News: June 2011

Small business growth strategy tips

Here are some small business growth strategies that you can use to expand your business.

Joint Ventures – This is essentially an agreement between two businesses to provide a specific product or service as a single offering. Joining forces with another business in this manner gives you access to their expertise, capacity and their client base. This is a great way to enable your business to reach new customers – however make sure to choose the right partner.

Extend Your Market Reach – The idea of expanding into new markets may sound daunting; however, it may be easier (and more successful) than you think. Extending your market reach simply means using your existing products or services to expand into new markets. Rather than develop a new product or service offering you can simply employ different marketing approaches. This may entail exploring new geographical areas that need your products or services, or perhaps targeting a new demographic.

Develop a New Product or Service – Although this may not be the most cost effective way to expand your business, developing a new product or service allows you to explore new market opportunities. In addition, your firm can sell the new product or service to existing clients. On top of this, the new clients won by your new product or service offering may now purchase your original offering too. In developing a new offering you should consider products or services that complement your current ones, allowing you to generate more sales from your existing customer base and keeping your product range synonymous with your company brand.

Enhance Productivity – Enhancing productivity in your firm simply means getting more done in the same amount of time. Whether this means doing more tax returns per day or building more products per week depends on the type of business you run. Bear in mind that increasing output in this manner may require additional financial resources in order to hire more people or buy extra raw materials, etc. Be sure to have a solid marketing plan as part of your growth strategy in order to sell your additional products or services.

The growth strategies you employ depend on the type of business that you run and the resources available to you. Whichever way you choose to grow your business, remember that proper planning is essential – “fail to plan then plan to fail”.