Starting a small scale business can be easy but finding the right strategies to grow your online business from scratch can be very tasking for businesses in developing countries.
Compared to entrepreneurs in some developed countries, most times, there are no clearly documented strategies that could get you from point A to B, tailor made for your business, based on your local realities.
This sad truth has pushed many upcoming entrepreneurs with promising ideas to adopt strategies that’s incompatible with their realities. And oftentimes, this has only led to catastrophic outcomes.
As someone who’s run a business in a developing country and worked with businesses in both developing and developed countries, over the years, I found that although there are universal business principles that work across regions, some business strategies are local.
That said, in the following paragraphs I will be sharing with you some of the top homegrown strategies you can use to start and grow your small scale business below…
Separate Facts from Myths
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One of the popular misconceptions about founding a business is the myth that your business is poised to become the next Facebook, poised to change the world.
As exciting as this may sound, you have to realize that for every successful business idea that changed the world, there are tens of thousands of other business ideas that failed to see the light of the day. Allow this to sink in.
So, to build and grow your online business successfully, before getting started, you want to ask yourself, what are the odds that my business idea will fall into the one percent of the one percent successful ideas?
Now, while you’re trying to answer that question, you have to also keep the following in mind, before starting a tech business:
- Planning Ahead: Starting and building a successful small scale business is not as simple as those digital marketers tell you in their eBooks. There are going to be ups and downs, good days and bad days. And a lot of planning to get you through.
- Using tailor made strategies: You can pick out or model other successful ideas and strategies but, learning to evolve what works for you using data, your local realities and your own business journey is very important.
Get rid of the idea that starting a digital business or a small scale business is less complicated or will not require the same smart thinking, resilience and pragmatism that will be required by any major business idea because it will.
Regardless of how small it is, start out with a decent business plan and a workable system that will bring your ideas to life.
Transition from Hobby to Business
As far as there’s an existing market and other resources, you can start a business from your hobby but to build and grow your online business successfully, you must see your former hobby as a business, as soon as you get started.
So, if you’re building a writing business for example and writing is something you do as a hobby, whenever you have the chance, the moment you get started as a business, you begin to run it as and on schedule.
Now, transitioning like this can be quite difficult for starter but it is very crucial to work with this mindset if you must grow your business. And you can take some steps to get started.
For example, you can ask yourself questions like:
- Why am I doing this? Find out why exactly you want to move from a hobby to a full scale business. Finding a Why will give you some sort of clarity and ideas on how to achieve your goal.
- What’s my Goal?; You can work on your hobby without any specific goal but to grow a business successfully, identifying your goals gets you an idea on what you want to achieve. And with this, you can create some sort of plan that will get you to achieve the goals.
- How will I break Even?: Growth is about moving from point A to B and so on. To grow your tech business, you need a plan that will outline the steps to take from when you get started till when the business becomes profitable. PS: This doesn’t have to be elaborate.
The reason for getting this sorted is simple. While a hobby is something you can do at anytime, without consequences, to grow a successful business of any kind, you must be very intentional about taking steps that will lead to growth.
You also have to show up when it’s time. Build systems and models. Attend to clients and give your business all the attention it deserves.
Build Systems
Successful businesses run on systems. To grow an online business from zero to multiple zeros in profit, you need a workable system that will deliver consistent outcomes.
By systems, I am referring to a set of practices, principles, procedures and workable templates that are applied to a specific activity to deliver specific outcomes.
These systems should be easily re-usable so that you don’t have to create new designs each time you want to use them.
For example, if you’re going to do a lot of email marketing for your business, instead of coming up with a new email structure all the time, create templates that can be used for your purposes.
Where you have a blog for your business, your readers and potential clients should be able to know the kind of content you create, depth and length of your post and days you’ll post online.
If it’s about design or other services, clients should be able to tell what softwares you use, what to expect as outcomes and how their jobs will be delivered.
As you continue to grow your online business, your fans and or clients should also be able to identify the way you do your stuff from others.
Unlike your hobby which you’re doing whenever you have time, basically for the love of it, your online business should be distinguished and attended to as something that your aspirations and that of so many others will depend on.
You should be able to see it as your work. Have a well defined schedule for carrying out business related tasks and stick to it.
If you’re a solo entrepreneur or working with a very lean team in your early days, you can simplify things by writing down all your business related activities and allocating specific hours and days to them, based on your schedule.
Allocate your Time Wisely
As an entrepreneur, time is one of the most valuable resources you’ll ever have. Unfortunately, like every other person, you have the same 24 hours we all have in one day.
So, managing your time effectively is going to be one of the biggest decisions you’ll make for your business, especially if you’re running a one man business or a lean startup with just a few staff.
To create a balance, I divide my time into productive and non productive hours. The productive hours are spent on tasks that generate income while the non productive hours are spent on other activities that are not work related.
Supposing you’re operating a very lean startup in a country with very unsteady electricity supply, you might even want to divide your time into hours you’ll have electricity and hours you won’t etc.
Let’s call this division, Recurrent and Capital hours.
Every single day, your recurrent hours are going to be spent on those tasks you’re going to do over and again which might not add direct increments to the money you’re making through your business.
You can call this the normal day to day activities like sleeping, doing house chores, attending non work related meetings, hooking up family and friends and other non money generating business activities etc.
Your capital hours on the other hand are going to be spent on everything you do that will in one way or the other grow your business or add more money to your bank account.
