Business Strategies for Growing a Company or Start Up.

In this article I propose my 10 basic rules related to Business Strategies to grow a Company or Startup.

In this article I summarize 10 basic rules for analyzing competitors, creating a Brand, and implementing a winning focus strategy to win in the market as a Leader.

These are insights that:

allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors
Can help you acquire new customers
Improve your company’s recognition on the web and social media
can give you new profit-generating opportunities that will enable you to grow your business.

And now let’s look together at my 10 rules of business.

1. Precisely define your Target Audience.

How nice it is when we stop for breakfast in the morning and the barman says, “Hello dear the usual…”

He remembers you, your habits–you feel at the center, we might say important.

This is what we need to do with our Customers. In marketing jargon, it is called the customer experience.

So first we need to decide who we want as a customer in our restaurant or store.

To whom we want to sell our Company’s new products or services.

We have to imagine it. Consider multiple aspects of your Buyer Persona.

Give him a face, think about what habits he may have, what music he likes, what kind of work he does, average age…etc.

In this way, we create ad hoc services and products for him that will enable him to grow his business.

2. Position yourself in the market. You can’t sell everything to everyone

“Our products are good for everyone” makes no sense.

Not even Coca-Cola holds 100 percent of the Market.

I have probably repeated this concept hundreds of times in my articles.

In 85 percent of the cases, where I find myself talking to my fellow entrepreneurs, when asked “to whom your Products or Services appeal,” the answer is “to everyone.”

It cannot be so, because each of us has our own needs our own tastes, goals, budgets.

It is therefore critical to stop and think about who we really want to sell to.

Who we want to wear our sweatshirt, use our grass clippers, buy our cheeses, use our online applications.

We must precisely define his profile, only then can we speak directly to him (see point 1), gain a competitive advantage over our competitors, and grow a business.

Basically, we need to decide on our market positioning strategy.

3. Business strategies: specialize in a specific niche

Specializing in a niche is a natural consequence of Step 2 and is always part of positioning.

A proper Focusing Strategy enables us to greatly improve our company’s margins.

Try doing an audit and you will find that 80 percent of the margins, is generated by 20 percent of your products or services.

So the remaining 80 percent of the Products or Services, do nothing but reduce your margins.

The ideal is to invent a new market niche and immediately become its Leader. This marketing strategy is one of the best performing business growth strategies.

Evidence of this are the new chain stores that offer only vegan foods, tacos, rice stores etc… Basically they have created a new market.

4. Build a correct and accurate brand identity

You have to be unique and recognizable.

It is not essential to be the best. It is essential to be different.

Brand is definitely a strategic element of the Company.

On the Brand we build our whole Company.

We invest our savings and all our work.

What a disappointment it would be to discover that our Brand looks like 10 others in our own Market.

That our new Customers confuse us with the store just down the street from us.

Therefore, before creating a Company, it is essential to create the right name, what is referred to in the jargon as a “naming strategy“.

And when you have found the right name, it is critical to create a unique Logo.

A distinctive logo that, together with the name, generates a Brand that stays in people’s minds.

Load the Brand with meanings, values, thoughts.

And you will have generated a Brand Identity winning. Then you will exist alone and win over your competitors.

5. Business Strategies: study your competitors.

If you want to increase market share, you must win your Competitors.

This is a fundamental rule.

In fact, during the development of Brand Identity, see previous point, theCompetitor Analysis, is crucial.

You need to know what they do, what the business strengths are. You need to know everything about the products and services they sell.

Figure out where and how to beat them. Otherwise you risk never winning this important battle.

6. Define a precise SEO and content strategy for your website.

As I have been saying for years now, having a website is not an option but an essential tool for expanding our Business.

So in order to make a site visible, it is essential to implement an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that allows us to position our site in the first results of search engines (serp).

Basically, we need to know what keywords users use to search for our products or services on search engines.

Check those used by our competitors and then define those to be used to create content for our site.

7. Business Strategies: Create valuable content

This activity is called Content Marketing.

The Client must recognize you as an expert in your field. This is a key element.

Users today search online for all the information they need to decide which product or service to purchase.

In which restaurant to go to eat, in which village to spend one’s vacation.

So it is essential to produce unique, valuable content that is useful to our possible Clients.

In this way we will be considered competent in our work.

This point is basically a direct consequence of all the points previously addressed.

Once I have decided who to sell to (points 1 and 3), what to sell (point 2), have clearly defined my Company (point 4) thanks to competitor analysis (point 5) and a proper SEO strategy (point 6), I will be able to make effective content for my site.

That is, I will be able to intercept the audience I want and thus outperform my competition.

8. If you are unable to deliver a service or sell a product, let us know

You create credibility!

How many times have we walked into a store to buy a dress or a pair of shoes and the salesperson tells you that they look great on you when you know perfectly well that you look terrible.

You will never go into that store again. They lost a sale and a Customer.

Considering that we cannot sell everything to everyone, we have to be consistent and say no.

If we are not able to deliver a service in the best possible way, we should not do it.

In the short term we will lose a job, in the medium and long term we will gain a loyal customer.

9. The customer at the center cannot be a slogan, but a real and constant activity

It is enough to read in sites and brochures to find, essentially, the same phrases over and over again:

We care about the needs of the Customer

Our goal is to satisfy the customer

The customer is at the center of our strategy

… then you ask about a given service or product and the salesperson is unable to answer you.

You call at 6:05 p.m. Friday for information and are told that Customer Support ends at 6 p.m. and you have to wait until Monday morning.

Isn’t that putting the Customer at the center?

10. Business Strategies: be determined, consistent, constant and ethical. You will win!!!

For almost a year now, I have been following a personal path with OSM, Open Source Management.

A major training and consulting company that has put Ethics at the heart of everything.

They don’t say it. They do.

And during MBS courses, their Academy, find out how everyone can succeed.

But it is essential to be ethical, consistent, constant, determined…. some would also say make an incredible ass of yourself.

But at the end of this path you will come out a winner.

Are you creating your first Start Up? Or do you want to improve your Company’s business? Don’t miss these articles:

Business strategies for growing a company