How to grow a transport business

Most self-employed individuals have the eventual goal of growing and developing their business, as a larger business means more income. Transport businesses are no different: whether you run a taxi service or drive a delivery van, you’ll need to grow your company to get more customers and increase your income.

This article will provide a guide on how to grow a transport business. We’ll look at a wide variety of business development strategies, including:

• Expand your target market
• Analyse your operating costs
• Expand your network
• Manage your increased income with Countingup

A target market is the group of people who are most interested in your product or service and most likely to buy it. Most businesses focus their marketing activities on growing their target market and maintaining the interest of those already part of the group.

To grow your transport business, you’ll need to increase your customers. A high-quality advertising campaign or marketing strategy can help add people to your target market, but you’ll need to research other potential markets before enacting this strategy. The first step in researching other markets is considering the services you offer and who they appeal to. 

For instance, say you operate a local taxi service, and your target market at the moment is people who use you for their commute. If the service you offer is as simple and as broadly appealing as this, you have many potential markets to gain customers from. 

Here’s a couple of examples of markets you can target to try to grow your business. By advertising near bars and nightclubs, you can add people coming home from nights out to your target market. Or you could advertise near supermarkets and offer to take those without cars home with their weekly shopping.

If you offer a service that’s a little more specialised, you may need to engage in some product development before you can expand your market. In the case of a transport company, product development would mean researching new services you can offer since you don’t sell any physical products. 

This might require a cash investment since the vehicles you own will limit the services your transport company can offer. For example, say your primary business is delivering products for local companies, and you have a good relationship with a contact that owns a catering company. An excellent way to expand your market and grow your business would be to start transporting that company’s food, but you would need to buy a refrigerated van first. 

In general, the more cash you have, the easier it will be to grow your business. This is because you can use this money to buy new equipment, vehicles, or property and invest in new marketing campaigns to attract more customers. If you’re short on cash, one of the best ways to find more is to analyse your operating expenses.

By analysing your operating expenses, you might find things you’re spending too much on, or that you don’t need to be spending money on at all. For a transport company, operating expenses include fuel, vehicle insurance and (if you have employees) driver’s salaries. By cutting down on fuel costs or finding cheaper insurance, you’ll have more money available for business development.

If you have a business account, you’ll have a much easier time identifying your operating costs because those transactions will be entirely separate from your personal purchases. Countingup offers a great business account, which is especially good for tracking operating expenses because of its real-time profit and loss reporting.

A profit and loss statement is a financial document that shows how much money your company has made and lost over a set period. The Countingup app shows a real-time view of your profits and losses, updating as you make transactions on the business account. This means you’ll be able to see and record any operating expenses as soon as they go onto your account. 

Growing your business doesn’t just mean increasing your sales. Although this is an important part of the process, another vital part of business development is expanding your network. A large network of contacts that can aid your business is essential. The more contacts you have, the more opportunities that’ll be available to your business.

There are hundreds of ways to expand your network. Even something as simple as letting your friends know about your business can help, as those friends might know someone in the transport industry interested in working with you. 

Other great methods of building your network include attending networking events for your industry and advertising your business on social media to attract new contacts. Creating a company website is also an excellent tactic, as by having an online presence you’ll be able to find useful contacts from outside your local area.

If you’re successful in your push for growth within your transport business, you’ll likely notice a significant increase in your number of customers. More customers mean more income, which in turn means you might need to put more time into your financial management. 

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. 

Find out more here.