So, here we are. It’s officially 2023. What are your big ideas for your business this year? Are you launching a brand-new (or new to you) product or service? Do you have plans to innovate something entirely new? Is your company growing into new markets or regions?
And more importantly, do you know what you need to effectively stay relevant to your customers and your market? If you’ve spent the last couple of years trying to survive, dodge, and weave, then 2023 is your year to thrive, boost, and grow.
Part of your team and company conversations will likely include growth strategies as well as scaling strategies. The two are different and require unique lenses. And considering how challenging today’s economy and business climates are, you’re going to need to get really good at targeting both to succeed.
If you want to stay in business, with your growing revenue, you have to constantly be moving forward. And these are the insights that might inspire you to be like those company leaders who have cracked the code to both growth and scale.
Distinguishing the two, think of growth as a linear effort when a company can add new resources to increase revenue. This might include people, tech, or funding. Scaling, on the other hand, is growing revenue without necessarily changing the roster of resources. Scaling is like turning up the volume on your existing business model on a broader scale.
Defining Growth
When you focus on growing your business, you essentially look for ways to boost revenue, brand awareness, presence, and customers. And to ensure you continue on a growth trajectory, you’ll want to evaluate and improve every level of engagement and operations. Growing can manifest in a variety of ways, including expense reduction, new services, and broader markets.
Methods for Growth
You can look for ways to explore new growth centers with your business, like new products, services, or solutions. But there are other channels, too. Today’s leaders are venturing into new markets, especially with the ability to hire remote talent. Can your core offerings serve customers across state lines, in other regions, or globally?
First, identify where your opportunities are, and from there, you can develop plans and operational roadmaps to leverage those opportunities. What can you do to make your company bigger, leaner, faster, or stronger? Additionally, you’ll want to identify which direction you’d like your company to grow.
Internal Growth: Healthy growth doesn’t always mean to the right and up. Improving internal policies, procedures, and operations can streamline how your organization delivers. Boosting company culture and infusing processes with automation and technology can be great methods for growth.
External Growth: Healthy external growth means setting realistic goals for revenue, market expansion, or product launches. Be sure to create strategies to enact that growth, leveraging your existing company strength and structure as the foundation for new endeavors.
Growth Challenges
If company growth were easy, every organization would be doing it. There are, of course, obstacles and challenges today’s company leaders can expect. While you’re planning your growth strategy, make provisions to address roadblocks, market shifts, and unpredictable problems. To do so, you can work with your teams to make educated predictions based on your data and industry trends. Then develop solutions or contingency action plans that perpetuate growth and address these questions:
- What can we remove or reduce in our operations that might prevent bottlenecks and roadblocks?
- How and when can we determine a profit center is no longer a profit center?
- Are there steps or nuances to our service worth eliminating because they no longer provide value?
- If our market does A, B, or C, then what’s our response and course of action?
- How efficient are the current methods for problem-solving and customer service?
Growth Tools
Based on the expert advice out there from economists, business leaders, and analysts, there are three primary tools for growth in 2023, regardless of what you do, how big you are, or where you’re located.
Lead Generation: Tap into every method that helps cultivate prospects and new customers. These strategies will require adopting the right software solutions that allow for the implementation of your curated action plans. Reach a broader audience, track each stage of the customer journey, and land more customers. Lead generation offers the highest impact and lowest cost method for growth.
Market Data & Research: Invest in every resource at your disposal that allows you to collect and analyze data in real-time. You don’t have to guess your way through advertising anymore. You can make critical company decisions based on actual metrics about your market, your industry, and your customers.
Digital Marketing: Today’s business leaders know the ultimate key to growth success lies within the organization’s ability to tap into engaging digital marketing resources. Find processes and technologies that make every engagement your customers have with your brand online user-friendly, informative, and problem-solving.
Personnel Growth: You can’t expect to open the floodgates for more customers, new processes, additional data, and new core offerings without manning all the necessary internal stations to handle and manage them. Spend time with your HR teams and develop a strategy for onboarding top talent you need to execute every growth strategy you have in the works.
Company growth in 2023 is one piece of the puzzle. Today’s leaders will also need to explore the potential for scalability.
Defining Scaling
If you’re a startup, you’re definitely going to be looking into scaling methods and strategies. But even established businesses can make shifts to embrace a broader audience and expand their company’s footprint in a relevant way. Remember, scaling is more about amplifying your existing structure and core offerings. Bottom-line revenue will increase, as will every other aspect of your business, without the need to introduce something entirely new. Here’s how today’s leaders are planning to scale their organizations.
Methods for Scaling
For starters, you’ll need to ensure your company has the necessary components for successful scaling. These are the signs you’re ready to take the next step to grow exponentially.
You have a proven business model: Your current business model will serve as the foundation for any scaling. If there are any internal roadblocks, silos, or breakdowns, you’ll need to remedy those first before enacting any scaling strategies. If your existing model is solid and works well for everyone, from your customers to your core staff members, then you’re ready to take scaling steps.
