In many ways, an entrepreneur’s ability to choose and implement ideal business growth strategies early in the life of a start-up can decide the fate of that start-up for the long term.
Other factors, including capital, staff, or market potential won’t matter if your growth strategies aren’t bold, effective, and efficient.
3 Bold Business Growth Strategies
In a competitive industry like security, slow growth can be as disastrous in the long term as no or negative growth. So today, let’s discuss three bold business growth strategies to put your security start-up on the path to success.
1) MARKETING: Implement Inbound Marketing
In 2015, few marketing strategies can offer the same power and efficiency as inbound marketing. Learn to treat your entire website as a sales and marketing tool — make it a method for attracting visitors, converting leads and closing sales. Design your website with numerous funnels that lead deeper into your solution, guiding readers toward desired actions for conversion.
Once you have a website that catches the eye and creates conversions, leverage social media, unique website content, SEO, and email outreach to bring prospects in, educate them and gain their trust.
Remember, with inbound marketing, customer satisfaction and delight is key. You want to be talked about by people who had a great customer experience on your website and found exactly what they were looking for. Even if they didn’t convert, you want those who do convert to rave about you to their friends, business partners and other acquaintances. Done properly, inbound marketing will let your website work for you to build customer relationships like a seasoned sales agent.
2) OPERATIONS: Embrace Lean Concepts
If it isn’t efficient, don’t keep it around. The idea of lead concepts in operations is to standardize, simplify and make operations repeatable.
This applies to marketing approaches, technology, staff, and core business concepts. Inefficient expenditures slow growth on multiple levels, stealing away capital, manpower, and other resources for minimal return. By cutting away the unnecessary and superfluous activities and throwing resources into the efficient and effective, all of your business growth strategies will benefit.
In adopting this principle, savvy entrepreneurs should also keep an eye out for technologies and approaches which embrace efficiency and streamline operations. New technologies in data management systems, marketing tools and countless tools for streamlining regular activities such as staff management, payroll, logistics can contribute to successful lean operations.
3) SYSTEMS: Gain Advantage with New Technologies
Learn to watch developments in business technologies — especially those offering specific advantages to the security industry, which competitors will be sure to leverage. By training yourself to keep track of potential improvements to your systems, you’ll also gain insight into the flaws in your existing systems.
It’s nonetheless important to remember your goals as a business when considering upgrades — does a particular systems improvement make sense for achieving your goals, or will it set you back in capital and implementation time for minimal returns?
When you look at the technology, can you clearly picture a business goal you can tie it to and use as a measure of success? If there’s no clear path from the technology to success in a goal, wait and save your capital.
If a technology is important for achieving your goals, but employee adoption will be a hard sell, consider methods of easing the process and managing acceptance. Seek out key opinion-makers on your team and educate them on the advantages the technology offers them in their daily job.
Point out current difficulties and show how the technology will help. Then, your respected opinion-makers will sell the idea to everyone else more effectively than you ever could. Also, consider upgrading in stages to minimize the difficulties of adoption and acceptance.
Position Your Start-Up for Growth
Using these three business growth strategies to overhaul your marketing, operations, and systems plans can give you an edge and push your business to its fullest potential — but don’t overlook the basics. Growth demands a firm foundation that stems from a solid business plan, secure funding sources and the right leadership.
What other bold strategies are you using to position your business start-up for steady growth? Share your ideas in the comments section and learn more strategies for a security franchise start-up in our free e-book, “Grow Your Business Using the Franchise Model,”below.
