How to Grow Your At-Home Business

Long gone are the days when a business needed to have a brick-and-mortar location to survive. As technology and e-commerce grow, more entrepreneurs decide to start their own at-home businesses. Unfortunately, at-home businesses face unique challenges when trying to expand in their markets.

To help you and other at-home business owners overcome difficulties and remain relevant within your industry, we’ve compiled a list of growth-friendly suggestions.

Narrow Your Focus 

It’s incredibly easy for small business owners to chase after a new service idea, product design, or innovative concept. However, if you want to maximize your growth potential and build a customer base, it’s imperative to focus on 1 or 2 items—whether they’re products or services. If you keep your attention focused, you’ll fill a niche and become the expert your customers trust to provide quality service and care.

Hire Some Help

Growing your business means growing your operations as well. If you’re running an at-home business, it doesn’t take a large shift in sales volume to tip the scales from manageable to too-much-work. As you prepare for expansion, consider hiring freelancers or part-time workers to help you stay on top of business and provide an excellent customer experience while you grow.

Boost Your Online Presence

If you want to grow your at-home business, you need to make certain you’re leaving the right digital impression. Influencers are 18% more likely to share and follow your products or site when they have a good experience navigating through your content. Additionally, if you’re not on social media, you should definitely give it a shot. Businesses who interact with customer service requests via social media earn 20–40% more revenue per customer than those who don’t.

Partner Up

Do you want to get your product or service in front of as many people as possible? Consider joining forces with complementary businesses. If you run a bakery, reach out to a local coffee shop and see if they can sell your goods. If you do freelance work, consider leveraging your relationships with previous clients by offering referral discounts. No matter the industry, there are people and businesses out there that are in a perfect position to help your business succeed.

Don’t Forget Your Current Customers

When looking at your customer base, it’s important to remember that it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep one. Do your best to take care of your current and past customers. If they have a pleasant experience with you, it can be great for business. Returning customers tend to spend around 20% more than first-time buyers. So if it costs less to keep them and they tend to buy more products, it’s a good idea to keep them happy and coming back for more.

Acquire Additional Funding

When you boil it down, expansion takes money. Unfortunately, not every business owner has enough squirreled away to make their dreams a reality—but there is hope. As a business owner, you have access to numerous funding options that can help grow your business. There’s capital ready and available for you—from equipment financing for a fancy oven or new processing software to startup loans and business lines of credit. All it takes is a bit of research and a quick application to put your business on the fast track to success.