Marketing and Growing your Business
If you want to prosper in your business, then you have to market it to the maximum. You have to employ new techniques every day in order to compete in the market. This is because you are not the only one offering these products or services. So thinking critically will help you grow your business without giving up.
The important thing here is education. Educating your customers about why they should consume your services/products every day will really expand your business. As it is said information is power, a better reach can be achieved by creating more awareness in different locations. This way you will be able to explore new territories, hence more sales. So strategize your marketing plan and you will experience daily growth in your business.
The following are the secrets behind growing your business;
- The right workers
Make sure all staff working for you are the right persons for a given placement. During the recruitment process, try to look beyond their curriculum vitae. Ensure that you understand your company’s culture so as to get the best employee. On the job advertisement, provide enough details so as to reach the most desired applicants.
When you feel you have enough applicants, then structure your interview in a special way. Then make an appointment for the interview. Test the applicant as much as possible to evaluate their ability to the given position.
As you finalize the process, you can ask for the reference from the successful candidates then you can bring them on board. Let the best candidate start working as soon as possible.
- Well established revenue sources
Whether big or small business you are in, you need to established long-term income from different sources. You should have in mind either monthly or annual targets so as to sustain your business. You can contribute more to your company by establishing more streams of income. This will give you a space to invest more leading to more achievements within a time span.
Establishing long-term revenue sources can be done in many ways. Subscribers are the common source of revenue since they subscribe to using your products/services for the long-term period by entering into an agreement at a given fee.
Innovation is another way to stabilize your revenue. Innovate new ways of presenting your products/services in the market. You can do this by changing the branding or the packages. You can as well innovate related products which go hand in hand with your current products/ services.
- Risks reduction
Doing business is like a gamble game. It is all about risk. However, there are some situations you can put in measures to avoid putting your business at risk. For example, you need to get legal documents to operate your business. This will allow you to venture into business in different given territories with confidence. Another important measure is insuring your business. This will help you retrieve your business back in case of accidents. Borrowing loans for business cannot be avoided however you can minimize your borrowings by taking little enough for it.
This will help you retain your business even if the loan lenders come for their money back.
Now in every country, there are laws that govern every business opportunity, so understand all the laws that govern your business and adhere to them.
Your business needs a track record of its performance. So ensure to document everything important that takes place in your business. This way you will be able to know if the company is doing well or is about to collapse. The track record will help you to save your business from dying. To maintain your customers, you need to build trust with them. Your reputation with your customers is what will make them come back for your services. If you will be able to build trust with them, then you are assured they will come back with new customers. In this case, you are definitely diversifying your products/services to a larger area.
- Business adaptation
Every business that is able to adopt the new normal is considered to have achieved a great advantage in a competitive market. This is a business that is open to new ideas and does not exist just because it needs to be but it is there for a purpose. This kind of business can adopt any change and cannot panic when things go wrong.
This situation of business adaptation in the market involves the process of changing the price, promotion, and packaging of your products in order to meet the needs of a particular customer in a given country.
To make it easier as a business owner, you need to be watchful of what is going on in the business environment and the changes that are currently taking place. At this stage, you will be able to identify the new idea and accept the change. This means while focusing on the present, you also need to predict the future and get prepared for it. You need to think critically so as to adapt to the new normal in the best way ever.
You need to adapt your business rhythm as you watch the completion over in the market.
- Customer experience
Improving products can be learned by focusing on getting feedback from your consumers. Their experience will always lead you to know how your product/service provision should be. If you are able to satisfy your customer’s needs, then you are likely to explore new ideas leading to business growth. Learn to listen to your customers as you establish what is needed most to meet their needs.
Since people are looking for quality service/products, your customers will always help you to build loyalty to new consumers with their experience. So always ensure that they provide a remarkable experience as you continue doing business with them. Interact more with your customers as try to understand their issues. Remember their feedback will always affect your new customers whether to run away or to keep using your products/services.
