Table of Contents
Find out what phase of the business you are in
Detect the strengths and weaknesses of your business
Get concrete answers on how to grow a business
Set measurable and achievable goals
We will review them shortly
Find out what phase of the business you are in
The first thing we need to consider before tackling our business growth is to determine what phase we are in. There are different ways to grow a business depending on its degree of clinics email list maturity in the market. Thus, depending on whether we are in the creation, maturity or consolidation phase , growth will focus on more or less ambitious business plans, from establishing ourselves in the local market to expanding beyond our borders.
Furthermore, knowing exactly how our brand image is considered and where we are within the different business stages will help us know when is a good time for growth.
Choosing how to grow a business requires thought, advice and clarity of objectives.
Detect the strengths and weaknesses of your business
Business logic dictates that we should not consider growing our company without first establishing ourselves in the market we are starting from. This statement, like so many others in the business world, is by no means an absolute truth: it may be that one of the reasons why our business does not achieve success in some of its phases is due to the fact that we are not targeting our target audience, and therefore solutions such as online internationalization are as valid as selling within our borders or just a few meters from our headquarters.
How can we find out where our target audience is and where we need to grow ? In a complete market study that detects our strengths in order to enhance them , and our weaknesses in order to improve them . We must continue to be the best in our field, retain our current niche of clients and improve to attract a new audience. For example, aspects such as creating a robust online community are vital to achieving our goals.
Get concrete answers on how to grow a business
In the business world, half measures are not enough, especially if we want to introduce the business into a saturated market . We must build our projects on solid foundations and not on weak assumptions. To do this, we must design a firm strategic route that does not make us deviate from our objective: business expansion.
How can I get concrete answers on how to grow my business? Through testing, external advice, observing the competition … any technique that allows me to clearly design a viable business plan that is not based solely on beliefs or impulses.
This example shows how, starting from a problem, I found a way to obtain the solution (A/B test) in a clear and precise way, without assumptions . Perhaps, without having done this exercise of reflection and analysis of where my strengths and weaknesses are and without having resorted to external help, I could have come to think that a price reduction would be the most reasonable way to increase sales, or blame the content for the failure of my strategy, which would have meant taking wrong turns without reaching the definitive solution, wasting valuable time, resources and worsening the results.
Set measurable and achievable goals
You should never work with your audience's back turned , and to know how to listen to what your potential audience is telling you, you need to measure their behavior and measure their results . But it is not enough to just study our users to be able to offer them what they want, but also to set our own objectives and be able to quantify them to know if they are viable, if we are on the right track and what we can correct to improve them.
We must treat our company like our audience: knowing how to listen to it, interpret it and offer the best tools to enable its development. Tools that can range from Google Analytics or other Google applications to the most complex, advanced and precise ones that 360º marketing agencies put at your service.
Different business marketing tools help to qualify and quantify the results of a strategy, indicating whether we are following the approach correctly or whether we need to correct it.
On the other hand, it is not worth setting growth as an objective, because what can be defined as growth for one SME can be a real disaster for another. Is it growth to go from one e-commerce to a network of three e-commerces if, instead of tripling income, what has increased are expenses?
To do this, it is vital that your strategy is aligned with a firm business plan , where the expenses to be taken into account and the benefits expected from them are clearly stipulated.
We will review them shortly
There is no point in having a precise roadmap and the right tools to measure results if we do not detect a deviation in time. To do this, frequently reviewing what each action undertaken has yielded can help us to know if we are on the right track or if we need to make changes to our business growth plan.
In short, we can summarize the keys to growing a business as follows:
Be clear about where you are in the market, where you are headed and where you want to go.
Detect the foundations of your success to strengthen them and where you fail to change them.
Don't hesitate to use tools or external advice to carry out specific actions that offer results.
Design a growth plan that includes a review of short, medium and long-term objectives.
