Next Step in Your Business: UK Small Business Advice

Next Step in Your Business: UK Small Business Advice

It might be that many months have passed from the moment you spent that afternoon writing a business plan to the current point of considering how to take that next growth step for your business.

Being a business owner can be hard, and the economic and digital landscape is constantly changing, so it is important to stay on top of constantly learning about all these changes.

However, you may be feeling unsure how to do so. The following blog will give you some good business ideas for approaching this exciting new step for your small business.

• Consider Your Business Expenses

After a good few months in business, you will get into a rhythm and routine of running your business. Although this is inherently both a positive and an expected turn after some time, it is important to assess whether you have unintentionally fallen into bad habits.

It may be that your water usage within your premises could be improved, thus saving you valuable expenses. Thus, you should consider hiring a professional business such as Caste Water. These businesses can help carry out any water efficiency audits in your business alongside conducting any repairs relating to leakages.

On the flip side of cutting back, it may be time for your business to expand fully. This may be because you may have had to bring on more staff which can require bigger premises to ensure that everyone is comfortable. Or simply that you need more physical space to conduct your services or create your products.

If you are looking to move into bigger premises, this may involve changing to a different location. The main factor to consider is the difficulty of the placement of your potential new premises: are there good transport links for staff commuting without a car or is the business distribution path clear and not affected in any way?

• New Ways of Marketing Your Business

When starting a business, everything will fall into place by doing things step by step. For this reason, you may not always do every single thing you should when you first start all due to time constraints or even the energy required to do so.

Therefore, when it comes to marketing your business, it might be time to look into the alternative marketing methods that you did not have the time to do. Furthermore, the digital landscape is constantly changing, so the methods you may use to market your business online will continually change and shift.

It might be time to consider expanding to a new social media platform for your business to expand to a different demographic: after all, as time has progressed, various age groups have preferred to stay within certain social media platforms, ultimately splitting where to find certain age groups.

A great marketing tactic that many businesses forget to consider is direct marketing. By creating promotional materials that you distribute to certain areas through the likes of letterboxes, you can reach customers more directly. This is particularly effective for reaching customers that are not connected online, for example the older generations. By creating a specific discount code for the physical marketing material drops, you can easily track the success of each campaign.

• Build An Even Better Team

Another way to expand your business, particularly if you are within a growth period, is to hire more team members. Although this may seem like a common-sense move, the suggestion here is to consider hiring more staff with less experience but keener attitudes.

Many entry-level applicants are desperate to get their foot in the door after education yet struggle to get into many roles as they require an unfair amount of experience for someone who has just finished education.

By choosing entry-level applications, you can be sure to have time to train these individuals to the standards and processes of your own business, as some experienced candidates may have picked up bad habits from other workplaces.

• Increase Your Products or Services

The best way to ensure that your business can grow is to provide opportunities for you to make even more money. You can do so by simply increasing your products or services. You will understand your own business better than anyone else, and you will no doubt be brimming with great ideas on how to do so. The best thing you can do is go with your gut.

The main caveat with this idea is that you must ensure that your business is prepared to make a loss if the new product or service does not do as well as it should. Give yourself a few months of trialling this new change before you go ahead and try to hire more permanent staff, for example. Business can be volatile, so you should give yourself the best opportunity for success.

Guest Article.