It can be remarkably easy to expand your business when everything is going your way. If you have the right products at the right time and can fill a market need, you can grow your business without much effort. It’s also easy to grow your business when the economy is flourishing and people look for new things to buy. And it’s easy to grow your business when you have plenty of investment capital and the right expert counsel to finesse your marketing.
Unfortunately, it’s rare to have everything fall into place, and while it happens now and then, you can’t rely on a perfect storm to grow your business. However, with the right strategy, it’s possible to turn around a business that isn’t pulling in consumers with a compelling product in a lackluster economy.
How to Build a Business in Almost Any Economy
Here are five ideas that have worked very well for some businesses in good or bad times. They work because they are based on sound marketing and sales principles.
- Try a new market
When most people think of setting up their business, they are either thinking of a B2C or a B2B market, but it can be highly profitable to break into the government markets. One reason most businesses don’t consider this is because it can be confusing and hard to find opportunities. Fortunately, there are specialized services like BidSync that can help you achieve success in the government marketplace. Their SaaS platform allows you to identify bidding opportunities, find agency contracts, create winning proposals, respond to RFP’s, and understand government agency spending analytics. Often the size of a company doesn’t matter when bidding; if you can submit a proposal that fulfills the needs of a government agency, you can outbid a bigger more experienced company in your niche.
- Create new income streams
Your revenue is not limited to the products you sell or the services you provide. You can also invest some of your profits in a dynamic market like Forex Trading that has an estimated daily trading volume to be in excess of $1 trillion.
Once you’ve acquired the knowledge and skills to be a good trader or know how to hire good traders, you can divert some of your existing income to the financial markets and then reinvest the profits you make to expand your business. In other words, you could create a two-way loop between your burgeoning business and the financial markets, pouring investment money into the markets then reinvesting this income back into your business.
- Offer consumers more.
Since your income is based on your products and services, see if there is a way to add to your existing product line or services. You can also think of matching a service with your product. If, for example, you sell computers, you could create computer education services and computer repair services.
This strategy focuses on expanding your product line and services to cast a wider net.
- Focus on your best customers.
Another strategy is to “deepen” your sales funnel, emphasizing cross-sells and upsells.
Some customers are likely to buy more than others. By reviewing your analytics and getting a better understanding of your customer’s buying behavior, you might be able to spot an unfilled need. Think about what you can offer your customers to augment what they are already purchasing.
If you can’t manufacture the product yourself or offer the service, then partner with someone who can help your customers and sell these products or services for a commission or referral fee.
- Expand into new territories.
One of the fastest ways to grow your business is to find more places to sell. These “places” could be related niches or different geographic locations.
Starbucks is a perfect example of a business that has used location to expand their business. The brand can be found in almost every American town and city. What’s more, they may even be found within close approximation to each other. Their ubiquity gives people a sense of comfort and familiarity when they want some coffee.
Howard Schultz purchased Starbucks for $3.8 million. At that time, it was a single coffee house in Seattle. Today the company earns more than $10 billion and has 16,000 locations across the globe. The idea of expanding through creating new locations can be highly lucrative.
- Add another business
Once you understand how to manage a business, there is no reason why you have to stay in one niche. You can use your business knowledge and experience to build other businesses.
This is a popular strategy used by the world’s biggest corporations. PepsiCO, for example, doesn’t just sell its popular soft drink, Pepsi soda. It also owns popular snack companies like Stacy’s, Ruffles, Lay’s, Fritos, Tositos, Cheetos, and Doritos.
One Strategy Can Turn The Tide
When you really think about it, you have many options on how to grow your business. However, you don’t need to try them all. Sometimes a single idea alone is enough to turn the tide. Dominos Pizza, for example, lit upon the idea of just making their pizza faster than anyone else. At other times, too, the synthesis of just a few good ideas working together can make a world of difference to your bottom line. PepsiCo not only expanded their product line, but it also purchased other businesses in the profitable snack industry.
