Some might say that doubling the growth of a business in 12 months is an ambitious goal, however it can certainly be achieved and I have seen this happen time and again. It takes a combination of mindset, strategic planning, innovation, the right people in your corner and correct execution.
It also requires a ‘no give up attitude’.
What qualifies me to write this blog post, or give any advice? I started my business from scratch 10 years ago. I’ve also spent the better part of 25 years reading books, watching videos, paying business coaches, paying life-coaches, attending seminars, learning from others (including mentors), my own intuitions & ideas, formal studies, my own self-learning, working in this industry for 20+ years, plus developing:
- Branding skills
- Graphic Design & Signage Design skills
- Website skills
- Business skills (in general)
- Digital Marketing skills (and traditional marketing skills)
In addition to this:
- I have actively looked under every rock that I could find to learn how to successfully grow businesses. You could say that I have dedicated my life to learning!
- Over the years my team and I have worked with many other businesses (and other entity types) and have helped them grow.
This blog post shares just 10 of the ways that can help a business grow within relatively short timeframes.
Like everything in life, the more you put in, the more you will receive back.
1. Customer Focused
- Identify your most profitable customer types.
- Gain a thorough understanding of their needs, preferences, challenges and biggest problems. Then tailor your offerings to meet those needs and help SOLVE their greatest problems.
- Provide great after-sale support. No one likes feeling sold to, then abandoned. Be of value to your customers and strive to provide the best customer service experience possible. Teach your team to do the same.
2. Work Hard and Stay Focused
- Introduce new products or services that complement your existing offerings.
- Following on from part 1 of this blog post, once you know what the biggest problems are that your idea customer types face, create products and services to help solve these problems. Then package them with a really great irresistible offer.
- Ensure your products and services are as accessible and affordable to your customers as possible, without harming the finances of your business. As in, be as competitively priced as you can be, but don’t destroy your business in the process. Charge what you need to in order to keep growing.
- Explore cross-selling or upselling opportunities to existing customers.
- Niche targeting: Choose the portion of the market that you want to focus on serving. There is a saying: “Market to everyone and you market to no one.” Avoid doing this. Instead, research and find the parts of your potential market who you can help the most, and who will value you and your business the most, and who will pay you enough (and on-time) to achieve growth. If you have been in business for a while I am sure you know about ‘niching’. If not, it’s worth looking into.
- Focus on getting the foundations of your business set up correctly. Then focus on it’s growth. Work hard, and smarter than others. Work extremely hard and put in the hours day in day out, but avoid burn-out.
- Don’t spread yourself too thin. Too often this is the cause for no growth. Juggling too many things at a time can dilute your efforts. ONLY start looking at starting more than one business once you’ve become highly experienced and have achieved growth in your primary business.
3. Expand Market Reach
- Make sure you have ‘Minimum Viable Market’ (MVM) size. As in, know that you have a big enough potential market. If you’re based in a large city, this should be a given. If though you’re based in a regional or rural area, this can sometimes be a challenge, especially if you have a lot of direct competitors in the same area.
- Enter new geographic markets (local, regional, national, and/or international).
- Partner with distributors or resellers to extend your reach.
- Network and build new relationships. There is a saying in service-based businesses: “You grow a business one relationship at a time.”
- Find ways to sell products. The more products you can sell 24/7 automatically (via online selling) the faster you’ll grow.
4. Reposition & Branding
- If your logo, business colours, business cards, flyers and other branding elements and marketing collateral materials are not attracting enough new customers, consider changing your branding and design. This includes a new logo. You need to get the basic branding foundations right first. It needs to be appealing, get attention and stand out. Set yourself apart from your competitors.
- Work with professional logo and brand designers to achieve a REALLY GREAT and highly appealing ‘look and feel’ for your business.
- If your logo and branding is already working well, but you want more growth, sometimes you need to improve your offers, and also finding additional ways to appeal to and target your ideal customer types.
- Come up with one or more irresistible offers.
5. Leverage Digital Marketing
- Following on from point number 4, if your website is sub-standard and/or average, invest in a high quality website.
- Learn about the ingredients that make a website a success. Some are listed in this blog post.
- Optimise your website and online presence using SEO (search engine optimisation) and CRO (conversion rate optimisation),
- Use online and social media advertising, but do this smart and with strategy, else you’ll waste money and get no growth. Consult with an expert.
- Invest in content marketing, email marketing, and influencer collaborations.
- Learn the basics of effective digital marketing. Do some courses if you need to or seek a consultant willing to teach you.
- Actively grow your mailing list and send useful emails to the people in your list(s) at times they will appreciate.
- Learn how to read analytics data; website analytics data, mailing list data, social media data. All of it provides great insight and will help you determine what is working and what needs improving. Work with an analytics expert.
6. Streamline Operations
- Automate repetitive tasks to save time and resources.
- Know all your expenses and control costs. This is the first step towards increasing profits. Once you know all your costs of operation, you can find ways to reduce them. Monitor them ongoing to ensure your costs are not blowing out too much as you grow.
- You will need to spend money to grow. Either your own money, or an investor. Either way, growth costs money.
