Small Business Growth: Three Key Elements

Small business growth: challenges and tips.

If your business has not yet got any digital footprint, now is the time to create one and start building your email list. For many customers starting their customer journey with a supplier of any product, service or experience, it begins online. You can also build up your social media connections, but the holy grail for any business is its email list – getting customers to give you their email address so that you can send them communications when you want to.  That’s ‘push marketing’.

If you have yet to build an email list or your list is not that big yet, then over the next few weeks, you can start to put the systems and processes in place to start building those connections and growing your email list.

The three elements that need to work together here are your:

• customer database (CRM) – the place you store customer email addresses and the system you use to send those on your list those valuable emails;
• website – the place you send potential customers to register their email address with you and give you permission to send them emails;
• social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and Google – where you can put posts and ads to attract potential customers.

For those of you who have already started, the problem you may be experiencing is attracting new people to opt-in to your list.

For those of you who have not yet started, it may be that you do not have the right technical set up or know-how.

The place to start: getting your marketing message right.

Before you waste your money on trying to attract new customers or retain your existing customers by attracting them to your digital world, you must get clear about your message.

One of the quickest ways of doing this is to focus on getting your business pitch right.  This exercise requires you to think deeply about who your customers are, what they actually want and need and how your product, service or experience solves their problem.

This is crucial for businesses that have had to close due to the COVID-19 restrictions imposed during the lockdown and the local lockdown measures.

If you can be clear about your message, certain that you are serving your customers with something they want and need, AND you are confident that you can deliver that solution effectively, you have got a fantastic start to growing your list.

To get your message right you need to be able to write and speak great copy. Copy that grabs the attention of potential customers, engages them in your offer and converts them into customers. To transform your message into a powerful proposition download this simple 3 step framework.

Once you have a clear message with some powerful compelling copy you can create the special web pages called landing pages to collect peoples email address in return for your free gift.

Business relationships: attracting people to your list.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, so if you want your loyal customers to give you their email address then you have to offer them something in return. If you want to attract new potential customers you need to give them some sort of experience of what it would be like to be your customer, so that they are confident that you can solve their problem.

What could you offer to your existing customers that you can connect with to encourage them to give you their email address? You may have their phone number or their physical address, so you could call them or even send them something in the post that would entice them to join your list in order to receive your gift or token or useful information.

The problem people encounter at this stage is that if they don’t understand what their customers really want. If you don’t understand your customer’s problems from their point of view, it is hard to influence them to enter their email address to download your gift, whatever that may be.

So what would your customers value so much that they would give you their email address? And what might potential new customers value so much that they would sign up for your free giveaway?

Hint: your gift or giveaway must help them solve a problem they have or perceive they have and it must be a quick win.

Firstly, you need to work out what your business pitch is so that you can succinctly tell your potential customer that you understand their problem, that you can solve it and that you are the right person to be talking to.  

I have a simple 3-step framework that can help you work out what it is you want to say and you can use this framework to develop the right copy that will attract your ideal customers.  Click here to download.

Business management: adding people to your list.

This language may not be familiar to you or you may think it is not important to capture your clients and prospective clients email address. Just consider the last lockdown. If you did not have their email address how could you contact them.  You could send them a regular surface mail letter or you could call them.  Both of those options can be costly and take up a lot of your time.

With an email list you could have sent all of your customers and prospective customers that had shown interest in your business a simple email to support them, let them know how you were dealing with the lockdown and also how you could help them through the lockdown.

Many of the new people on my list joined during the last pandemic and a small intimate group joined me in the Build a Business That Works Masterclass, which I will be running again in the New Year.

So how did that work?

I created a simple multiple-choice framework of 11 questions that were designed to help a small business owner identify simple steps they could take to improve their business performance. It is specifically a sole trader or a business owner who may already have a small number of employees, say, up to 10.

It solves the question that many business owners said they had which was “what do I need to do to start making my business work for me?” (The reason I knew business owners were asking themselves that question is because I asked the existing business owners on my list what they were struggling with.)

Then I used Facebook ads (pull marketing) and organic posts on LinkedIn and Facebook, to offer this free download to business owners who wanted to answer that question. 

When they clicked the link in the ad, the organic post, or the pop up on my website, they were taken to a special page where they could enter their name and email address and request the free download, How to Build a Business That Works Framework.  I have now updated this workbook so that it can be filled in online. The user submits it to me and I then send my feedback, insights and suggestions.

You can download the latest version here and submit it for feedback. By clicking any of the links in this post you are taken to a special page called a Landing Page. On this page, there is an explanation of what the free gift is and a button that you can select to request the download. You are then taken to a simple form to enter your name and email address. Once you have the email address you can deliver your free gift.

