How to Kick Start Your Business After Covid-19

I thought it was a great time now we’re getting back to a new normality in business after our prolonged lockdowns to revisit my previous blog called “How to grow your business during a recession”.

Now, in that blog I talked about how to get through the initial short sharp shock of your business entering a recession or the pandemic, and that advice still stands if you’re feeling the pinch in your business from the shifting marketplace. So, today we’re going to look at what else you can do to kick start your business growth after Covid-nineteen and more importantly, your income!

I’m Lor Bradley, author of Grow Your Tribe. And I’m a business strategist and I’ll be sharing smart ways to grow your business by working smarter, and not harder. 

So, you want to start boosting your business income, but we all know the economy is pretty unstable right now and you want to be sure you’re making the right forward plans and taking solid decisions, but where do you get started? 

Even without a pandemic or a shifting marketplace on your hands there’s already quite a few moving pieces involved in growing your business, so it can feel like an overwhelming task when you get started. And I’ve always found that getting organised and building a manageable plan of action has always been super helpful to overcome any feelings of overwhelm or confusion.

Ok, so let’s get started on areas to turn you should be turning your attentions to when you start to grow your business. And the first one is pretty obvious, but I’m always surprised on how often its actually overlooked so we’ll start there.

Number 1: Focusing on Serving and Retaining Your Customers

And that means keeping hold of the customers you have in your pocket right now. To grow your business in a pandemic it’s not going enough to just offer great customer service, you need to get smart and work towards building strong, long-lasting relationships and if you’re a B-2-B business you’ll need to start building strong collaborative relationships with your business owner customers as well.

Remember, if you’re a b-2-b business you’re stronger when you’re standing together, and this is something you’ll also see me actively doing in the coming months.

Ok, let’s dive into some ways you can retain your customers and build know like and trust with those who haven’t yet taken the leap to invest in you.

I’ve covered this in another blog how to grow your business by segmenting your market, so I’ll keep this brief here. 

What you want to do is seek out the most engaged people in your audience, your ideal paying customers or the ones who have significant influence in your marketplace. And then, reach out to them. Build a strong collaborative connection with influencers and they'll help you nurture your relationship with others. Create a special offer for your ideal paying customers and those who are actively engaged.

Creating challenges for your audience is a great way to keep them connected and build know like and trust with you. Give your audience a structured challenge and see what they come up with. I find that in my own audience of women that personal visibility is something they really struggle with (and that includes me at times), so I created a thirty-day visibility challenge. I asked them a question each day, set some structure around how to be more visible and build know, like and trust and then asked them to go live each day and answer the question.

It brought my community together, it was great. You can offer incentives to encourage participation or create a system of awards. You could increase engagement by asking other members to help you decide who is the winner.

Other great ways of connecting with your audiences are through holding webinars, hangouts and stepping up in your outreach to your subscriber list. Your email subscriber list is your greatest asset so don’t forget this!

I’ve already covered how to tap into your strengths in another post but if you want to grow your business then you need to understand where it’s strong and then double down your focus on further building those strengths. Now, I know we can be the last to see where our strengths are so talk to your friends, your existing customers and your past customers and ask them for feedback on why they like you, why they like your business over your competitors.

My other blog on how to grow your business in a crowded market will be really helpful here.

There's a good chance that those around you are going to have insights on things about your business that you might not see. And your assumptions about your strengths might even be totally wrong. This could be an eye-opening process and it always is for me when I do this. I’m always finding new strengths.

Number 3: Figure Out How To Go The Extra Mile For Your Customers

And this is going to help you retain them, and their investment in you. When you take on the mindset of authentically serving those who are investing in you then you can easily boost your business growth. If you focus on how you serve; you'll retain your customers, you’ll naturally get referrals for your business from them, and they’ll be happy, and that’s the most important thing right?!