Small Business Alert: Be Open for New Opportunities

May 18, 2020

There are two paths for small businesses during a time of crisis.

The first path is that of downsizing and hoping not to buckle under the weight of an ailing economy. Recessions often favor large corporations with the leverage to stave off any negative side effects.

The second path is a more creative and dynamic one. Looking for new opportunities is the way a small business can remain sustainable while building further momentum. As a small business owner, you mustn't have a scarcity mindset. Barely clinging onto the last thread of your current situation is a recipe for disaster.

In sports, it is often said that teams playing for the draw usually end up losing. You must go on the offense.

How to Make Your Business Open to New Opportunities

You don't have to wait for hard times in order to instill your small business with the proper mindset. Creating the framework for new opportunity recognition is something you should incorporate into your business's culture starting today. Brainstorming and bench-marking should be regular calendar items.

Reviewing your past decisions and actions will pave the way for taking advantage of exciting new opportunities. Let's look at some tips on how you can accomplish those.

Brainstorming for New Ideas

Whether you provide products, services or both, there is always room for expanding your list of offerings. If you sell a product, there are new market segments ripe for the picking. For service providers, slight modifications to your existing catalog can bring a windfall of new clients. After you brainstorm, you can check your website analytics and any other metrics from other sources to see if your ideas have potential.

For instance, if you have a store that sells tennis rackets, a pick-up stringing service could be an addition to your offerings. This would be a service where you pick up the racket from your customer's home, restring it and return it to them.

After coming up with the idea, you would look for keyword searches for stringing services in your analytics. If you have content on stringing rackets on your website and people used stringing-related keywords to find you, it means that there is interest in the service. Corroborate it with your customers by sending out a survey to a sample of your clientele. If you get a positive response, you can go ahead and implement the new service.

Leverage Your Employees' Competencies

During times of economic hardship, employees can be a limitless resource. If your employees have competencies beyond their normal job-related tasks, they can be leveraged in the pursuit of new opportunities. By incentivizing your employees, you can turn them into catalysts for your small business's growth.

Help Your Customers Grow

It's important to remember that economic downturns aren't only difficult for your business. Your customers are looking for more efficient ways of meeting their needs. Whether by providing cost-effective options or services of greater convenience, your customers will appreciate any initiative you take to address their pain-points.

If you have a customer-centric mindset, the opportunities for growing your business are endless. Spend some time researching new technological trends and try to incorporate them into your product mix. The more you understand where the market is going, the quicker you can position yourself.

Offer Consulting

Consumers and businesses are not only looking for products and services but are also interested in guidance on how to maximize their use. Between 2015 and 2020, the consulting industry has grown at an average rate of 3.2 percent annually. This growth in expected to continue as the solution-oriented mentality is becoming more popular.

Offering consulting services on your existing offerings can be a great addition to your bottom line. All you need to do is position yourself as an authority in your field and communicate the fact that you offer consulting.

Create Courses and Tutorials

A great part of offering solutions to your clientele is the ability to communicate information in an easily digestible manner. Offering courses and tutorials is a great way to strengthen the relationship your customers have with your brand.

Being able to provide actionable content can expand your business's horizons. Other than doing it for them, nothing can be more helpful for consumers than videos and other visual content they can use to enhance their user experience.

This also holds true for your business's marketing efforts. Running video ads where users can see your products and services in action is more effective than text ad campaigns. If you don't have the video creation skills within your business, this shouldn't prevent you from taking advantage of visual content.

Speak with a visual marketing expert to find out how video and graphics can boost your results.

---

Also in Visual Marketing News