online business

5 tips to scale your online business

Written By James Kisielew

24 January 2024
Blog
Business Financing
Canada
SEO
Social media

As a small business owner, you’re always looking for ways to grow your business. However, while growth is good, it isn’t always sustainable. That’s why it’s important to learn how to scale your business – growth that is deliberate, sustainable, and long-term.

Growing vs Scaling Your Business

Growing your online business often focuses on getting new customers, entering new markets, and expanding your product or service offerings. But without the proper systems and processes in place, rapid growth can lead to operational chaos. This is where scaling comes into play.

Scaling is a strategic and structured approach to handle growth effectively. It involves optimizing processes, improving efficiency, and ensuring that your business can handle increased demand without compromising quality.

While growth is about reaching new heights, scaling is about building a solid foundation to sustain those heights. And although there is no one formula, there are common steps to consider. Check out these 5 tips on how to successfully scale your online business.

1. Plan Ahead

Strategic planning plays a pivotal role in ensuring sustainable growth and success. Your first step is to set realistic goals for your business’s growth (they can be quarterly or yearly). This gives you time to prepare and determine what resources you will need for your next milestone. Planning ahead can help you:

  • Mitigate risks: Anticipate challenges to help you proactively address potential pitfalls and minimize the impact on your business.
  • Optimize resources: Allocate your resources more efficiently to ensure you have what you need to support the scaling process.
  • Adapt to market changes: Understand your business’s market to help you adjust quickly to market shifts and stay ahead of the competition.
  • Achieve financial stability: Safeguard your business’s financial health by providing a safety net during periods of growth and investment.

2. Hire Strategically

Scaling your business means you may no longer be able to do everything yourself.
And that’s a good thing! When the time is right, building a team that complements your goals and vision can help you with:

  • Specialized expertise: Strategic hires can bring specialized skills and fill gaps in your business’s capabilities.
  • Scalability: Employees with a growth mindset can help scale your business, as they’ll be able to adapt seamlessly to increasing demands.
  • Innovation: Talented people bring innovation, drive creativity, and can provide fresh perspectives to help propel your business forward.

3. Leverage Technology and AI

Embrace technology and AI to help you achieve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer engagement and experience. Leveraging the right technology and AI for your business can help:

  • Boost automation: AI streamlines repetitive tasks, enhances operational efficiency, and allows you to focus on more important tasks.
  • Provide data-driven insights: Technology can provide invaluable data insights, enabling informed decision-making and targeted strategies for growth.
  • Personalize experiences: AI can help you create unique customer experiences by analyzing customer data to determine their preferences. This can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Support scalability: Tech solutions can often scale seamlessly, adapting to the increased demands of a growing business without compromising performance.

4. Consider outsourcing

If there’s an aspect of your business you struggle with, it’s only going to get harder as you scale up. Determine what parts of your business would benefit from expertise you don’t have and look into third-party services that can help you out. Outsourcing can help your business:

  • Acquire specialized skills: Tap into the expertise of external professionals (for example, a marketing agency).
  • Focus on core competencies: Delegate routine tasks to a third party so you can focus on what you do best.
  • Be flexible: Scale your team up or down based on your business’s needs.

5. Find New Capital

Simply put, scaling your online business costs money. It’s important to seek outside financing to achieve your goals and keep your cash flowing. When you’re ready to secure more capital to fund your business growth sustainably, Journey Capital can help.

Journey Capital helps small businesses with three types of business financing solutions. Which one’s the best for you?

  • Fixed term loans: Our business term loans offer a short-term infusion of capital to help you achieve your growth targets.
  • Line of credit: Take only what you need from your business line of credit and you’ll only be charged for what you use. We also offer flexible repayment options, including both fixed and variable. Find out if a line of credit makes sense for your business.
  • Flex funds: Our flex funds advance allow you to leverage future sales to access capital today. Repayment is based on a percentage of your daily sales. Learn everything you need to know about flex funds here.

Unlike traditional banks, Journey Capital’s solutions are fast and efficient. Simply complete the application (under 10 minutes), review your options with a dedicated lending advisor, and get your funds in as little as 24 hours. It’s that easy. Apply online here or reach a dedicated lending advisor at (855) 704-7458.