10 Proven Ways to Grow your Business Quickly
Opening a business has never been easier in human history. Today, even a fresh high school graduate can become a successful business owner if they play their cards right. However, as easy as that statement is, it is essential to remember that the world is currently in economic turmoil, and a recessionary spell is sweeping the business landscape. This makes the endeavour far more challenging, and with the stakes so high, one wrong move can spell the end for any start-up. This leads many aspiring entrepreneurs to scour the web for any edge. This is precisely the purpose of this article: to look at some proven methods to grow your business quickly, even amidst the hostile business climate.
Before looking at ways to grow your business, it is essential to understand that there is no foolproof method for doing business; you must learn how to succeed. Every business idea is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to be successful. While this article elucidates strategies that other firms have employed to achieve success in the past, there is no guarantee that they will have the same result for your business or even apply to your business model.
As such, this list should be taken as a rough set of best practices with historic success and generally accepted as lucrative. However, when it comes to implementing these strategies into your business, it is a case-by-case discussion. You should hire an industry expert for a second opinion. Look at some companies' most lucrative strategies and learn from the best.
10 Strategies to Grow Your Business Quickly
1 – Carve a Niche Market for Your Business
If someone asked me today how to be successful in business, my first answer would be to tell them to carve a niche market. In today's highly competitive business landscape, carving out a niche for yourself in the market is more critical than ever. Standing out from the crowd and providing a unique and tailored experience to your customer base is paramount for success. The best way to do this is to look at your product and identify your competitors. By researching your competitor's customer base patterns and habits, you can quickly figure out what they need that you can fulfil.
The Dollar Shave Club's success story highlights how vital carving your niche market is. The DSC identified that its market competitors were expensive and required store visits. DSC capitalised on this opportunity and launched a subscription service that is both affordable and delivers the product to customers' doorsteps every week/month without any added hassle.
This was an ingenious move by the Dollar Shave Club, and they grew to be acquired by Unilever for $1 billion recently. If that isn't a testament to how effective it is to carve a unique niche and be the first to do something, then I don't know what is. We may live in an age where everything has been done before, but all that means is that you must do it better than the rest to grow your business and rise above the competition.
2 – Customer Experience is King
Never has customer experience mattered more than it does in the 21st century. With the advent of the internet and the whole world today being on social media, protecting the business's reputation is vital to stay running. All it takes is one bad customer experience, and the situation can escalate to where serious harm comes to the business.
We can look at the debacle with EA DICE, the gaming giant when it came to their Star Wars Battlefront 2 game. The game's predatory loot box mechanics were so offensive to customers that the company experienced a massive backlash over social media. Things escalated so far that the government even resorted to legal action against the company for its customer abuse. All it took was one bad customer experience to annihilate a reputation built over decades. As design director Dennis Brännvall said in an interview with Games Industry two years later, “We hit rock bottom in terms of player sentiment, but now it's climbing every month,”. The company remained standing after this incident because it is an established corporate giant with multiple game I.P.s in its portfolio. For a smaller business, one such controversy can completely shut down the business.
On the flip side, there is room for an opportunity here. While a bad customer experience may prove immensely detrimental for a business due to the easy proliferation of information over the internet, the reverse is also true, i.e., a good customer experience can prove to be a massive boon for the business. We can look at many success stories regarding customer experience, with companies like IBM topping the list regarding having the most satisfied customers.
Businesses that become famous for their customer service will see rapid growth as word of mouth over the internet brings more and more people over to check them out. Investing in customer experience, especially when hiring a competent, soft-spoken, and professional customer service team, is one of the quickest ways to grow your business and secure a loyal customer base that will keep returning. This article provides a short and insightful guide to building your business's customer experience.
3 – Brand Development
Brand development is why Apple is one of the most beloved and profitable companies today. Despite many outcries at Apple being overpriced or predatory, the company has experienced steady growth, with one of the most loyal customer bases. Apple customers pay for the brand; they pay to have the apple symbol with them. Apple has made it's brand a status symbol, and today, it could sell virtually anything with the logo on it and would be profitable.
Developing a brand this strong takes work, it requires years of industry presence, but you must try to establish your brand. Investing in brand development and making the right moves can skyrocket the business' success.
