Many small business owners dream of scaling their business to new heights in order to compete against the major companies and get a piece of the action. While it’s a lofty goal, it’s not unreachable. You just need to have a solid plan and be willing to work hard.
With so much competition at the top it take a big push to get up there, especially with so many corporations claiming stake, such as Amazon owning the product search results. Can you compete with them? Maybe. Will it be hard? You bet it will be.
Here are six things that will help you take your local business to new levels and compete with the biggest companies in your niche.
1. National SEO
SEO (or search engine optimization) is the process of making internal and external optimizations in order to help your website show up in the search results. While you might be doing well on local search terms, national website traffic is a different animal.
It’s not something you can probably do yourself, either. There are a lot of SEO agencies, including those specializing in IT support London, that offer service. I would make sure you find an SEO partner, particularly one experienced in IT support London, that understands the product or service you are selling and who your customer is.
2. Google Ads Targeting National Audience
Google Ads are a great way to reach anyone and if you have the marketing budget you can really scale fast using this advertising strategy. It requires constant monitoring and optimization to make sure your ads are converting in a way that meets your ROI needs, so hiring a marketing agency is usually a must.
There are a lot of Google Ads certified partners, so I would search for one that is local to you and you can go talk to them. Make sure they know your goals and what the numbers are. You need to make sure you are acquiring customers at a price that keeps you profitable.
3. Targeted Facebook Ads
I don’t know about you, but when I login to Facebook I see ads for whatever I was lookin at last online. It is creepy, but I guess that means it’s very effective. It’s the world’s largest social network and with the entire population active on it it’s a dream come true for advertisers.
You can get a little brief overview on Facebook ads by reading this guide. I think it’s a good read for those brand new to it.
4. Build Out a Call Center
Online marketing and advertising can really get your phones ringing off the hook with orders, so you might want to consider building out your own call center to help you really scale fast.
Some products and services require phone support, so if you are in that boat and you receive a lot of pre-sales questions or need to offer phone support you need to be prepared to handle growth.
5. Hire Territory Sales Reps
Expanding nationally means entering new markets that you might not be familiar with. Hiring experienced sales managers that know the market and have established connections can help you make a fast impact.
Sometimes these connections and existing relationships can contribute to rapid scaling. It’s worth exploring and there are a lot of sales reps that will work off an attractive commission structure, which reduces your upfront cost to expand.
6. Increase Your Social Media Presence
As you grow you are going to have more people searching for your business online. You want to make sure you give people a way to stay connected to your business.
Some people might be very active on Facebook while others prefer Instagram. Then there will be some who use Twitter as their main social media network. Create accounts on all of the options and be active.