Growing your business is all but easy, especially when you need to develop it beyond the start-up phase and establish a more solid position. An efficient market strategy needs to focus on more than just selling, and must be built around some critical goals you need to achieve. Expanding your customer base is the first target you want to reach, but how could you achieve this feat in a simple and efficient way?
Here are the top three tips that will help you boost your business growth:
Build a solid relationship with your customer base
The most forward-thinking approach to ensure your start-up is always healthy and thriving, is to focus on your customer base’s satisfaction. Think about your most loyal customers as the foundation upon which you’re going to build and develop your company, both in the short and in the long-term as well. Statistics from the White House Office of Consumer Affairs tell us that a loyal customer can be worth up to 10 times more than their first purchase. The probability to sell a product to a new prospect is just 5–20% on average: just a fraction of the nearly 70% chance to sell it to an existing customer. And since 68% of buyers quit or switch to another company or brand just because of the staff indifference towards them, it’s easy to understand why building a solid relationship with them is so important.
Add alternative channels to reach more clients
Are you selling or promoting your product only through a couple of social medias and/or your website? Have you ever thought of, say, advertise it with a YouTube video or a Podcast sponsorship? Covering all the bases of the many advertisement and selling channels available can be very hard and time-consuming, but a lot of start-ups end up becoming stagnant simply because they’re not reaching the right public. Diversifying your offer may sometimes mean you need to rethink your strategy (for example by selling your software as a service instead of as a product), but frequently gives you a rather unique opportunity to expand your customer base much more than you could ever expect.
Focus on data-driven results and streamlined marketing methods
The most efficient marketing strategies are those that begin with a thorough analysis of your company’s numbers and statistics. Many new tools and software will let you keep track of what your customers really want by checking their behavior, and streamline your sales by collecting precious information. All this data is critical to make full use of the opportunities given by marketing automation solutions, too. Automated processes will help you save time and money, for example, by reducing the need for your staff to spend a lot of effort and resources on repetitive tasks. Companies that improved their marketing efforts with data-driven strategies achieved three times more customer engagement and a 35% increase in revenues compared with those who didn’t.
Originally published at medium.com