When it comes to reaching your target market, many businesses struggle because of a lack of marketing strategy. But what better place to learn than to take a look at business growth examples from successful companies?
In this article, we will take an in-depth look at how you can create a market strategy that will enable you to reach new potential customers, and help you fulfill your company’s growth goals!
Table of Contents
Why Does My Company Need a Business Growth Strategy?
It may seem like you don’t need to explore strategies for growth for your business, but the fact of the matter is that effective business growth strategies are key to the success of your company.
With a plan in place, you can exponentially increase your revenue growth. After all, studies show that 20% of small businesses fail in the first two years, and half fail in the first five years.
In most cases, the reason behind this is that many small businesses don’t start with a business growth plan in mind. While they can still be lucky and gain some success, it is highly unlikely that they will see major success or growth unless they come up with a suitable market strategy.
Setting the right growth goals, understanding their current market, and outlining a clear plan of action is key to succeeding in the world of business, and a business growth plan is a major part of this.
Strategies for Business Growth Examples
What does developing a strategy even mean? If you are curious about where to start, the best way is to understand what strategies exist in the market and align with the ones that fit you best. Once you have an effective market development strategy, you can understand what you need to take on to grow.
Not all businesses choose one strategy and commit to it wholeheartedly. A true innovation in companies is fostered by creating an action plan that is best suited to you. However, by looking at the most common examples, you can create a plan that has the highest potential for rapid growth.
Here are some of the most common examples of growth strategies in the business world:
Developing and Creating Markets
If you want to reach a new target audience in a market that you are planning to create, a market development strategy is the best way to make that happen. This business growth strategy allows you to tap into a market that has been unexplored for some time. You can do this by finding different markets that can be interested in your products or services.
There are a lot of reasons why this market penetration strategy is so common within the business sphere. One of the biggest benefits of such a strategy is that it allows you to expand the customer base you are targeting.
This allows companies to change and expand in their market share. For example, you could change the industry you are targeting, the demographic you want to meet, or even a new location.
One of the biggest business growth examples in this strategy is the work that Meta (formerly Facebook) has done. The company started as a social media site available on campus at Harvard. It then expanded to include other educational institutions.
Eventually, the company decided to shift focus and move towards a complete social media site, where people can connect even when they are not enrolled in an educational institution. This shows that the company saw that its potential audience could grow exponentially if it looked at a different market share.
Disrupting a Market
If you are up for a challenge, disruption may be the marketing growth strategy you need. This strategy involves entering a market that is already well-established, and even has companies dominating it, but ‘disrupting’ it with innovative ideas and strategies.
You can do this in several different ways.
One of the most common ways of disrupting a market is to use a different model for your business, one that is not usual in the market itself. You can also use an innovative product that gives you a competitive edge, even when there are giants in the industry.
Another strategy some businesses use is to give cheaper offerings. Consider how Netflix disrupted the media industry by offering television in a completely new format, at a fraction of the cost of most providers.
Additionally, companies can create a completely new, never before seen product. This will disrupt the current markets and give the company a huge level of market share.
An example of market disruption you should consider is the Dollar Shave Club. Instead of relying on stores to sell their product, they introduced a model that would allow customers to buy from them directly, and at a cheaper cost.
This innovation would allow Dollar Shave Club to have rapid growth in the industry, and subsequently, improve its value. The best way to see this is by looking at Dollar Shave Club’s 1 billion acquisition by Unilever in 2016.
Expanding Existing Products
Expanding on and developing your products to include more features and offerings is an effective growth model. You can take a simple product and improve it until the finished product can offer your customers greater value.
This kind of product development is an excellent way to keep your current audience happy while expanding your reach to audiences who are looking for more from their businesses of choice. However, expanding on products can be a significant undertaking, as you will need to take on specialized product management, and hire professional product marketing managers.
That being said, this product development strategy is highly effective. It helps your customers feel like they are continuing to gain benefits from your services or products, which improves brand loyalty and helps more people invest in your offerings.
An example of this kind of product development strategy is the video-conferencing software Zoom. The company still has the same core product that it did when it started – software that allows you to communicate with people using video features.
