Three Ways To Grow Your Business

In dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times it’s more im­por­tant than ever to con­stantly de­velop your busi­ness. Com­ing up with new prod­ucts and mar­kets is essential.

In this guide, we’re tak­ing a look at ways of ex­pand­ing your busi­ness into dif­fer­ent ar­eas, and in­creas­ing your mar­ket reach.

Ex­port­ing

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from the UKTI (UK Trade and In­vest­ment) the per­cent­age of UK firms who do busi­ness over­seas has risen over two years from 26% to 31%. Of these, 55% were in man­u­fac­tur­ing, and 26% in services. 

Yet trad­ing over­seas is not re­served for big busi­nesses. Re­search of over 200 SME’s has shown that 3 out of 4 plan to ex­port more.  So if you are not al­ready ex­port­ing, you could be miss­ing out on po­ten­tially lu­cra­tive markets.

To cre­ate an ex­port mar­ket, you should cre­ate an Ex­port Mar­ket Plan. This could include:

  • As­sess­ing your ex­port po­ten­tial by find­ing out how your prod­uct or ser­vice could be use­ful to an over­seas market.
  • Mar­ket Re­search: You should thor­oughly in­ves­ti­gate your over­seas mar­ket. This should in­clude de­mand, growth rates, cur­rent com­pe­ti­tion, and any eco­nomic or po­lit­i­cal risks.
  • Bar­ri­ers such as the ex­change rate and any lan­guage or cul­tural dif­fi­cul­ties should be explored.
  • An as­sess­ment of the costs in­volved, as well as po­ten­tial prof­its based on your mar­ket research.

In­no­va­tion

In­no­vat­ing – de­vel­op­ing new prod­ucts, ideas, or ways of do­ing things, is vi­tal to mov­ing a busi­ness for­ward. The UKTI study also showed that firms who in­no­vate are far more likely to ben­e­fit from  over­seas busi­ness. So in­vest­ing in in­no­va­tion will help you spot ei­ther po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties or prod­ucts that can in­crease your market.

Re­search and de­vel­op­ment doesn’t have to suck up all of your time; there are dif­fer­ent op­tions avail­able for man­ag­ing in­no­va­tion. It is pos­si­ble to out­source in­no­va­tion to com­pa­nies who as­sess your cur­rent ap­proach to in­no­va­tion and iden­tify new ar­eas, op­por­tu­ni­ties and mar­kets for you to develop.

Al­ter­na­tively, you can in­vest in in­no­va­tion man­age­ment soft­ware which can help with the gen­er­a­tion, de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion of ideas. Es­pe­cially use­ful is in­no­va­tion man­age­ment soft­ware which works in the same way as so­cial me­dia, en­abling em­ploy­ees in­volved in in­no­va­tion to eas­ily share, vote on and dis­cuss ideas.

In­vest­ment

You might have the best ideas in the world, but of­ten you will need ex­tra fi­nance to get them off the ground.

To gain fund­ing for your busi­ness, you can ei­ther ap­proach a bank with a sound growth plan, or ex­plore fund­ing from pri­vate in­vestors or busi­ness an­gels. There are also nu­mer­ous sources of grants and gov­ern­ment funded fi­nance ini­tia­tives, or you could bor­row through as­set based fi­nance such as bridg­ing loans.

If you have a re­ally in­no­v­a­tive idea, es­pe­cially one which would also be of great ben­e­fit to the poor or stricken in un­der­de­vel­oped coun­tries, then crowd fund­ing web­sites are a new and grow­ing source of fi­nance for many busi­nesses. Be­fore ap­proach­ing any­one for fi­nance how­ever, make sure you have a busi­ness plan which fully sets out the po­ten­tial and prof­its you will be able to gen­er­ate through investment. 

[rms]Ralf’s com­ment: The typ­i­cal risk in an ar­ti­cle like this is that you (Yes, you! You, the one who is read­ing this now…) skim the ar­ti­cle quickly and dis­miss the ideas with­out think­ing about them. „Oh, this does­n’t ap­ply to my busi­ness. I would­n’t know how to do that!”

There can’t be growth with­out change in your busi­ness or mar­ket­ing. And there can’t be change, with­out you ex­am­in­ing ideas. If you re­ally give your­self a few min­utes for each of the above points, you will get the think­ing started, and new ideas will pop up!