10 Ideas to Grow Your Small Business in 2026

Download Our FREE Insurance Guide

Learn everything you need to protect your small business.

Your email address will be used by Zensurance to provide latest news, offers and tips.
You can unsubscribe at any time.

1. Train an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Assistant

Estimates of how many Canadian small businesses use artificial intelligence (AI) vary considerably.

For instance, the results of a 2024 Business Development Bank of Canada survey indicate that 66% of small to mid-sized businesses use some AI tool for at least one business function. Meanwhile, a 2025 Microsoft survey suggests that 71% of small businesses use AI, including generative AI. However, in a 2025 Statistics Canada survey, only 12.2% of businesses reported using AI to produce goods or deliver services.

Estimates aside, it’s worthwhile for small business owners to explore using AI tools. For example, using ChatGPT or similar generative AI tools may help boost productivity and drive new sales.

For example, build simple chatbots for FAQs and lead captures and track the hours your team saves weekly.

Additionally, integrating AI into your workflows can help analyze sales data and streamline operations so you and your employees can get more done efficiently.

2. Personalize Customer Experiences

Provide exceptional customer service by being highly attentive and responsive to individual customer needs and concerns.

After a purchase, always follow up with a thank-you email offering further assistance. This practice demonstrates genuine care, builds trust, and can lead to future business.

Additionally, using SMS (text) as a personalized follow-up to conversations with customers can keep your business top-of-mind and increase conversion rates – get them to opt-in first! – as well as using direct messages on social media to send special discount notifications to juice sales during downtimes. 

3. Diversify Your Revenue Streams

You might specialize in providing certain products or services, but that doesn’t mean you can’t leverage your expertise to diversify your business and drive more revenue.

For example, a restaurant chef can host virtual cooking classes, a florist can offer a monthly delivery subscription to customers, or a yoga instructor could provide nutritional coaching to their students. 

Selling holiday or themed bundles at a discount and offering gift cards can also boost cash flow and help convert prospects into paying customers. And if you need to increase prices, try doing it in a smart way by rolling out tiered product packages gradually that can help spike sales.

Furthermore, if your small business doesn’t have an e-commerce channel, set one up and embrace online selling and social commerce. It’s easy to set up an online store on Amazon, Etsy, or Shopify to start selling your inventory online and on social media. Doing so can expand your customer reach and smooth over seasonal dips in customer demand.

4. Get Direct With Your Audience, But Keep It Human

Direct communication with prospects and customers can drive new and repeat business and help build a community to create an engaged, loyal customer base.

For example, using educational “drip” emails to prospects and customers with weekly tips helps to build trust and position your business as the experts people need, and launch an email and SMS combo campaign for prospects or those who abandon shopping carts instead of finalizing a sale.

And don’t discount the use of a good old-fashioned phone call – some of your customers may prefer talking to a real human being rather than interacting via email, text, or social chat.

5. Enhance Digital Marketing & Sell Where Your Customers Hang Out

There are many affordable steps your business can take to up its digital marketing game, such as:

• Creating and sharing micro-content – such as short-form videos on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube – will continue to attract customers’ attention in 2026. Share quick demos of your products or services, customer spotlights and testimonials, and brief how-to guides.

• Add Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok Shops to your social channels. If you host or participate at events, enable tap-to-pay options to make in-person checkouts quick.

• Optimize your website for conversions, not just looks, by adding clear calls-to-action, displaying trust boosters on your site (like Trustpilot and Google Reviews ratings), and ensuring your site works smoothly on mobile devices.

• Strengthen your local SEO (search engine optimization) and AEO (artificial engine optimization) for AI-generated searches by using relevant keywords and service locations.

• Keep your Google My Business profile updated with current information, photos, contact details and links.

• Track your site’s performance using Google Analytics to see what your top-performing blog article posts are, where your website traffic is coming from, what your click-through rates are on social media, and to identify what is and isn’t resonating with your target audience.

6. Offer Post-Sale Support

Follow up with your customers after they’ve purchased from you with a thank-you email or phone call, and offer a gift or a discount on future purchases. Let them know you’re available to assist if they are not pleased with what they bought and offer to make it right for them.

Showing you care beyond the initial sale speaks volumes to customers and shows your business is trustworthy, and can encourage them to return to your store or site.

