After several years of working with many businesses in the marketing field, I’ve come across my list of the top two ways to really grow your business. Those that seem to follow this process have proven to scale their business really well and very quickly with a great outcome.

#1 Hire a Marketing Professional.

(This is not necessarily a web developer, IT guy, or a tech savvy student)

I know what you’re thinking: We don’t have the budget and we can figure it out for ourselves. Maybe you want to try to manage social media or use one of those build your own websites. You may even try to send some emails out to clients here or there when you have the time. Better yet, you’ll have Sally at the front desk tackle some of these tasks because you know it’s important but no one else has the time. We’ll have her follow some influential leaders, watch some free YouTube videos, or attend some free courses etc. Trust me, marketing the wrong way is actually wasting business time and will cost you a lot of money in the long run while definitely slowing your business growth.

Hire a professional business marketer. What exactly does this mean? You hired a web developer to build your website and the phone isn’t ringing off the hook, why? Because you had someone build you a website without any marketing knowledge and although you received a beautiful website, it will never convert and no leads will generate from it.

Someone with marketing knowledge should not only be able to help your business with all things marketing (including websites, social media, SEO, and branding), but they should also know what key items should be included on all the above to generate sales.

Here’s a list of a few things they should know. . .

How to write captivating copy on your website, social media, or branding materials to trigger a customer response. Please note: I definitely agree with having a copywriter handle this BUT, a writer may not know how to adjust copy for lead generation. Make sure they can do both.

Include captivating, meaningful photos to trigger an emotion to generate leads. Just adding a nice photo to website is not enough. Make sure they know the purpose of the imagery.
Provide specific call to actions that generate leads across all your marketing materials. Telling your potential customers to call or email you for services IS NOT a call to action and won’t work.
Add specific lead generating components to help grow your business. Anyone in the marketing industry knows there’s several tools we can add to your website and social media etc. to make them a lead generating machine.

A person/company that specializes in marketing has the knowledge and know how to deliver results. Today, with the use of the internet, you can basically do all your marketing online yourself if you really wanted to. Without the marketing knowledge needed however, your website may not rank or even convert, your social media following will not be engaged, and you may not attain leads like you’d like from these platforms. This is the very reason why you should invest in your business and seek proper guidance.

#2 LISTEN

So you followed all the advice above and you found the right fit. You hired someone to help market your business. Great! Now what? Well, this is the BIG one. LISTEN! You are trusting someone to help build your business BUT you’d like to control, change, and have a say in rearranging everything. That old saying, “the customer is always right,” in this case could cost you money. I’m going to provide some real world examples below and show you why this is not always the case. . .

These are just a few examples but it is crucial to the success of your business that you LISTEN and TRUST the agency you’re working with. If you don’t trust who you’re working with then find a partnership that feels like a better fit.

If you find the right EXPERIENCED marketing partner and LISTEN, your business is guaranteed to grow.