When you’re running a business, you need to be consciously chasing success. If your full attention is devoted to solving problems as they come up, and you have no plans for growth, development and long-term success, then you’re liable to find your business closed before you have the chance to get established. Finding the time and energy to put together a plan for future success can repay you when you’re steering through the many challenges and problems of the early days of your business.
Today we’re looking at different routes to success for your business – not every one will be for your business, but the more you learn, the better you are able to make the right choices for your specific situation.
Expanding Physically
If you’re a bricks and mortar based business, one of the ways you can pursue success, higher revenue and greater stability is to expand physically. If you’re based in a single premises, in a single town or city, you’re over-reliant on the market in the immediate area for your revenue.
Opening a new branch in another location allows you to tap into a new market, access new revenue and weans you off your dependency on a specific, relatively small group of people. Make sure you’re ready by polling customers to check demand in the new area you’re targeting, and ensure you have either a willing investor, or enough money in the bank to fund your expansion until you’ve established a network of loyal customers that will support it with revenue.
Diversifying
If physical expansion isn’t possible or suitable for you, you can still access a wider spread of customers to boost your income by diversifying what you offer. Adding to your array of products and services gives more people more opportunities to spend their money with you.
New product development is a big investment, so again, commit to consumer research to ensure you’re creating something there’s a demand for. If what you produce is too expensive (or too cheap!), out of character with your brand, or doesn’t offer what customers perceive to be value for money, you could find it hard to recoup the costs of the work that’s gone into creating or stocking this new product.
Going Global
If you’re well established in your home territory, or a digital business with no physical barriers to trading around the world, then you might want to take the step of launching as a global brand.
It takes a lot of work to get a development like this right: marketing to a global audience is a very different task to selling yourself to a local or even national market, and you’ll need to make sure you know regulations governing your business and it’s products in the foreign markets your targeting.
If you have the resources to make a success of a big move like this, then it could be the step that makes your business immortal!