First off, congratulations on your incredible success that has allowed you to start planning further expansion! It is a true accomplishment that customers have overwhelmingly opted for you time and time again in a world where they have so many options, letting you build your reputation one day at a time. This alone is more than enough to help you find the right path that will ultimately let you expand your business further, but certain steps in addition to your existing success will shape how quickly and successfully you launch your new business ventures.
After all, your competition is not stagnant. They will do the very same thing: trying to expand their brand, while new companies keep popping up to steal a slice of the market from you. This is why you need to excel at discovering new opportunities and retaining existing customers, inspiring them to stay loyal. Let’s see what you can do to expand your business and allow your brand to stay above your competitors, no matter how crowded the market may get!
Embrace innovation
Staying true to your niche is one thing, especially if there’s enough need to keep your business thriving for years to come, but avoiding to innovate is completely another. For modern brands to succeed, they need to keep refining that edge that has made them valuable enough for the market to make room for them to begin with. Today, even when you do start off your business existence with a proper “bang” in terms of an innovative solution for your target audience, you also need to keep growing and advancing that mindset.
In the same way you have spotted an opportunity to solve an issue for your customers, you need to keep looking at their needs with the desire to improve your brand’s solutions. That doesn’t have to mean an entire line of new products or services. All it takes is an innovative approach to your existing product and you can rest assured that the interest in your brand will grow. Take a look at the biggest brands such as Coca Cola – the same product sold for decades, but simply letting the shoppers customize the bottle with their name has made all the difference.
Mind your financial stability
No matter how brilliant your upgraded service idea may be or how welcoming your market may seem, you need the funds to keep your expansion running smoothly. Before you embark on this journey, you need to make sure that proper debtor management practices are in place to ensure that all of your debt is resolved before you take the leap into expansion.
That way, you will make sure that your business ideas revolving around expansion can be funded properly, that your cash flow is in excellent shape, and that you don’t have any undiscovered drains on your finances in general. Before you commence the expansion process, conduct all the needed analyses within your company so as to avoid any unexpected financial turmoil caused by debt or cash flow problems!
Play on loyalty
The numbers are in: it can cost you as much as five times more to acquire a new customer than to inspire an existing one to stay loyal to your brand. Other data further supports this simple bit of truth. For example, your chances to sell to an existing customer are as high as 60-70%, whereas they plummet to merely 5-20% for a new customer coming your way. People are creatures of habit, and as such, they are more likely to stay true to a brand they know and they’ve used than a new one popping up on the news feed.
This means that your existing pool of customers is your greatest asset when it comes to expansion. They are the ones most likely to be your brand advocates and to continue building your business when you’re running more than a single location or more than a single service. Make sure to reward their loyalty in more than one way and inspire them to spread the word of your brand well before you start expanding, and by the time you begin the process, you’ll earn more awareness and visibility than ever.
Get personal with your audience
In the present times of digital revolution and the absolute rule of social networks and all things online, the value of face-to-face interaction has increased exponentially. This is a perfect chance for your brand to build a closer bond with its customers, and the finest way to achieve that is through setting up an event. Whether it’s a product launch, simply celebrating an anniversary for your business or an educational course free of charge for your customers, your brand will benefit from the publicity and the networking.
Make sure to utilize events to send the right message, cater to your customers’ interests and to inspire them to stay loyal to your brand. Create various forms of content to get more people interested: engaging videos with your customers in them as well as influencers, sending out personalized invitations, preparing freebies to hand out to your guests, etc. All of these steps are key in determining how well your brand can use its events to prepare for the expansion, as you’ll harness the growing interest to announce the news!
There are so many strategies to put your brand above your competitors, temporarily as well as permanently. From grabbing your market’s attention through wonderful event planning all the way to utilizing innovation, you stand a chance to help your business outgrow its current status.