Are you looking to take your business up to the next level this year? Then check out Entrepreneurs Circle’s 9 proven ways to grow your business.

What was the first thing you did on the morning of the first day of running your business? Usually, it’s the logo that gets first priority. Got to have a great logo, right? Seriously, have you ever chosen to do business with a company because of their logo?

You probably also did a lot of research online on “how to run a business” or “how to get customers” and you would have found millions of pages telling you how to do these things written by people who have never done it before.

Well, having started eight separate £1M+ businesses from scratch in the UK, I know how to grow businesses fast.

But, I have to keep up to date on the current best ways to do that. 15 years ago, all you had to do was take a really expensive advert out in the Yellow Pages and sit by the phone and pray. Well, things have changed and they continue to do so year on year.

9 Proven Ways for Success 

1. Have a Marketing Plan. Have you got one? Just like a builder wouldn’t build a house without a plan, you can’t build a business these days without a plan. So many small businesses fail because they don’t have a plan in place to get those much needed customers. Like I said above, only a few years ago all you needed to do was to take out an expensive ad in the Yellow Pages and that was your marketing strategy for the year. But things have changed so much and there are literally hundreds of different forms of marketing today that you can use to get new customers. You need to work out which ones will work the best for you, how many customers you need and how much getting those customers is going to cost you.

2. YouTube Advertising. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. Oh, and Google own YouTube, by the way, so whenever you search in the Google bar they will search YouTube at the same time. When you go to watch a video on YouTube, there are 3 different types of adverts – In-Search, In-Display and In-Stream. The In-Stream adverts being the best performing. They are the ones you can skip at the beginning of the YouTube video after 5 seconds. You can target them to a chosen audience so that they resonate with whoever watch them. Plus it’s cheap as chips to use YouTube to advertise.

3. Facebook Advertising. Facebook is such a massive advertising platform and is still much cheaper than Google AdWords. Especially for Business to Consumer markets. With 39 Million Facebook users in the UK, some of your customers, if not all of them, are on there. You can target your audience to suit your exact customer. So if you were a bridal shop, for instance, you could target females only, aged between 20 and 40 who are engaged and interested in all things bridal. Your adverts will only show to them and have a higher engagement rate. You can use images and video to grab their attention. Facebook is so cool for marketers. You can start by having a look at our Ultimate Guide to Split Testing Facebook Ads for free here…

4. Measure, Measure and Measure. Don’t go spending money on advertising that isn’t working. You need to measure all of your marketing to see what’s working and what’s not working. With all of the different ways to use marketing to get new customers these days, part of your marketing plan (if you have one) is to measure your marketing. If you see something that isn’t working then don’t do it again. If you see something that is working well in getting new customers then spend more money on it. Simples.

5. OPC – Other Peoples Customers. Email marketing has been very popular over the last few years and lots of different businesses have lists and lists of their customers on their database. So what other businesses will have the same type of person in their database as you need. Back to our entrepreneur with the bridal shop. She could approach wedding venues, photographers, cake makers and event caterers to ask if she could contact their lists and vice versa. Or ask them to send marketing out on their behalf for a cost. Who would have a list of your customers?

6. Outsource. With the entire world at our fingertips on the internet, it’s very easy to outsource work that you need doing to anybody across the world. Don’t spend your time trying to do jobs in your business that can be done far more professionally by somebody else for much less cost. Take graphic design for example. You need some artwork doing for some marketing that you’re making live. Just go on to fiverr.com or upwork.com, post the job and someone in the world will do a far better job than you on the artwork for just a few pounds. What about your bookkeeping, who does that? You shouldn’t be doing it, you should be growing your business. Outsource the bookkeeping to a professional bookkeeper. A good one costs around £15 per hour and will be much quicker than you.

7. Send Stuff in the Post. Nobody ever does this anymore. Since the Royal Mail put their prices up for stamps, most business owners said “We ain’t posting anything, it costs too much. Let’s just send loads of emails”. Bonkers. The smart marketers send more letters in the post. How many emails do you get every day? I get hundreds. How many letters do you get every day with a handwritten address and real stamp? Hardly any, so if you want to grab your customer’s attention, send them something in the post.

8. Call ‘em. It’s far too easy to hide behind computers and technology these days, but believe it or not people still actually like to talk to other people. As the old British Telecom advert used to say “It’s good to talk”. Pick up that telephone and call your prospects and customers. If you’re “Telephonophobic” (real word by the way!) then get someone else to do it for you.

9. Become a Marketer of What you Do, Not Just the Doer. Yep, that’s right. You need to be the MARKETER of your business not just the DOER. You need to put a set amount of time aside each day to work ON your business and not just IN it. It all starts with that marketing plan that you need to put into place. Once it’s written try and put aside 90 minutes every day to just work on getting customers. The serving of those customers can be the rest of the day, but that 90 minutes is key. Try not to be interrupted, leave the mobile in the other room and switch those emails off. You won’t believe the amount of work you’ll get done which will result in getting more customers and ultimately grow your business fast this year.

Still reading? Of course you are! You’re a business owner and at Entrepreneurs Circle we exist to educate, motivate, help and inspire business owners to achieve more than they ever thought possible. Founded by multi-millionaire, entrepreneur and businessman Nigel Botterill, no one knows better than him of what it takes to build big businesses and FAST!

Nigel now spends 90% of his time teaching, training and mentoring UK business owners who want to be super-successful. He does this through his widely acclaimed Entrepreneur’s Circle. Find out how we grow thousands of business here.