Delivering your free gift.

My framework was a free gift, a lead magnet as it is called in digital marketing. Your free gift could be anything, depending on your market and your product, service or experience.

Hint: Your free gift must be seen as valuable by your potential or existing customer. That may mean you have one lead magnet for existing customers, a special promotion or offer, and a different one for potential new customers.

In either case, you want to solve or fix a problem quickly for them.

Once you have decided on what your free gift is going to be, you are ready to deliver it to your new list member. Again, depending on your market, be conscious of how many will be required. In a perfect world, your free gift will not cost you anything. It is something that gives them guidance, information or helps them work out what to do next.  Steer away from expensive discounts or time-consuming services.

This is where your email system, sometimes called an autoresponder or CRM system comes into all its glory. When set up correctly, these systems today are pretty straightforward to use, the moment someone enters their email address on your special page, your email system will automatically send them the email that contains the link to your free gift. 

The beauty of this approach is someone could be sitting at home wondering where they could get hold of your specific product, service or experience. They will receive your “gift”, and you don’t have to do anything about it. It happens without you lifting a finger.

For many businesses that did not have such systems already, the pandemic was a real blow to their ability to continue trading with their customers. For others who could not allow customers to their premises or events, it meant that without this system they had to use the phone or regular post to contact their customers, which as I said is costly in both time and money.

If you are not familiar with how the process works, click on one of the links above and experience the process. Remember, whenever you give someone your email address you will always be able to unsubscribe if it turns out that their free gift does not help you towards solving your problem.

Defining a new customer Journey

You are 100% in control of the journey you take your customers on, from being a complete stranger to the moment when they become your raving fan and long term client. You get to choose the path they follow, the steps they must take and the way you deliver your product, service or experience.

The pandemic may have thrown some significant boulders in that pathway and it is up to you to adjust the path so that your customers can still consume your products and services, now and in the future.

If the pandemic has literally forced your customers to stop consuming your product, service or experience, such as networking meetings, restaurants, beauty salons and spas, hairdressers, non-essential retail outlets, hotels and even B&Bs and holiday lets, your necessary activity is to sustain and deepen your relationship with existing customers and future potential customers.

This is not easy or simple. It is almost impossible without a digital footprint and the systems to help build those relationships and protect the existing ones. CRM actually stands for Customer Relationship Management and that is what you must do during the pandemic. Maintain, sustain, deepen and renew your relationship with your customers.

Every relationship is defined by both its specific purpose and dynamic.  The specific dynamic of your relationship with each individual customer is defined by the customer journey that you design and deliver through your operations systems and processes.

No matter what business you are in, the process is the same.  You create a relationship with a potential customer, the relationship develops to the critical point where your prospective customer crosses the line and becomes your paying customer.

What steps to take

The systems, processes and dialogue you have throughout the process make up the customer journey and the pandemic has changed this for every business.

For some businesses, the change has been too much and for others, the change has created new possibilities.

Whatever your business, it is time to look for those new possibilities and identify the new systems, processes and behaviours that your business needs to adapt to sustain, deepen and nurture the relationship with your audience.

Step 1
Get clarity about your business pitch so that you are certain about the journey you are taking your customers on and confident that you can deliver your promise, even during a lockdown.

Step 2
Identify a suitable CRM system for your business, one that can deliver the functionality you need. You may have to pay a monthly fee for all of the functionality but start with a free trial to test it out. Flodesk is a new system and has some great features worth checking out. Active Campaign is a more powerful solution as is Kajabi and Aweber.

Step 3
Create some simple landing pages on your website to capture email addresses.

Step 4
Start sending people to those landing pages.  Start with one landing page and write a blog post like this one here, and then share it on your Facebook page, your LinkedIn profile and if you are comfortable doing so, your personal Facebook profile. And once you have got all of the systems working and you know that people are interested, start to try out some paid advertising, either with Google ads or Facebook ads. Both platforms offer lots of free training on how to use their advertising platform, and if you are still not sure then find a professional ads person to help you.  Always ask for a reference from someone who has worked with them.

How To Build a Business that Works
and stop the low paid, time-sucking job you accidentally created for yourself.

To take your good business idea and build a business that works for you, your team and your customers is a complex task, with literally 1000s of moving parts. It is important that you know where you stand in 6 key areas and understand the actions you need to take. To help you build a business that works for you, download this simple 5-step framework. By answering the multiple-choice questions, map out the simple steps you can take to make progress in running a successful business that works for you. With this framework, you’ll discover how to avoid the common pitfalls of working all the hours you can without getting the income you need or deserve.