Small business owners across the U.S. dream of growing their business into the next great global brand. As a company with a history of helping small businesses expand overseas, we’re here to give you advice and tips on how to take your business to the next level.
What does business growth mean for my business?
Growth means different things to different businesses. It’s up to you to decide what goals and aspirations you have for your company. Is your goal to grow your customer base? Is it expanding your product range? Is it higher revenue? Is it higher profits? Is it a bigger share of the market? Is it hiring more people? Is it selling in more countries?
Before putting together a formal business growth plan, here are some strategies to consider when you’re thinking about expanding your business.
What is a business growth plan and why is it important?
When you’re running a business, it’s hard enough to keep up with everything that’s happening day to day, let alone put multiple strategies for growth into action, monitor their success or otherwise, and adapt accordingly.
That’s why business growth plans are essential to the future of any successful small business. A good plan will allow you to monitor your market share and penetration (which must increase, or you’ll end up making losses rather than profits); help you recoup any early losses your company made; minimize future risks; give investors an outline of future growth; and show concrete revenue plans.
A business growth plan will force you to look ahead. It is an outline for where you see your company, usually with a timeline over the next year or two, and goals for each quarter. At the end of each quarter, you can see which goals you’ve met and where you can improve.
How to grow your business
The power of customer research
The first step is figuring out what made your customers buy your product in the first place. Did they discover it from a Google Ad? Did they learn about it through social media, or word of mouth? This will help you determine what marketing strategies are working for your business.
To increase loyalty and attract new customers, it’s also vital to find out how you can improve your products and processes. You can figure these customer pain points and challenges by conducting high-quality customer research by email, an online questionnaire or even telemarketing. You can also get feedback from user reviews and by engaging with customers on social media.
And of course, tools such as Google or Adobe Analytics can help you focus your marketing efforts by giving you useful data about how your customers arrive at your website, which pages are most popular, what are the dwell times, and so on. That way, you can optimize your site accordingly.
Boost your customer service
When it comes to operating a successful business, never underestimate the power of good customer service. The result of the customer research you conduct could show you ways to improve how you interact with your customers. If a customer feels disappointed by your service, find ways to turn the situation around by offering a discount, for example. Exceed expectations and you’ll find your reputation grows through word of mouth and on social media, bringing in new customers.
Increase customer retention
It costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. Losing customers – and having to replace them – will damage your bottom line and hinder your growth. That’s why improving customer retention is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your business.
If you can keep your existing customers coming back, they’ll end up spending more. A customer loyalty program, which rewards your customers for spending with you, will help. Probably the best way to execute this is via email marketing – one-to-one communications are very powerful when building customer loyalty.
You could also consider introducing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to store data about your existing and potential customers and help you identify sales opportunities.
Use your competitors
Think of competition as an opportunity. Conduct thorough competitor research to understand what strategies they are using, what works for them, and what doesn’t. Pay attention to customer reviews to see what their customers are saying. Use these insights to inform and improve your own strategies.
Ronald Frasier, a successful business growth strategist, recommends using Similar Web and AdBeat platforms to research competitor sales funnels and uncover their online strategies2.
If you’re at an early stage in your business, you might be tempted to copy your competitors as a quick way to grow your business. However, to keep growing long term, you will have to define your brand against theirs.
Make the most of social media
The digital world offers huge marketing opportunities and one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your business is by reaching new customers on social media platforms.
Create a presence for your business and make sure you post content regularly on those platforms whose users match the profile of your target market. You might even consider some influencer marketing – you can find out more about influencer marketing here.
As well as marketing your business and building a relationship with your customers, some platforms now enable customers to buy products directly without leaving the app – giving you another new way to sell!
Interacting with customers on social media is also a great opportunity to research and get unfiltered, honest feedback. One thing to remember though: whatever you post on social media, keep it consistent with your brand.
For more about marketing your brand, check out our article, the six key principles of marketing.
Network, network, network
Attending networking events can raise your business’s profile, make your brand more visible, and often lead to new customers. By networking with people in your own industry, you can also get new insights on how to grow your business, hear about emerging trends, and build long lasting professional relationships. Once you’re feeling confident, you could even offer to speak at one, raising your profile even further.
And don’t forget to build your network on social media business networking sites, chiefly LinkedIn.
Engage in a strategic partnership
Partnering with another business can help you reach new customers and grow. A good example of this is the Sydney-based fashion brand Shona Joy. The brand partnered with DHL Express to provide international express delivery service, enhancing the speed and reliability with which they could deliver to customers around the world. By aligning with a company that offered expertise in an area where they needed support – in this case, international shipping – they were able to expand their customer base and grow.
Learn more about the benefits of strategic partnerships.
Diversify your products or services
Your customer research may well reveal a customer need or desire for a new product, or a new variation on a product you already offer. By offering new or different products, you can attract new customers. Consider products at different price points, too, in case price is a barrier.
Another option might be to find new ways of selling products or services you already offer, for example, bundling together some that are part of the same range.
