Whether your business is a well-established or a newly started venture, here are five ways to kick-start your business growth.
Your business is going just fine; and well that’s indeed a great news! But still most likely there are questions that might cross your mind at times such as – can you further increase your sales and revenues? Is there an opportunity seen to increase your market share? Is there any way you could further your business growth?
Before going any further with these questions, let’s look at the success-failure statistics in the business world. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), approximately 65 percent of businesses fail during the first ten years of opening, and out of these only 0.1 percent of companies are able reach USD 250 Million in annual revenue.
And why does this happen?
There are many reasons which can be attributed to this including of wrong target market, lack of product demand, bungled marketing, or unsteady finances which can lead to a decline in the profitability, and can even lead to business closure. But you can mitigate the failure rate by adopting a concrete growth strategy.
Interested in knowing more? Read on further to learn about the four major business growth strategies that you can use to fuel growth for your brand.
Growth Strategy #1: Market Penetration Strategy – Increase your market share
This is a business growth strategy in which you seek to increase market share by using existing portfolio of products and services. Basically, the growth efforts are concentrated on competing over price, or positioning your brand or service offering in a way that it has an edge over the other competitors.
For example let’s consider the case of Apple Inc. which reached an early momentum with coming up of truly unique and innovative products, but eventually experienced a major fall and started losing its market. But, then with implementation of right growth strategies which focused on coming out with its famous core product, the iPhone and developing the strategy for increasing its sales every year. For this it focused on amalgamation of innovation along with powerful marketing, community leveraging and pricing strategy; resultantly today it has become the first $1 trillion company.
Growth Strategy #2
Market disruption – Differentiation in the product offering to capture competitor’s share
Market disruption involves coming into a well-established industry that is usually dominated by a few legacy brands and proceeding to do things completely differently than everyone else.
For example, Gilette was the first one to enter the razor product market and soon became a recognized brand. Soon, Dollar Shave Club came up with a similar product, and disrupted the razor market with a direct to consumer model and positioned its product as affordable by using pricing as their USP.
Growth Strategy #3
Product development or expansion strategy – Refresh or renew your offerings for your targeted customers
Another highly effective strategy that also can fuel the business growth is that of product development or adding new features to existing ones. This usually involves developing new products or services for existing markets / targeted customers that should either solve a new problem or add to the existing problem your product solves.
For example, Google has always followed the product development strategy by launching new services and gadgets over the years. Some of them became successful and the others failed. Another example to consider is that of Semrush which started with a basic SEO and paid search platform; but later on it launched new features and functionalities thereby attracting a wider segment of its targeted customers. And today it is a famous an all-inclusive software.
Growth Strategy #4
Market or Product diversification strategy – Attract new customers
This strategy focusses on growing your market share by entering into entirely new markets/geographies or developing new products to cater new customer cohorts. Though, this strategy is often the riskiest but can have huge rewards if successful.
For example, Amazon’s initial operation was that of an online bookseller, but the company founder Jeff Bezos planned to diversify in a bid to increase the revenue. Subsequently, Amazon began selling videogames and other multimedia in 1998 and, thereafter it ventured into selling electronics, software, homeware, toys and more to its customers.
Growth Strategy #5
Market Development Strategy – Expanding your footprint
In a market development growth strategy, an organisation attempts to sell existing products into untapped markets. This involves identifying new markets that would be a good fit for your current product line or targeting of new customer segments in a bid to increase revenues. This is especially important when you want to reach new customers or if sales of existing products have stagnated or if you’re looking to expand your market reach to a new geography or target demographic.
“Companies realize the most profitable growth when they move into an adjacent target market.” – Bain & Company
Are you ready to grow your business?
Growing a business is indeed easier said than done! But implementing the right type of growth strategy can indeed take your business to the next level. All you require is to creating a unique growth plan that aligns with the goals, financial viability, products, and brand positioning of your business.
