The prospect of business expansion signals an exciting time for your business. Given that the business has reached its current capacity, you can now look to venture beyond old constraints, earn more revenue and capture a larger customer base. But, expanding your business will come with its own set of difficulties such as obtaining resources, hiring the right professionals, managing a larger budget, and much more. To help entrepreneurs make their business expansion successful, Branding Creatively explores four strategies to try and implement.
Add New Product Offerings
While this may sound like a no-brainer, the key is to find the correct product/services to add to your collection. As reported by Info Entrepreneurs, to find a new product that meets these criteria, you’ll need to conduct market research, competitor analysis, and study customer data you have collected. Additionally, reach out to customers for ideas of offerings they’d like to see you sell and how much they would be willing to pay for it.
As this project is by no means a one-man job, and has various moving pieces, the best way to tackle it is by creating a plan. The steps to create a product roadmap is as follows:
Mention your Goals: This will include information on what problems are you trying to solve? What market segment are you trying to capture? And other specifics regarding the product.
Designate Stakeholders: To avoid confusion, assign specific tasks to teams and individuals with clear objectives to be met.
Set Deadlines: Break the project into various parts each with its own deadline. This will help stay on top of progress and ensure you can launch your product on the decided deadline.
Upsell to Existing Customers
This strategy involves diving deeper into your existing market segment and finding ways to sell more products to your customer base. To make this strategy successful, you need to learn as much as you can about your existing customers and then find segments that have a higher probability of buying additional goods or services, as reported by Appointy.
Finding these customers will involve a deep dive into your data and segmenting customers based on:
- Age
- Location
- Buying Habits
- Spending Power
Once you have found the ideal segment(s) to target, channel appropriate marketing and sales resources for promoting and upselling your goods.
Expand into New Markets
Moving into a new market will provide you the chance to sell your products and services to a completely new set of customers. But, entering new markets also means facing more competition, hence it is crucial to conduct thorough research regarding market demand, customer buying behaviors, and competitor performance.
When done right, this can be the best strategy for making a business expansion successful. For instance, if you run a retail clothing shop, starting to sell your products on e-commerce sites can boost your sales massively. Similarly, local restaurant owners can choose to enlist food delivery service apps to sell their food to a wider customer base.
Invest in Branding
Regardless of the strategy you choose for business expansion, branding will play a key role in its success. Being in a competitive market, customers are bound to have similar products to choose from. Their purchase decision will be based on which product they perceive to have the stronger brand. Additionally, when it comes to first-time buyers, they’re more likely to go with well-known brands in the industry rather than lesser-known ones.
Designing a brand goes beyond social media handles, and should include:
- A strong messaging that resonates with buyers.
- A memorable logo that customers can recall at any time.
- A unique color scheme to distinguish yourself from the competition.
- Consistency in terms of messaging and colors across all promotional mediums.
Given the importance that branding plays in your expansion goals, work with the experienced professionals at Branding Creatively, who can drive all your promotional activities, leading to an increase in brand awareness and revenue.
Now that you have numerous expansion strategies at your disposal, all that’s left to do is decide which ones to pursue depending on your goals and financial standing.
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