You’ve put a lot of work into starting your remote business. In your first year, you achieved all your business goals and hired a great remote team of employees that work together effectively and efficiently. Don’t stop there. It’s time to take your remote business to the next level and become even more successful.
But what does it take to scale your company?
Here’s what you need to know to grow your remote business.
Review Your Software and Cloud Services
Remote businesses need to make the most of software and cloud services. These are the tools that keep your remote team working together. Cloud services let you use superior and updated software such as project management apps and communication suites.
Update your cloud platform and work with a business IT support company to be sure you have the maintenance and correct set-up for a full array of cloud services. When you improve your cloud infrastructure you can increase the productivity of your remote team, giving them access to the best software tools and apps.
Update Your Business Plan
Don’t underestimate the power of your business plan. It got you this far, now let it take you even further. Update your plan as your business grows, so you can focus on points that need to be modified and adjusted.
- Review the metrics
Review the last year and look at the metrics. In what areas have you been successful, and where do things need improving? Categorize and modify your plan of action, your business objectives, and strategies to improve metrics such as profit and customer retention.
- Make revisions
Once you’ve reviewed the last year, revise your plan for the upcoming six months to a year. Revisions should include rewriting your business vision and mission statement. Although the backbone of your mission statement will remain the same, growing your business means establishing new goals.
Adjust Your Budget
Having a start-up budget is crucial to a business in the first year. Your business has made it through that first year as a success and it’s time to shuffle around your budget and use money where it can have the most positive impact. Start-up budgets are based on projected expenses and estimated profits – now that the numbers are in you can take a good, hard look at your yearly profits and adjust your budget.
- Estimate yearly profits
Closely examine the profits you made last year. Take that profit and use it to come up with your new estimated profits for the next twelve months.
- Estimate yearly expenses
Calculate your estimated expense for the coming year. This includes costs such as employee salaries, software and tech expenses, taxes, and your own salary. Put those expenses to the side and determine how much you have left to put into other expenditures that can grow your business, such as marketing and hiring more employees.
Shake Up Your Marketing Strategy
One of the biggest mistakes growing remote businesses make is sticking to their marketing strategy. If it was a success the first year during start-up, why not stick with it? Here’s why: you need to modify and update your marketing technique to reach new clients and customers. Many of the customers you acquired during the first year have become loyal to your business and brand. They’ll continue to do business with you – business trends show that 80 percent of your future profit will come from about 20 percent of your current customers. So now it’s time to focus on attracting another set of customers.
Update your website
Your website is the door to your digital presence. It’s the first thing customers notice about your business, so you want to make a great first impression. Design your website so it’s clean and efficient. It should get to the point quickly without a lot of fluff that can distract people from why they came to your website in the first place.
- Optimize for mobile devices
Increasingly more people are making online purchases through their phone. This means your website needs to be optimized as much as possible. What does optimization mean? It’s all about fast loading web pages and responsive digital viewing. It’s also about content that stands out from your competition. Content needs to speak to your customers and tell them something they want to hear. Consider quality content an important investment for your business – hire writers who can engage the customers you’re trying to reach.
- SEO matters
Along with quality content, make the most of SEO practices. Google and other search engines are smarter than ever. They no longer just rank and load web pages based on content that’s packed with keywords – Google algorithms put a lot of emphasis on websites that have longer, text based articles that maintain a high level of expertise. What does this mean? Content that delivers quality information is going to get you the most attention.
Expand Your Remote Team
The more successful your business becomes, the more employees you’re going to have to hire. Your remote team needs to work hard to continue to bring your loyal customers the service they’ve come to expect. Your team also needs to be ready to take on the growth that you’re expecting in the next phase of your business.
- Transfer team skills
Review the team members you already have. Where are they located and what are their skills? Many times, employees have skills that can be transferred to other responsibilities and roles within your business. This is a good way to make the most of the talent you already have without hiring new workers.
- Outsourcing is the new thing
A great cost saving strategy is to outsource tasks no one on your team can do. Is it really cost effective to hire a new remote team member if you’re only going to utilize their skills a few times a year? Outsourcing lets you hire people who have the expertise you don’t have – when you need it. This tactic can significantly lower your labor costs while at the same time boost your employee efficiency. Business research shows that over 59 percent of businesses outsource to save costs while 57 percent say that outsourcing lets them focus attention on other business functions where their skills are stronger.
Taking your remote business to a new successful level is within your reach when you evaluate what happened in the first year – and then make improvements in your business strategies. Use the guidelines here to see even more success in your second year.
