2020 growth strategy and business plan
Strategic planning is a crucial process that often gets overlooked in small businesses, due to a lack of understanding about the process, and a lack of resources available to dedicate to planning. However, a strategic plan can be the difference between staying afloat and being a true success. This guide from Parserr highlights outlines some key considerations when putting together a strategic plan for the coming year. By applying the actions located herein, small business owners can put together a simple strategic plan that will guide the business forward. This document should be put together by management and shared with the overall business, whether you decide to present it in a pared-down way or choose to have all the information in a shared drive for review.
7 Key Steps to a Growth Strategy That Works Immediately
Every business owner wants their company to grow and soar to new heights with each passing year. There is a lot of competition these days and all businesses especially small businesses require a plan — a plan not just to stay afloat but to thrive. That plan is the growth strategy for your small business. Growth Strategies are techniques that businesses use to expand their scope — mostly it translates to an increase in revenue.
Usually, a growth strategy is adopted with a vision for the future, which could sometimes mean short term setbacks. This technique involves a company selling its products or services in a market where similar businesses already exist. A company tries to gain maximum market share in this approach. Example: Netflix and Amazon Prime — both streaming platforms are competing in the same market and try to attract customers by offering the latest movies and TV series.
Unlike market penetration, a company using a market development strategy seeks to gain new customers into using their products or services. Example: Starbucks, the global coffee brand — used to sell their coffee beans only in their own stores but later on started selling them in grocery stores too thereby expanding their market and exposing their product to a new customer base.
An example would be that of Casper and West Elm, Casper mattress partnered with West Elm, a high-end furniture company — their partnership allowed customers to try out the mattresses made by Casper, at the same time providing a platform for West Elm to display their furniture. Example: One of the best examples for product development strategy would be Apple, having started with the Macintosh in the 80s, Apple has continued to innovate with a whole suite of products like iPad, iPhone, and iWatch.
Buffer is a good example when it comes to SaaS, they initially had only one product that scheduled social media posts but now have two more offerings Reply and Analyze which makes buffer a complete social media management tool. Diversification can be considered as a mix of market development and product development. It is the most ambitious of the 4 strategies because it involves selling a new product to a new market.
Example: Amazon is a good example of a diversified company, which started off as an eCommerce company that now provides cloud hosting and streaming services. One could say they are also into hardware as they make the Kindle and Alexa. Another example in the software space would be Freshworks which offered only helpdesk and CRM solutions to begin with, later came up with Freshmarketer — a marketing automation tool, thus diversifying its product offerings.
These four strategies are not the only ways in which businesses can grow but they most certainly are the tried and tested ways of growing a business. We live in rapidly changing times now, businesses cannot afford to bank on or stick to one growth strategy.
Even if it has worked in the past, you miss out on big growth opportunities if you have your eyes in the past. This is especially true for small business, every small business dreams of scaling and growing big.
However, they cannot achieve this exclusively by doing what they have always done. The future brings in several opportunities, you have to tap into them and model your growth strategy based on them.
Growth need not necessarily come from conventional strategies, some of the above-mentioned strategies may not be easily implementable as it involves long term changes. In that case, it is a good idea to have in place certain in-trend strategies. The following are some strategies that can boost the growth of your small business and can be easily implemented:. Read reviews. You have to become proactive in your approach towards getting reviews from your happy customers. AR and VR technologies are coming up in a big way — many businesses are already using them to their advantage to provide a unique experience.
For example, Ikea has an AR app that lets you place furniture in your house before you buy them to avoid any last-minute surprises.
There are a lot more ways you can use AR to grow your customer base. You can make your shopping catalogs come to life by making it interactive using AR technology thus giving your customers an immersive shopping experience.
As a small business, it can be overwhelming to think of implementing AR. At first, AR may seem like complex technology. When thinking of growth strategies, we only think of acquiring new customers. However, did you know it costs 5 times as much to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones? Related: The 7 deadly customer service phrases and what to say instead.
Chatbots are intelligent enough to handle basic questions from customers without any human intervention. When it comes to customer service, chatbots can help provide hour service.
Having a chatbot installed on your website can increase engagement with visitors and also help collect information.
Chatbots can be helpful for small businesses that are short on employees. Emails are becoming old, many businesses are now moving towards messaging apps like Whatsapp, Viber, WeChat etc.
Businesses are using these private messaging apps to create a more personalized shopping experience for their customers. It also makes the purchasing experience easier, WeChat has already made it possible to pay using the app, soon many other messaging platforms would follow suit making transactions frictionless for businesses and customers alike. If you enjoyed reading this blog, you may also be interested in knowing the small business trends for so that you can stay ahead of the curve!
Freshcaller is a modern-day reimagining of our everyday phone system for customer support, sales, IT, and HR teams.
