How to Grow Your Small Business

Are you just starting out as a pool business? You’re good at what you do, but expanding your reach and bringing in new customers feels rather intimidating. Where do you even start? With just a little know-how, you can start bringing new leads and growing your business. Here are some tips to get you started. 

Avoid ‘Start Up’ Techniques

These days, it’s very tempting to refer to any new business as a ‘start-up’. However, the terminology actually refers to a very particular kind of business. Start-ups are usually a company that has been set up with external funding, is designed to grow very quickly, and isn’t intended to start making money right away. 

As a pool company, you’re not looking to emulate that setup, so avoid any tips that use techniques for start-ups. These often use aggressive marketing, such as emailing everyone in a client’s address book or using black hat SEO to grow your business quicker. These are tips that will make your business look less than reputable, and actually make leads avoid you. 

Create A Plan

If you haven’t already, you need to make a plan for marketing your business. So many businesses out there are focusing on online marketing with no clear goal in mind. 

Consider the customers that you want to appeal to. What’s the best way of finding them online? For your pool business, you may want to focus on social media, or creating highly usable and informative blogs. Ensure you’re thinking about customers’ needs, and test out ideas. 

Focus On Your Branding

In today’s crowded marketplace, you need to have clear branding. You may feel hiring a graphic design team is too much as a new business, but it’s going to pay off in the long run. They will work with you to create logos, designs, and color schemes that reflect what you’re all about. 

Once you have that branding, you need to use it consistently. Use it on your website, and in any communications, you make with customers. It’s also useful for social media, as you can use it across several platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. This gives you greater brand authority, and once a customer sees that branding, they know it’s you. 

Of course, you’ll want to take that branding offline, too. Use it on your vans and on the t-shirts your staff wear. The more consistent the branding, the better. 

Improve Your Website

On the subject of your website, you want to see where it can be improved. If someone’s looking for your business, they will most likely end up on your homepage. It needs to make an excellent impression right away. Is it doing that now? 

If you’re not already implementing that new branding, you’ll want to do it now. Also, take a look at the homepage’s design. Is there too much going on there? Is it too hard to find what you’re looking for? If a visitor can’t find what they’re looking for right away, they’re very likely to head off and you’ll lose a potential sale. 

You can use a website design team to look at your site and make the improvements you need. It’s incredible how much of a difference a small site redesign can have on your business. 

Take Advantage Of Analytics

If you aren’t already checking out your site’s analytics, you want to start right now. This is something any business can do, even if they’re a small or new one. There are lots of free tools out there, including Google Analytics and Hubspot’s Marketing Grader. These will help you see how well your mating is reaching your leads, and show you where you need to make improvements. 

Make a habit of checking these often, so you can see just where you need to be making these improvements. As they’re often free, you won’t have to pay an extra penny to do. That’s good news for those just starting out. 

Implement A Blog

Are you creating a blog on your site? If not, you’re missing out on some crucial marketing power. A good blog will bring leads to your site, as you’ll be giving them informative blogs that are useful to them. The goal is to get them to stick around, and eventually hire you to take care of your pool. 

The key is to create blog posts that are giving customers information only you can provide. As you’re pool experts, you may create blogs on subjects like ‘Which Pool Chemicals Are Right For Your Pool?’ ‘What To Do If Your Pool Turns Green’. As you have the knowledge, you can pass that on to customers.

Also, ensure that most of your blogs are evergreen. This means that they’ll be relevant to readers whenever they come across it. Cover subjects that are relevant year-round, to get the most bang for your buck. 

Have A Backup Plan

As a brand new company, you are probably working with a very small crew, or just yourself. As such, you’re spinning a lot of plates at once. If something goes wrong, you don’t want everything to crash to a halt as you try and fix it. 

Instead, have a backup plan for your marketing strategies. If something doesn’t work as planned, you can then implement your backup plan without losing too much time. 

Focus On Your Strengths

You want to stand out from the crowd, and that’s hard to do online. Many pool business owners feel that they have to offer everything, just to bring in those leads. The problem is that spreads them too thin, and they can’t deliver on those promises. 

Instead, focus on the key strengths you have. For example, as a local business, you can offer a fast response when a customer needs to call you out. Focus on this in your marketing, and ensure you follow through on it. 

With these tips, you’ll be able to grow your business with ease. Improve your online marketing, and see the difference it makes.