3 Ways to Grow Your Business

Now, I've got a bit of a topic for you today. It's really interesting for me.

There so many different ways to market and grow your business, whether you're a ticket supplier, whether you're in weddings, whether you're in gigs, live festivals, music, B2C, B2V events, whatever it is. There are so many different ways to actually grow your business and I'm just really interested, because one of the main ways that my business really exploded was through relationships and referral, word of mouth marketing.

This was something that happened organically by building a really great reputation in the industry, cultivating those relationships and then being passed around from person to person, and we built a strong business off the back of these kinds of relationships.

What was really great off the back of that was it's very low cost.

Obviously, there's no ad spend involved and it was really validating in terms of the product and service that we were providing. Specifically we were providing digital marketing for events during this time.

That's really one strategy to grow a business, and for me the way it worked was relatively accidental. I started the business and one person led to another person, before I knew it, things were growing and moving, but there are so many different ways to actually grow and market your business.

For example, digital marketing, you've got Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, and TikTok now, even LinkedIn. Now, each of those platforms have a different strategy as well, and each of those platforms require content and relationships, and it's really much more of a cold kind of approach to reaching out to prospects than referral marketing.

There's also partnership marketing where you start to identify different partners in your industry who are non-competitive to your product or service.

So for example, with us, we do digital marketing for events and we partnered up with a ticket provider, so ticket providers are always getting new clients who need their services. Basically we went out and just formed relationships with people who provided the ticketing service for events, and that was a really, really beneficial relationship as well.

So how can you in this time start to forge some of those strategic partnerships of noncompeting people who really are in that same kind of spaces who might have your audience's attention but don't actually have a competing interest where you can be complimentary? It might be teaming up with a florist, or a photographer, or a caterer, or whatever that is, so that when those people are having these conversations with your ideal customer, they can start to refer you into them as well, and provide their services.

They're just three really, really quick ways that you can actually grow your business and market your services.

Number one…

… you've got referral and word of mouth, so just doing a fantastic job, and you can actually ask people to refer you on and say, "Hey listen, why would you mind sending me other clients, I've got some capacity? Would you mind thinking about referring me some business?"

That's number one, and start to think about who that would be for you now. This downtime in the event space is actually really valuable to get you super clear on your strategy and how you can start to talk, connect with these people.

Number two…

… digital marketing. Think about your content strategy. What platform makes the most sense for you. Is it Twitter, is it Facebook, is it Instagram? Really just choose one at this stage, and understand how that platform works, and how your audience is on that platform before you can start to branch out, because it is really a... Each platform really does require quite a lot of time, and attention, and consideration. If you're going after a LinkedIn customer, it's very different to an Instagram customer for example.

Number three…

… the third one really is that strategic partnership piece. It's literally just thinking about who has your client before you or who has your client after you, and how can you guys start to collaborate in a way that you send them business and they send you business? Because it just makes the job of the client a lot easier as well, you're getting referrals and recommendations from other people.

Have a think now about ways that you can start to add some marketing and content and ideas around how you can grow your business, and that would be a super powerful thing to really get on top of right now. Drop a comment below, hit me up and let me know what you're thinking in terms of other key ways that you can grow your business or get ready to grow your business in this time.

Now, start to build relationships, start to get on Zooms, or go for walks, or have a coffee with someone in your industry. Build that relationship and then when this industry snaps back into life, you already have that all ready to go, and it's just going to be super powerful.

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