A push marketing is focused on loading up your marketing channel, advertising with a high budget, and trying to convince the customer to buy. This strategy, involves you taking (“push”) your products to customers. Here, you say a lot of BUY, BUY, BUY!!!. The setback is that you may not build your product, you may be talking to the wrong audience. This is the reason why experts suggest the “Pull Strategy”.
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How To Make Your Business Viable; Stable Customer Base And Competitive Advantage
Stable Customer Base
Creating your unique proposition is just the first step. To be viable, you have to know who is going to buy your product or service. That means doing research to find out who these people are. People who buy buttercream cakes are not the same people who buy whipped cream cakes. People who buy human hair are not the same as those who buy fibre hair.
Thus ultimately, you need to identify and run a survey or activities to identify your customer base.
It is also important to have your competitors’ knowledge. This way you can work out solutions that stands you out. It could even be as little as having a nicer packaging box or bag.
Even if your product is unique, and you know who you are selling to, you must always consider the competition.
Find out who might be your competitors, who might sell similar or new competitive products. Create a marketing strategy that gives you a competitive advantage.
Remember you can always reach out to us for all your business support needs.
How To Make Your Business Viable; Create A Marketing Strategy
The viability of a business is measured by its long-term survival and its ability to sustain profits over a period of time. A business is able to survive when it is viable because it continues to make profit year in year out.
A business demonstrates its viability by making a profit every year of its existence. Some say a viable business is one “with legs,” and the Cambridge Dictionary says something with legs can continue to exist and be successful for a long time.
When a business loses its viability, it loses its profitability which is always difficult to recover. Thus, stay tuned with us as we show some tips to build a viable business.
Business Viability is tricky to define and create, but there are some key factors to making a business viable.
Compare these factors with your business and consider the ideal steps that suit you in increasing your business viability.
Creating viability is a two-part process. First, it means creating a marketing strategy by knowing who you are, who you are selling to, and who else is selling to them. Second, it means having your business financial house in order(through proper bookkeeping of course).
To create a marketing strategy that will make your business viable, you’ll need to have 5 key information:
First , Your Unique Selling Proposition: Having a unique selling proposition (usually called a USP) is a first critical factor in having a viable business. You can go through our previous post to identify ways to create one for your brand.
Remember you can always reach out to us for all your #businesssupport needs, as we remain committed to your business growth.
Understanding Financial Abuse
Financial abuse is the act of controlling and restricting a person’s access to their own money. In some cases, it is forcing an individual to make financial decisions that are not in their best interest.
In another word, it’s a form of manipulation where others have access to your money.
Financial abuse comes in various forms, they are;
- No refund: This happens when someone borrows your money without reimbursement.
- Dictatorship: This is a situation whereby your friend, family, or partner has total say on your money, that is, how you spend your money and also buy your necessary wants.
- Accounting for money spent and also gotten from your business.
- Someone taking loans in your name without your consent.
There are several ways financial abuse can affect and leave an indelible impact on a woman and her business. One of the major impacts of financial abuse is that it affects your business and sales, it affects your mental health, it cuts one-off training and learning (which ought to build your business)
Therefore, the best way to overcome financial abuse is to tell someone you trust, be smart and assertive.
Tips To Expanding Your Small Business; Expand To Exporting.
Expanding into international markets or even markets within your continent can also be a powerful boost to your business’s bottom line?.
Like franchising, this is a way of growing your business by accessing new customers in different geographic locations. However, it also requires a major commitment of time and resources.
Although expanding internationally or even within your continent can be legally complex, as you will need to deal with the restrictions of trade and customs laws across multiple countries, if you have the time and resources, exporting your product allows you to grow into markets that were previously inaccessible, creating huge opportunities for growth.
For example, a fashion designer can make a contact outside of Nigeria for sales of her clothing line to Nigerians in that country.
While an agriculture farm products seller can also plan to begin exporting her farm produce outside the country. A hair seller can also do the same for her hair products etc.
As exportation is mostly available for products in high demand, you may want to consider introducing such products in your line of business , if you want to consider going into exportation.
