8 ways to expand your home business without leaving home

1. Double down on your online presence.
More than half of consumers, 59 percent to be exact, use Google in hopes of finding a trusted local business. Even if you’re a one-person business, using a 5-year-old website and your personal network isn’t good enough anymore. Update your website so your landing page is up to date and make sure your website works well on mobile devices too. If you don’t have the skills to revamp your own website and don’t have the funds to hire someone to do it for you, you can start with DIY tools like Wix or Squarespace. While these tools won’t provide as original a result as a fully customized site would, the drag-and-drop design tools will allow you to create a compelling website that lists the information your customers need to know.

2. Measure your success online.
If you really want to grow your business, you need to figure out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to your website. Fortunately, there are plenty of analytics tools out there that can tell you how consumers are interacting with your website. A good place to start is with Google Analytics, a free and easy-to-use tool that offers robust features. Google Analytics allows you to track traffic, see how users are behaving, and identify any issues in your conversion funnel.

3. Take advantage of the freelance economy.
As you expand your home-based business, there are many tasks that need to be done, but might not justify a whole new hire. Fortunately, in today’s world, the freelance economy is growing, and hiring someone on a project basis is easier than ever. Even if you want to do something complicated like build an app or turn your old business website into a mobile-responsive one, platforms like Toptal can connect you with freelancers for that task. Once the job is done, you don’t have to keep them on the payroll, ensuring your business doesn’t pay for idle hands.

4. Automate your marketing campaign.
Email is a powerful tool for converting new customers and keeping past customers loyal to your business, but emailing your entire customer or consumer list is a time-consuming process. MailChimp is a service that automates your entire email campaign system and offers easy-to-use drag-and-drop design tools and helpful analytics to boot. Using an automation tool for your email marketing needs will save you time and make your campaigns more efficient.

5. Improve your customer service.
In today’s world, consumers expect great products with great service. In fact, 66 percent of customers will take their business to a competitor if they experience poor customer service at a company. To build brand loyalty and a great reputation, start using cloud-based customer support tools like Freshdesk, which provides a single place to keep track of all customer inquiries, as well as automating many steps. of the interaction with the customer. This will help you quickly answer all customer questions and save time at the same time.

6. Grow your presence on social media.
The average internet user spends 1.72 hours every day on social media, making social media platforms valuable places for your business to attract new customers. Services like Hootsuite let you manage all your social media accounts in a single dashboard, automate posts, and track the success of all your engagements. Hootsuite not only reduces the amount of time you need to spend managing social media, but it will also help you develop a stronger insight into your audience’s behaviors.

7. Track your time.
When you run a business alone or with just one or two co-workers, time management is critical to success. With so many different roles to play within your business, it’s hard to juggle multiple responsibilities. Time trackers like Toggl help him structure his day and make sure he doesn’t spend too much time on one task. If you want to track time all the time, Harvest is a great option for coordinating everyone in your business and delegating time and responsibilities appropriately.

8. Streamline your payroll.
If your business has reached the point where you are expanding your team, congratulations. It’s a big step forward, but managing payroll can be a pain when you’re too small to have an HR person running your business. Tools like Zenefits and Gusto provide software to handle payroll, employee benefits, and taxes. With these services, you’ll find software that provides a neat and organized solution for onboarding and documentation, and you won’t need to hire someone in HR until your business grows significantly.