Every small company’s long-term objective is to increase sales and profits to drive growth. To do this, companies need to adopt a shrewd and comprehensive growth strategy to boost revenues and facilitate expansion.
These are three killer strategies small and medium-sized businesses can adapt to drive growth. Each one is unique and employs vastly different methods. Decide which one is best-fitted to your business and devise an implementation plan to begin heading towards the next level for your business.
Mobile-Focussed Expansion
As technology is constantly shifting, companies that have embraced the very latest technological developments and are ahead of their competitors in the race to modernise are in the optimal position to boost sales.
Now, with more consumers beginning to use their smartphones in their purchases, your business should be accessible online. This means building a website that functions as well on mobile as it does on a laptop or tablet.
Embracing modern payment solutions like Apple Pay, or even accepting digital currencies, is another way of getting ahead of the technological curve and staying ahead of the competition.
Investing in Staff
Keeping staff up-to-date on the latest regulatory measures, working practices, and technological developments will help ensure you are maintaining an innovative and creative workforce that are knowledgeable and adaptable.
You can invest in your staff with in-house training, in the form of educational courses and training presentations from senior staff members. If you are looking to run these training in-house, ensure you have the relevant expertise, as well as good presentation software to deliver memorable and eye-catching training presentations to promote information retention.
Alternatively, you can employ external training services like residential courses and training days, or even provide masters assistance programs for employees.
Market Penetration vs Market Expansion
The final growth strategy can be divided into two subcategories. Both are designed to expand your business’s user base and drive growth through increased sales.
The first way of expanding your customer base is through increased market penetration. This is achieved by marketing existing products to the same market you have been using. This can be achieved through user-targeted marketing campaigns, such as a mailing list or through social media.
Alternatively, a company can lower prices to increase their hold of the market share and increase market penetration. Then, once its customer base has grown, it can restore prices to original levels in the hope that the newly-acquired customers keep using the company for their business.
The second way of driving customer acquisition is through market expansion. This means finding a new market for existing products. This is often adopted when there is limited room for growth in the existing market, either due to market saturation, more stringent legal regulation, or dwindling consumer demand.
A company may also wish to employ a strategy of market expansion if they find a new use for their product. For example, if a company producing data analytics software has always sold to the agricultural industry, but finds that its existing products can also be used in the manufacturing sector, it may wish to expand its market to include the manufacturing industry.