These capital tasks may include: Writing your blog and social media posts, Promoting these posts, Building and tweaking your brand reputation, Writing free books etc.
You have to be able to understand where each of these activities will come in, how many hours you’ll allocate to each of them and how you’re going to stick to this schedule, in order to grow your business.
Read this post to learn more about how to boost your productivity as a small business.
Don’t Quit your Job Immediately
As someone starting an online business, don’t put all your eggs in one basket by quitting your job or whatever you’re doing to focus entirely on your small scale business.
No. It’s not advisable. It’s better you start your tech business as a side gig. Focus on what’s already paying your bills while building up your business by the side.
Unless you have a lot of funding from scratch, you should only focus fully on your new business when it has started generating adequate income to the point you’re confident it can sustain you.
Quitting your job to start a business without a strong financial backup can be suicidal.
It will lead you to expecting an instant returns on investment (based on the effort you’re putting in) even when it’s not yet time.
And when these expectations are not realized immediately, it can lead to discouragement. And you may even feel like quitting at this stage.
This is one of the main reasons so many digital businesses failed, after the first few months. If you want to survive past your first few years as a business, don’t quit on your job immediately. You need the income to keep your business floating.
Don’t niche-down Immediately
If you can do more than one aspect of a digital business, do it. Don’t focus only on one single aspects of your business, as soon as you get started.
Supposing you’re a graphics designer and you can also do digital photography, add it up.
To grow an online business successfully, diversify your offers. Provide complimentary offers. Serve as many related client base as you can.
You can then micro niche your business to a particular aspect of the business you want at a time you might have gathered clients and adequate capital, to help you target a particular micro niche.
Some other established digital entrepreneurs are going to ask you to niche down as soon as you get started. This doesn’t work all the time. Especially in most developing economies.
Depending on your market and target audience if you want to grow your startups successfully, forget about niching down or focusing on a very tiny audience at the early stages. That won’t help you.
As a new business in a developing country, to keep growing you need a large client base. And to get this started quite easily, you need a lot more than just one offer.
When you feel satisfied with your established client base, you can then niche-down to focus on a few more sophisticated target audience.
Brace up for the Down Times
Most businesses are not prepared for down times. But, in reality, there are always going to be both the good and bad times for businesses.
There are going to be intervals where you experience an upsurge in growth, slow growth and even zero growth.
To build and grow an online business successfully, you need to plan ahead for either of these days.
Plan ahead by taking some drastic measures that will keep you in business if or whenever you experience a downturn.
The following are some measures you can put in place to prepare ahead of time;
Save; One of the first ways to brace up for any eventuality is to save. Saving ahead can help you in cases of any urgent monetary needs so you don’t have to spend all you make from your business.
Plan Ahead; Even when your plans may not work the way you want all of the time, planning ahead gives you heads up on what to do, if there’s any eventuality.
Create Systems; Put up some ideas together to take care of eventualities like customer satisfaction issues, massive increase in client request, content automation etc.
In any case, whether you’re running an online or offline business, you’ll do well to remember that all business go through different stages of growth.
Yours can be slow or faster and then slow… However it turns out, brace up and get ready for the bloom days and slow days.
Build your Credibility
Small businesses thrive on credibility. As a small scale business owner, you probably have a lot of big names competing against you on the fringes.
You naturally may not have what it takes to compete against these big fishes but you can build for yourself credibility, by evolving a brand that delivers on its promise.
Instead of competing against the big brands, find out the blue ocean areas. Identify what these brands are not doing for their clients. Focus on doing these things exceptionally well.
Understand, running a small business or an online business in particular is slightly different from doing your business offline.
So, there are things you won’t take for granted if you’re planning grow an online business successfully.
Things like honesty should form a core part of your value system. I had to write that boldly…
Because you’ll have to do more than enough to get people who’ll probably never meet you physically, to trust you with their money.
Focus on delivering your job excellently and as expected to clients. And finally, build thought leadership.
Build your Circle
In most part of the developing world, there are not a lot of support systems that will give you a buffer as you grow your business but you can build your own for the rainy days.
Starting with peers, you can build a relationship with other entrepreneurs in your niche, industry or region where you can get support, exchange ideas and grow together.
To get business funding, you can join contributions, collaborate on project or partner to build or carry out projects that are beyond your individual capacities while sharing the proceeds.
Furthermore, you can find role models, mentors and industry leaders both locally and internationally. These should be people you can relate to their growth story etc.
You don’t necessarily have to contact or interact with them frequently but you can learn from a distance or closely, depending on what works for you.
Final Words
Be it a startup, small business or an enterprise, it’s possible to build and grow your business successfully from scratch but while at it, pay attention to these things you just read today.
Also, keep a clear picture of where you’re going with your business. Be able to create a convincing picture of what you want to achieve in the long run, where you’ll be in 2-5 years and what you’re going to do to get to that destination.
Always refer to this picture during those days you get discouraged. Hang it somewhere you can see it more often.
And finally, understand that commitment to your business is not the absence of other options… Commitment is a decision to stick to something you believe in… Because you’re convinced it’s going to turn out successful, against all odds.
Now, there you have the key strategies to build a small scale business in Nigeria and other developing countries. For further assistance, reach out to our support team let’s hold you by the hand to build a successful business.
Now, it’s over to you. So, what’s your biggest challenge as a small business entrepreneur? Drop your comments below.
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