Thirteen Ways You Can Grow Your Business (Without Really Trying)

It's not something that you can put effort into intermittently, especially when you work within a hyper-competitive industry. However, some methodologies for growing and scaling your business require less effort than others - making it easier for you to achieve your goals.

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With that in mind, here are thirteen ways you can grow your business without really trying. 

• Use automation technology. Automation technology is one of the easiest ways to grow your business without having to invest too much of your time and energy. After all, it allows you to automate tasks that would otherwise take up hours of your time, such as responding to emails. (Note: a recent study found that “people spend around 23% of their work time on emails.”) 

• Complete a DevOps Maturity Assessment.  Completing a DevOps Maturity Assessment can help you to enhance your practices in deploying and hosting mission-critical applications - which in turn, can help you to grow and scale your business. Completing this assessment using the appropriate tools reduces the need for you to pool through data manually, which would otherwise take up a lot of your time. 

• Reach out to potential investors. A lack of funds can often stand in the way of business expansion. As such, it's important that you reach out to potential investors when you need some extra support.

• Incorporate SEO best practices into content creation. Growing your business means growing your customer base, which means that you need to find new ways to stand out online. Fortunately, you can quickly boost your online presence by learning the basic principles of SEO so that you’re able to climb the rankings on Google and other search engines.

• Hire new employees. Your business would not be where it is today without your employees. In a similar notion, your business cannot grow unless your team grows alongside it. After all, how else would you keep up with increased customer demands? 

• Be open to new ideas. As a business owner, you’ll likely take the lead on any projects that lead to business expansion and growth. However, this does not mean that you need to come up with the basis for these projects alone. In fact, you should be relying on your team to generate new ideas for products and services, too. Not only does this take some of the pressure off your shoulders, but it also enables you to take on fresh perspectives. This, in turn, can prove to be invaluable when growing your business.

• Improve your time management skills. It goes without saying that effective time management is one of the easiest ways to grow your business, as it means that all tasks are completed within the ideal timeframe. It can also help to reduce mistakes caused by rushing on the day of the deadline, as tasks are always completed ahead of time. As such, you should invest in time management tools and software that help keep your team on track.

• Get to know your customers. Taking time to get to know your customers will help you refine the services/products you have on offer, ensuring there’s a clear demand for everything you bring to market. This way, you aren’t wasting money on ventures that would ultimately prove to be unsuccessful. You can get to know your customers through feedback sessions, focus groups, or even by hosting events at your business premises. 

• Take care of your team.  Taking care of your team can also help you to grow your business, as it prevents burnout and drastically reduces the chances of employees quitting their jobs. For example, “86% of employees would be more likely to leave a job if it did not support their wellbeing.” 

• Outsource in areas where your expertise falls short. While you may be an expert within your field, there will likely be some tasks that lie beyond your skillset or the skill set of your employees. As opposed to trying your best with these tasks (resulting in making potentially costly mistakes), you may want to consider bringing in some experts to take them off your hands. This is often better than hiring a full-time employee, as it is considerably less expensive. Despite the cost-cutting benefits of outsourcing, you continue to gain access to the support you need! 

• Improve your collection rates. If you run a B2B (business-to-business) company, you may already have encountered some nightmarish scenarios when it comes to processing invoices. For example, it's reported that only 6% of manual invoices are paid within 30 days. However, using invoicing software that sends out automated invoices and payment reminders/prompts can help to rectify this. This way, you can ensure that you get the payment you deserve as quickly as possible, helping grow your business. 

• Develop a contingency plan. A contingency plan is a plan of action for when things go wrong. While you never want to encounter these scenarios, having a system in place for how to respond to setbacks can minimize their impact on your business. As such, they can be a great way to ensure a minor mistake does not have a major impact on your success. 

• Go live on social media. In the past, companies spent hours curating the perfect content for their social media feeds - whether this relates to editing photographs or designing new graphics and advertisements. However, more recently, there has been a push towards authenticity, which means customers prefer less curated content or online interactions. One way in which you can capitalize on this is by going live on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. This way, you can interact with your customers in real-time. TikTok can be particularly beneficial when growing your business, as lives that perform well will be promoted to potential customers. 

In short, while any entrepreneur looking to succeed should be willing to put the work in, there are many “low-effort” ways in which you can steer your brand to success in the new year. Making the most of these opportunities will help you to succeed in 2024 (and beyond)!