When it comes to turning a small business into a large one, it is never so easy. But if you feel it’s not good enough for you or your business, or if you believe that staying small doesn’t really guarantee the survival of your business, there are a couple of real life examples that companies have successfully used to transition from that small start-up business to a full fledged business.
As you embark on creating your digital growth strategy, the first thing you should consider are the fundamentals of an intensive digital growth strategy. Each fundamental brings more opportunities for an unprecedented growth, but also a little risk. They are:
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- Online Market Penetration: This particular growth strategy is less risky for any business, because the idea is to understand how your product will reach more customers through various mediums online. You can find out how to sell more of your current products to current customers, while analyzing the possibility of expanding to other online territories.
- Online Market Development: The next fundamental you’d come across on this growth ladder is to come up with a way of selling more of your current products to a growing market – offering your product or services to customers in other cities, states or countries. For example, as your business grows, your product or services may be in demand in other locations, but you may never know if you do not devise a way of expanding your business.
- Alternative Digital Platforms: This digital growth strategy involves pursuing customers in a different way such as, for example, selling your products through media platforms, apps etc. The customer behavior is drastically shifting and in order to stay on course, you need to match the shift by being visible on these digital platforms that your customers are moving to.
- Product Development: This is one strategy that is very key. It involves developing new and exciting products to sell to your existing customers as well as to the new ones. If you have a choice, you would ideally like to sell your new products to existing customers and market your products to new customers to increase your sales force.
If you decide to follow one of the Intensive Digital Growth Strategies, you should ideally take only one step up at a time, since each step may take a longer while than the other, and of course the effort it would take to achieve each step. The cue is that sometimes, the market changes without warning, and it forces you to take immediate action. Sometimes, you have no choice but to take more steps.