If you want to find out more about what we do, check out www. About freshcaller. Authors Varun Raghunathan 6 min Read. Growth strategies for small businesses in Every business owner wants their company to grow and soar to new heights with each passing year.
What is a Growth Strategy? This is done in a variety of ways: 1. Market Penetration This technique involves a company selling its products or services in a market where similar businesses already exist. Market Development Unlike market penetration, a company using a market development strategy seeks to gain new customers into using their products or services.
Diversification Diversification can be considered as a mix of market development and product development. Small Business Growth Strategies for Growth need not necessarily come from conventional strategies, some of the above-mentioned strategies may not be easily implementable as it involves long term changes.
Customer Service When thinking of growth strategies, we only think of acquiring new customers. Messaging Apps Emails are becoming old, many businesses are now moving towards messaging apps like Whatsapp, Viber, WeChat etc. About Freshcaller Freshcaller is a modern-day reimagining of our everyday phone system for customer support, sales, IT, and HR teams.
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A growth plan lays out how you want your business to grow and the steps you'll take to achieve that growth. A strategy helps you focus on what's. Writing a growth plan is very similar to writing a business plan. Here's how to do Updated. Mar 18, There are four major types of business growth strategies: market strategy, development strategy, diversification and product strategy.
Want my help to implement a growth and marketing strategy that will bring you more customers? Go here to see how me and my team can help you. While pithy one-liners are all well and good, how do you actually achieve business growth? While many companies are able to achieve a period of fast growth in their early years, the vast majority will find themselves stalling once they mature. Successful growth strategies are what drive companies like Nike, Facebook and Starbucks to not only dominate their markets and become worldwide brands, but to actually continue growing.
It includes the following details:. For more guidance on growth strategies for your small business, check out the planning for growth resources offered by the Government of Canada.
Every business owner wants their company to grow and soar to new heights with each passing year. There is a lot of competition these days and all businesses especially small businesses require a plan — a plan not just to stay afloat but to thrive.
Prepare a business plan for growth
The answer is to create a growth strategy for your business, of course. A growth strategy involves more than simply envisioning long-term success. The key with any growth strategy is to be deliberate. Figure out the rate-limiting step in your growth, and pour as much fuel on the fire as possible. But for this to be beneficial, you need to take the following steps:.
2020 Small business strategic planning guide
We invite you to access our services online or by phone. Planning is key to any business throughout its existence. Every successful business regularly reviews its business plan to ensure it continues to meet its needs. It's sensible to review current performance on a regular basis and identify the most likely strategies for growth. Once you've reviewed your progress and identified the key growth areas that you want to target, it's time to revisit your business plan and make it a road map to the next stages for your business. This guide will show how you can turn your business plan from a static document into a dynamic template that will help your business both survive and thrive. Most potential investors will want to see a business plan before they consider funding your business. Although many businesses are tempted to use their business plans solely for this purpose, a good plan should set the course of a business over its lifespan.
By Lee Frederiksen, Ph. January 15,
Business growth plans are short-term outlines for where a company sees itself in the next one to two years. The growth plan should be formatted to follow along with each quarter.
Business growth planning: How to create a growth strategy for 2020
Last Updated on December 27, by Richard Kershaw. In its rawest and simplest of forms, a business plan is a guide; a roadmap of sorts that allows entrepreneurs to clearly outline their business goals and how they intend to achieve them. When you think about it that way, you will quickly realize that every entrepreneur has a business plan in one form or another. The problem often comes when people start thinking of a business plan as a long, boring, academic-type document that can only be written and used by Ivy League graduates who truly understand corporate mumbo-jumbo. Yes, technically, a traditional business plan has a strict set of rules and a template to follow. That, however, does not mean that you are doomed to fail if you cannot clearly articulate what your cash flow statement is in the financial plan section. The best types of business plans are dynamic. They change with time as you get to learn the market, your own business, and indeed, your very self. While it is important to learn how to write a business plan, the truth is — only a small subset of businesses still need to go through the formal process and follow a strict template. Businesses that are keen to attract investors, especially from the formal corporate or financial sector, should absolutely learn how to write a business plan in its strictest fashion. The rest only need to start simple and grow it organically as the venture progresses. Not every business needs to have a business plan, although, it is recommended that every business has a roadmap to guide its progression.
Business Development Strategy: A High-Growth Approach
It matches my vision of business planning as ongoing management and steering a business. Strategy can be as simple as a list of bullet points, or brief descriptions, or even a series of photos. Strategy is focus. My favorite metaphor is the sculptor with a block of marble—the art is what he chips off the block, not what he leaves in. Michelangelo started with a big chunk of marble and chipped pieces off of it until it was his David. Michael Porter, who is perhaps the best-known business writer on strategy, said:. But simplifying, doing today what will seem obvious tomorrow, is genius.
