Growing A Business Requires the Right Tools for the Job

Featured article by Andre Smith, Internet Marketing and E-Commerce specialist

Businesses are like marriages: they get about five years before they have to either grow or die. The excitement and infatuation phase is fun in a breathless irresponsible kind of way. But, eventually, you have to learn to have deeper conversations about hard things that matter.

Finances can not always be about how much money is in the bank at the moment. At some point, the growth of the family has to be considered:

* Will there be kids?

* How many?

* What resources are needed to raise the to maturity?

* What is our responsibility to aging parents and extended family?

These family growing pains are somewhat paralleled in the business world. The first five years are a feverish rush mainly focused on existing for another day. But once the initial survival issues are tackled, there is the matter of growth and maturity. Will there be permanent employees? How many? What resources will be needed to take the business to the next phase? What responsibilities does the business have to the greater community?

Whether marriages or businesses, all organisms and entities have a grow or die imperative. Those organisms that successfully gather and implement the resources to do so are the ones that survive. Here are some of the tools it will take for your business to survive the growth phase:

HRM

Hiring people is easy. Managing people is hard. It is very possible to hire all the right people for the job, only to destroy your business by mismanaging your human resources. Before you decide to hire your first employee, you need to make sure you have the resources in place to manage them.

Long before you grow big enough to merit an entire human resource department, you can benefit from human resource management (HRM) software. This type of software can help you in all the post-hiring phases of managing employees. Without getting into the myriad details, this type of software:

* Automates complex business transactions

* Eliminates manual processes

* Reduces systemic errors

From employee benefits to time tracking, this type of software is what helps small and mid-sized businesses to manage their workforce, ensuring that they are resources as opposed to liabilities. You can’t grow to your full potential without employees. And you need a management system in place before taking that critical step.

A Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

If you build it, they will come is about as false a statement as you can make, at least as it relates to business. Just ask the makers of these five products that failed after CES launch hype. One of the problems with these products is that they were the answer to questions that no one was asking. They were solutions in search of a problem.

One of the most important parts of marketing is the research before the marketing. Let’s say you have a multifunction device. One of the aspects of this device is opening bottles and another is opening letters. You go all in on the bottle-opening aspect, only to find that no one cares about opening bottles. With just a little market research, you would have found that letter-opening is what people are looking for.

Research is just one part of a complete marketing strategy. You have to think beyond putting an ad in the local paper. Growing your business means maturing your marketing strategy.

Monetizing Your Audience

Thanks to your successful social media campaigns, you have established yourself as a property on the web. You have Facebook fans and Twitter followers. You have the greatest of resource potential: eyeballs. Unfortunately, eyeballs don’t always turn into paying customers.

To build equity on the web, you have to learn how to convert your audience into people who give you money. Growth is meaningless if it is not profitable. 3 out of 4 startups fail because they can’t convert audience into revenue. If you can’t turn that corner, yours will fail too.

Everything that lives needs to grow. That includes your business. The first few years is all about getting established. After that, it is grow or die. No single tool will get you there. Among others, you need HRM, a comprehensive marketing strategy, and an audience that pays. Make sure you have the right tools for the growth phase of your company.

Andre Smith is an Internet, Marketing and E-Commerce specialist with several years of experience in the industry. He has watched as the world of online business has grown and adapted to new technologies, and he has made it his mission to help keep businesses informed and up to date.