- Try and find business grants to help you pay for certain things. In Queensland the State Government provides this website where they announce new grant opportunities that they offer. Other entities sometimes also offer grants.
- Learn how to use ‘marketing automation tools’ and other ‘digital task automation tools’ or hire staff skilled in this area, or seek a consultant.
- Eliminate inefficiencies by auditing each of the operations and tasks within your business. Then improve and optimise the processes for each. Reduce the time it takes to perform tasks without sacrificing quality (aka: quality control).
- If able, employ an assistant or virtual assistant to take care of as many tasks as they can, to free up time in your day.
- Focus your time on what will maximise growth and profits.
- Spend more time each week working ‘on your business growth’ vs ‘working in your business’. If you don’t have the time to do this each week, consider finding extra hours each week (eg. working at night), or hiring someone to help (like an assistant or other capable staff or sub-contractors). If you’re not laser-focused on growth each week, the growth may not occur.
7. Enhance Customer Experience
- Focus on personalised and exceptional customer service to build loyalty.
- Become familiar with the ‘ideal buyer customer journey roadmap’.
- Have customers become advocates for your business. The power of ‘word of mouth referral’ and endorsement can be huge!
- Use tools like CRM software (like GoHighLevel) to engage and follow-up with potential new customers and existing customers and address their needs proactively.
- Stay top of mind. Keep in contact with your customers. Find ways to ‘add value’ to them. Don’t pester but also don’t become a stranger.
- Foster and develop relationships.
- Do all you can to help customers feel more inclined to provide online reviews, written testimonials and video testimonials (for your website, social media, ads, Google Business Profile, etc).
8. Invest in Talent
- Commission a quality digital marketing & business growth business that has the skills to help drive growth.
- Empower your team (including employees) with the clear vision for your business. Make sure they understand your vision, values, mission and goals
- Ensure your employees have a high ‘care-factor’ for the success of your business. If on the other hand they’re simply ‘phoning it in’ every day, coasting, under-performing, etc, this will all need to be addressed. Also make sure your team has high belief in your business. Belief is incredibly important, along with productivity.
- Offer staff incentives; bonuses, a career ladder (pathways for them to elevate & grow within the business), and other perks.
- Build team morale.
- Provide great resources to help your team become of increased value to your business. Offer ongoing training (or training when needed) as well.
- Hire more talented employees if you need more sets of hands as your business grows.
- Do everything to keep your star team members. Keep them happy, keep them interested, inspired, fulfilled, etc. Meet and exceed their needs! Ensure they don’t want to leave and/or get poached.
- Remember that “honey catches more flies than vinegar.” Keep calm with your team. Be patient with them. Find a great HR specialist if you need to. Navigate staff conflicts with tact, etc.
- Stay calm, but don’t let your team blind-side you, attempt to control you, attempt to undermine you, or attempt to hurt your business.
9. Optimise Pricing Strategies
- Experiment with tiered pricing (package options), limited time special offers, subscription models, etc to attract and retain more customers.
- Conduct competitor analysis to ensure your pricing is competitive yet profitable. Make sure they are not providing better offers, options, packages, etc than you.
- Test different pricing strategies. Review the data over time to determine what works best for your business.
- Read books and watch videos on YouTube about ‘pricing strategies’. A good book worth reading is “No B.S. Price Strategy” by Dan Kennedy.
- You might be able to increase your prices. There are a variety of ways to go about determining if you can increase your prices. Often this requires testing. It is worthwhile working with a growth expert if you’re considering increasing your prices. They’ll help you do this in the right way, so you don’t start losing your current customers and/or over-price yourself (aka: pricing yourself out of your market).
10. Form Strategic Partnerships
- Collaborate with complementary businesses. Network and find similarly minded people. Over time, strengthen these relationships. Some of these people will begin referring you and you’ll start building your ‘list of referral sources’.
- Become a referral source to others. The more people’s back you scratch, the more people will scratch yours.
- Become a giver. Givers-gain! The book called “The Go-Giver” is worth a read.
- Possibly seek co-marketing opportunities to share resources and reduce costs can also be effective.
Bonus: Measure and Iterate
- Continuously track KPIs and key metrics to evaluate performance.
- Test, analyze, and adapt strategies to ensure you’re scaling effectively.
- If testing and analysing data is not your thing, hire a specialist; either an in-house employee or a 3rd party business like us.
- Make data-drive decisions.
- Build an arsenal of highly effective marketing and advertising strategies that you have tested (so you know first-hand that they work) and then use them whenever you need to.
Conclusion
Doubling the growth of a business within 12 months can certainly be done. Some businesses grow even faster during a 12 month period. Some grow slower. Some don’t want to grow that quickly. It’s all about choice and personal preference.
If you do want aggressive growth though, the activities mentioned within this blog post will help. There are also MANY other additional activities and strategies that can be utilised. I’ll write more soon.
Each business is unique, so it’s essential to prioritise strategies based on your industry, target audience, research, data, resources and your own intuitions.
At Green Valley Digital we are passionate about business growth for those who choose us to work for them. We’d love to share with you ways to achieve greater results across your brand and business. Contact us for a FREE consultation.
* Please note: All information in this blog post is general advice only.