How many ways can you grow your business?
Is your business growing right now?
You’re probably considering a few things after reading that question: Did we hire more people this year? Did we bring in more revenue? Did we open another location recently?
When you’re investing in your organization’s growth, it’s worth breaking down what kind of growth you’d like to emphasize to steer your company's success.
To do that, we’re looking at five different growth categories. They’re all important, and chances are, you’ve already been thinking about how to grow in these areas. We’ll explore what each means for your organization, their contributing factors, and how you can prioritize growth categories to take your business to the next level.
Revenue
Businesses are businesses to make money. From day one, every business owner is making careful decisions on how to stay in the black, how to keep the business going. Because of those factors, increasing sales and market share is often the top growth priority.
Here are some of the common factors influencing revenue growth:
- Entering new markets or expanding in existing ones
- Introducing new or improved products/services
- Launching effective marketing campaigns and sales strategies
- Maintaining and growing relationships with customers
- Adjusting prices to maximize revenue without losing customers
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Operational expansion
Thinking more literally about business growth, operational expansion covers physical areas like your geographic footprint, new locations, technology, infrastructure or increased production capabilities. Growing in these ways can mean significant gains in your business’s overall performance, market presence and profitability.
Here are some of the common factors influencing operational expansion:
- Increased customer demand for products or services in existing or new markets
- Access to funds to finance new facilities or new technology
- Ability to attract investors or secure loans
- Using customer feedback to refine products, services and operational strategies
- Collaborating with other companies to enter new markets or develop new products/services
- Strong brand recognition to facilitate easier market entry and customer acquisition
- Identifying and assessing potential risks associated with expansion
Gaining trust with partners, investors and customers: Your BBB Seal inspires trust and shows stakeholders you’re a legitimate business to work with. When associated with your brand, this badge of trust can be a difference-maker in securing loans, closing deals and making sales.
Feedback: Your BBB reviews are a great way to gain verified feedback about your products and services if you’re considering operational growth opportunities. Similarly, the BBB Directory is a great way to research other businesses in your industry and learn about their products, services and feedback as you develop your expansion plan.
Knowledge and skills development
By fostering a culture of continuous learning and providing tailored training programs, businesses can enhance their competitiveness, boost efficiency and productivity, and improve customer satisfaction.
Setting aside time to offer these knowledge opportunities might be a challenge for some, but these pursuits could help build a strong brand reputation, attract and retain top talent, and establish your business as a leader in your industry.
Here are common factors that influence knowledge and skills development:
- Evolving industry standards
- Advancements in technology
- Designated time for learning
- Access to learning materials, online courses, workshops, industry conferences and seminars
- Sufficient budget for training and development initiatives
- A culture that encourages continuous learning
SmartBusiness newsletter: Your BBB Accreditation includes an automatic subscription to our daily newsletter, SmartBusiness. The featured articles are curated every day to keep business owners up to date on the latest news, resources and insights.
Behind the Sign webinar series: Scheduled on the third Thursday of each month, our webinar series features renowned authors, podcasters, leaders and business experts with tips and insights on how to make your business better.
The Transformative CEO Institute membership: BBB Accredited Businesses have free membership access to content distilled directly from the world’s leading CEOs, including thousands of past interviews with Top CEOs, weekly CEO interviews, access to quarterly CEO Summit events and The CEO Forum magazine.
BBB Learning: This on-demand learning platform features a built-in curriculum on trust and ethics for Accredited Businesses. Powered by MindEdge (a BBB Accredited Business), this offering gives you the tools you need to advance your skills while keeping ethical business practices top of mind.
Online presence
As discussed in our online reputation articles, the importance of online visibility is something modern businesses must prioritize. Growing your online presence could lead to increased sales, a more accessible customer experience, and more confidence in your brand.
Here are common factors that influence growing your online presence:
- On-page SEO: Optimizing website content, meta tags, headings and URLs for search engines
- Off-page SEO: Building backlinks from reputable sites to increase domain authority
- Online directories like BBB and Google My Business
- Video content on your website, online profiles and social media platforms
- Social media presence: regularly posting content and interacting with followers
- Website quality and user experience (responsive design, fast loading speed, easy navigation)
- Customer reviews that are authenticated, current, and include responses to comments
- Targeted and personalized email campaigns to engage your audience
- Online advertising: Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, display ads and retargeting campaigns
- Analytics and monitoring tools to measure website traffic and user behavior
BBB Profiles: For the thousands of visitors using BBB’s online directory, your profile is how they learn about your organization. They also have the option to filter their search results by “Accredited Businesses only” when researching trustworthy businesses.
BBB Reviews: The reviews shared on BBB are verified for authenticity before being posted to your BBB Profile. Businesses are encouraged to respond to give a balanced picture of the experience. Accredited Businesses also have access to the BBB Customer Review Toolkit, which provides tools and resources for boosting your review activity.
Online Trust Monitors: One of BBB’s newest offerings, these tools monitor if your online reputation is at risk and provide recommendations on how to fix issues like inconsistent information, broken web links and unanswered customer reviews.
SEO services: To enrich your website presence and gain more organic web traffic, our SEO packages cover national, local and Google My Business campaigns to grow your impact for search engines.
Trust and reputation
Consumers know they can rely on a BBB Accredited Business. For more than a century, BBB has specialized in connecting shoppers with trustworthy companies. Last year, BBB.org’s online directory welcomed more than 134 million visits from customers looking to find businesses they can count on.
To be clear, if you’re reading this article, you consider growing your business a priority. Communicating that trust to customers through BBB Accreditation feeds every important facet of your operation so it keeps moving up.
Is your business ready to take the next step? Reach out to a BBB expert today to learn what growth looks like for you. We'll help you get there.