Business Growth Blog

If you have a business, mission, or objective that you're passionate about, you're probably excited to get the word out and make things happen. The hardest - and most essential - part of advancement and growth is building the team, processes, and systems that enable you to accomplish your objectives. As technological advances speed up and customers shift ever faster from one platform to the next, building a collaborative team of specialists is essential for sustainability and growth. Whom you choose to bring into your inner circle and place trust in to help advance your mission is essential to your outcomes. So how do you know who to trust?

It can be challenging to step out of the grind of everyday work to attend conferences, but in a fast-paced industry like marketing, it's vital to stay up on the trends. I went to HyperGrowth in Boston a while back, a marketing conference put on by Drift, a technology company that focuses on bots and conversational marketing. There was a good mix of motivational, strategic, and tactical ideas and insights about success and growing a business.

I took notes during the presentations and recapped the key takeaways in this article. Here are eight progressive business growth strategies that the speakers discussed throughout the day. The overarching theme between HyperGrowth and Inbound (an adjacent marketing conference) was customer experience.

The first place potential customers will learn about your business is most likely from your social media profiles or website. What they see there will either engage them and make them want to learn more or turn them away. If your online presence is weak, you’re putting your company at a huge disadvantage and missing out on business opportunities. Here are a few stats that show why it’s critical to invest in your online presence:

I've been working as a sales and marketing consultant for various businesses for over six years now, and there is a lot of 2 steps forward and 1 step back going on. My Dad found this comic and clipped it out of the paper for me. He thought I'd get a kick out of it, and I do! :-)

It’s easy for business leaders to become entrenched in day-to-day operations. Time gets swallowed by constantly arising challenges and issues that need “immediate” attention.

As my Dad always tells my kids, “You have to dribble with your head up so you can see what’s happening on the court!” It’s the same in business: you have to figure out a way to juggle the day-to-day responsibilities while thinking broadly and long-term about your business.

Most modern marketers will tell you that you need to invest in inbound marketing activities (blogging, email marketing, and social media) to get new customers. It will drive website traffic and leads, and your company will grow by leaps and bounds.

That is true, but what they might not tell you is that it takes time for that method alone to start generating high quality leads (and it will never generate them if you miss the mark on the kind of content you're creating). What are you supposed to do in the meantime?

We know that traditional marketing activities, like cold calling and direct mail, aren't very effective for the amount of effort you have to put in. That leaves most companies in a conundrum. They walk a fine line between traditional and modern marketing and feel frustration that nothing seems to be working.

I was recently contacted by a company that needed some help fixing a problem they were having with their marketing. When I looked at their analytics, I was quite shocked. This is what I saw:

*Disclaimer: Moon Marketing was not involved in these results!

My contact (we'll call her Sally) said that things were going pretty smoothly, but about a year-and-a-half ago they decided to take it up a notch. They hired a company to help them with their marketing strategies, including blogging and social media.

Sally was expecting things to increase at a faster rate, but unfortunately the scale tilted the wrong way. What the heck happened?