7. Make Strategic Partnerships Your Growth Engine

Get active in your community by forging partnerships with other local business owners, and swap audiences with complementary businesses and collaborate with them.

There may be opportunities to share resources, co-bundle products, or offer special deals together, and to refer potential customers to each other.

8. Launch a Referral Program

Rewarding paying customers who refer others to buy from you drives loyalty. Offer your customers reward discounts or gifts for referring others to your business who make purchases, but make it easy for them.

For example, create shareable digital links your customers can use to forward to friends and family via text, email, or social media. Have a “top referrers” leaderboard on your site, offer extra rewards or discounts to customers who’ve referred many people to your business, and celebrate them on social media.

Also, add a “referral button” to your online checkout and make referring others part of someone’s buying experience.

9. Be Covered and Protected

A comprehensive, tailored business insurance policy is crucial for safeguarding your financial health, building customer trust, and forming the foundation of your business continuity plan.

It’s important to review your current coverage to ensure your coverage limits are still adequate, especially if you’ve had significant changes in 2025. 

For instance, you might have expanded, downsized, or modified your offerings, hired more employees, renovated your business premises, or seen an increase in annual revenue. These are all reasons to review your policy. A Zensurance broker can help you identify gaps in your existing coverage.

10. Strengthen Financial Health

Growing your business’s bottom line is exciting and necessary, but managing your financial health and building on a strong economic foundation are vital to achieving and maintaining a healthy cash flow and profit margin.

Review your sales data from the previous 12 months and your cash flow projections for 2026.

Separate personal and business finances to gain better insight into how your business is faring, build a cash reserve to weather off-peak times of the year, and consult a professional accountant or financial advisor to craft a practical budget to live by if numbers aren’t your forte.

Extra Tip: Pick three of the ideas above for the first quarter of 2026, assign weekly targets, and review your progress each Friday. Experiment to find what works each quarter. Small, consistent wins compound fast over 12 months.

Emerging Liability Risk Exposures in 2026

It’s critical to remain vigilant about the liability risks that can affect your small business. Among the key emerging liability risks to businesses in 2026 are:

• Cyber-Attacks and Data Breaches: Cyber threats and data breaches continue to escalate, and many times, an attack or data breach results in legal action against your business following the loss of confidential customer data and privacy invasions.
  
  A Zensurance online survey of 1,000 small business owners in Canada last September found more than half (53%) had already experienced an attack.

• Third-Party and Vendor Threats: Liability exposures from your business’s vendor partners, cloud storage providers, and outsourced IT services are on the rise.
  
  According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, as businesses increasingly rely on outside vendors, cloud services and outsourced IT providers, third-party cyber risk is becoming a major vulnerability – potentially leaving small business owners liable if a vendor breach compromises your customer data.

• AI-Generated Content and Misinformation: Using AI for a variety of tasks can be helpful, provided you understand the potential risks and use it safely.
  
  However, AI tools can make mistakes, and without human oversight to monitor and double-check their outputs, their use can lead to defamation or copyright infringement claims or lawsuits against your business.  

• Product Liability: A frequently expressed sales theory is, “You are what you sell”. In other words, you’ve got to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. So, don’t be afraid to test the products you sell. Any retailer, small business, or online seller can be liable for the products they manufacture, distribute, or sell (including food), even if they didn’t create them.
  
  Many products may malfunction, causing injuries or property damage to customers. While you may not be able to control (or test) every item you sell, it’s wise to ensure you have product liability insurance as part of your overall policy to help cover those unexpected incidents and claims against you.

Get Comprehensive Liability Insurance Online Quickly and Be 2026 Ready

You’re a small business owner because you’re a leader, visionary, and a go-getter. Don’t let all you’ve built and are continuing to build be threatened or destroyed by one accident, lawsuit, or incident beyond your control.

Get low-cost, comprehensive small business insurance online easily through Zensurance and protect your livelihood and finances.

We’re Canada’s leading online business insurance brokerage – our brokers are insurance experts who can find the right policy to suit your company and budget, and our technology makes it quick and easy to get the coverage you need in minutes, not days or weeks.

Try it now! Complete our online application now for a free quote (it takes less than five minutes).

Be 2026 ready by protecting your small business with the customized liability insurance you need and your customers expect you to have, so you can make the coming year the best one yet!

– Reviewed by Alexandria Anthony, Senior Broker & Team Lead, Property & Hospitality, Zensurance.