All startup owners dream of exponential growth. In a 2018 study by the British Business Bank, one in three businesses said that they wanted to grow their operation, but were unsure how to build a growth marketing team or how to go about it as a whole.
It’s all in the preparation and strategy. An article we came across from Business 2 Community offers up a few tips for those startups who want to double their revenues but are wary of over-committing too many resources to achieve it.
Marketing plays a crucial role in any business. To achieve healthy revenue and foster business growth, it is essential to develop a strong marketing strategy. This includes incorporating a growth marketing strategy, which focuses on identifying and leveraging effective growth channels. Growth marketers specialize in implementing tactics such as advertising, content marketing, PR, and social media to drive sales. However, it's important to note that these growth marketing strategies differ from traditional marketing approaches. While effective, they can also be costly and time-consuming to execute. As a startup owner, you may face resource limitations and a lack of expertise in traditional marketing. By collaborating with experienced growth marketers and adopting effective growth marketing strategies, your business can unlock exponential growth potential.
The first step is to identify your market and determine if it is growing. This way you can determine if your chosen segment is one worth pursuing. You can use online tools such as the Harvard Business calculator on their review website. It is worth noting that there is no standard formula. The growth rate of your market will depend on its size and how much of that market share you can gain. The Harvard report suggests that you should look for markets that are growing by 10% or more annually. If the market is growing strongly, then it means
that there is a strong demand for your product or service. The article also recommends finding a market that is underserved. This will give you a competitive advantage.
Here are some tips to make your growth marketing more efficient.
The idea of outsourcing jobs that you could do yourself might seem counter-intuitive. Particularly in the early days of running a startup, you may be tempted to do everything yourself. However, finding successful growth marketers and prioritizing growth marketing focuses can be beneficial. They can take certain tasks off your plate, freeing you up to focus on what you do best while saving you time, energy, and unnecessary expenses.
But by failing to outsource early, you could be preventing your business from reaching new heights. Take digital marketing as an example. Of course, you could bring in a small internal team to help you build a campaign which generates leads focused on your target audience that drives revenue growth. But how much is it going to cost you to find an experienced growth marketer or marketers in your niche who can assist you in formulating and implementing an effective growth strategy?
By outsourcing early, you give yourself a bit of time to find a specialist agency that has a proven track record full of effective marketing strategies and case studies. They can help design your strategy in the pre-growth stage – so when it comes to scaling up, your startup can hit the ground running.
If your website was to welcome thousands of new visitors in the next hour, could it cope with the demand? Likewise, if you were to get a host of new enquiries via telephone, do you have a system in place to put callers in a queue?
If your answer is 'no,' you're right to be concerned. After all, if prospective new customers or even existing customers cannot easily find out more about your business, their experience will suffer, and they won't become loyal customers. In the meantime, they might seek out a competitor and forget about your business altogether. By implementing effective growth marketing campaigns, utilizing growth hacking techniques, and executing a successful growth marketing campaign, you can overcome these challenges. These strategies can enhance your online visibility, attract and engage customers, and ultimately cultivate customer loyalty. To ensure you're ready for any spike in enquiries, invest in scalable solutions.
As your business expands, it becomes inevitable that you will need to hire new staff to support customer acquisition, optimize the marketing funnel, and manage the entire customer journey. Relying solely on marketing automation is insufficient. However, training them to meet your standards can be time-consuming, which may not be feasible for you and your current employees. Conversely, if you fail to adequately train them, there is a risk of having staff who could do more harm than good, impeding the success of your business. Additionally, talented employees may be more inclined to leave if they do not feel comfortable in their roles.
By embedding a knowledge management strategy, however, you can cut the time it takes to adequately train employees; increasing productivity and helping keep valued workers happy.
Achieving business growth is directly linked to a variety of different factors. Being able to identify the channels to invest most of your efforts in will elevate you to great heights. Whether it is social media marketing or a different avenue, making your customers the centre of your operation will improve your customer retention, client acquisition and make the most of your marketing efforts.
Has your startup got growth in its sights?
Check out Incisive Edge’s guide to generating leads and driving revenue growth.