What Does Your #SmallBusiness Need to Grow?

What do small businesses need to spur rapid growth in the economic landscape?

According to the latest data from the LegalZoom/ Kauffman Foundation index on startup confidence released late last week, 84% of small business owners were confident in profitability over the next twelve months, with 96% of younger entrepreneurs bullish on growth.

Of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges out there today. So how can small business owners push growth regardless of what is going on at a macroeconomic level? What tools, strategies, and help should you be reaching out for?

Before charging ahead horns first, or unleashing a massive PPC advertising campaign, consider structure. You absolutely must have scalability built in or increased popularity could actually be your downfall. Make sure operations can scale up to meet demand rapidly without sacrificing customer service or quality and it can be done profitably without slashing profit margins.

Many experts continue to predict social is where it is at, and in one form or another, this is absolutely true, just don’t let it become a distraction. Recent reviews of startup RebelMouse, which offers a social-centric homepage for brands and entrepreneurs, have credited with pulling it all together and replacing old style websites with a virtually 100% social platform. This of course is an extension of what GoDaddy has been doing for years, just with a new twist.

Paid advertising from direct mail to TV commercials and PPC advertising all have their value and place, and can be an essential part of a smart marketing mix for keeping revenues consistent. However, those on limited budgets or just want to put more into product and business development rather than advertising will find incredible power in leveraging others.

In fact, even those who aren’t on a tight budget have recently shifted back to this type of marketing. Find out how they pulled this off in our blog post: “How Small Business Owners Can Leverage Competition”.

Entrepreneur Magazine also recently promoted the benefits of setting up a board of advisors to fuel growth. No matter what stage your business is at or how small it is, a board of advisors cannot only provide priceless insight and advice but help spawn growth through their own contacts too. If coordinating something like this just seems like too much to take on right now, then at least consider the advantages of tapping into the power of coaching for propelling growth.

Location also seems to play a big factor in the rate of business growth. According to a MarketWatch survey some of the top cities in the U.S. for business growth right now include:

1.    Austin, TX

2.    Salt Lake City, UT

3.    Raleigh, NC

4.    San Jose, CA

5.    Seattle, WA

In terms of tools for pushing business growth, toll free numbers are clearly hard to beat. Toll free numbers offer instant scalability, can dramatically increase advertising effectiveness and marketing ROI on PPC, direct mail, TV commercials and more, while toll free vanity numbers serve up mass visibility.

Whatever you do, do it with passion. This is the secret ingredient that will inspire investors to write checks, create new customers, and spur word of mouth referrals. Just ask DropBox. The hugely successful cloud storage service DropBox went from 100k to millions of users in eighteen months and they were poorly equipped to market in an environment packed with competition, armed with a product no one saw a need for.

Unleash your passion, grab winning toll free numbers, and get ready to scale big time!

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