The daily demands of managing and running a business makes it difficult to set aside time to focus on growing your company. However, making the time for a few key changes can make all the difference in increasing your revenue and expanding your organization.  Below are some simple and budget-friendly ideas to increase your productivity and scale-up your business this year.

Analytics, analytics, analytics… it’s a common buzz word in business. Tracking your customer data, and understanding how, when, and where your potential customers find you online, is critical to setting meaningful goals. Whatever platform you use for an online presence, make sure you are capturing critical data to understand your ideal customer. Google Analytics is a great, free tool to understand the behavior of visitors to your website. Getting familiar with the digital pathway that visitors take to find your sites and pages gives you insight on where to strategically post ads, create content, and ultimately, how to spend your marketing money.*** when and how visitors find you is important in understanding where your viewers are coming from and how best to utilize those referrals to increase traffic and how to improve marketing campaigns. Google Trends is another free tool to better understand what topics are trending nationally, or in your region. This tool can help with focusing your blog content or marketing strategy to identify topics and trends that matter to your customers. For more ideas check out Grow Your Business with Google for other free tools and trainings. Did we mention it’s free?

Automation is one of the best ways to save you, and your business, time, money, and avoid unnecessary errors. Investing in system updates, whether its a better payment processing system, customer relationship management (CRM) software, appointment management and scheduling systems, or other systems important to your specific business. There are thousand of different software programs available for a low monthly cost that can help organize and improve consistency in how your business operates. Often they come with a whole team of help desk support to customize their service to your budget and goals. Take an honest review of what areas of your business could use some improvement and do some research on what software is available to make those tasks simpler for you and your staff.

In any organization, there are daily tasks that are necessary but are a drain on your time and resources. Outsourcing the ones you find most tedious allows you and your staff to focus on what you do best. Whether it be marketing, customer service, order processing, or some other aspect of your business, there are many low-cost resources available that saves you the effort and expense of having to hire additional staff. One of the biggest advantages for small businesses today is that you no longer need to hire for every position in your organization. Instead, there are many experts who actually ENJOY those mundane tasks you dislike, and can complete those projects for you on a short or long-term basis. Often times, these specialists can create customizable plans, so you can scale services to meet your specific needs and remain useful during surges of growth. Check out some more ways to outsource common business needs here.

It’s a typical refrain that it is exponentially more challenging to acquire new customers than to create repeat business with existing clients. Improve customer retention and increase sales by creating a system that keeps customers invested in your business. Whether your loyalty program is based on points, tiers, or a donation-based system, find an incentive program that is focused on the values of your ideal customer. Get creative and tap into what matters to those in your community!

We hope you find these ideas helpful, and we wish you and your business the best in the new year. Please comment and share some of your simple solutions to growing a small business!