Scaling any business is a perpetual journey. At different stages of a venture, there are varied strategies that need to be applied and executed, as a part of the consistent efforts toward business growth.
Whether the business is new and trying to set foot or has expanded to become an established one, growth is a parallel pursuit at all times. With digital transformation and tech advancements, there are a range of initiatives that can be adapted over time to see which work best for the organisation.
Some strategies might need calculated risks, others might demand sustained efforts and some others can take very long to show results. Nevertheless, a business must continuously try and experiment with every approach that holds potential for its growth.
Let’s look at how to expand a business with some of the most effective business tips that can accelerate your company and help it achieve greater heights.
How to grow a business:10 ways
1. Adaptability
The market is evolving, customers are evolving, and so should your business. Being sensitive to the prevailing environment and aligning your business accordingly ascertains that your product/offering is responsive to consumer demands.
You might have started out with a well-researched idea but the changing market trends mean that adaptability is inevitable. It might be necessary over time to either diversify or change the business model altogether. A lot of startups often pivot or alter their initial business strategy to ensure continuous growth.
Moreover, agility in business is conducive to growth since it allows space for new ideas and opportunities.
Here are a few approaches that can be considered with a focus on adaptability:
- Frequently check if a change/modification in your strategy can help you target a bigger market segment
- Do not hesitate to either completely shut or remodel parts of your business that are slow on revenue
- Seek new business ideas for your product that can cater to the changing market demands
2. Customer awareness
If you haven’t found ways to connect with your customer beyond the website and transactions, you might be missing out on an opportunity to learn and grow your business.
Interacting with customers through surveys, interviews and other modes of feedback will help you understand what the buyers want in terms of products as well as the experience they are looking at.
Several times, a minor oversight on your website can turn away a potential buyer. Card abandonment due to an imperfect checkout is a common example.
E-commerce brands lose $18 billion in sales revenue each year because of cart abandonment. Ignoring such small but important details hampers the growth opportunities for a business.
Here are a few data points that you can collate by efficiently interacting with your customers:
- Overall website/shopping experience
- Customer behaviour and interactions
- Product and delivery expectations
- New product possibilities and ideas
- Testing new features and offerings
- Identifying customer groups
3. Competitor research
Researching the competition can have two main consequences. You might be motivated to do exactly what your competition is doing across various spheres or you may set out to do something that sets you apart from your closest contender.
In either case, competition research is very important to business growth. A few ways that can help you analyze your competition include:
- Follow their social media campaigns
- Understand their growth potential and curve
- Engage with their website
- Buy their products
- Note their weaknesses
- Analyse their marketing spends
The above steps will help you in better decision-making because you will have qualitative and quantitative data to validate your strategies. Most importantly, competitor research will tell you what mistakes to not make which might come in the way of your business growth.
4. Networking
Networking, especially in the offline space helps you connect better with everyone who is associated with the business. When you interact using multiple platforms, the brand is represented through you and people get a better perspective into the business’s insights.
Networking gives you new ideas, opportunities, positive influences as well as community support that can help your venture in its long-term growth. It is also a smart way to establish your identity in the market.
Some of the ways to create and maintain networks are:
- Participating in trade shows and conventions
- Being a part of talks, seminars and interviews
- Partnering with other brands
- Connecting with professional communities
The internet also offers an opportunity to network online through platforms such as Linkedin. Additionally, hosting webinars and participating in podcasts are great ways to converse with people, and make your brand visible to a larger audience.
5. Social media
Every online business maintains a social media presence but not many leverage these platforms for business growth. When your social media channels are updated frequently, it is easier for your customers to locate them and access the subsequent information they need.
If your audience base is young, it is likely that they have discovered your brand through social media rather than the website or any other source. The platforms are inevitable in today’s world for a larger reach and subsequent growth.
Apart from daily content updates, a business also needs to be responsive to the user comments so that the audience feel connected and nurture a sense of trust.
Here’s how social media can boost your business growth:
- Allows instant interactions and updates
- A powerful medium for ads and campaigns
- A great tool for customer service
- Increases brand awareness and boosts sales
- Increased inbound traffic and leads
6. Revenue streams
Business growth strategies cannot be envisioned without a strong financial backing, hence it is important to ensure a consistent flow of revenue.
