Growth is crucial to the survival and success of businesses. Growing a business is a difficult endeavour, yet with the right growth strategies in place, scale and expansion can be achieved.
Business growth depends on the stage that a business is in as well as its objectives. When a business is still new and is in its initial phases of operation, it must place extra emphasis on its growth strategies to boost its standing in the market and enhance its chances for long-term success. A more mature business that holds a reasonably large market share may not need to emphasise on growth quite as much but must still ensure that it is headed in the right direction to secure stability and profitability.
Thus, in business, growth is a continuous phase which is dependent on the organisation’s needs and goals. To scale up, it is vital that businesses avoid the things that cause them to struggle.
Here are seven effective ways to help your business grow and thrive.
1. Streamline Your Operations
Streamlining your operations is all about boosting operational efficiency. It involves a comprehensive evaluation of all the systems, processes and tasks within your business to identify:
- Inefficiencies
- Duplication of work
- Wasted resources
- Avoidable costs
To simplify processes, businesses can leverage the digital capabilities of systems and software solutions that are designed to automate and streamline processes across different departments as well as business functions, including:
- Bookkeeping
- Payroll
- Email distribution
- Supply chain management
- Reporting
- Procurement
2. Replace Old Equipment
Relying on outdated equipment can compromise your business’ operations and capacity for growth. Older equipment can oftentimes lag and be prone to frequent crashes, thus impacting the overall productivity, performance and profitability of the business. Successful organisations require advanced and regularly updated systems, tools and equipment to be able to perform to their full potential and meet their growth targets.
“You know for sure it’s time to upgrade if your equipment is costing you money instead of generating revenue, causing downtime or both.” — Trevor Fillo
Although purchasing new equipment may require a large budget, it should be considered as an investment to your business that will provide you with a great ROI as time goes on.
3. Diversify Your Offerings
Diversifying your business offering by launching new products or services is a great way of attracting and retaining customers, driving sales and accelerating business growth. Doing so, however, requires much planning and consideration such as extensive market research, trial and error, staff training, product adjustments, thorough testing, etc. But such preparations are vital as they help in determining the efficacy of the offer and its readiness for distribution.
Another way to diversify is by improving on a business’ existing products and services to generate enhanced, alternate or innovative uses for these existing offerings.
4. Expand Your Target Market
Developing new target markets is crucial not only to expanding a business but also to keeping that business afloat during tough times. There are definite growth limits to maintaining only your original target market. Hence, business leaders must incorporate expansion of target markets into their growth strategies. This strategic business approach also requires thorough research and analysis into:
- Customer groups and profiles
- Demographics
- Marketability
Expansion in this sense can be achieved by tweaking existing products and services for a new target market, creating completely new offers that appeal to a new demographic or by optimising your promotional and marketing campaigns to reach and attract wider audiences.
5. Create a Customer Loyalty Program
A Customer Loyalty Program is a marketing strategy that attracts existing customers to make purchases in an exchange for a reward. This is one of the easiest ways of attracting new customers while retaining existing loyal ones.
Customer Loyalty Programs greatly benefit businesses. They work to strengthen relationships and brand trust, giving rise to brand advocates and referrals through word-of-mouth marketing. These reward programs encourage customers to conduct more business with a company, thus increasing customer retention and maximising the customer’s lifetime value (CLV) as well as a business’ competitive advantage and revenue.
There are a multiple loyalty programs, including:
- Points-based programs
- Tiered programs
- Gaming programs
- Fee-based programs
- Hybrid programs
However, to get the most out of a rewards system, it is essential to assess and determine which type best matches your business model, organisational needs, strategies and customer base.
6. Reduce Expenses
Running a business requires money. And for you to keep your profits up, you need to keep a proper balance between sales and expenses. To do this, you need to track your expenditures to make sure your resources aren’t being unnecessarily wasted.
From overhead expenses to utilities, supply costs, motor vehicle mileage and employee benefits, it is important for a business to consistently evaluate its expenditures and cut costs without compromising on quality. Finding more cost-effective yet high-grade alternatives is key to reducing expenses and accelerating business growth.
7. Improve Your SEO
The value of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) cannot be understated in the digital era. SEO is all about increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website. In fact, it has been shown that 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
SEO works by matching your business’ information, products, services and web pages with the most popular online searches. To ensure that you rank well in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs), keyword research and the strategic use of links are vital. Building content-rich posts using popular or trending keywords will help your website rank higher on search engines such as Google, thus generating greater leads, customer engagement and revenue opportunities.
Hence, SEO is an indispensable digital marketing tool which is essential to the success of any website. Investing in a SEO keyword research platform to help your organisation boost its digital presence is recommended.
It’s important for business owners to recognise that scaling up a business requires significant planning and preparation and comes with certain inherent risks. However, growth is essential to the long-term survival of a business. Without sustained growth, an organisation’s operations will diminish, causing massive disruptions to a business’ bottom line and market standing.
Primedge is committed to helping you drive business growth. Connect with us today to learn how we can help you.
