Growing Your Business

If your start-up business is going well, you may be looking at how you can grow your business. First of all, congratulations on your success, you are a rare breed! If you are looking to scale up, you may find it a bit daunting, but there is help available to do this successfully. As a start-up business, you will have learned many new skills that you can use to grow your business, but there are a few things to consider before you start investing resources into this project. Here are some things to consider before you begin, plus a look at the four strategies you can use to grow your business, each having a different level of risk from low to high.

Understand your motivation for growing your business

Expanding your business allows you to reach new customers and increase profits. Expansion can be achieved in many ways, and all offer new challenges and risks, though the level of risk you take is entirely your choice. Do not assume, as the owner, that you have to expand the business to be successful. Consider if it would be better to increase efficiencies. Only look to grow your business if it aligns with your purpose and your financial goals and remembers that bigger does not always equate to better or more profitable.

Your brand

Growing your business will gain your attention from investors, customers, and the media. As the owner, you need to own brand knowledge. Be your own marketing and outreach officer to become a personal brand so that it goes with you wherever you are and whatever you do. Embrace this and use it with confidence.

Customer first and always

Be customer-obsessed, not just customer-focused. You need to consider how expansion might affect your current customers. Will they feel alienated or enhance their experience with you, your products/services or your brand?

Have your strategy in place

Before growing your business, update your strategies for marketing, websites and operational processes to prepare your team for upcoming growth. Having a well-developed team at the start gives you an advantage when the inevitable hiccups appear and will help avoid any costly mistakes in operations that can harm the good name of your brand.

Ensure that you can integrate the growth into your existing way of doing things, using your current team. If resources are limited resources to integrate the new project into what you are already doing, the risk of failure rises. The easier the integration, the more likely success.

Be profitable

Ensure that growing your business allows you to remain profitable. If growing your business is going to be tight on your budget look at the idea from the point of view of an investor. Consider whether growing the business will give you an edge over competitors and if the time to expand is now or can wait a year. Also consider the biggest operational, financial and human capital risks to realizing your targeted returns. However, if you want to grow your business, do not wait for the “perfect” moment, but prepare as best you can and go ahead.

Create your own website

Once you have found your market and your product, you need an online presence on which to market and sell. There are plenty of free software and online programs to create a professional-looking website with a shopping cart, list building capabilities and blogging.

Some of these websites are free and offer ready-made templates that you just have to fill with your products and content and can update and change without any web development experience. From here you can use plug-ins for search engine optimization, marketing, analytics to track visitors to your site and a lot more. These companies also offer personalized domain names for a small fee.

Strategies to grow your business

There are four strategies to grow your business, each having a different level of risk

Market penetration

The course of action with the lowest risk is market penetration since you already know the products and the market that you will be targeting. Selling more products to new customers or broadening your product range requires little research and risk, whilst achieving the business growth you want.

Product development

Introducing new products will increase revenue but is a higher risk as the market for new products will be unknown. This is where research into customer preferences is vital for successful innovation. Find creative ways for new customers to come on board, since trying something new and unproven holds some risks for the customer. You may have repeat customers who would be happy to answer some questions about what they would most like to receive from you, or you may have seen a successful media campaign of a competitor that you can use.

Market development

Raising the risk levels further, you can expand your business internationally, choosing specific regional markets like Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The risks here are two-fold. There are many opportunities, but you need to be sure to chase the ones that are right for you and your business. There are also the risks of managing currency fluctuations which can strip away profit margins. Even if your product is accepted in new markets, a lot of research is required for this strategy, with particular consideration given to cultural differences. As an example, Primark has been very successful business in Europe, except Germany, and has been slow to take off in the United States.

Market development does not have to mean globalization. You could open another store in another district or start trading using e-commerce and mail order. Whichever market development strategy you use, you need to be sure that you can keep up with the demand from new customers. This may require employing more staff and ensuring that those manufacturing the goods can handle increased orders.

Diversification

The highest risk in growing your business is to diversify. This means offering new products into a new market, which usually means that existing expertise is not going to be of much help. Samsung is most famous for their mobile phones and televisions, but have expanded further into the construction of apartments, ships and the manufacture of military hardware. Whilst the risk from diversification can be daunting since it almost certainly comes without guarantee of success, an attempt to grow and progress encourages innovation which can see your business improve. Though you need to be careful that you are not spreading the business too thin.