Extend to new markets
If you’re not already selling your products cross-border, exporting them is a sure way to grow your business. And if you’re already doing so, why not think about new countries to sell to?
Of course, you could look at opening new bricks-and-mortar sales outlets abroad but, at least to start with, consider creating a country-specific webstore. Check out our article on how to grow business online.
And when it comes to shipping your goods to a new market, rapid, reliable logistics are essential. At DHL we can ensure it all happens smoothly.
Measure and adapt
There is no substitute for hard data when deciding what is working and what isn’t. So it’s good to set forecasts and targets in a business growth plan and measure against them.
For example, what are your customer retention levels before and six months after your customer loyalty program has kicked in? If the program isn’t meeting your targets, how could you refine it, so it does?
Keep monitoring and keep updating and adapting, until you find exactly what works.
Be a socially responsible business
Corporate and social responsibility (CSR) is a huge issue for every business right now. Many people will only work with, work for, or buy from businesses that practice good CSR. That means making changes to become a greener business, producing sustainable products and giving back to your local community.
On the other hand, if you publicize the fact that you insist on a logistics partner who uses electric vehicles for delivery, for example, or you’ve changed to sustainable packaging, or your employees are volunteering and cleaning up the local green spaces, this will all help build your brand – and create goodwill amongst current and potential customers.
For more insight on ways to grow your business, check out our top seven business growth strategies.
What factors impact business growth?
There are many factors that can affect your business growth, but according to business.com3, these are the three key elements:
- Leadership. You need to know the ins and out of your business processes and how external forces impact them. Otherwise, you can’t direct your team to drive your revenue and grow.
- Management. This includes the key areas of obtaining funding, resources, and physical and digital infrastructure. While it may be tempting to hold back on these to save money, it could restrict your growth – and the money you’ll earn after growing could cover your current costs. This is where you need to take a calculated risk.
- Customer loyalty. According to research by the Harvard Business Review, a 5% boost in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%!
How to write a business growth plan, step by step
If you search online, you’ll find many different experts offering different views on how to write a business growth plan and what to include in it. However, here are some of the key points that most agree upon.
Step 1. Define goals
Set your goals according to your idea of how to measure business growth.
That could be growing your customer base, expanding your product range, bringing in more revenue, achieving higher profits, taking a bigger share of the market, hiring more people or – most likely – a combination of several of these.
Step 2. Decide on a timeline
Some experts encourage you to start with long-term goals (eg. 10 years), and then work backwards to decide your five-year, three-year, two-year and one-year goals. Others limit a business growth plan to one or two years. In the end, it’s up to you to decide how far you want to look ahead.
Step 3. Plan actions to reach your goals
If your goal is to increase revenue, for example, what are your best ways of achieving this? They might be adding to your sales team through a recruitment campaign, or increasing your website traffic through a marketing campaign, or increasing customer retention through a customer loyalty program. Think about the tactics and tools at your disposal.
Step 4. Add some metrics
Once you’ve set your goals, and planned how to achieve them, work out some key metrics to measure your success.
Try to keep them clear, simple and quantifiable. For example, if you’re thinking long term, ‘Increase our customer base by x% within 10 years’, or shorter term, ‘Increase revenue by x% in two years’ or ‘Expand into x new countries within a year’.
Add metrics to the smaller action items too. That might be, for example, ‘Run a recruitment campaign that brings in x new staff members’ or ‘Run a customer loyalty program that increases retention by x%.
Step 5. Research and adjust as necessary
Once you’ve defined your goals, decided on a timeline, and added some metrics, you need to check whether they are all practical. Do some research within your industry and among your current and potential customers.
This will help you justify your goals to yourself, adjust them if necessary, and ensure a realistic timeline to achieve them.
Step 6. Set funding
Again, you’ll need to do some research to find out how much your business growth plan will cost to execute. Then you’ll need to either secure some capital investment or set aside an internal budget.
Step 7. Execute your business growth plan!
How to measure business growth in six different ways
You may have chosen your preferred ways of measuring business growth, but it still makes sense to get a more rounded view. When checking your progress, consider the following six measures:
- Revenue: Revenue is a commonly used metric for business growth. However, remember to balance it with outgoings, because making more money often means spending more.
- Profit: this is a better indicator than revenue. A growing profit rate is desirable but, even if growth is minimal, it’s important that your company has a healthy profit margin. However, for new businesses, rapid growth in profitability is vital.
- Market share: Again, for new companies, it’s important to grow market share rapidly against competitors. Otherwise, it will be difficult to drive sales.
- Customer acquisition: a good way to grow market share is to focus on lead generation and sales volume – which obviously grows revenue too.
- Customer retention: it’s far less expensive to keep a customer than gain a new one, so retention should be a key focus and metric. Only if you retain your current customers will you grow by acquiring new ones.
- Employee head count: of course, you need enough employees to enable you to grow your business. But you need to balance this with how much your team costs and monitor this closely.
With a DHL Express Business Account, you'll have advice from the international experts on growing your SME.
