Growth Options: How Businesses Take the Next Step

One of your responsibilities as a business owner is to ensure you have a plan for growth. If you don’t have long term growth as one of your goals, as well as facing the more immediate challenges of the short and mid-term, you leave yourself open to losing out on opportunities which are grasped more enthusiastically by hungrier businesses with a longer view.

Today we’re taking a look at some of the options you have for growing your business – not every one is appropriate for each different business, so you need to appreciate all the possibilities available to make the right choice.

Adding New Products

One of the easiest ways to grow is to add new products to your inventory. This can help you generate more revenue from your existing customers or broaden your appeal to bring more customers in.

It’s not a guaranteed route to success though, and need to make sure you have a reliable new product development process in place. If you’re not releasing a tested product that’s optimised to your customer’s needs then you run the risk of a failure that’s costly not just in financial terms but also damages your reputation.

Opening New Branches

Another way to expand your business is very literal growth – if you’re a bricks and mortar based business you can open more bricks and mortar branches.

Again, research here is vital. If there’s not sufficient demand for your brand in the area you open in, then this new branch could cost you more than it ever brings in, endangering not just your plans to expand but your core business as well!

Global Customers

If you’re a web-based commerce brand, then it could be worth your time to take a worldwide perspective. A global market frees you from reliance on only one group of customers. If you’re overcommitted to a single group, then you’re at their mercy: if the economic situation changes they may not have the money to spend on you; if competitors move into town you could lose your customers to them; even simple changes of fashion could see a fatal drop in your revenue.

With a global market, you’re free from the insecurity of that single group of customers. Preparing for this kind of expansion means researching the markets you’ll be expanding into to make sure you can present yourself for them in the most persuasive way possible, and also to ensure you can ship to them cost-effectively, and in compliance with tax regulations at home and abroad!