Starting your own business is a great achievement; getting out of a 9 to 5, rinse and repeat job is not an easy thing to do. No small business owner wants his business to stay as it is, a lot of businesses, even funnel money for long durations just to make sure the business expands instead of making a little profit while being small. The problem with upscaling a business is that it comes with its risks. The research found that almost 90% of startups that perish or fail is because of something even more dangerous than competition- upscaling. Businesses that manage to grow big have had a lot of difficult situations and have taken risky gambles that made them who they are today.

In the beginning, you have to factor in a lot of different fields that you have to engage in barehanded, like sales, marketing, tax evaluation, corporate law, HR, and many other factors. All of this is going to be overwhelming at first, which is why the potential for a startup to fail is high in the scaling process; a new small business biting more than they can chew is very common. Like anything worthwhile, it takes time to scale your business, rushing into the process of upscaling is a very bad financial move. Most strategies will require you to start implementing something, then analyze it during the implementation, and make changes to it according to your analysis.

As long as you’re genuinely all about customer satisfaction and building something- not just for yourself, but for others as well- you should expect that all your upscaling will be built on a solid foundation. To make this process easier, we’ll be presenting you with the best methods that you can use to make sure your business grows optimally within a year.

 

Customer Engagement

20 years ago, if you told a business owner to engage in digital marketing, they’d probably laugh you out. Nowadays, the strongest form of marketing is digital, especially social media. Social media can be your biggest enemy or your strongest ally; you can throw tons of money on sponsored ads, which will take a strong toll on your marketing budget. You can also choose to have your audience as your messenger, by optimizing content, your audience is going to spread the word for you. This plan is dependent on the quality of your content. For example, a genuinely funny ad doesn’t require you to pour thousands of dollars for it to be seen, people will share it with their friends and family for laughs.

 

Sales Funnel

If you chart the initial stage of trying to attract customers through marketing, going through the sales process, and ending right at the loyal customer stage, it will look like a funnel. You’ll notice that your bulkiest reach of potential customers is through marketing since what you’re looking for is awareness at this stage. The number of potential customers decreases as they are down to only interested customers and reduce even more as you go further towards closing a client or a customer. Sales funnel management is very important for upscaling, it gives you an estimate of the number of customers you’ll be getting and even those that you won’t be getting, depending on your own ability and marketing.

 

Search Engine Optimization

 

Search engine optimization is a staple in every solid marketing plan. This is a very important step to gain more awareness and be able to showcase what you have to offer. It may seem compelling to engage in SEO by yourself instead of hiring a professional, but it’s time-consuming and may need some experience to pull it off. In Malaysia, for example, many businesses prefer to hire professionals to take on the process for them. Adam SEO in Malaysia believes that as businesses get more involved in digital marketing, SEO is going to be something that has to be implemented in any business. Dominating search engine means dominating markets, this is very important in local markets, as your brand will be carving its way up from there.

 

Know Your Competition

You’re not the only one trying to market a product to the masses, there are probably other businesses that may provide a similar product. It would be wise to research your competition to know their weaknesses and strengths before coming up with a plan to engage your market. You can hire professionals to gather intelligence about their traditional digital marketing plan and reach- this information will help you build a strong marketing model that doesn’t leave you with a lot of blind spots. You can also learn from the competition by knowing which ads are running strong and bringing in the most views or sales, then use this information to build similar ads.

 

Partner with Other Businesses

Partnering with a company can really give you a strong boost, a strategic partnership can ensure you reach a much wider audience than you would alone. It may not be easy to find a mutually beneficial company to partner with, but if you look hard and devise a strategic plan, you should be able to land one. No businesses can turn down an opportunity for further growth.

 

Using Automation

What many entrepreneurs may not notice at first, is that expansion or upscaling is more difficult and expensive when there are more manual processes than needed, not to mention the human element as well. You’ll need to optimize your processes and metrics to know when automation would be beneficial for you in the long run instead of spending a lot of money in hiring more people or getting more sophisticated tools.

There is no magic button that can make or break your business, you need to understand that upscaling a business is like growing a very sensitive tree. It’s understandable that you’d want to relax after setting the main pillars of your business up, but the real challenge is the product development stage and making sure your business is profitable. It’s certainly not easy, but it’s not hard, once you set your mind to it and have some faith in your dreams, you’d be able to pull it off.