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26 Ideas for Growing Your Business

Mar 20, 2016

There are many ways to grow your business! Read and think about the following ideas for growing your business. You’ll see that are really easy to implement:

1) Advertise in trade magazines

2) Add a Blog to your website and write articles frequently – share them on social media

3) Call your happy Clients and ask them for leads, introductions and recommendations

4) Look at your costs and see if you can reduce significant ones by renegotiating contracts or changing providers

5) Look into potential Export markets

6) Determine if you could create a Franchise

7) Join relevant linkedin Groups and engage with the members

8) Find out who the leading Bloggers are in your market sector – think of a way of getting them to try out your product or service

9) Realise that there are Networks all around you – at the gym, in the pub, at birthday parties, occasions – always carry your business card.

10) Freemiums – Can you give something away for free to attract people to your website?

11) Use Linkedin strategically

12) Look at what you are selling – can it be sold in other Market Sectors

13) Networking – but figure out the best networks for your business

14) Use Social Media to attract more business aka ‘Attraction Marketing’

15) Add New Products or services

16) Attend Trade Conferences & expos

17) Create a new Business Model

18) Implement a Price Review to determine if you can increase your prices

19) Analyze your Turnover, and figure out your most profitable products or services and determine how you can expand sales in that particular niche

20) Give Talks in the industry – that will get you noticed!

21) Add Value to current products/services to increase prices

22) Use Twitter as a search tool to find the right people to follow

23) If you created Partnerships with other synergistic businesses, could you create a joint website and co-market each other?

24) Talk to your accountant, lawyer – ask for Referrals

25) Create an App

26) Become the ‘Go To‘ person in your sector

Over the next few weeks I will write articles in more detail on several of these ideas – watch this space!

10 Top Tips on How to Penetrate a New Industrial Sector

Mar 4, 2016

If you’re in a certain industry, or want to learn how to penetrate a new industrial sector, you need to learn all you can about the industry. Questions you might want to ask include who are the key players? Who are the up-and-coming and on the ‘watch this space’ players? Who has been mentioned in the news, or in leading websites? Who has appeared in leading trade newsletters?

What are the industry trends? How fast is the marketplace growing? Who are the leaders? Who are the opinion leaders? What academic research is going on in the field? What patents are being registered? There are a number of ways to do this:

1. Put industry keywords into search engines such as Google and Bing and see which companies come up in the search, learn all you can about them by going onto their websites, read their About Us, News section and research/technical section.

2. Put keywords and hashtags into Twitter.

3. See which white papers and blogs come up in the search, look at industrial survey results – who are the opinion leaders? Follow them in twitter, linkedin.

4. Determine what groups your opinion leaders belong to on Linkedin and join those Groups.

5. Clone your results by find similar companies using tools such as Linkedin, twitter and zoominfo.com.

6. Find out which companies have been acquired lately by the blue chips in the industry – what have they bought over the last three years and especially in the last six months. Try to figure out why they are buying these companies – what is the bigger picture? Look for patterns.

7. Search to find out who are the key venture capital firms investing in this sector and which companies they have invested in (do the same for angel and crowd funders).

8. What exits have these VCs done in recent months – have the companies they have invested in been acquired? By whom? For how much?

9. Check the publications leading academics in the field publish in, review them regularly. Implement intellectual property searches (the British Library IP & Business Centre can help).

10. Go to events, exhibitions and conferences – what are the subjects of the talks? Who are the opinion leaders? What do they say about where the industry is going? What is the leading research/innovation going on in the industry? Are there technology disrupters?

All of the above market research will help to position your product or service, as well as uncover opportunities for your company. It may also uncover where your R&D department should be investing its time, and the ‘must haves’ versus ‘nice-to-have’ product features.

It will also determine what joint ventures you may want or need to put in place, and what unique selling points need to be emphasized in your marketing literature, and search engine optimization strategy. All of above should help you to create a strategy and plan to penetrate a new industrial sector.