Ways to Grow Your Business – 9 Proven Strategies

Written By Dave Lavinsky
hands holding a soil with plant

If you’re business isn’t growing, it’s probably dying. Inflation and costs increase whether we expand along with it. Customers, markets, and trends are changing whether we are changing along with them. Those who do not grow get left behind.

But what is growth? That’s the tough question, isn’t it?

Growth is making progress in narrowing the gap between your vision of the company’s future and its present status. It doesn’t necessarily mean getting larger, having more people, and more revenues, though it often does. Growth is making progress towards your vision and future as only you can define it.

We also know that your business has several “parts,” or functions and departments that work together. They don’t grow by themselves haphazardly or unintentionally. They have to grow together in an integrated, coordinated way-by choice!

So what ties it all together? The answer is “Growth Drivers.” These are the three areas in which you can focus your growth efforts:

Whichever of these on which you choose to focus, you have three “growth strategies” available to choose from:

  • Expand
  • Saturate
  • Diversify

This gives nine possible ways to grow, which I’ll break down for you shortly.

But first, for growth to be successful and sustainable, it has to start with marketing knowledge. The right marketing knowledge and intelligence will tell you which available market segments can give you the best opportunities for growth, what products will attract and please your customers, and which lead generation channels and messages will bring them to you.

To acquire this intelligence, pay attention to your customers and collect feedback; conduct formal market research surveys, assess customer demographics, etc.

After you’ve conducted this research and it’s time to grow, here are the nine ways to grow your company:

1. Market expansion – Increasing your target market to include more people or a larger geographical area. This is doing more of the same but to reach more people in more places.

2. Market Saturation – This means getting a bigger piece of the current pie. Whatever target market you are currently in, you would attract more customers from within it and make them “yours.”

3. Market Diversification – This entails going after additional market segments. If you’re selling donuts to walk-in customers, then you might start selling them in the grocery stores or directly to businesses as well (new segments of your market of donut buyers).

4. Product Expansion – Adding more variety to your existing product. An example of this would be Coca-Cola adding Diet Coke, Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, etc.

5. Product Saturation – This means customizing products-tailoring custom-made goods for individual customers. If you go this route, make sure to raise your prices for the extra value (and work).

6. Product Diversification – This means introducing new product lines. The more you have that might appeal to the same group of people, the more likely it is that they’ll buy one of them. You might sell items that complement your flagship product and enhance your customers’ experience.

7. Expanded Lead Generation – This means advertising through the same channels you have been (magazines, signs, direct mail, etc.) but using more of them (ads in additional magazines, mail to new lists, etc.).

8. Concentrated Lead Generation – This means advertising more often through the channels you already are. You’ll reach a higher percentage of the market more frequently to increase response and sales.

9. Diversified Lead Generation – Adding a greater variety of lead generation channels and messages that you’re not currently using, to reach prospective customers in as many ways as you can.

If you are just starting your business or launching a new business model within it, do your best to plan and execute on a small scale.

Once you are farther along and/or are ready to really grow, choose one or more of these 9 growth strategies and focus on implementing them.

 

Suggested Resource: Would you like to know more ways to improve your business; and turn it into one worth $10 million or more? Then check out Growthink’s 8 Figure FormulaThis video explains more.

 

The Secret Formula to
Building a $10 Million Company

If you want to build a $10 million+ company, you must focus on building Value. And to build Value, you need to follow a specific formula.

On this page, I layout the precise formula for you.

As you scroll down the page, you’ll see the important schematic below:

Growthink 8 Figure Formula

Don’t be overwhelmed by its complexity, by the time you see it, it’ll make perfect sense. And you’ll be able to follow it to dramatically grow your business.

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