If you’re a small business owner, you’ll know that investing is the key to growth. If you fail to invest appropriately, your rivals will comfortably overtake you. However, properly targeting your investment is simpler than you think, as long as you follow the essentials. You can either invest in yourself, or invest your cash in other ventures.

Know your customers

Do you know your audience?

Your audience and customer base are vital to your business, and you should know them like the back of your hand. As a result, you should spend time and money creating realistic audience profiles and personas. Consider what you should know about your average customer:

• Gender
• Age
• Hobbies
• Expendable income
• Location

And much, much more. Once you’ve created your profiles, you’ll have an excellent idea of who your customers actually are. These profiles can then be used to inform what type of stock to buy and what type of marketing activity you undertake. Your Google analytics data can help you pull these profiles together, as can external agencies and YouGov’s profiling tool. Time will be your biggest investment here, but it’s invaluable.

Technology

Once you’ve got the right customers through the door, you need to ensure that you can get them to spend as much money as possible in as little time as possible. From cloud computing to social media channels to automated check outs, there are many ways that technology and automation can improve your business.

Generally speaking, technology will improve the efficiency of your business, allowing you to process orders faster and serve more customers in a shorter period of time.

From installing contactless card payments at your tills to automating your ordering systems, the money that you spend will be recuperated in only a couple of months thanks to the increase in efficiency.

There are lots of other ways you can invest your money in your business, too. But, what about external investments?

Investing in currency: Foreign exchange

It’s true. Money makes the world go round. As such, the foreign exchange market is the largest and most liquid in the world; which makes it ripe for investment.

As such, if you’re looking to diversify your investment portfolio, forex is a great investment. Plus, if you opt for trading with a specialist firm, such as Sucden Financial, you’ll also be eligible for physical delivery to suit your commercial requirements.

All of your forex trades can be run through your business, so you can receive a level of liquidity that matches your needs as a business owner and investor.

To conclude, whether you’re investing in your business physically or diversifying your portfolio and investing elsewhere, your business can grow to outstrip your rivals – just ensure you invest carefully.