6 Helpful Tips for Growing Your Home-Based Business

Many new business owners take their first steps into entrepreneurship by running a business from their homes. Entrepreneurs of all experience levels also run home-based businesses for a variety of reasons, from saving on operating costs to providing a practical workspace for business owners with disabilities. 

A home-based business has the same goals as just about any business: Provide a great product or service, turn a profit and grow your customer base. But it can be tricky to achieve the growth you’re looking for when starting off on a small scale. So, for all of those independent home-based entrepreneurs out there, we’ll talk about a few things in this article that will help your business grow and flourish toward new horizons of volume and profitability. 

Why does your business exist? What is the core value that you provide to your customers? What separates you from the competition? These are the questions any new home business owner should ask themselves to determine how they can best steer their business toward growth. Get some questions like these down on a whiteboard wall sticker and spend some time puzzling them out. 

When you’re running a fledgling home-based business, efficient use of resources is particularly important because you’re likely working with limited space and/or funds. Thus, it’s critical to be able to stretch your existing resources farther, and (at first, at least) that means specializing and refining. 

Your best potential for growth, in the beginning, will come when your business is focused on pushing its strongest products or services. Why? Because these offerings are the ones most likely not just to convert new customers but to give them the kind of experience that creates brand loyalty and interest in your other products and services.

Once your business has established a steady initial stream of customers, it’s important to make plans for taking things to the next level of growth. What that next level is varies by the type of business, but it will usually involve some kind of expansion. That might mean any of the following:

Any of these can provide a stepping stone into the next level. Think about your long-term goals for your business and, if necessary, use a tool such as a dry erase calendar wall decal to chart out milestones you want to hit by certain dates. 

Running your business from your home is no excuse to slack off when it comes to record-keeping. You’ll need to keep most of the same records that any business owner keeps, including: 

Make sure that you’re familiar with taxation rules specific to your business type (such as a sole proprietorship or LLC), as these can significantly change your paperwork requirements. It’s a good idea to have a tax professional’s help with the finer points of taxation on home-based businesses, especially since these laws are different in every state. Speaking of which, that’s what our next tip is about. 

It’s easy to see yourself as a singular unit when you have a home-based business, but you’ll have a much easier time if you don’t try to shoulder every burden yourself. In some cases, you’ll put yourself at a significant disadvantage by taking it all on alone, especially when you need highly specialized services such as those of an attorney. 

The initial expense of hiring outside help might seem like it would be a hindrance to your ability to grow, but the opposite is actually true. These are investments in your business’s stability that will give you a structure that allows further growth. A business owner who tries to perform specialized functions that they’re not trained for risks destabilizing their business at critical moments, so take the time now to form connections with professionals you can trust. 

Much like any business, home-based businesses need to market and advertise their products if they want to grow. Fortunately, today’s marketing landscape offers a large variety of tools that require fewer substantial investments of resources upfront. The best way for most of today’s small business owners to advertise is to explore the many digital marketing options available, from social media ad buys to search engine optimization marketing. 

The major advantage that many of these ad platforms offer is that they’re compatible with web-based analytics platforms (sometimes built-in ones) that allow business owners to track conversions, clicks, and other important metrics for growth. Learn to use and analyze these powerful digital tools, and you’ll likely find that your ad dollars are creating more growth than ever. 

With conditions for small businesses as difficult as they’ve ever been, it’s important for small businesses to stick together and help each other thrive. There are many great things that businesses can do when they work together, including sponsoring community events and offering cross-promotion discounts that synergize with other local businesses. 

Local government and civic organizations can also provide great resources for helping your home-based business grow. If you haven’t already reached out to your local chamber of commerce, do it. These organizations are designed to provide support for business owners, and they may be able to connect you with resources that will help your small business grow.