Usually, after successfully starting a business, the next goal is for business growth. Business growth is not an automatic or easy thing in business development. Many fail to achieve and end up remaining stagnant or even retrogressing. I have done several articles before on the subject of business growth. One of the prerequisites for business growth that I mentioned was having a guaranteed availability or access to capital. Be that as it may in this article I want to explore a different approach to business growth. Consider the possibility of achieving business growth with little to no costs incurred. Ways to achieve that are what I am discussing in this article.

Organic Yet Active Social Media Presence

Most of you know that investing in paid ads or boosting posts expands on social media. Nonetheless, it is also possible to expand your business reach organically. By ‘organically’ I am referring to you just basically posting and driving engagement on your posts. This means you simply set up accounts for your business on various social media platforms. Then you commit to regularly and consistently posting content.

Then while you are at it you also commit to responding to all posts. There are several strategies you can also employ e.g. using hashtags, encouraging tagging and so on. Over time this can actually grow your business reach online. With or without a business you probably purchase data every month. Thus promoting your business organically on social media would not require extra costs.

Bring LinkedIn Into The Fold

I know I have already mentioned social media but most people exclude LinkedIn. I have even seen that most businesses do not take LinkedIn seriously – most are not even there. Recently I have been doing sort of an experiment to draw some insights. I have been making posts on certain Zimbabwean startups promoting their brands. I have been doing all this organically but amazingly I have gotten remarkable engagements. Some of my posts have had more than 2000 views, 50+ likes, 20+ comments, and so on.

Not only that, they have generated leads, partnership proposals, and the like. This is just from me casually making posts (not even daily); what more if a business commits to doing it daily? I am making you see that you should be on LinkedIn as a business and you must take it seriously. The platform mainly comprises professionals and professional content so it can open up some doors for you.

Always Network At All Levels

The LinkedIn I just mentioned is core to networking online as a business. When I am talking about networking I am not just talking about fancy events. I am referring to starting with your customers. In as much as you interact with them as customers always are on the lookout for networking opportunities. A customer might be strategic in the sense that they own a business of their own. It could be that they work at a strategic business or organization. It could also be that they are related or connected to a strategic person.

So your customers must be your starting point. You could end up unlocking huge customer inflows just by networking like this with select customers. Then of course you go over beyond by attending strategic networking events. The bottom line is you must think about networking all the time. You can literally grow your business without any cost by building a strategic network.

Cultivate Word Of Mouth Marketing

This is yet another witty way of growing your business. The approaches to it are so many I cannot exhaust them all here. The core idea is to encourage anyone connected to your business to recommend it to others. Understand that offering great products or servicing and customer service can automatically unlock word of mouth marketing. Satisfied customers are typically wired to share the good news with their social circle. They will most likely recommend or simply inspire others to buy from your brand. So that is the first layer of cultivating word of mouth where you essentially ‘passively’ inspire or encourage it.

Then there is the active part where you request or tell people to recommend your brand. This means you do this to your business team, your customers, and anyone whom you deem strategic. I recently talked about customer loyalty programs – they are essential to this. You can also make every employee a brand ambassador of sorts. Them wearing branded material and requesting them to talk about the brand constitutes and drives word of mouth. If you handle your employees well they can be central to driving business growth beyond their stipulated duties. So these are just some of the broad approaches but the truth is the possibilities are endless.

These are 4 ways which seem few but they are a gold mine. When you closely pursue just one of these 4 ways you can discover huge prospects. Imagine what you can achieve by exploring all 4 of them. I encourage you today, as a business, to pursue these business growth strategies. You can achieve so much and if ever you put in more money the prospects can become even bigger.