Let's think about a brand that has recently acquired overnight success thanks to its brand development: Wendy's. Wendy's is today one of the most famous fast-food chains in the US, and it's not because of its food; it's because of its Twitter presence. Wendy's Twitter account is one of the biggest memes on the internet, and it all began with the account “roasting” people and other brands over Twitter. This led to a massive wave of internet traffic flooding Wendy's, a brand like a living, breathing person, talking in casual internet lingo and dissing its competitors. This pivot from corporate speech and highly sanitised social media presences to the character of Wendy, a rebel mascot that makes witty retorts and even dropped a well-produced diss-track, got the company a profit boost of 64 million in just one year, according to Deputy.com. By building its brand around this witty mascot, the company set itself apart and became the focus of the entire internet's attention.
Learning brand development is vital if you want to know how to be successful in business today. You can grow your business immensely rapidly if you find ways to make yourself noticeable online. Even offline, your business can make efforts like these brands did to become the talk of the town, the brand guaranteeing customer influx and retention. All it takes is one correct PR stunt, and the business can sprint ahead of the competition even in this harsh business landscape.
4 – Invest in Digital Marketing
The above example of Wendy's is also apt to be considered here. Digital marketing is the future; it is the most efficient way to attract customers and generate revenue. Almost every business we use as an example in this article is here because of their immense digital marketing efforts. Being known is the bottom line; it only matters how good the product or service is if people know it exists. This is where leveraging modern digital marketing methods such as SEO content writing, social media marketing, YouTube video marketing, and similar strategies become integral to achieving and sustaining relevance in the market.
Staying on top of trends, interacting with customers over social media, launching ad campaigns, and getting the word out about the business' presence through posting SEO-optimised content to top Google search results are all strategies that demand investment if you plan to grow your business quickly today.
Hiring a dedicated team of digital marketing specialists and content writers can initially seem like a vain effort, but trust in the process. It takes time and a bit of luck, but with patience and concerted efforts, digital marketing can bear fruit quickly and abundantly.
Influencer marketing and brand endorsement is also immensely beneficial way to grow your business quickly. Today, having an influencer talk about and endorse your brand is more profitable than plastering the whole town full of advertisements. For one, an influencer has a cultivated audience that trusts in their word. You can leverage this trust to get their customer base to come to your business and, in the best-case scenario, capture their audience and grow outward through word of mouth. Influencers come at a hefty price; however, you must research the best choice.
Ideally, businesses want to select a stable, active, and engaging audience with the least risk of potential harm to the brand through association. This is one of the more high-risk, high-reward strategies, and if you play your cards right, the ROI could far exceed your wildest expectations.
5 – Invest in Automation and Artificial Intelligence
While AI may be the talk of the town in 2023, it would be a great disservice to mention how Dominos leveraged the technology well ahead of its time to pull itself out of near bankruptcy. Today, Domino's does not sell itself as a food company but as a technology company. Domino's CEO Patrick Doyle made history when he tasked his IT team with one goal: Make it so a customer could order a pizza at a stoplight.
This led to the creation of Domino's unique and staple ordering system and transformed the company into something of an Amazon equivalent for pizzas. By adopting technology like automation to make the ordering process as hassle-free and streamlined as possible, Domino's managed to strike gold. The failing brand pulled itself out of decline and skyrocketed, experiencing unprecedented growth and overtaking all competition. Today, Domino's is the shining example of why investing in technology is paramount for growth. Automating where you can, making the sales journey as simple and easy as possible, and using AI to manage orders and queries, all of these technological investments have huge ROI if implemented correctly. Not only do they offer tremendous savings once set up, but the possible profitability jump is worth every penny. To grow your business quickly, do what Domino's did and fully leverage technology.
6 – Create Multiple Revenue Streams
If the pandemic taught us anything, a business must always have a fallback option to continue growing. Creating multiple products and diversifying your revenue stream are crucial factors in business success today. A brand must refrain from selling one thing perpetually, which leads to stagnancy. Constant innovation and multiple products and services are necessary to capture a larger audience and grow the business.
