All businesses, big and small, went through tough times over the past two years. The pandemic affected supplies, availability of labor, production, demand, and sales, forcing many aspiring small business owners to shut shop, though in many cases, only temporarily. As a provider of business transcription services, we went all out to support our clients’ documentation requirements. In 2022, challenges remain. Fortunately, small enterprises are resilient and can lead their business into the future by rethinking their growth strategies.
What is a growth strategy? Gartner defines it as “an organization’s plan for overcoming current and future challenges to realize its goals for expansion”. Examples of growth strategy goals include providing more value to customers by improving the company’s products and services, increasing market share, and increasing investment in specific assets or areas.
Every business goes through various stages of growth and need to know which stage they are currently in. To succeed in their short-term or long-term goals, they should work out their growth strategies and take steps to achieve them.
Top Strategies That Small Businesses Should Focus On
Let’s take a look at the top strategies that small businesses should focus on now and in the near future.
- Grow your online reach: Whether you’re a big or small business with a physical or ecommerce store, you would miss out on customers without a strong online presence. Up to 97% of customers find and research local businesses on the web. Statistica predicts that annual revenue from e-commerce sales will reach $6.5 trillion by 2023. Aren’t these reasons enough to expand your online presence? There are many ways to build brand awareness and improve your online reputation: build an attractive and user-friendly website, implement focused SEO strategies like link building, keyword research, posting quality, optimized business blogs, being active on social media platforms that your audience is using, and being active and responding to feedback.
- Update digital marketing: A strong digital marketing or SEO strategy is foundational to a successful sales campaign, especially as businesses strive to overcome pandemic-related challenges. Regardless of your field, there a lot of competition out there. That’s why most businesses are partnering with digital marketing agencies to update their SEO strategies and increase sales through social media channels. Digital marketing success depends on having the right technical, content and outreach strategies in place. For example, the Cadbury Worldwide Hide campaign was designed to help consumers connect with loved ones when social distancing prevented them from getting together during the pandemic. The company created a virtual experience that allowed users to buy a real Cadbury Easter Egg, hide it virtually in a unique location using Google Maps, and then provide a personalized clue to help the recipient find the egg. After the recipient found the egg, a real, physical chocolate egg was delivered to their home.Hosting virtual events and product demonstrations, increasing investment in search ad spending, optimizing for mobile devices, local SEO, and personalized marketing communications are highly effective ways to reach your target audience in this new era.
- Implement creative video marketing strategies: Reports indicate that up to 82% of all consumer traffic in 2022 will be generated from video. That’s why small businesses should prioritize video SEO. The best options to increase engagement with your audience is to create interesting short-form videos, such as company introduction videos, product explainer video, customer testimonial videos, instructional “how-to” and FAQ videos, and social media marketing videos. In fact, according to a 2020 Wyzol report, viewers want to see more of educational content such as think how-to’s, DIYs, and explainer videos. Hubspot reported that it’s likely that brands will focus on such educational content in their short-from videos in 2022. The article explained how Soy Yo Candle promoted their product by creating a short-form video that showed how to make candles last. Their strategy succeeded because it provided a solution to the biggest pain points of owning candles! However, your potential customers can find your video only if search engines index the content. Uploading the text version of your video or transcript along with the media file will allow search engines to crawl everything that’s said in it. Including video transcription with SEO-friendly keywords is important for the best results. Professional transcription services can help you take your video marketing campaign to the next level.
- Co-branding: Try co-branding, a marketing strategy that focuses on creating a mutually beneficial agreement between two businesses. First, brand your business – create a logo and brand design and establish yourself as a subject expert in your niche. Then look for a partnership opportunity – find a brand that your customers are familiar with and trust and can introduce you to them. Co-branding is a win-win arrangement for two parties that have similar but non-competitive audiences. One of the most well-known examples of cobranding is Betty Crocker’s collaboration with confectionery king Hershey. The duo’s launch a range of cookie and cupcake mixes succeeded because it offered value for both brands’ chocolate-loving audiences. Brand collaborations are expected to be bigger than ever in 2022, according to Rethink Retail. With the changes in consumer demand, building meaningful collaborations can improve shopping experiences, and have a significant impact on a retailer’s bottom line.
- Find micro influencers: Leverage micro-influencer marketing. Neil Patel describes micro influencers as hyper-specific influencers who have lower follower counts in a given niche, and have intensely engaged audiences, yet a below 25k follower count. Find small niche-based influencers who can help you grow your sales. This cost-effective strategy is an ideal way to target specific audiences. The right micro influencers can provide instant promotion of your product or service with amazing conversion rates.
- Foster a robust company culture: Having a strong company culture is the latest competitive advantage, according to a recent Forbes article. Adapting to the evolving expectations and values of the modern workforce is crucial to retain talent. Creating a robust, authentic and sustainable culture and creating an inclusive, transparent environment in which all types of people can thrive, has become more important than ever t stay ahead of the curve.
- Address supply chain and inventory problems: Snags in the supply chain were one of the key problems small businesses faced during the pandemic. Supply chain disruption can by resolved by building collaborative relationships with key suppliers. If you are developing a new product, keep your suppliers in the loop as this can help ensure access to critical materials and gear. Wolterskluwer recommends ordering supplies and inventory much earlier than before and diversifying your vendor portfolio so that you have more options to purchase supplies. Also, because of economic uncertainty and fluctuations in demand, consider keeping lower levels of inventory.
As small businesses strive to meet the new challenges coming their way, reducing operational costs is an important goal. Partnering with transcription outsourcing companies is a reliable option to ensure the availability of skilled workers for tasks such as business transcription. Experienced companies can ensure affordable transcription to document audio/video content related to meetings, conferences, podcasts, interviews and much more.
