Growth is the ultimate goal for every business. Any organisation that is content standing still will find that they actually move backwards, as competitors outpace them and seize market share.
There are a wealth of ways for a business to generate growth: advertising and marketing, product development, entering new markets, M&A activity and more. But no matter the method, successful growth is always built on a foundation of strategy.
In this guide, we’ll dive into the whats, whys and hows of business growth strategies, with a particular focus on the most accessible and powerful growth strategy of all: digital.
What is a business growth strategy?
What is a growth strategy? It is a carefully researched and considered plan that lights a path to business growth; a detailed outline that describes the specific actions you need to take to increase revenue and market reach.
What are the strategies for business growth, more specifically? A business growth strategy can take many forms, from scouting opportunities in international markets to identifying organisations to merge with or acquire. But perhaps the most accessible, most popular, and for most businesses, most impactful form of growth strategy is digital.
Unlike growth powered by capital-intensive means like product development and M&A activity, any business can capitalise on digital. The opportunities for digital growth are functionally endless: the internet grants you the chance to reach almost every consumer on earth and hyper-target those who are most interested in what you offer.
Armed with the right digital growth plan, you can understand where to focus your efforts, you can get in front of your ideal audience, and you can compel them to choose you.
The essential components of a digital growth strategy
A successful digital growth strategy is built upon a foundation of hard data. Modern digital channels serve up all the information you could ever need to grow your business – you just need to know where to look.
Essential components of your digital growth strategy will include:
Market research
How does the market search for what you offer? Often the keywords you use to describe your products and services will be very different to how your customers describe them. What are some of the common questions that customers ask? Where does your market appear to be headed in the future? Market research can answer all these questions and more.
Target audience identification
You’ll probably have an idea of who your target audience is, and you can clarify this idea by creating buyer personas that distil the essence of your perfect customer into a more relatable avatar. But are there audience segments that you aren’t currently capitalising upon, or outright ignoring? Target audience identification can reveal often surprising opportunities.
Competitive analysis
How does your performance compare to the performance of your competitors, both direct and indirect? What are you doing better than your competition? What are your most successful rivals doing better than you? In competitive analysis, you work to understand the issues you need to fix and the opportunities for competitive advantage that you can capitalise upon.
Lead generation techniques
Armed with a wealth of market, audience and competitor insights, you can turn them into leads, revenue and business growth through a wealth of digital-focused techniques:
- You can use keyword and competitor research to enhance your SEO efforts, earning more traffic from Google by climbing up the rankings, and converting that traffic into sales.
- You can use target audience identification to better direct your digital advertising spend to the people who are most likely to convert.
- You can use content marketing to build brand awareness and trust by giving people the information they’re looking for, pushing them down the awareness and consideration phases of the sales funnel all the while.
How to implement your own growth strategy
If growing a business was easy, everyone would be doing it. The truth is that when competing organisations fight for a finite pie, even the best-laid plans can go awry.
That said, the best-laid plans—the type built by experts and based on hard data—do give you a far greater chance of success.
Digital growth is a complex and specialised subject. On the internet, you’re forced to fight against the rest of the world for the attention of your target audience. You then need to convince that audience to buy from you, which is no mean feat.
You need to know where to find relevant data, and how to convert it into meaningful insights. You then need to know how to transform those insights into digital actions that will drive growth.
Ultimately you need help from an expert in the field – you need a Growth Partner.
Your digital growth and transformation experts
At Growth Partners we drive digital growth. We use targeted data analysis, strategic marketing thinking and best-in-class digital implementation to solve real-world business problems and identify incredible growth opportunities.
As proven digital growth experts, we’ve spent years helping growth-focused businesses to digitally transform. We have developed a complete suite of strategies and technologies designed to enhance your online presence and gear your business for growth.
DigitalArchitect® is a proprietary system that uses deep data to highlight online expansion opportunities. It determines the strength of your business case for digital marketing investment – including a three-year ROI projection – and lays the foundation for continuous, sustainable growth.
Are you ready to digitally transform your business and drive demand far into the future? Reach out to us to kickstart your growth journey.
