How to Grow Your Small Business

How to Grow Your Small Business

As a small business owner, you’re constantly challenged by your responsibilities: staffing, budget, technology, sales, and training, to name just a few. However, addressing these challenges can turn them into great opportunities that will enable you to grow your business.

Challenge: You aren’t drawing enough people to your website, your physical location, or to your product.

Opportunity: Re-target your audience. If you have the tools that help you determine your target audience’s characteristics (geographical area, age, disposable income), use them to re-focus your business. For example, if you opened a sports-themed restaurant that you expected would draw families because of the location, but you instead are seeing just as many over-21 patrons who love watching late games at the bar, you should consider offering specials and different menu items to get more single adults into the bar area. Form a partnership with a local brewery to offer specialty beers, and rearrange the inside so that you can book local bands who can play on weekends – or, create an outdoor patio for summer patrons.

Challenge: Your advertising and marketing budget was low to begin with, and it’s being diverted into other areas while you grow your business.

Opportunity: Use social media. Social media is an incredible resource for small business owners. Depending on the audience, there are several social media platforms that can be used to connect with potential customers. To start, you create your Facebook business page for free, and then gather fans. You can use social media to share information about your product, of course, but its real genius lies in the ability to educate or entertain your customers and potential customers.

Placing your content on social media means that your site, brand, content, services, and products can be shared. You can also reach influencers, who are leaders in branding that can affect potential buyers’ purchasing decisions.

Challenge: People have heard about your local business, but they aren’t really sure what it is you do or what you sell.

Opportunity: Brand (or re-brand) your business. Your brand is everything about your business. It’s not just your marketing materials or social media posts. It’s how you interact with customers, how you train employees, what you sell, how you sell it, where you company is based . . . it’s all of those things and much more. A branding campaign that’s targeted to customers brings all of that into focus, so the next time someone sees your business in any form, they’ll say, “I know that place!”

Challenge: Meeting businesses who would benefit from your business. 

Opportunity: Attending networking events in Pittsburgh. Small business owners don’t usually have the budget or opportunity to get their business’ name out and to get their products and services known over a large area. It’s important to attend as many networking functions as you can, because that provides the most face time and interaction with other business owners.

The Pittsburgh Business Show, being held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on April 25 and 26, 2018, will allow small business owners to meet thousands of professionals and connect to their businesses. Additionally, there will be speakers with expertise in more than 20 different industries who can help business owners learn how to increase revenue and run a profitable business.

If you are searching for networking events in Pittsburgh to help grow your business, go to www.pittsburghbusinessshow.com and register today to receive a special promotional rate. This annual event is Pittsburgh’s largest B2B trade show and networking event.