A perfume brand, for example, can only grow so far as just a perfume brand. After a certain point, it must expand into other cosmetics products such as make-up or accessories. We have countless examples of companies constantly innovating and reinventing existing products to spur growth.
Mountain Dew is an excellent example of a business that continues diversifying. Sporting 32 unique flavours, the soda brand has become a giant in today's corporate world. By targeting the tastes of any and every age range, gender, and community, Mountain Dew has cornered the soda market and continues to expand. Investing in diverse revenue streams like this is one of the fastest ways to grow your business. A new product regularly launched is integral to maintaining customer attention. The goal is to have only some of your eggs in one basket, leading to stagnancy and potential failure if the product loses relevance.
7 – Collaborate With Other Brands
No business can thrive alone. Mingling in the business community and collaborating with other companies is necessary for growth. Some of the most explosive growth we have seen in recent years is brands collaborating to launch a product that mutually benefits both sides. Take the hit video game Fortnite as a shining example of this. Fortnite, as of May 2022, has collaborated with 100 brands, ranging from Marvel to Ariana Grande. By collaborating with these brands. Fortnite manages to break out of its saturated niche as a battle royale game and into a hundred different and distinct customer bases.
Do you like Iron Man? Well, he is in Fortnite. Do you like John Wick? He's there too. What about Goku from Dragon Ball Z? They have him as well. Fortnite brings in players from all these brands' customer bases and gets them to spend for their favourite character's skins while augmenting the game's battle royal mechanics to include nifty references to all these IPs. This genius move has made Fortnite one of the biggest multiplayer games in the world today, and despite being a free-to-play game, Epic Games continues to grow and bring more and more such collaborations to its player base.
While not at this scale, any business can learn from Fortnite and secure inter-brand collaborations to gain a wider audience for high profitability. As an entrepreneur, expand and try alliances instead of isolating your brand yourself. Growing your business has never been easier than it is with this tactic. Getting a famous brand to partner with you is a sign of trust in your brand and an opportunity to widen your horizons significantly.
8 – Practice Corporate Social Responsibility
Nothing gets customers more invested in your brand than practising corporate social responsibility. This entails showing the community that your business cares about the people and social causes. Companies cannot function today as just businesses; they must become personable and develop a persona. A business people can relate to and feel good about giving their money to has a far better chance of success than a stone-cold business without public goodwill.
We have many instances of businesses making significant contributions to philanthropic causes, such as cancer research or climate change research. All of these instances of corporate social responsibility help build this bank of trust and goodwill with the public, showing that the business cares. In a world where corporations and big companies are vilified for being uncaring, the more grounded and socially aware your business presents itself, the easier it becomes to grow your business quickly.
9 – Regularly Evaluate and Optimise Business Processes
Moving to a more internal part of the equation, one of the best ways to stay on top of things and ensure steady growth is to reevaluate your business processes and optimise where possible. Business growth is more than just how much you can sell but also how much you can save. And the best way to save on business costs is to know where you are overspending and how you can reinvent the process to make it more efficient, both in price and in time.
This requires keen eyes, and hiring business process analysts is a lucrative investment in the long run. By continuously keeping your business in check and ensuring that you are using money wisely, you can reinvest the savings in the industry and grow your business even more quickly.
10 – Leverage Outsourcing
If you want to learn how to be successful in business, the best place to start is by learning from the experts. Experts, however, are not easy or cheap and are typically out of reach of most small businesses. This is where outsourcing comes in to save the day. These days, companies can find affordable and quality expert outsourced solutions for any business function. For example, Expertise Accelerated offers vast experience in the US CPG industry's accounting sector and provides outsourced accounting professionals at a fraction of the US cost. By leveraging outsourcing, you can access treasure troves of knowledge and experience at an affordable price, contributing significantly to quickly growing your business.
Conclusion
After discussing these proven strategies and tips to grow your business, it is time to bow out with a heads-up. Growth may only sometimes be a good thing for your business and brings a whole new set of challenges. Before investing in strategies that may exponentially increase your growth, you must be aware of these challenges. Issues such as a lack of infrastructure to support growth and financial strain are common in rapid growth. Preparing for these challenges and leveraging solutions like outsourcing to pick up the slack is a wise choice. I wish you the best of luck in growing your business!