- Self-investments
This is the ability to provide a commitment in investing your time, energy, and some amount of money in nurturing and growing your mindset towards business. You can achieve this by researching more on various sources. This can be through reading books either online or on hard copies. Attend and listen to educative forums that may provide you with more knowledge on how to build and grow your business.
You can also advance your skills by paying to courses available online or at the college offering your chosen course. Take time to listen to advice that may help you build your business and most importantly, create time to improve your health.
When the business is doing quite well, you can as well save some amount to your personal account by cash or writing a check to be directly deposited in your account.
- Thinking ahead
This is a vital aspect of growing your business. You need to set your business goals and detect how much it is already achieved and what is yet to be achieved. This will help you in cases where you want to venture into new markets as well as create a new products line. Remember to also check on possible challenges your business may encounter in the future. This will help you get ready on how to deal with it. You can check on the business that has been performing better and stronger despite the challenges.
Thinking ahead will lead you in planning more without any worries if any shortages arise. This means you can even do some purchases at a cheaper price ahead of your time.
- Customer service booster
You need to win the competition in the market by providing a better-improved product/service. This will help you retain your customers as you extract some values from them. Involve your customers as much as possible in any upcoming changes like costs and other new products. This is because your customers serve as the case study who will always provide testimonies and reviews about the company.
Having learn and develop new techniques that are secrets behind the growth of a business, you also need the knowledge of market strategies. There are four main growth strategies to build your business. Either of the strategies can meet your business goals depending on your target market as elaborated below:
- Fitting in the market. In this case it means that the product/service you want to offer is in the market and you want to penetrate in the market and make better sales. To achieve this you need to attract more customers by lowering your costs, increasing your promotion for better reach and also providing distribution support like free deliveries within a given location.
- Market exploration. This is a case where you explore new territories that may need your product/service. The product/service is also an existing ones, however you need new methods of sales. This may involve analysis of how an existing company is achieving its goals where the same techniques can be applied at a different location to offer the same product/service. The analysis may include different customer views, industrial buyers who bought items for house hold use, new territory demands or foreign markets.
- New product/service development. This is a situation where you are launching new products in already existing market. You need to conduct a thorough research before employing this strategy. You can go ahead and enter into join with an already existing company to offer out their product/service but on a different branding. Another way is providing additional products to the existing ones after investing in research. Remember to acquire permission when duplicating products/services from the owner. This development aims at extending the offer that was propose to current customers to increase their turnover.
- Unknown market/ diversification. This is the process of introducing new product/service to completely unknown market. This strategy is risky since it involves a previous market that was not explored. The research is done by the company which is further divided into four categories:
- Horizontal diversification method
This is a method where the company purchases or develop new product/service in order to sell them to already existing group customers. In this case, it is more of a technological business where it is commercially unrelated to offerings but the current customers are appealing to it.
- Vertical diversification method
This is where a company enters into business to provide products that are related to the services they are providing. An example is where a construction company starts to offer products like iron sheets, cement, paints, etc. where these materials can as well be used in the same business.
- Concentric diversification method
This is a method where the company starts the business of providing products that are in line with already existing products. It is a method that provide an option to a customer. For example, a company that produces bread can go ahead and produce dough. This method is mostly employed by small business owners.
- Conglomerate diversification method
The method is mostly used by big companies who try to balance their cyclical portfolio with a non-cyclical portfolio. It is a way of moving into offering new products/services that are not related to the current products/services in either technological or commercial. The products/services are also not related to the current existing equipment or distributions channels. Employing this method may lead to a high return of investments in the new industry.
Conclusion
All four strategies can work best depending on your business. You need to understand your business first to establish which of the methods suits it. Market research can contribute a lot while establishing the kind of method to use. Ask yourself which products/services do you offer currently and what would you like to offer in the future? Another question is which kind of market do you currently serve and which one would like to offer in the future? This way you would be able to establish the best strategy that can work for you.