If you are an entrepreneur and run a business, no matter how big or small, you do not need a global brand to succeed. Instead, you need well-formulated, pre-planned, and empirically supported business growth strategies to grow your business.
It is true that growing a business is not easy and requires a lot of efficient work. When the work is channeled in the right direction, the results become more sustainable and generalized.
What are Business Growth Strategies?
Before we hop onto some helpful growth strategies for your business, here is an overview of business growth strategies and how they work.
An organization’s growth strategy involves careful planning to overcome current challenges and build proactive plans to prevent and manage future difficulties so that it is better able to achieve its future goals.
Some popular ways an organization entails a successful growth strategy include strengthening the service and product quality, building assets, and improving one’s share in the market.
Components of Growth Strategies
A successful business growth strategy must include several components.
These include the following:
- Goal: what does the organization want to achieve
- People: what is the interdependence level between people and the administrative authorities?
- Product: what is the instrumentality that the product provides in achieving your broader organizational goals?
- Tactics: the strategies adopted for goal achievement.
The aforementioned strategic components are essential in efficient business growth planning and enable you to plan growth strategies for your business that have the maximum effect.
How do Business Growth Strategies work?
When discussing using and employing growth strategies for a successful business. Some question that commonly arises in our minds is what is the rationale behind the working of these strategies? How do they essentially work to make a business as successful as one desires?
A growth strategy involves aligning the current marketing team with far-reaching goals and forming an action plan listing the steps required for achieving the goals.
It ensures that every organizational department plays a vital role in developing the goals and fulfilling the subsequent strategy.
Business growth planning allows the departments to ensure everything they want to achieve within a stipulated time, thus helping them drive away from the unnecessary distractions that are caused.
In addition, a strategic avenue designed to achieve the company’s goals creates a platform of sustained development for the company.
Types of Business Growth Strategies
There are several growth strategies that one can apply to boost the revenue and market share of the company. Initially, the market goes by four stated approaches, but experts have recently expanded on them to include seven.
1. Market Penetration (commonly known as market development)
One of the most prominent strategies for growing your business is developing your market or penetrating deep into it. To implement this, try launching your existing products to a population that is untapped and is never reached by your company.
This way, you might develop new customers and a line of the audience, thus enabling you to expand your share in the market.
2. Market Disruption
Organizations that take a unique and different stand on popular items have seen more growth than those that build on conventional methods.
Try adopting different ways of doing things by staying in the traditional market.
3. Product Diversification (or product expansion)
The products you acquire have been in the market for a long time and have driven the sales they were supposed to do.
Now, it is time to add some features to it or develop new products altogether. It is one of the most helpful strategies if you own some capital and want to add diversity to the range of products and services you offer your customers.
4. New Channels
If you are looking to stir your profit margins without changing the nature of your company’s product, look out for news channels as they are one of the most suitable options for this purpose. They help you increase your sales and revenue for a minimal fee by portraying your product as it is.
5. Strategic Partnership
If you own a particular brand but are not seeing the desired growth results, consider making a strategic partnership with a similar brand that is performing well enough.
Then, you can sign a reasonable contract that benefits both parties and grow your business accordingly.
6. Acquisitions
Acquisitions have been a vital and most prominent part of the business growth strategy for ages.
By forming an acquisition or merger with your counterparts, you ensure that the flow of resources is moderated carefully and the competition in the market reduces. These are different from maintaining strategic partnerships.
7. Organic Growth
A newly introduced business growth strategy, going by organic growth, is essential because it communicates that you can succeed in the desired niche without having to depend upon other organizations.
Note that these strategies have been empirically tested and proved effective in revamping numerous organizations’ business growth planning.
In the modern age, many companies are adopting an integrative perspective, combining different aspects like disruption and expansion to create a long-term win-win strategy.
Some examples are given as follows:
- Companies allow customers to buy a product or service without paying for the complete package at the payment gateway. Instead, they have introduced new interest-free installments divided equally across months. The results of this development have been whopping. The average order value from customers increased 45% since they found it more convenient.
