fooled into believing that you can do it alone. Most importantly, you should ask for help from the right source

Make a list of the biggest movers in the sector you’re operating in, copy what is working for them, and add a little twist to make it yours. Don’t be shy to ask questions, and to make contact with your competition. The truth is that there’s plenty to go round, and no single business can fulfil the need of all customers Africa And The Scarcity Mentality.

The Estimated Number of World Wide Business Start-ups.

Source:bing.com

According to Dr. Paul D. Reynolds, Director, Research Institute, Global Entrepreneurship Center, when asked about global startup statistics he said it was impossible to find such statistics online as they don’t exist for most countries, but it is known that “Worldwide, there are about 300 million persons trying to start about 150 million businesses. About one third will be launched, so you can assume 50 million new firm births per year. Or about 137,000 per day! As firm birth and death rates are about equal, the same number of active firms, say 120,000 probably terminate trading each day–worldwide. This is the only source of comparative data on start-up and closure activity internationally for countries that participate in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor” (Lerumba.com).

The question then is, now that you know all this, what are you doing about it?

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