How to Accelerate Business Growth Without Breaking Your Budget

Finding a balance between accelerating business growth and staying within your budget

Finding ways to grow your business when there doesn’t seem to be room in the budget can be a tricky line to walk. You want to plan for growth and put marketing strategies into place to achieve that growth. At the same time, doing so without breaking your budget is a smart strategy to avoid spreading resources too thin.

Planning for effective, sustainable business growth is a combination of having the right personnel in place, a good handle on your materials, and a sound marketing plan. This article will provide you with 5 ways to grow your business without increasing your budget. 

1. Bring in the best people possible

When you hire people quickly without making sure they are best for the job, you could be wasting money. Poor hires, especially on the sales team, will lower your company’s output and efficiency. They will eventually have to be replaced, and the expense of hiring and training replacements piles up quickly. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, bringing in the best-qualified, most motivated employees helps your business grow while staying under budget. With the right personnel, you will have less time spent onboarding. They will also “hit the ground running” and make a positive impact on the bottom line faster. 

Don’t underestimate the effects of the right hires on team morale, either. The right people bring fresh ideas to the table and require less help from the seasoned staff in your company, all of which improve the work atmosphere and increases the growth potential of your business.

2. Start a customer loyalty program

Nearly everyone in business has heard the truism that it is easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers. Satisfied customers already see your business as a proven commodity, one they feel comfortable with. You can use this goodwill to accelerate growth by starting a customer loyalty program. 

When starting a loyalty program, offer rewards for a variety of actions. This gives customers different motivations to spend more money with you. Also, remember to give rewards for actions other than just spending money. Give rewards for birthdays or other important occasions. Doing things like that will surprise and delight your customers because they are not expecting it.

If your business is a B2B company, don’t assume a customer loyalty program is off the table for you.

While B2B loyalty programs are rarer, they can be a great way to accelerate your business’s growth. Compare the probability of selling to a new customer (between 5% to 20%) to making a sale to an established customer (60% to 70% probability). The moral of the story? Start a customer loyalty program immediately.  

3. Maximize what works in your marketing

Analyze your marketing efforts to find what is working and what is not. Reduce what is not working and increase the channels that are producing results. Remember the 80/20 rule.

The Pareto Principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule today, is named after the Italian economist Alfredo Pareto, who discovered that 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people.

We find examples of the 80/20 rule in all aspects of modern business. Often, 80% of your business’s revenue is provided by 20% of your customer base. Likewise, 20% of your marketing efforts produce 80% of your revenue. Crunch the numbers to find where 80% of your sales are coming from, and you’ll likely find 20% of your marketing expenses are responsible.

Once you’ve determined where your 80% is coming from, you can devote more of your marketing budget in those directions. You’ll be able to grow your business simply by increasing what is working and reducing what isn’t.

4. Be ready to adapt to changing trends

With the digital landscape changing all the time, savvy companies constantly look for opportunities for growth. Keep your eye on your niche. What are your customers saying on social media? What new technological advances are making what you offer faster, cheaper, or more appealing to your customer base? 

Balance looking for those opportunities with the realities of production. If a hot new trend in your niche only has an estimated lifespan of a few months, and it will take longer than that for your production cycle to respond, you may not want to jump on that bandwagon.  

Where you do see opportunities, jump on them. You never know when a well-timed Twitter beef could lead to more sales.

5. Improve the customer experience

CX, or customer experience, is incredibly important in digital business. It starts with the user experience or UX, wherever they engage with you. If a customer finds your website hard to navigate, they may simply hit the back button and go elsewhere for their search. But CX is far more than just the user experience on a website.

Dealing with customer support, order fulfillment, and overall satisfaction with the product itself are just a few details to consider in providing a good customer experience. Look at the ordering process. Read feedback about your products on social media. Follow up directly with past customers to hear what they have to say.

Improving the customer experience can result in more referrals, more repeat business, and an increase in positive product ratings. All of this can easily be achieved simply by tweaking what already exists in your business, and you can stay on budget while executing them.

Increase your revenue with a dedicated sales team

An ineffective sales team can prevent growth by failing to follow up, lacking people skills, or simply taking the wrong approach. When you have an effective sales team that knows your product or service intimately, you can accelerate growth today with fewer headaches. Let MetaGrowth Ventures help you put together a world-class sales force. Connect with us today to find out how we can help you.