As we approach the end of 2022, business owners should be considering ways to grow and extend their business in the new year. No matter your industry, the type of business or its size, growth is essential. The only way to stand out from the competition and overcome challenges is to keep expanding, but this is not straightforward to do.
Growth in business requires time, sacrifice, dedication and hard work. With technology evolving at breakneck speed, it is not unusual to find yourself feeling a little stuck sometimes. With that in mind, here are 14 tips to help grow your company in 2023.
1. Take an Honest Look at Your 2022 Performance
Being as objective as possible, what were the successes and failures of your company in 2022? Make a list of each and then calculate things like profit, debt, close-ratio and other key performance indicators. This will put you in a position to establish your goals for the coming year and be realistic about what is actually possible. At this point, you can establish a spending plan for 2023 based on your most recent financial records.
2. Create a Strategy for 2023
There is sure to be uncertainty in 2023 with the ongoing economic crisis and the situation in Ukraine. Nevertheless, you should use your discoveries from the previous step to create a plan to see your business through 2023. This could cover things like:
- Sales.
- Finances.
- Business Development.
- Marketing.
All these things are interconnected so you can develop strategies that touch upon all of them. The review from the previous tip is a good starting point.
3. Consider Accelerating Your Digital Transformation
Transformative technologies have been a huge feature in recent years for businesses. Things like cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT) and more have been opening new doors for business owners to improve their operations. These bring about opportunities for the automation of manual workloads, in-depth analytics of huge amounts of data, centralisation of disparate data streams and also hybrid/remote working.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help improve efficiency and boost productivity. This is absolutely fundamental to growth, as an expanding company will have exponentially more data and tasks to process.
Without the right technology in place, time-consuming tasks distract from core operations, decision-making involves a lot of guesswork, errors creep in and collaboration between departments is hampered. Look for opportunities to invest in technologies that will make a difference.
4. Automation, Automation, Automation
Building on the previous tip, you should be looking to implement automation wherever lengthy business processes are taking up a lot of your or your employees’ time. Automation can improve accuracy in data entry and reconciliation and it will also free your team up to focus on more important things like growing the organisation and developing new markets.
5. Revisit Sales Strategies
Take some time to investigate trends and things your audience is most interested in. This kind of research can make you more attuned to their primary demands so that you can deliver for them. Optimise goods and services in accordance with what you find in your research, ensuring that only information that is pertinent to them is provided. Again, CRM software can be helpful in making your sales strategies more targeted and effective.
6. Communicate Effectively
Once you have developed some goals and strategies for 2023, you need to communicate these to your teams. They need to be working towards a common goal to stay motivated and engaged – your plan will not be realised all by itself. Communicate your plan in full and allow for feedback from individuals in your company. By encouraging feedback, you may be able to improve your plans further. Have faith in the people you built your team with – communication can bring about improvements to production and make your vision a reality.
7. Review Your Website
Your website is the digital storefront of your business. It needs to be kept in line with the latest web design trends and use the latest technologies. It also needs to tick the boxes for being:
- Appealing.
- Interesting and engaging.
- Easy to navigate.
- Mobile-friendly.
- Optimised for search.
- Optimised for speed.
Make it easy for your visitors to navigate their way around and utilise simple call-to-action buttons to convert visitors into leads. Analyse navigation and loading times and consider an SEO audit to make sure your website is working for you.
8. Take Advantage of Social Media
Few tools available today are as easy for connecting with new customers and building your brand. Social media gives you access to enormous networks of potential new customers. With a little creativity and consistency, you can leverage the power of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and others. Develop content strategies, engage with your audience and consider using paid advertising where relevant.
9. Use Text Marketing Effectively
Mass text marketing is a very effective way to reach your audience, particularly if you have collected their mobile phone numbers. This enables you to solicit feedback, raise awareness of discounts and other campaigns, exchange links and pose brief queries.
10. Email Marketing
If you haven’t built a mailing list, now is the time to start. Email marketing is an extremely effective instrument for expanding your business. To start building your email subscriber list, incorporate email signup forms into your website and social media pages. You could even use techniques like landing pages and marketing funnels to bring people to your signup forms. Just be sure to provide pertinent content with your email marketing and newsletters to take advantage of this powerful way to reach out to potential customers.
11. Establish an Employee Engagement Programme
Your employees are the most important resource your company has, so you need to make an effort to motivate and engage them to maximise their productivity. Investing in an employee engagement programme can be a great way to grow your company, enhancing feelings of loyalty and satisfaction among employees so they want to deliver for you.
Hiring new talent can also be a big factor in success. You want to populate your team with effective individuals with the skills and personalities to bring about results.
12. Redouble Your Branding Efforts
One of the big challenges for smaller businesses is to maintain the appearance of success and development. This helps solidify trust among both customers and investors, and the foundation is strong branding. You need a detailed, strategic definition of your brand and extensive plans to maintain that image in every facet of communication with the world. Again, ERP and CRM software can help with this by unifying and integrating everything into one place and enabling employees from all around your company to access the same, real-time information.
13. Be Prepared for Taxes
It is crucial to stay on top of accounting records throughout the year. Any business that aims to grow must be efficient with its taxes and finance records from the outset. Any kind of tax avoidance, whether deliberate or accidental, will have disastrous consequences in the long term, particularly if you reach a high level of success. Use powerful software like accounting systems or more advanced ERP platforms that are built to meet the needs of your company.
14. Review Your Product/Service Costs and Supply Chain
It’s always important to review the amount your customers pay for your products/services regularly. This ensures you are operating in line with competitors, production costs and demand. But in these times of uncertainty, you need to review these costs even more frequently to ensure the price you are charging aligns with your revenue goals as inflation continues to rise.
No business wants to increase prices for their customers but ultimately, this will need to happen if your own costs are increasing.
It’s also prudent to revisit your supply chain. Over time, prices from your suppliers inevitably increase but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a better price out there with another supplier. In order to achieve the best possible profit margin from your products, you need to keep supplier costs as low as possible.
15. Start Positive and Stay Positive
Often easier said than done, it’s important to start the year with a positive and optimistic attitude, and to keep that enthusiasm going for the rest of the year. Running and growing a business is challenging, and it’s important not to let the pressure get you down, especially when things aren’t going to plan.
Working every hour under the sun can become counterproductive, with fatigue creeping in and poor decisions being made. Often, finding a better work-life balance can actually increase your output and lead to better decision making and greater success. Always remember, your business is important but you, your health and your friends and family are more important.
Why choose Eventura for your digital transformation?
Eventura have been helping businesses in their digital transformation journey for two decades. From the implementation of industry-leading ERP solutions such as Sage 200 and NetSuite, to helping them move their entire operations to the cloud and away from costly and restrictive on-premise solutions.
As well as being NetSuite Solution Providers, Sage 200 Partners and Microsoft Gold Partners, we also offer a wide range of managed IT services, meaning we can take your business as a whole and help it achieve digital transformation.
If you would like to speak to one of our experts, you can request a free call back here.
