Building a growth strategy for your business takes more than just creating a vision and planning its execution. This begins by identifying gaps in your marketing efforts and establishing unique business goals to close these gaps.
After the business evaluation, it would help if you researched your industry and competitors. Then, use data-driven methods to measure your results. This will help you position your business in front of your competitors. This guide will cover the basics of planning a growth strategy for your business.
Why start with a business growth strategy?
According to studies, only half of the startups survive the past five years in operation. Only half of those companies make it past the five-year mark. A business growth plan is the secret to a resilient and successful business.
Business growth strategies are concrete, data-driven plans that consider your business’s specifics. No room should be left for guesswork. You should base your course of action on your current performance, strengths, weaknesses, and the performance of your competition.
You need to imagine the success of your company in the future. If you do that, you will be among the 50% of businesses that will only exist for five years.
Start by recognizing your current situation.
Entrepreneurs often begin by setting SMART (Specific Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals. Here’s some solid advice: start with something other than this. Setting goals without knowing where your company is, is like putting a ladder up against a wall you have subjectively chosen.
What’s the problem? You may need to climb the right wall.
To write a plan for business growth, you must first analyze your digital marketing. Then, identify where you could improve. Then, place your ideal customer and establish your unique value proposition. Identify what makes you different from your competitors and who is interested in your products.
Set Business Goals and other Essentials
You can then set short- and long-term goals after determining where your company stands in the sales marketing spectrum. In this respect, based on my experience, I can categorize companies into three types:
- No clear goals for businesses
- Digital marketing campaigns that fail to meet their goals
- Marketing budgets that are too high for companies with a lot of goals
In each case, a comprehensive web audit is required. This will allow you to define your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) and where you are in relation to your competitors.
Develop Data-Driven Strategies
Next, you will need to create data-driven strategies to support your goals. Use conversion rate optimization tactics (CRO) and A/B testing to determine which solutions will help you reach your goals.
It would help to consider other KPIs depending on your position in the digital marketing spectrum to determine how to fine-tune business growth strategies. Here are a few to consider:
- The conversion rate (CVR) is the ratio of conversions to the total number who visit your website.
- Impressions Served (impressions served): The number of times your ads were shown to an online user.
- Cost per Action (CPA) is the amount you pay to perform specific actions, such as newsletter signups, clicks on ads, and completed sales.
- Cost per click (CPC) is the amount you pay each time an ad is clicked.
- Return on Advertising Spending (ROAS) is the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
Many KPIs are available; some may be more relevant to your business than others. It all depends on your stage in the lifecycle of business development. New companies, for example, will need to concentrate on increasing brand awareness, site traffic, and establishing an online presence. A company with a solid online presence should focus on building customer relationships, increasing repeat business, and improving ROAS.
Go For a Multichannel Approach
Next, you will need to develop a holistic multichannel marketing strategy. Depending on the results of your audit, you’ll need to identify a marketing mix unique to your company.
It is essential to cover all aspects of brand marketing. Incorporate a wide range of marketing strategies into your business’s growth strategy. This list includes social media, SEO, email marketing, and paid search.
You must identify your revenue streams as you develop a multifaceted marketing strategy for business growth. You will introduce new products and services and need to match the marketing strategies with them. Choose the ones that will last and stick to them.
Analyzing your competitors is a crucial part of a multichannel marketing strategy. Most likely, your competitors excel at something you struggle with. Find out your competitors’ strategies and see if they work for you.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help if you need it. You can get help from a digital marketing agency to create a plan for your business growth. You can also get help with digital strategy development and competitor analysis.
Then, evaluate the results and fine-tune everything.
Your business needs to be able to adapt and change as it grows. Your business goals and needs will vary at each stage of enterprise development. The process includes evaluation and fine-tuning.