No matter its size, business owners are always on the lookout for ways to increase their company’s growth, profitability, and success. But it’s not always easy to find the perfect growth strategy that works every time. That’s why it’s so important to understand the different strategies available for developing your business and whether or not its size factors into choosing the right one.
Should Strategies Differ for Large Business and Small Businesses?
The strategies for large and small businesses often differ for a number of reasons. For starters, large businesses often have a lot of employees involved in decision making. That means a lot of people who might have input into what the strategy entails and what areas of the business it affects. Smaller businesses often just have a few employees involved in the strategy development process. Sometimes, it might just be the business owner themselves. These factors can often lead to quicker decisions and smaller, more focused strategies.
Large business strategies also require a lot more interdepartmental coordination. That means finding ways to ensure the strategy is implemented correctly and efficiently. Depending on what strategy they decide on, this can often add time to the level of effort (LOE) to execute the strategy for larger companies. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, are more nimble, often having fewer departments and people to communicate with, which can open the door for strategies that larger companies might not consider to be beneficial due to their size.
But that doesn’t mean that large and small businesses won’t have growth strategies in common. In fact, there are probably more similarities to the strategies they use than differences. Especially when it comes to core ideas that all companies use to boost their marketing and sales efforts, like content marketing, programmatic advertising, and developing targeted audience lists.
Small Business Growth Strategies
Here are some growth strategies that often work best with a smaller business:
Focus on Client or Customer Retention
Larger businesses often have more resources to focus on both customer retention and generation, which small businesses can’t often compete with. That’s why it’s helpful for smaller companies to focus on the relationships they already have with their clients to develop more repeat business.
Finding ways to make a client’s experience with your company memorable and satisfying can help with that. That might include reaching out to them to see if they might be interested in additional products or services you offer. It might also include adding them to an exclusive mailing list to receive news about upcoming products, events, or promotions your business is having.
Develop a Value Proposition Campaign
Ensuring your customers and prospects know the value you bring to their lives and pain points is a great way to stand out from the competition. That’s especially true if your competitors are larger companies.
Demonstrating your value proposition can show your target audience what you have to offer that larger companies don’t and build demand. That might include a more personal touch to your customer service or perhaps higher attention and care when it comes to the services you perform. Showing your audience that your company can provide those services with more value than a competitor can help your small business grow and succeed.
Promote Your Workplace Culture
Prospects aren’t just interested in what your business has to offer, but how your business contributes to your community and treats your employees. Creating a social media post or a dedicated social media account for your workplace culture and business’s work environment can show people that you’re more than just the products or services you sell.
Promoting your workplace culture in this way can help you build stronger relationships and trust with your audience. It can also help you build awareness for your business because it allows you to create content that’s easily viewed and shared online.
Large Business Growth Strategies
Here are some growth strategies that often work best with a larger business:
Research Market Development
Market development is when a business attempts to sell its products or services in untapped markets. That might include selling to a new demographic, a new industry, or a new geographical location.
It’s often easier for larger companies to explore untapped marketing given their resources. However, if you decide to expand your business into new markets, it’s important to thoroughly understand the competitive landscape before you do. Knowing what the competitive landscape looks like can help you determine the most strategic way to enter the market and how your company may succeed or fall short against competitors.
Discover New Partnerships
When you develop partnerships, you create opportunities to interact with new prospects and develop promotions that are mutually beneficial to your partner’s company and yours. This often allows you to improve your business’s awareness while increasing your sales and revenue. Most often, these partnerships occur with businesses that target a similar audience to you, but aren’t direct competitors.
For example, let’s say you sell accessories and tools for long-haul truckers. You might consider forming a distribution partnership with parts retailers or truck stops along the freeway. These partnerships would allow you to reach a wider customer base while your partners make a certain percentage off the sales and improve the satisfaction of their customers by offering your beneficial products.
Find Acquisition Opportunities
Acquisitions are a very popular way for companies to expand their operations into new markets or develop new business opportunities. That’s because acquisitions involve acquiring a company and absorbing its resources into your daily operations. This often creates a number of advantages for your business, including creating business and capacity expansion, gaining access to proprietary technology, accessing a brand new customer base, and reducing competition.
Growth Strategies for Both Large and Small Businesses
Here are some growth strategies that both large and small businesses might be able to benefit from:
Increase Engagement with Authoritative Content
Content marketing is one of the best ways for businesses both large and small to build an online presence and help their company grow. That’s especially true when companies create authoritative and knowledgeable content that prioritizes informing their audience instead of advertising to them.
Though it might seem counterintuitive to not use content marketing to advertise your business, it’s actually more effective when using it first and foremost as a knowledge base. This helps you build stronger relationships with your audience and motivates them to engage with you earlier in their buyer’s journey. In turn, that can help you develop higher-quality leads and ensure you’re creating new customers and retaining existing ones. The more trust you build, the more customers you develop, and the more your business can grow.
Generate More Highly Targeted Audience Lists
Custom audience’s lists can help you pinpoint where your target customers are and the best way to reach them with relevant advertisements and content. This allows you to attract customers to your business more effectively, so you can generate more revenue and help your business grow. These lists are often built using data that analyzes the buying behavior of consumers and determines what content, websites, and products they’re most interested in. From there, businesses can use that list to place their ads more effectively and attract more customers to their business.
Randall Reilly currently offers programmatic advertising solutions that pairs well-placed ads with our proprietary data lists. We analyze your audience for you and build a customized list to make your advertising and marketing efforts more efficient and effective. Contact us today to see how we can help your marketing efforts flourish and allow your business to grow.
