Growing Your Small Business

There are several ways to expand a business. You may be looking to launch a new product or service, expand to a new location, merge or acquire a business, increase production, franchise, hire new employees, streamline your processes, license your products, or expand into new markets. You can also expand your business through marketing strategies like aligning yourself with a similar business, expanding marketing efforts, building your online presence, targeting new markets, or winning a marketing contract. Your next big move could involve several of these expansion strategies. With several business growth strategies, you’ll want to ensure your business can withstand this expansion and make the right moves.

Before you embark upon your business growth strategy, you may want to seek advice from a trusted business counselor and one of our bankers. The SBA has a number of free resources available to small business owners, too. With our help, you can discover what growth strategies suit the vision for your growing business and get insight into how to present your business case when seeking funding. Our business bankers are deeply rooted in the community and can direct you to other professionals who can offer additional guidance. They also can give you a realistic outlook of the state of the local economy. Lastly, they can help you understand what tools can help you streamline operations and the types of funding you may qualify for.

Before you move your business forward, take time to assess the past and current business climate. Timing is everything in business, so if you’re planning to launch a new product line or service or expand into new markets, do your research to ensure that there’s enough demand before investing precious resources.

Return to the business plan you used to start your small business, and update it to project future growth. If you’re looking to scale your business, hire more staff or streamline your processes, you should iron out your current model to make sure you can grow steadily without sacrificing quality or your core business. Once you’ve worked out the details, update your business plan and to outline your business expansion plan.

Once you’ve figured out your business expansion plan, you’ll want to consider updating or developing a formal marketing strategy. Growing your business will involve new internal and external audiences as well as stakeholders. Outlining how you’ll communicate with these new audiences, both online and offline, are necessary when any change is upon a business, especially a small business. Investing the time and money in developing a scheduled marketing plan, with a dedicated budget, is wise. Focus your marketing efforts on the tactics that deliver the highest return on investment (ROI) and align best with your brand image. You can also run this by your business counselor and banker for objective feedback.

When you are ready to grow your business and have developed and reviewed your business and marketing plans, a Paducah Bank business banker can help you understand your financing options. Depending on your purpose for expanding your small business, you can look into applying for a working capital loan, short term or long-term business loan, real estate acquisition and development loans, commercial real estate loans, credit cards, and other small business lending options.