Growing Your Small Business

Growing Your Small Business

As a proud small business owner, you’ve established your business, taken the time to build your finances and discovered what has worked and what has not. Now, you are ready to move to the next phase of small business ownership – business expansion and growing your profitability. As a leading small business lender in OH, MI, IN, PA, our Business Specialists can offer helpful advice on creating your business case and ironing out the details of your business growth strategy.

Although you learned a lot when you started your business, growing and funding an existing business is a slightly different experience than financing a start-up. Read how to grow your business with these simple but essential steps in your small business ownership journey.

Small Business Expansion

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, ramp up 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.

Seek Business Advice & Do Your Research

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.

Update Your Business Plan

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 to outline your business expansion plan.

Update or Develop a Marketing 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.

Seek Financing to Expand Your Business

When you are ready to grow your business and have developed and reviewed your business and marketing plans, a Premier Bank Business Specialist can help you understand your financing options.

Depending on your purpose for expanding your small business, you can look into applying for business financing for a variety of purposes:

• To increase short-term cash flow needs or inventory
• An Equipment Loan to buy a new building or facility or other fixed assets
• An SBA or USDA loan for financing a variety of needs including working capital, real estate and equipment
• An Agriculture Loan or line of credit to keep your farm running smooth
• Commercial Real Estate Loans to finance a variety of commercial properties
• A Construction Loan to help you build a new residential property, industrial or warehouse, financing office, retail, multi-family or other mixed use construction
• A Commercial Credit Card to help you improve cash flow and speed up payments with suppliers

Trust Premier Bank to find the proper business solutions and resources to help you grow your business. As a Small Business Administration (SBA) Preferred Lender, we are experienced at helping small business grow and thrive in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania . Our local decision-making means your business loan closes quickly. Contact us today to get talking about growing your OH, MI, IN, or PA business.