Innovative Questions All Small Businesses Need to Ask to Succeed

Small business owners want their idea to be successful, and they want their business to grow. But it can be difficult to see your business through a different lens when you are so close to it - so asking some simple, intuitive questions about your offering will make all the difference.

It is important that you regularly review these questions as the answers might change as you grow and develop - and it is a great exercise to ensure that you are positioned properly in the market.

Question: What Problem is Solved?

Consumers want to find a solution for a problem; that is why they are spending money. It might be something as innocuous as clothing, or something more specialized like tax advice.

You need to be able to clearly demonstrate the problem that you are solving, and where that solution sits in the marketplace. You should have a unique selling point that will drive customers to choose your brand, especially when there are other options available.

Question: How Do You Make Money?

This question might sound like a no-brainer - of course, you make money by selling your product or service. But on the granular level, you need to be sure that you are achieving a consistent income.

Start with cash flow and payments from customers. How do they pay? Through Intuit Business checks, cash, online payments, card? Are payments up front or do you have credit terms?

Does your cash in outweigh your cash out? Sometimes payments received do not align with payments that your business might need to make, to suppliers or similar. This means you need to have cash available to cover this.

How can you make more money? You might want to look at your budget and plans and think about sloughing off any products or services that are not making money (or perhaps losing it).

Employee effectiveness comes into this too. Are your employees offering value for money? Are they generating income, or providing an effective service?

Question: Do You Have Loyal Customers?

Although you will want to attract new customers, it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, so building loyalty should be a priority.

You can do this through the quality of your service or product, but also by offering repeat customers incentives to stay with you. This might look like a loyalty scheme (such as coffee shop cards where a certain number of purchases offers a free coffee) or extra services.

Loyalty can also be rewarded by referral schemes. Happy customers tell their friends about their service - and so do unhappy ones. By offering some sort of referral scheme, you can take advantage of simple marketing, where people trust the opinions of others when choosing a new brand.

Question: Are You Visible?

We live in an increasingly online world, so if your brand has no presence on social media or even a website, you could be missing out on customer acquisition.

Every business, at the very least, should have a website. This might be a simple placeholder site with limited pages, just establishing the basics and giving customers a place to check out what you can do.

Social media is one of the biggest growth areas when it comes to marketing. You need to know where your customers are spending their time and ensure that you are creating content on that platform that is engaging and interesting - so that you can build trust and your reputation.

In some ways, social media marketing can be the most cost-effective way to advertise, if you do it right. You will need a proper strategy, of course, but with the right engagement you could build brand awareness, grow your audience, and generate those all-important leads.

These are some basic questions that should apply to almost all businesses, but as a business owner you should be considering these and more to ensure that your business can grow effectively.