Your Strategy for Business Growth

First, you should research the market to see what your ideal customers need and how you can help them. Consider the biggest problems people have and how you can provide the best solution.

You can also determine if there’s a gap in the market, either at a certain price or in a specific city. To figure this out, do some competitor research and see what other businesses are doing.

Maybe you want to sell online, and you notice your competitors all have nice websites. However, none of them work well on mobile devices, so you make sure your website is mobile-friendly to help attract those shoppers.

As you do market research, write down your findings. Then, you can analyze them in one sitting to help determine the right growth strategy.

Another vital thing to consider is how much money you have to carry out your plan. For example, you’ll need a lot of cash or a large loan for most business acquisitions.

Be sure to review your business budget or start one if you haven’t already. Then, you can see how much money you have and can expect to earn each month.

If you have a very limited budget, you may want to focus on organic growth. You could also find strategic partners to help your business grow.

When you have more money, you might focus on market penetration by opening a new physical store. Of course, you can also look into a loan if necessary, but you’ll want to evaluate your risk tolerance, especially before borrowing a lot of cash.

Once you research the market and review your finances, you can set some SMART goals. These are goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.

Having these goals in mind can help you further narrow down your options when it comes to growth strategies. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, for example, a partnership might work well.

On the other hand, your goal might have to do with increasing profit margins. Going the organic growth route could help you keep costs down while getting more sales.

Try to be as specific and clear as possible with your goals. Instead of setting a goal of higher profit margins, you may set a goal to increase your profit margin to 20% within a year.

After you figure out some goals, use those to create a basic plan. You can write out and include the complete strategy for growth in your business plan.

Of course, you should determine what growth strategy you’ll use. Then, write the details of how you’ll implement that strategy, including larger tasks and smaller things.

For example, you may decide to start selling on Amazon in addition to your website. You can write the steps you’ll take to make that happen, such as signing up for an Amazon seller account and listing your products.

Be as detailed as you need to, especially if you have a team. That way, you can distribute the plan to any other executives or managers who will help you execute the plan.

Once you figure out a general growth plan, you should start with one strategy. Of course, using multiple strategies can increase the likelihood of you seeing massive results.

However, more strategies can also take more time and money to execute. For now, figure out which strategy will help you meet your goals better than the others.

Then, you can focus your efforts on that one strategy until you start to see results. This is particularly important for small businesses where you’re the only employee or where you have a small team.

If you have a medium-sized business with more employees, you can work on two strategies at a time. However, you don’t want to sacrifice the time you spend working with clients or customers just to try and work on an extra growth strategy.

When you set your goals, you may also want to choose some key performance indicators (KPIs). These will help you track your progress toward your goals over time.

Using the example of increasing profit margins, you’ll definitely want to track those. You might also keep track of your average sale price and average order volume.

On the other hand, KPIs for organic growth might include website clicks, social media followers, and email subscribers. Whatever you choose, be sure to review your KPIs at least monthly.

That way, you can figure out if your strategy is working or if you need to change something. If you go too long without tracking your results, you could waste a lot of time and money.

After you review your KPIs, you may learn you need to adjust your growth strategy. Consider what marketing tactics have been the most successful and which have been the least successful.

Using organic growth as an example, you may start getting more traffic from SEO. You can lean into that and update older posts so that they can get even more visitors.

But you might also learn that your Instagram page is growing very slowly. In that case, you could choose to post less frequently on the platform so that you don’t waste a ton of time.

Your business growth strategy will almost certainly change. Be willing to try new things to see if they work better than what you’ve been doing as well as prioritize what’s currently bringing more results.

Another excellent way to determine which strategy for business growth works the best is to pay attention to your audience. If people are responding well to a new sales channel, for example, you can sell more products through there.

On the other hand, maybe you aren’t getting any sales through retail. It can take time to generate sales in a new way, but if it’s been many months, you may want to get rid of that channel.

Then, you can redirect your efforts toward another strategy that may be more successful. Your customers can be very good at telling you what they do and don’t like, so listen.

You can send a survey to everyone who hires you or buys from you. Use those survey results to determine what your audience likes the most and where you can improve.