Today small businesses are facing a number of unique challenges when trying to grow business.

From shorter attention spans, higher expectations, and a need for instant gratification amongst customers ― even down to market clutter from the waves rising competition.

Here’s a few big tips every small business should know to help you rise to the challenge and grow business.

Cutting through the clutter and getting noticed is becoming more difficult in the digital revolution we’re experiencing.

Regardless of whether it’s business-to-business or business-to-customer.

It’s dramatically changing what’s termed the “purchase path” or “decision journey” of customers.

New digital media and communication channels, the associated ease of accessing information, and the ability to interact with brands instantly, are changing the ways customers everywhere are purchasing.

image courtesy wiki user Wuaiubon

image courtesy flickr user The Demo conference

With any prospect, once a need is triggered, two notable events occur in starting their journey. Both move them to draw perceptions of brands, products or services and will in turn influence their approaching purchase.

Often termed the “initial consideration” and “active consideration” stages, it’s noticed that prospects initially consider options from which they were previously exposed to.

Afterwards, they actively search for, closely scrutinize and consider the brands who seem to offer the best value relevant to fulfilling their needs and which have been most readily accessible. (whether from options pre-exposed to or new options discovered in their search).

This usually is a make or break period for small businesses.

As a small business you need to focus on effective ways of landing your brand into your target audience’s consideration set based on discovering how they are making purchase decisions.

It’s a task not so challenging if you align your brand to focus on understanding and staying connected to your target audience as you’ll see mentioned next.

If your business isn’t visible or goes without being noticed, than it has no way of being considered by potential customers while they’re making purchase decisions.

image courtesy flickr user Freddie Alequin

To drive customer acquisition and revenue it’s a must to understand:

The nature of your target audience, the manners in which they’re making purchase decisions, the influencing factors driving those decisions, and lastly how to deliver experiences that will engage them based on those decision drivers.

Gaining meaningful buyer insights from building a close connection with your target audience.

Creating engaging and immersive customer experiences.

Thoroughly researching your market and target audience.

Within the digital age that has emerged, all businesses are being faced with a number of complexities.

On one end buyers have become more empowered than ever ― having instant access to information, having the ability to interact with brands at will, and having control over those interactions. On the other end market trends are obscure and today’s buyers are overwhelmed with choices as a result of market clutter. Both have made customers a moving target.

In order to respond to the chaos, you’ll have to place a serious emphasis on truly understanding your target audience. Understanding how your target audience behaves, what influencing factors motivate them to interact with brands, and especially which ones are driving them to purchase.

This requires conducting the kind of customer research that will uncover the nature of your target audience, the manners in which they are making purchase decisions, and what factors are driving those decisions.

Following your research, you’ll need to take a critical look at the insights you’ve attained and determine exactly how to deliver the right kind of experiences that correspond to these purchase drivers.

Thoroughly researching your market and target audience.

The experience a prospect receives, while interacting with a brand, is increasingly the defining factor influencing their perception of the value in it ― which will ultimately shape their intentions in making purchases.

Buyers today are knowledge seekers and much more critical of the value offered by brands. Hence, when buyers are trying to zero in on brands they perceive could offer the most ideal benefits, the brands who actually win them over are those able to best deliver a high level of value relative to fulfilling their needs and wants.

Each time they interact with and experience a brand, they draw perceptions based on the attributes, functional benefits, and the emotional & self-expressive benefits (if any) that they receive from it. You’ll need to deliver immersive experiences that can engage customers in a way which they’ll feel they’re being provided a level of value which resonates the most with them.

For this to happen your experiences must deliver benefits that immerse buyers into the experience through the following:

Captivating expression that is novel and pleasurable and which effectively conveys the value & message of your brand, Functional benefits that practically fulfill the needs of customers, and Genuine two-way dialog which provides customers with self expressive benefits and that can also motivate deep emotional connections.

Creating engaging and immersive customer experiences

image courtesy wiki user Roland zh

Today’s digital age is empowering buyers. it’s enabling them to learn of and decide on brands as well as recommend, criticize and share experiences they encounter at will.

This empowerment is producing a more demanding customer ― one whose critical eye for value is moving them to consider the value of products/services and exactly what value means to them more thoughtfully than ever.

Due to this, providing the right level of value has extended beyond just delivering attractive attributes and benefits alone. There’s also now a need to foster deep connections with customers that motivate self-expression from them ― creating instances which prompt for and expressly encourage customer’s feedback, opinions, feelings, and suggestions allowing customers to directly personalize their experience with a brand.

Building this frequent two-way dialog with your target audience, as opposed to bombarding them with ads and sales pitches (i.e. a one-way dialog), is the basis of building deep relationships with customers which will then allow you to use any information gained as insights into understanding their perceptions of value, individual wants and needs.

Consequently, you must treat building customer relationships as an investment and not another expense.

Gain meaningful buyer insights from building a close connection with your target audience.

The digital world we live in is witnessing an explosion of new communication channels and digital media.

People everywhere are discarding traditional media in favor of newer media and technology.

This can be observed with the emerging mobile presence, online video, and hordes of social media networks.

image courtesy wiki user Annie R.B. Elis

image courtesy flickr user Johan Larsson

Or the benefit they’re capable of providing as strong customer acquisition assets.

Many organizations are already investing in these, but without a clear understanding of the change they bring in influencing customer behavior, mobility, and interaction.

As a small business, you’ll especially need to use emerging media and technologies to your advantage.

Using them in a manner that is in line with how your target audience is using them.

For instance, social media should be used for building connections and engaging with your target audience ― not for compulsively advertising.

Mobile technology has become a cornerstone in the daily lives of people everywhere ― replacing traditional technology in endless amounts of functions from shopping even down to banking.

The popularity of social media is continuing to grow and is rapidly becoming ingrained in everyday social and business life. The immersive nature of social media is inherently due to its goal of driving two-way dialog that’s organic.

As technology continues to increase the ease of accessing information, it also propels customers’ “active consideration” ― propelling their usage of search engines to such a familiarity that customers naturally link higher rankings in search engines with credibility and trustworthiness.

A few simple but notable examples would be

A mobile-ready website

An immersive social media presence

Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Although a lack of resources and personnel may seem to be the biggest challenges for many small businesses, in actuality the changing competitive environment, emerging product & service categories, and evolving customer needs are some of the biggest obstacles small businesses face today ― as these challenges signal for transformational shifts in how you’re structuring your business to truly live up to your brand promise everywhere it is expressed, the amount of attention you’re devoting to creating & delivering the right kind of value which will resonate most with customers, and the level of focus you’re committing to interacting with and building meaningful connections with customers.

Building a strong brand and growing business is no easy task, but making transformational changes to your small business will allow you to create a brand capable of navigating through the clutter and rising up to the real challenges faced today.

Rising up to the challenge

As it’s becoming increasingly challenging for all businesses large and small alike, today’s small businesses are uniquely challenged in attempting to grow business ― whether due to a lack of resources such as access to large sums of capital or lack of manpower specifically in regards to possessing a strong leadership structure, customer-centric marketing team, and an efficient sales force. However in order to drive growth, small businesses simply must be adaptive and ready to respond with changing demands and situations.

Growing business

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