Business Growth Online

This white paper will explain how you can grow your business online and provide a simple guide to what you need to know before you get started.

 

Getting started and how to avoid the pitfalls

Expanding your business is something that every company wants to do but most rarely succeed achieving the full potential because they fail to manage day to day business whilst also thinking about growth strategies. Companies who struggle to achieve greater success do not realise the amount of planning and organization that needs to be applied to future business. Even those companies who have unparalleled success often become a victim of this because they failed to cope with something they were not prepared for.

The first thing that you should remember is your business plan. Hopefully you have one of these from when you first started out. Even once your business has been established and you have secured funding - don't throw it away! Follow your business plan as a guideline because that is what it is there for. If your business strategy or plans have changed, even slightly, update this and continue to follow it.

You will probably want to think about your current situation. Decide what direction your business is headed, and is that the direction you want it to go? Think about the goals you have achieved so far and if they are the primary goals you sought out in the beginning. You need to have control over what it is you are doing and make sure that the company is headed the way you want it to. Sticking to a plan will help you organize and have something to aim for within your time scale.

Look at your financials and find out where your money is being spent. Often companies waste money on unnecessary tasks where they could be saving for future projects and expansion. It's good to look back at how your money has been spent in the past and try to evaluate any trends that appear. Looking to the past can sometimes yield useful clues to help predict your future - keep doing the same things and ut's unlikely the future will be much different from today.

Make what it is you do or sell bigger and better. You will have to compete within your own market, and even if you operate in a niche you should still try to improve the quality and range of your products or services. You may have a product that is selling really well, so focusing on how to improve that is your primary task - not introducing new products before you make the most of your current one. If you have a good product and a sufficient amount of business interest then word will quickly spread about your company and product. Once you have got all you can out of a product then look at bringing to life other new innovative ideas, creating a new line of products or extending an existing range.

Your new ideas don't have to be totally different from your original products(s). If we use Coca Cola as an example, they have been selling the same product for the last 100 years. It has been refined on many occasions, but its still considered the same product. The Coca Cola Company has also introduced variants in its products and capitalized on the name Coke by introducing branded clothing and gift items. Considering bringing in something that can enhance or work with an existing product, or adding to it, might give you some extra leverage on an original idea.

Are your customers satisfied? You shouldn't settle for satisfaction, you should aim to make sure your customers are very happy with your product, but more importantly, your service. When people call you make sure you give them a exceptional experience on the phone. Just being polite should be second nature to customer service staff, but what makes a unique experience unique? People remember good customer service and it reassures them that they are dealing with professionals. If in the future a dispute occurs then people will recognize that you want to solve the problem quickly and effectively.

To start with consider using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System. These systems are designed to manage you and your clients, store call and incident histories and generally provide you with more information about your clients so you can identify and work with them when they contact you. CRM allows you to analyze all the data you hold on existing and potentially new customers. Allowing you to see buying habits and possible risks, CRM has integrated itself into the most successful businesses in recent years.

Growing your business requires money. Early on in your planning try and make some financial relationships. Having financial backers makes it easier for you to focus on expanding without having to worry about generating money from your own pocket. Money isn't free however and a substantial percentage of your business will probably have to be given up in exchange for cash or cash flow to fund loans - which are preferable to overdrafts as they can be planned into your finances. This isn't unusual and it's probably the push you need to get started making your business bigger and better.

Once you've got the cash, you are going to want to start spreading the word about your company and products. Promoting your business to potential buyers should be your first step to getting more sales leads so set your goal for your promotion and know what you expect to get from that. Using the Internet is a fantastic way to promote your business. There are many different ways to advertise on the web - through your own website, by pay-per-click advertising and even optimisation (getting up the search engine rankings for free). See our seperate white paper on how to manage a SEO strategy.

Consider advertising in magazines or newspapers with promotional offers and deals on selected products or try introducing a pay later scheme. If you don't see your products fly off the shelf in the first week, don't worry. You need to aim for more exposure so people can identify a certain product with your name! Be creative when advertising because something that looks different or can stand out from the rest is going to catch people's attention and they are more likely to remember it.

Targeting specific groups depending on wealth, age or gender can help you reach the right people. Segmentation will improve your chances of selling your products by focussing on the most likely buyers. Do some research about the types of people who might buy your products because you should know your customers well and be able to predict trends in buying or using your service. If we look at how large franchises like McDonalds advertise, it is to a younger segment of the market, and primarily though Television. These products, such as the ‘happy meal', have been the same for the last 25 years and have hardly been changed. We are not suggesting every business should be on TV but every business should try to understand its customers and the kinds of media they will use.

Once you have reached as many people as you think you can within one segment of people, then you can move on and try a new field of potential customers. Change or alter your product to fit into a different group; don't be afraid to experiment with your products once you have gained confidence to market it to one segment. Often a completely new product isn't useful as it takes much more advertising and input to make it successful. Developing an existing product that already has a market can still be beneficial for company growth.

It seems inevitable that you will experience some aches and pains while trying to grow your business. Establishing a business is the easy part, but making it effective and starting to make profit is where all the work goes. Seeking advice from business professionals can help keep you on track if you are finding difficulties. They can help you devise a strategy and advise you on what does and does not work.

Sometimes it just isn't feasible to start thinking about expanding your business by yourself, so you may wish to consider a joint venture. Working with other companies makes it possible to have access to more resources, joint customers, ideas and expertise that you might have working by yourself. If your primary goal is the survival of your company and not independent success, then this is something you should seriously think about.

Competition is something that can slow down the rate at which your company can grow. Buying another business that is in direct competition can give you a slight edge over the market but is sometimes costly. Integrating someone else's products into your business gives you the chance to develop, improve and remarket them under your name.

The problems many companies come across are conflicting objectives. It's not always possible for two different organizations to have the same aims to work towards. People also have alternative ways of working and managing business, which could create confusion and make co-operation hard to reach. The most important aspect of working in a partnership is sharing the workload and reward equally, or depending on the financial agreement, the percentage of the work each side should be expected to do.

something 4 Ltd can help you start to grow your business in several ways ranging from helping you build a more effective online presence to attracting online customers or partners - we also have solutions such as Cyrane which can improve business efficiency - making it easier to focus on growth. With the expertise and experience you would expect, Something 4 are willing to help you achieve the goals and high expectations you set for yourself!