- Expansion, be it geographical or theoretical, increases the scope of the market and the organization’s target audience, enabling them to reach a more significant population using the same products and services. However, one thing that needs to be considered here is to include culture-sensitive stances. Avoiding jargon and using simple language is one of the most effective strategies for successfully expanding your market across different regions and witnessing growth.
Business Growth Strategies for Small Business
Growth strategies for small businesses are remarkably different from that of well-established companies. This is one of the reasons why we should carefully monitor the strategy to grow your business before implementing it on a smaller scale.
To begin with, it isn’t easy to land on a concrete definition for growth methods for small-scale companies because of the broad concepts it entails. Nevertheless, here are some of the most critical growth strategies to kickstart your small business:
- Focus on increasing the demand for your business-relevant products and services primarily by building strategic partnerships with contemporary organizations or counterparts.
- Analyze the products and services you employ. And focus on removing those that are not profit-driven and are more like a liability than an asset.
- Rev your revenue by improving the rate of conversion of the organization.
Several strategies and tactics can be employed for this purpose.
- Focus on increasing your sales by building a valuable and comprehensive sales funnel. In a successful sales funnel, you draw on the inconsistencies and realize where the work is required.
- Adopt creative approaches in recruiting your staff. If you are running a small business, you don’t have the time to keep the staff that is not contributing skillfully. Therefore, it is time to revamp your skills.
Using Business Growth Planning in 2023:
2023 is a different year for businesses to kickstart and show their supreme skills. This is mainly because the world has taken enough time to recover from the untimely layoffs and other deterioration brought about by the pandemic.
And now is when most entrepreneurs and business giants are entering the field to show their skills off. To enhance and give a new rise to your business this 2023, it is essential first to consider the current challenges the year is producing.
This can be different for different organizations. Post this, and the following steps need to be followed to align one’s business goals with growth strategies:
1. Increasing share in the market
Increased market share, or market penetration, is one of the most effective growth strategies as discussed previously. Yet, there is a reason not many people use it.
To maintain and modify the amount of market penetration that an organization is subject to. It requires relevant knowledge and a certain skill set; otherwise, the organization may lead to losses.
2. Attraction and Retention
Develop your market outside the area of your comfort. For this, you need to very carefully attract and source relevant customers while also considering that you are retaining the present customers that are driving profit. One important thing to remember here is skillfully driving oneself away from unprofitable consumers.
3. Adopting Alternative Channels
Do not limit the scope of your marketing to only social media, flyers, posters, or any one channel. It reduced the amount of audience it reached. Rather, adopt a more holistic approach in spreading awareness about the business you engage in. Make sure it goes to the maximum number of population. A survey analysis regarding the preferred source of medium for the targeted audience can be conducted for the same purpose.
4. Expanding Services
To kick start your business this year, you need to redirect your attention to the kind of products and services you offer. It is also essential to expand the scope of your products, offerings, and services to include other such provisions.
5. Segmenting Market
Your company should be very clear about the target audience that it wants to acquire and generate sales from. Making policies and provisions according to the wrong target audience will only lead to unsolicited wastage of time and resources.
6. Making Allies
In the present day and age, it isn’t easy to build one’s sales and grow without making allies and working with counterparts and contemporary organizations.
This holds even more true for the year 2023 when all the companies are by large facing the same issues. Joining hands with other organizations is helpful in many aspects. For example, it can ensure better allocation of resources, better division of tasks, and provision of additional resources, including skill sets, workforce, and knowledge.
The bottom line:
There is no single best growth strategy that will show overnight results. To see sustained results, one needs to conduct a comprehensive and regular company assessment, considering their needs closely, determining repetitive patterns of sales and demands, and so on.
Whether you run a small business, a successful one, or want to boost the market share of your business during the pandemic, these factors are crucial and effective in each category.
Therefore, there is no one solution. Instead, it is on the organizational authorities to develop a uniquely tailored approach that solves their problems and considers them carefully.
Also Read: Why Do You Need A Certified Bookkeeper For Your Business Growth In Australia?