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There is always hope for expansion for small businesses in Australia, but laying structures and foundations for future growth may not be on your to-do list at this point.  

Planning for growth can sometimes seem like a distant bridge you’ll cross when you get there. Given what has happened since Q1 2020, many small businesses have had one thing and one thing only in mind – Survival!

Often it’s only once you have survived do you start to think about the process and infrastructure requirements needed to grow. However, there are always systems and processes a small business can begin to establish for future growth.  

In this article, we will focus on expansion strategies you can use to help you get to that point quickly and not wait until you arrive at your growth point. Subsequently, once they are in place, you just optimise them and push them into overdrive for quicker growth than being reactive.  

Table of Contents

• Begin SEO Now for Long-Term Benefits
• Chose a Growth Strategy for your Business
• Create a Sales Funnel
• Find New Sales and Channels
• How to Use Influencer Marketing
• Making your Blog Effective
• Referrals – ALWAYS Ask for Them
• Summary

Begin SEO Now for Long-Term Benefits

Almost all businesses globally now have a website due to digital marketing becoming the most powerful marketing tool on earth. You need it to work to gain brand recognition and new customers to increase your bottom line.

We begin with this because if you get this right in 2022 and beyond, you will have laid a solid foundation that will get you rapidly closer to growing your business.

Sound easy, right? Well, it can be…sometimes.  

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the driving force behind making your website visible when online users search for services and products within your industry. Please look at our guide on its importance and where to start.

Any small business is now up against the intense online competition, but even so, it is not something you should shy away from. If finances are tight, that’s understood, but foundations can be laid to start an ongoing process for many years to come.  

Here in Canberra, there are many SEO agencies to choose from. Still, you need to ensure they are the right fit and have previous experience in nurturing small businesses and working with them for years to help grow many aspects of their digital and social marketing. 

Website optimisation has been a new theme throughout 2022 due to Google’s updated algorithms in 2021. If your website is not bringing you enquiries or sales, then this is the perfect starting point to help your website grow with you. As for generating leads with SEO, even a small amount this year can be the catalyst if you also follow the other areas we cover.

Chose a Growth Strategy for your Business

Many factors dictate a solid growth strategy:

• Available Resources
• Your Evolution Stage
• Your Current Market
• Goals
• Customer Requirement
• Time to Dedicate 
• Budget

Here are some ideas that should resonate with most business owners:

• Base your new business plan on growth ideas, explicitly adhering to your niche and your business.
• Set targets, and analyse income and expenses from them.
• Set a system to analyse and track the progress of said targets.
• Keep track of these goals regularly to keep track of your development.

TIP: Keeping track of this systematically is easy if you implement website monitoring tools. 

Source: Semrush.com

Semrush offers a free trial, and as you can see, these tools can help you clearly identify strengths and weaknesses on your website. Therefore they give you a blueprint to improve your overall performance and are easy to use. Plus, you can also get accurate reports to help you plan ahead. 

Create a Sales Funnel

Source: Pixabay.com

Building a sales funnel is crucial in helping you and the potential customer have a direction when they enter your website or, indeed, your premises.  

A sales funnel should track the buyer’s journey. When they first enter, they start at the top of the funnel. 

When someone has bought from your physical store or for eCommerce has purchased online, they have moved seamlessly through your funnel, and that is precisely what it is designed to do. 

Part of the funnel can be promotions and discounts or gaining their contact details for direct marketing with new products or updates on your industry or even your business. 

TIP: A sales funnel approach isn’t just immediate sales. It’s creating a process that can eventually take time to get what you want. Initially, getting some interest can lead you to have many emails. So an email marketing campaign can be a great idea to keep you on their minds each month until the time is right and they buy. 

Find New Sales and Channels

Small businesses need only look at social media platforms over the past decade or so as a prime indicator of how many different sales and delivery channels are out there to help you grow. 

These online tools give companies a wider audience and reach by utilising online advertising in conjunction with the SEO techniques mentioned above. The higher you rank, the more visibility in searches you gain. 

There are many different market tools, an example of which is Instagram. Instagram is one of the fastest-growing platforms in the world. As Stastista will show you, there are likely to be nearly 1.3 billion users by the end of 2022.

Source: Statista.com

Here is a good starting point for online advertising.  

TIP: Timing is everything on social media, so knowing when to schedule Instagram posts is essential to reaching the right audience at the right time. Hubspot offers a free Instagram kit in this link, with scheduling being part of it, so be sure to check that out. 

How to Use Influencer Marketing

Influencers can significantly affect your sales funnel, especially with Gen Z’s and Millennials.  

Source: Unsplash.com

Numerous influencer marketing platforms that vary in demographics are available for you to choose from. Here you can see what you feel would fit you best and what suits your business plan and budget.  

Some influencers require payment others can be paid in products. And what better to have an influencer wearing or showing your products? This is a fast-track way to get people to your website or store and share information with friends. The boost in brand awareness can be fast, so make sure you are structured and ready for it, if it does.

Making your Blog Effective

Source: Firstsiteguide.com

As you can see, blogs are the most popular form of content on the internet and can be a vital cog in your marketing wheel.  

Blogs are a proven tool that drives traffic to your site and becomes easier to convert into business as the consumer already feels connected with the business as your creative content has engaged them. 

Source: Firstsiteguide.com

And almost like Instagram, as we mention, timing is everything, and with blogs, frequency is everything. You can write an incredibly engaging and informative blog, but if you do that once a month, your initial readers will have found some other blogs in the same niche or industry writing similar to you, but frequently and now you’ve lost them.  

Once you start, don’t stop!

Referrals – ALWAYS Ask for Them

Often overlooked is asking a satisfied customer for a referral. Don’t be shy; they just have had a service or bought a product they were satisfied with.  

Behavioural Targeting

A behavioural targeting approach involves engagement tactics that vary from business to business. 

For instance, your goal could be for visitors to purchase a product. Another would be to download their app. Someone else wants people to read articles that link them to their sales funnel and sign up for a particular service. It really is a yellow-brick road. 

When you start to produce marketing content based upon statistical evidence of behavioural patterns, this is far more focused and has a substantially higher impact and success rate than blanket or generic marketing or suggestions. 

Once you start personalising content and releasing (as we have mentioned) content at the right time during the day (depending on your target market), your hit rate will be higher; therefore, the call-to-action is more likely.

Have you ever wondered:

“Isn’t that a coincidence? I was only thinking about this the other day”. 

The likelihood is you clicked on something recently – that’s behavioural targeting. People want to buy from brands they feel understand them, and to a point, you can do this without having to have created a blog and engaged with them for months to turn them into a lead; this can expedite the process. 

SUMMARY

Growing a small business into a medium size business is no easy task in 2022 and beyond. The topics we have covered above won’t work overnight. But as we stated from the start, if you take a little time to start researching these and setting them up, designate a little time each week for a select few to start. We can’t guarantee success, but they will begin to turn things in your favour as these are the trends users seek to align themselves with brands at this point in time. Approach SEO agencies in Australia to show you the structure.  Look for a company that is willing to start with a lower budget to work with you and help you grow. Good luck for 2023.