If you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you are probably looking for practical business scaling techniques to set your business on a proper growth track in 2023.
Since 2020, the number of small businesses has rapidly increased in the US. So how can you scale up and sustain their growth amid all the competition?
Image via US Census Bureau
It's possible only by foreseeing growth trends and adopting the right business scaling techniques to help you generate more revenue without excessive investment.
Even with less-than-favorable economic conditions forecasted for 2023, small business owners have a positive outlook. 66% of business owners expect an increase in their revenue in the coming year.
Image via Bank of America
The same report says that the small business expansion plans have significantly increased as 52% of owners plan to expand their businesses in the next 12 months.
You also need to scale up your marketing efforts, refine your products, and determine how to convert customers into buyers for sustainable revenue generation.
Are you ready to experience exponential growth for your startup this year?
7 Scaling Techniques for Small Business Owners
- Stay updated about market demand
- Establish a clear roadmap
- Refine your product line
- Adopt automation
- Hire and retain the right talent
- Prioritize customer experience
- Invest in fundamental marketing tools
While business growth refers to growing your revenue by adding resources, scaling your business requires thoughtful planning to boost your revenue with a limited increase in expenses. Here you need to apply all your business school learnings. Let’s look more deeply into each business scaling technique, shall we?
1. Stay updated about market demand
The market is quite dynamic for small business owners, and if you want to stay on top of your game, you need to be well aware of the trends and market demand.
Research and analysis are the most vital business scaling techniques you should rely on while making important decisions.
By analyzing data collected from database platforms like ZoomInfo, you can determine the steps to maximize overall profitability.
Staying updated with the latest market trends and demand can help you spot the weak points in your business strategy and adopt the right tactics to plug those gaps, reach out to more customers, and boost your revenue.
2. Establish a clear roadmap
More often than not, business owners may perceive a business roadmap as simple as goal setting.
The roadmap you create for your business needs to be more detailed and should address specific steps on how you want to scale up your business.
This business roadmap template shows how you need to plan moves for each department every quarter to scale your business sustainably.
Image via Roadmunk
A few elements to include in your roadmap are:
- Realistic goals for each department
- Major changes to implement and the team members responsible for them
- The resources required and the best way to source them
- The timelines and deadlines for each phase
As one of the fundamental business scaling techniques, a company roadmap must focus on optimizing your strengths and USPs to help you grow.
3. Refine your product line
Small businesses today are driven by innovation. But constant innovation may not be one of the best business scaling techniques for small businesses as it can be costly.
Instead, small business owners can adopt a proven growth plan like the Ansoff Matrix. You should focus on refining your existing product line and making it more impressive to penetrate the existing target market deeper.
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While scaling your business, you must focus on your prime offerings and make them your USP. Your conversion rates will soar when your solutions best meet your customers' challenges.
You should also strengthen your supply chain and customer service to be the best in your niche.
According to the above matrix, you can explore other markets with your successful products and expand your product line to diversify your offerings.
4. Adopt automation
One of the best business scaling techniques to empower your small business to compete with the more prominent players is the strategic adoption of automation.
Businesses, big and small, can benefit from workflow automation in multiple ways, especially in marketing. Below are the benefits companies are already enjoying with marketing automation.
Image via Pedalix
These benefits can help you scale your business as you’ll be able to accomplish a lot more for a minimal cost.
Right from project management to ecommerce marketing, social media marketing, customer service support, and several other manual tasks — you can automate it all to improve your team's productivity.
You can invest in different SaaS tools for automation to leverage the benefits of technology and scale your business like never before.
One example is LinkedIn automation software, which allows you to automate the whole process from sending contact requests to drip message campaigns.
5. Hire and retain the right talent
If you want to scale your business sustainably, you should be able to hire through RPO or in-house recruitment team and retain your best talent. After all, a good team is the only way to boost your business.
While building a diverse team, you should adopt an approach that’s two-fold. First, you should focus on training and diversifying the competencies of your existing employees.
Next, make sure to use an employee vacation calendar to efficiently manage time-off requests and ensure adequate coverage for ongoing projects.
A LinkedIn report says that only 26% of organizations challenge their employees to learn new skills.
Image via LinkedIn
Also, hire talent with expertise in areas where you want to scale your business. Always look for professionals with complementary competencies who resonate best with your business values.
Go the extra mile to retain your loyal employees, as they can significantly implement your business scaling techniques.
6. Prioritize customer experience
Customers are your biggest assets, and customer experience management can make or break your business.
Case in point—while 72% of customers shared their positive experience with six or more people, 89% of consumers switched to a competitor following poor CX.
Image via Zippia
In other words, to scale your business, you must deliver exceptional customer experience at every stage of the customer life cycle.
Personalized recommendations, offers, and quick and prompt customer support can go a long way in creating loyal customers and improving customer lifetime value.
For instance, POWR can drive your customer support with its live chat feature.
Leverage the power of word of mouth to make your business more credible and trustworthy.
Showcase positive customer reviews and feedback on social media and add Google reviews to your website to win over potential customers and generate more revenue for your business. This can help you scale your business with minimal investment.
7. Invest in fundamental marketing tools
Investing in marketing techniques such as SEO, content, social media, and PPC is necessary for businesses. They must build robust SEO, content, and social media strategies to boost brand awareness in digital marketplaces.
Also, they need to invest in digital marketing tools such as Google index checker to monitor and analyze the effectiveness of these digital strategies for their businesses.
Are You Ready to Adopt These Business Scaling Techniques?
Business scaling is a comprehensive sustainable growth approach requiring detailed planning and execution.
The business scaling techniques you adopt should help you offer better products and CX and build a strong and memorable brand.
Take note of the business scaling techniques discussed above and adopt them into your growth strategy according to your broader business goals.
With the right approach and execution, your business can scale sustainably amid an economic slowdown.
Author Bio
Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. He grew an agency from five to seven-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic.
He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more. You can email him here, or subscribe to his social accounts: Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Instagram.