Stay tuned with us as we work to bring you more tips on how you can leverage on exportation for your business growth in September.
In the meantime, you can work out & share the products you are looking to export with us.
Tips To Expanding Your Small Business; Conquer Your Market Niche
If you don’t want to expand into new markets or add new services to your revenue stream, you can also grow your business by being very focused on a single niche. This gives you the opportunity to become a “big fish in a small pond.”
A niche is a narrowly defined group of customers. Look for a subset of the larger market whose needs are not being met, then concentrate on meeting those unmet needs at a consistently high and accessible level. So you could be the one that offers the best service at an unbeatable price , or that sells the best products within your business market at an unbeatable with great customer service.
By conquering your market niche, you need to identify a value that will make you stand out.
Tips to Expanding Your Small Business; Extend Your Market Reach
Opens stores in new locations can also be online/virtual, such as a website with an online store. This allows you to put your product in front of new customers in a new market.
Target a new demographic: Identify other groups who could also use your product in similar ways to your initial target audience. Once you’ve identified a new market, you can advertise in media that targets that market create custom marketing campaigns.
Encourage new uses for your product: Discovering and promoting new ways to use your products or services allows you to encourage existing customers to buy more. It can also help you attract new customers who might need your products for different reasons.
All of these approaches allow you to grow your small business into a large one. This not only increases sales, but it also makes your business model more stable. When you don’t rely on just one type of target customer, you are more likely to survive changes to the market.
Tips To Expanding Your Small Business; Keeping Your Cost in Check
Increasing your profit is very important to growing your business. If you expand your business but continue to increase your costs, you won’t actually have any money left to invest in your business or make a profit.
So while you’re looking for ways to grow, pay close attention to the costs associated with running your business and getting your products or services to customers. Lowering these costs can be an effective way to give your business the cash flow it needs to grow and stabilize. There are two main approaches to cutting costs:
Stopping the production of low-earning products or eliminating low-performing services.
Improving your revenue through new marketing and sales tactics.
• Identifying gray areas in your business and introducing new business techniques that will make your business process smoother, better, and more cost-effective. E.g If delivery service is a huge problem for your customers, considering that they have to pay for high delivery services within the state where your business is located, you can consider owning a branded delivery bike to help ease off extra cost for your customers. This gives you extra cash flow as well.
However, remember to be careful not to cut costs in a way that impacts your customer service or employee satisfaction. Happy customers and enthusiastic employees are both key drivers of business growth. Cutting costs in these areas will ultimately harm your business’ ability to expand, even if they give you more cash flow in the short term.
Leveraging on referrals
Still, on ways to expand your small business into a large one, our second step is leveraging on referrals. These customers are already your target market, which means that people in their social or work circles are likely to be your target market as well. This makes them a strong access point to new customers.
However, assuming that your customers are recommending your business isn’t going to increase your customer base. You have to actively seek referrals. Depending on the type and size of your business, you can:
• Ask satisfied customers if they know anyone else who would be interested in your products or services.
• Incentivize referrals- via discounts, money back, etc.
• Encourage customers to share and tag your brand on social media.
This way, you are assured of continuous sales for your business.
Spending Money To Grow Your Small Business
Spending Money To Grow Your Small Business is another way to expand your small business: The benefits of spending money to grow your small business include:
- Developing a new product line, re-positioning your brand through new brand items.
- A proportionate savings in costs gained by an increased level of production.
- Increased capacity to attract qualified team who can further improve the organization.
- Expanding geographically to take advantage of opportunities in other markets.
- Access to a wider variety of financing (at a lower cost) from banks, financial institutions, crowd funding (esusu, cooperatives).
- Eventually becoming a public organization so that shares in the business can be bought and sold on a stock exchange, giving ownership an opportunity to sell shares and recoup their investment.
It is important that small business owners have an expansion forecast in their timeline. This way, as the profits come in, you work on keeping a clean record to aid a quick expansion process, which will further boost your sales and make your brand formidable.
What are your expansion plans? How do you think we can work with you in achieving this? You can reach out to us to further discuss this.