You may have already researched the types of business expansion or the importance of business expansion to your company. Here, we walk you through three essential points to consider before pulling the trigger...
3 Important Considerations That Should Fuel Your Business Expansion Strategy
All successful businesses eventually look for growth opportunities. However, expansion always comes with some risk.
You usually need to invest a healthy sum of effort and money if you want your business to grow. In turn, if that investment doesn’t translate to increased revenue, you’ll find yourself in a tricky position.
There are many reasons why plans for expansion fail. It might be:
- Timing was wrong
- Economy was sluggish
- People simply weren’t spending
- Wrong targeted market
More often than not, growth plans fail because people don’t understand their own business. Deeply knowing your own company is so important if you want to achieve sustainable growth.
But how exactly do you do that? In this article, we outline the key factor to successful business expansion and the three considerations to make before pressing the button to go.
Your Business Architecture
Business architecture is an important concept and it’s a phrase that you’ve likely heard before. But a lot of business owners still wonder, what is business architecture and how does it affect me?
In short, it is the representation of your entire business structure and culture, as well as the wider ecosystem that it operates in, framed through a strategic lens. It gives you a clear picture of exactly:
- What your business is about
- How it runs
- How it relates to other businesses in the sector
- How you can use all of that information to plan for the future
Many business owners think that they understand their company but they don’t have this big picture view that is so important. They fail to consider their position in relation to other businesses and society as a whole. But once you start thinking about your business architecture, you will have a much clearer idea about what you need to do to thrive.
Employee Engagement Surveys
Your employees are your best asset. You need their input when planning any changes to the business. It’s also important that you are on the same page and you understand how they work best so you can get the most from their efforts.
Conducting an employee engagement survey is an effective way to gain a deeper insight into your team and really understand them. This allows you to tackle issues that affect productivity. Also find ways to improve engagement, so when you execute your plan for growth, your team is working at full strength.
Your Customer
Every business thinks that they know their customers. But do you really know them well? You might know their age and gender, but:
- What about their spending habits or their financial situation?
- What time are they most likely to read emails?
- Do they spend time on social media?
- Do they respond well to direct mail marketing?
Having a clear, detailed picture of who your average customer is will make things much easier when you are trying to create marketing campaigns to grow the business. Using data is the best way to learn these things, so invest in tools to analyze all of the customer data you collect so you can extract useful insights.
Final Thoughts On Business Expansion
Trying to grow a business without taking a full inventory to completely understanding it is risky. Do the homework before going forward.
Once you understand these aspects, you are ready to start implementing your business expansion plan.