However, over time, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has been expanding its services and incorporating features that can allow it to reach its growth objectives, while still providing a quality service to customers. Zoom’s growth in revenue has been demonstrably huge, with a 326% boost in revenue.
Creating Partnerships
Your company doesn’t have to handle its growth efforts alone. One of the best ways to foster economic growth in your company is to create partnerships that allow you to reach new customer segments and encourage you to create a new potential audience, with the support of another company.
This kind of business growth strategy allows you to create strategic collaborations that complement your offerings. In some cases though, companies can use unprecedented collaborations to develop interest.
These kinds of growth experiments may be risky, but they can sometimes pay off. For example, consider how fashion giant Dolce&Gabbana collaborated with Smeg to create a range of small appliances featuring beautiful designs.
Another business growth example to consider is that of Taco Bell, which created an alliance with Lyft for a unique business growth strategy. The collaboration meant that Lyft allowed people to order Taco Bell through a single tap on the ride-hailing app. This meant that both companies got a lot of publicity, and Taco Bell saw a huge boost in revenue.
Collaborations with companies within your niche can offer even more growth potential. This is because the target audience is similar and already has an interest in your offerings. For example, another interesting collaboration Taco Bell has done, but within its niche, is with Doritos, to create the Doritos Locos Taco, which was an instant hit for customers of the restaurant.
Acquiring Other Companies
If you are looking for huge growth in the company, one of the best types of growth strategies available is to acquire companies. However, this is not an option available to most businesses unless they have resources for capital accumulation available, such as a steady flow of cash, and the capacity to apply for debts.
For larger companies, acquisitions play the role of a critical factor when it comes to growth. Acquiring companies can bring about a lot of benefits for the company. The biggest advantage that this type of growth strategy brings to the table is the ability to decrease the competition in your market share.
In addition to this, it has the benefit of helping you access products that you may not have the time or capital to develop within your company. Finally, the other major advantage of these types of acquisitions is that they bring on a new, and often large, customer base that comes with the new company.
An excellent business growth example here is that of Amazon. The company, an e-commerce website, acquired Whole Foods Market for a whopping $13.7 billion, which allows Amazon to enter the world of physical stores, while at the same time, covering an important area of Amazon’s plans for the future, accessibility to grocery delivery.
Fostering Organic Interest
When choosing a business growth strategy, the one that everyone looks out for is organic growth. This is the concept of seeing a marked interest in your company’s offerings through natural, organic interest, without the need for customer acquisition costs.
In terms of the strategy for growth, what this means is that you will not need to invest a lot of money into advertising and that your growth is not dependent on the amount of money you spend. Once you stop spending money, you will still be able to see growth in your company.
This is the marketing growth strategy all companies hope for, but not many achieve. There is no harm in having to spend money on advertising, but being able to redirect the capital to other ventures can leave a lot of room for profit within the company.
An example of this business growth strategy is that of Apple. The company spends far less on acquisitions than its competitors, such as Microsoft, and manages to focus on an acquisition strategy that allows it to maintain internal organic growth.
The greatest benefit of organic growth is that it allows you to save money, and additionally, it places you in a position where any spending on marketing yields far better returns. This journey toward organic growth is crucial for any company’s long-term success.
While advertisements will yield results, and so will acquisitions, it is ultimately organic growth that ensures that a company can stay on top.
How to Create a Successful Business Growth Strategy
Whether you are deciding to focus on organic growth or product development, the best way to make things happen for your company is to focus on creating a business marketing growth strategy. The type of growth strategy you opt for can include a combination of the ones mentioned above, or something completely innovative.
Ultimately, the power of your key growth strategy is how strongly it is planned, and the kind of implementation you opt for in the future.
If you are curious about what creating a strategy like this involves, here is an in-depth look at the steps you need to follow if you are interested in growth through your plan.
Carry Out Market Research
Regardless of the types of growth strategies you choose for your business, the best place to start when creating a plan is to take a look at market research. This research will help you understand what your user base is interested in, and help you identify areas to explore in markets you have not considered yet.
The idea of market research is to provide you with the tools and information you need to thrive.
By doing this, you can better understand your company as well. It is helpful to know what your limitations are, what opportunities there are available for growth, and what works best for your company. These are key sources of data that allow you to know what to expect as you conduct your business.