You have more work or customers than you can appropriately handle: Another sign that you need to act and develop scaling strategies is your workload. If you’re getting more business than you can handle or have had to turn down new business, you’re ready to amplify your business. You’re essentially looking to expand your business model in a way that allows you to accommodate the expanding workload.
You are and have been reaching your previously set goals: Don’t start chasing new scale goals if you haven’t had much success reaching any other previously set growth goals. However, if you’re looking at the data and reporting from 2022 and have proof that you’re effectively hitting those goals, you’re ready to target new heights and start scaling.
Scaling Challenges
Scaling an organization can be wrought with just as many challenges as traditional growth methods. So, as you create your company’s scaling roadmap, prepare for hiccups along the way, much as you did with your growth planning. Ask yourself and your teams these questions that will lead you to better identify anticipated challenges.
- Can your company’s current systems and infrastructure withstand the additional growth?
- Do you have enough (or the right) employees in all the right places?
- Can you financially support your scaling agenda at every level?
- Will your customers feel any growing pains as you scale?
- Are the new-to-you, broader markets ready for what you have to offer?
Scaling Tools
Be diligent about developing your scaling roadmap. Don’t embark on any action steps without first consulting your teams, surveying your customers, and evaluating your company data. Then you can effectively create a strategy, with precise to-do list tasks and a chronological order of operations, to affect growth. These are the core elements to consider first.
Decluttering Company Systems: Before you enact any scaling strategy, leverage every tool and resource you have to eliminate unnecessary everything. Talk with your teams about what steps in the process or current systems that no longer provide value in the new scaling endeavor. To get bigger and better, you must also be more efficient. Anything within your various company operations that wastes time or doesn’t support the new goals – get rid of it.
Aggressively Attacking Company Weaknesses: Don’t gloss over current chinks in your armor. Tap into the tools, software, and otherwise that help you attack company weaknesses quickly and with pinpoint precision. Issues will undoubtedly arise as you scale. So, any procedures, metrics, or systems you have for identifying problems will also need to be amplified, as will your methods for problem-solving.
Improving Customer Engagement: Ideally, as you scale your business, you don’t want your customers to sense a change. Prevent them from feeling your growing pains by beefing up your customer service segments and engagement initiatives.
Internal Company Culture Initiatives: Scaling your business means scaling your teams. If you have one salesperson, you’re going to need ten. If you have one HR manager, you’re now going to need support staff. So, onboarding new team members to sustain that growth is paramount. But don’t just hire people to fill critical gaps. Instead, embrace methods and tools that inspire employee loyalty, attract top talent, and sustain an environment of collaboration as you grow.
Automate Everything: Lose the paper trails and automate everything. Any busy work or tedious tasks should be replaced with digital solutions, apps, and company dashboards for electronic management and engagement. There just won’t be enough time in the day for any of your teams to facilitate growth the old-fashioned way.
So, with some understanding of the scaling methods and strategies today’s business leaders are exploring, it’s time to mesh both growth and scaling strategies together for simultaneous results.
Steps to Start Growing and Scaling Your Business
Whatever you’re planning for your business, keep these growth and scale strategies in mind. And as you meet with your teams to discuss ideas, run through these checklists of considerations so you can make the most actionable and realistic roadmap for your company. Both growth and scaling are achievable with the right tools and resources. Pre-planning for upcoming challenges will ensure you won’t be blindsided by roadblocks. And taking care of your employees, existing and new hires will be the added layer of operational success you need to achieve your growth-centric goals.
Implementing your new growth and scaling strategies will require a bit of a checklist, too. So, this loosely assembled roster of initiatives should help inspire you to start taking action with whatever company growth plans you have in mind.
- Defining Your Existing and New Target Markets
- Assessing Current Capital, Assets, and Resources
- Lead Generation, Sales Funnels, and Analytics, Oh My!
- Preparing for Emerging Growth Pains Now, Not Later
- Automations for Everything
- Trimming the Fat and Beefing Up Profit Center Support
- Training and Delegating New and Existing Roles
- Continuous Review and Adjustment
Today’s business leaders are exploring all their options for growth and scaling in 2023. And these are the considerations they’re weighing to develop their most effective strategies for success. If you’re growing or scaling, just know that it’s the forward motion, no matter what it looks like, that will keep your business thriving.
And let’s not forget one of the most important components of any marketing effort you have in mind is content strategy. Your messaging matters, and you don’t have to go it alone with Ghost Blog Writers in your corner. Connect with us to share your growth or scaling plans for 2023, and let our teams of inspirational and engaging writing help produce the best content to complement your goals. If you’re not sure about your content creation just yet, we can help you there, too. Let us share insights and trends for 2023 to help you check content off your overall growth to-do list!