Business growth isn’t something that just happens to a company. It’s typically the result of careful planning and strategy. One challenge many business owners face is that they aren’t sure what to do or how to grow their companies. If you feel that your business is ready to take the next step or move to the next level, there are multiple ways to do so. Often, growing a business means moving into a new market or finding new ways to connect with your customers. Here are a few options.
Expand or Update Your Existing Products
One way to grow a business is to keep reinventing the wheel, as it were. If you make one thing, you’ll eventually get to the point where you have saturated the market and everyone who is going to buy it will have purchased it. But if you offer a new, improved product, the same people who already bought the first version might be likely to come back and buy the new one.
Technology companies are particularly good at getting people to buy new products, as they tend to introduce updated products on a fairly consistent basis. The introduction of the latest smartphone often encourages people to upgrade their phones, even if the current model they have still works perfectly well.
When expanding or updating a product, it’s important to remember to make it better in some way. You don’t want to offer the same thing in different packaging. For example, a new smartphone needs to have features that older models won’t have. New car models need to have enhanced safety features or standard features that people used to have to pay extra to obtain.
Offer New Products
Along with or instead of updating your current products, you can think of ways to introduce new, related products to the market. Google is a good example of a company that keeps on growing regularly introducing new products. It started out as a search engine, then added email a few years later. Today, it offers a full range of products, including hardware such as smart speakers and tablets.
The new products your company offers don’t necessarily have to be in the same category as your existing products. One way to decide what to make is to look at the problems your customers are facing, then develop a product that seeks to solve those problems.
Reach Out to New Customers
Another way to grow is to find new people to sell your products or services to. You might not need to change much about your existing services or products to do so, you might only need to change how you market them. Take a look at your core product and think about who could benefit from using it (who isn’t already doing so). For example, in addition to the email and cloud services it offers to the general public, Google has a version designed specifically for businesses. The people at the companies who use G Suite might have been using it in their personal lives, and Google found a way to reach them in the workplace.
Change How You Sell Products
You can also grow your business by changing your revenue stream. For example, instead of selling a product once, you can try a subscription model, which has people pay for the service or product over and over. Twenty years ago, people who wanted to watch a movie at home headed out to a video store and picked up a rental for the night. They paid for the rental at the time, then paid fees if they didn’t bring it back in time. Netflix changed that by charging people a monthly fee for rentals. Instead of only paying when they have a movie at home, people paid the same amount month after month, no matter how many movies they ended up watching. It created a continuous stream of revenue for the company, compared to relying on piecemeal rental charges.
How you decide to grow your business ultimately depends on what your goals are and the direction you want to take your company. If you are looking for assistance in finding the best way to grow your company, New Direction Capital can help. Contact us today to learn more.