If you want to focus on customer growth, studies into your audience can help you see what markets remain unexplored within the areas you serve. This will help you learn about what your customers buy, what they prefer, and how they use what they have access to.
Research into your competitors is also key as you try to understand other players in the market. This will help you learn what their weaknesses and strengths are, and what you need to improve on in comparison to your competitors.
Explore Business Growth Examples
If you take a look at examples of companies that have flourished before you, you will see that there is a lot of information to learn from. Those companies likely had to deal with hurdles, challenges, and limitations – understanding how they overcame these challenges will allow you to create new strategies for your business plan.
You can also learn from the mistakes you see in the examples of companies that failed, so you are in a good position to say you are aware of the market and its history. This key growth strategy will allow you to look for innovative ways that you and your company can see customer growth by learning from the examples of other businesses before you.
Set Your Goals for Success
With an understanding of the market you reside in, or the markets you want to tap into in the future, you can now move on to the second step of creating a growth strategy – deciding on your goals.
This is an essential facet of your plan. You need to be aware of the goals you want to hit as you create new strategies so that you have a clear purview of what needs to be done to achieve the success you want.
Having goals isn’t as easy as it looks. For example, you can’t just make ‘improved sales growth’ a goal. An active and efficient goal means understanding what sales growth means, and also setting a timeline. For example, an appropriate goal in this circumstance would be to raise sales growth levels by 10% by the next quarter.
Creating measurable and timeline-driven goals is an excellent way to pace yourself, and create an optimized plan for success. The best part of the goals you set is that they don’t have to be concrete – you can adjust your strategic plan to reflect new and changing goals – but the general idea is to set an objective for what you are doing, clearly and concisely.
Choose the Perfect Strategy
Now that you have an idea of what your objective is, it is time to create a strategy to implement. This strategy is the perfect way for you to make those goals happen, so the strategy you choose must align with your long-term objectives.
We’ve talked about the type of growth strategy you can choose in the section above, but it is important to understand that you are not restricted by any one choice. For example, you can target organic growth, while at the same time, looking into acquisitions that can help boost your level of market share.
There is one thing you should consider when you choose multiple strategies, and that is that you will need to carry out a more complex plan. However, this approach can lead you toward the success you are looking for. Ultimately, the strategy you end up choosing can be affected by the goals you set, the kind of budget you have available, your timeline on the plan, the number of opportunities your level of market share offers, and even the competition you have to deal with along the way.
For example, a small business startup in a market that is already dominated by large business leaders may have to rely on a disruption technique, such as offering the same quality products at a lower cost. On the other hand, with capital on hand, you can look towards organic growth through content views.
Implement Your Plans
Once you have a strategy on hand, you have everything you need for the implementation of your business growth plan. It is now time to convert your plans into a reality through the power of action.
This process involves carrying out the work needed to act out the details of your plan, finalizing any acquisitions or marketing decisions you need to make, and analyzing any potential source of friction.
Using a catch-all approach here is the best way to manage the gaps as you can then identify what works and what doesn’t. Once that is done, you will need to involve your team members in the plan and explain what they need to do to get functional team growth. This will allow the plan to be carried out smoothly and prepares anyone for big changes that can happen.
Monitor Success and Adapt
Finally, you have begun implementing your plan. While this is happening, there is one more thing you will need to do to get the best results – monitor how the changes are affecting your company, and whether they are in line with the expected progress you need to get to the goals and objectives you decided on.
With constant monitoring and measuring, you will have one crucial piece of information – what parts of the plan work for you, and which parts are causing delays and friction. It is important not to stick to the first version of the business plan when things are not working – you need to be able to adapt and change it with the ultimate focus on achieving the goals you set aside earlier.
Final Thoughts
Creating a plan for business growth can seem like an overwhelming task, but it is crucial for any business that wants to succeed in the long run.
By setting your objectives, choosing the right strategy, implementing it with a team approach, constantly monitoring and adapting to changes, and looking at business growth examples, you will have everything you need for a successful plan that can bring your company to the next level.
I’m a blogger and entrepreneur. I want to help you in your journey to build your business online.
