Running a small business has its pros and cons, the same as running a large corporation.
Large corporations may have endless resources to implement and execute elaborate and detailed strategies as they have hundreds of great minds constantly devising new ways to grow their business.
Whereas in a small company, you have to keep overheads lean, hence, there is no massive budget for strategy sessions with great minds from Ivy league schools. In a small business, the entrepreneur is the great mind and the world is your Ivy league degree, you have to make do with what you have.
But how exactly can you do that? I highlighted some solid, foolproof strategies that big corporations employ to achieve massive results and successes, which can be applied to your small business on a lean budget.
Market Segmentation
Enterprises spend millions annually on research to find out what market segment their products are best suited to. Market segmentation is important in every business as knowing your customer is the key to finding your market, which consequently leads to sales.
You need to know who your customers are, where to find them and how to reach them.
For small businesses, market segmentation helps you focus on a particular demographic or geographical area, thereby allowing you focus efforts on being the market champion in that market segment.
To figure out your market, small business owners should ask questions like who is your ideal customer? Which customers are you avoiding? What markets are the most profitable?
Answering these questions would help entrepreneurs prioritize and apportion resources to market segments that have the highest returns.
Marketing Funnel
A marketing funnel is basically a fancy term for all the points in your customer acquisition strategy where you contact prospective clients.
As a prospective customer moves down the funnel, the better your chances of converting them into a paying client. Big businesses have a large team and budget to automate and implement this process, with small businesses on a lean budget, you can adapt this technique by being intuitive to your customer’s buying pattern.
Ask yourself, how does a customer find out about your service? How often do they come to your page? When do they buy?
What motivates this purchase? Asking yourself these questions gives you a clearer understanding of how to move your customer from being aware of your product to become paying clients.
Partnerships That Work
Large corporations usually cut deals with their counterparts that their customers can benefit from, small businesses should employ this tactic.
By bundling your services with another that complements you and your customers, you rake up good points with your clients.
For instance, if you sell hair extensions, you can offer your clients free hair care products, this would cause clients to be more inclined to your products, or event decorators could team up with an event space to offer a bundled service to customers.
It’s about leveraging what you’re good at, not trying to be everything to everyone and giving your customer a more wholesome and rewarding experience.
Chief Sales Officer
Enterprises can afford to pay several people bucket loads of money. Especially people who work just to think about how to execute more sales every day. These people have access to real-time data and analytics.
The data is what helps them make sensible insights, that make executing a large number of sales a reality.
On the other hand, for small businesses, it is usually hard to have more than one person in this role. It is of utmost importance to have someone who is constantly thinking of ways the company can generate revenue.
You must always know who your customers are, where they are and know what they want.
As you scale, have more people in sales and segment each section of the market the person should be handling.
By focusing on the customer and how to make them advocates, generating sales and loyalty. Most businesses have grown to become big businesses.
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