One way of maintaining steady earnings is by focusing on the existing customers before expanding your base. Alternatively, you can also prioritise a product that is already doing well and attract a larger audience to your website.
Some of the business development ideas for fortifying your revenue streams are:
- Business franchising where you can sell the business right to independent entrepreneurs for increased reach as well as profits.
- Licensing deals that allow other businesses to earn from your property and add to your earnings in the form of royalties.
Another crucial factor that can come in the way of a business growth plan is an external setback that is beyond the business’s control – cyber thefts, recessions, outbreaks, etc, pose a consistent threat.
It is of utmost importance to have a recovery policy in place along with the necessary insurance that can safeguard your business in the face of such adversities.
7. Expansion
Expansion is fundamental to business growth and the internet offers several opportunities to extend its reach.
A business expansion strategy can be planned in many ways including:
- Opening to a global market and audience
- Introducing products/offerings that target a new demographic
- Leveraging existing marketplaces to sell your products
- Launching related products and services
- Acquiring new businesses
The path to business expansion must be trodden cautiously because it creates newer responsibilities and added pressure on every aspect of the business.
Reckless growth can result in a compromised brand quality & experience resulting in more losses than gains.
Expansion should be ideally looked at once the offering is stable and accepted by a fairly large audience. You can build an expansion strategy once you have:
- A large loyal customer base
- Significant years of experience
- Steady profitability in at least one segment
- Well-established operational and management system
- Growth of the industry that you are placed in
8. Customer retention
While a lot of enterprises spend heavily on customer acquisition, customer retention needs equal attention since it is one of the most cost-effective ways for business growth.
Customer retention is the ability of a business to efficiently retain its existing customers. It indicates that your buyers are happy with the product and are more likely to increase their spending on your website.
Acquiring a new customer is five times as expensive as retaining an existing customer.
The compounding effect of retention is an increased ROI, greater customer loyalty and better referrals resulting in an all-round business growth.
Some ways of increasing customer retention are:
- Introducing special offers for returning customers
- Implementing a customer loyalty program
- Offering a personalised shopping journey
- Amplifying focus on customer service
- Exceeding the buyers’ expectations
9. Company culture
Businesses often overlook this aspect but a healthy company culture is directly proportional to business growth and success.
According to a report by PWC, 72% of people feel that culture helps successful change initiatives happen.
A good workplace is an inclusive one that pays equal attention to everyone from the top-level management to the junior employees and has a shared belief of core values, traditions and attitudes.
Being responsive to the employees, keeping them motivated through different initiatives and creating a transparent environment can go a long way in building a balanced culture and a successful business.
The single best predictor of a company’s culture score is whether employees feel respected at work according to a study conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review. The other factors include supportive leaders, benefits & perks and job security.
Here’s how a positive company culture contributes to business growth
- Increases overall productivity
- Enhances employee morale and engagement
- Reduces attrition and attracts good talent
- Helps create a brand reputation
- Leads to better decision making
10. Building a vision
Conceiving a well-defined path for your business is a powerful instrument to realise the objective that you have set for yourself. It carves out a purpose and gives your business the right direction for its growth.
Setting long and short-term goals motivate everyone involved to also set and align their personal targets. As discussed earlier, market demands and customer expectations might compel you to modify your goals and vision over time. But at any juncture, the ability of a business to work towards a futuristic goal helps it evolve and stay ahead of the curve.
Here’s how a business vision helps you grow better:
- Gives your organisation a strategic direction
- Helps prioritise resources
- Keeps your business priorities future-oriented
- Gives you a competitive advantage
Conclusion
Business growth is an exciting as well as a challenging process. Thanks to digital transformation, there are many ways to explore and experiment with, while working on growing a company.
All the above-mentioned success tips are critical to a business’s growth and every organisation should steadily implement them according to its own pace and capacity. Business growth, apart from being inevitable for survival, also helps a company and its people reinvent themselves and reimagine the ecosystem.
