As a business owner, you know how important it is to nurture your brand. After all, growth is the end all and be all of operating a business. The process, however, is nothing like a walk in the park. It takes time and a great deal of effort to widen your brand’s reach and unlock more valuable growth opportunities.
Taking your brand from point A to point B doesn’t happen overnight, although using the right approaches and strategies can make all the difference. It’s possible for your brand to grow within just a year’s time. You only need to adopt the methods that have worked for brands that also started out small. Here are a few ways to accelerate your brand’s growth.
1. Hone in on the right audience
Knowing who you are targeting is crucial to your brand-building efforts. You wouldn’t want to waste time and resources on a general audience, so it’s important to narrow your focus on the people you will want your brand to engage. For this, consider the types of products or services you are selling. Do they cater to consumers or other business owners? Which industry will benefit the most from your offers?
Answering these questions is only the first step towards identifying your target audience. You should also narrow down your targeting even further by looking at specific information such as location, occupation, and other important demographic data. Understanding who it is you are selling to helps you carry out marketing campaigns and other activities that generate interest and grow your brand.
2. Invest in your current
As your client base grows, you need to find out how you are going to take advantage of it for generating new opportunities. Indeed, client engagements never end with a sales close. They continue further into the future and evolve into relationships where brand loyalty is central. For this reason, it’s best that you re-engage with clients through special offers, promos, and loyalty programs. Keep them on the loop about your latest products or services and invite them to events.
Aim to develop authentic relationships that get to the heart of the issues and problems that matter to them. From there, you can then reach out to them for referrals. There is a good change that they will open new opportunities for your brand to leverage. By putting more time and work into nurturing your current network, you won’t have to look hard for new clients to bring to add to your growing audience.
3. Stay current with technology
Your business won’t get far without taking advantage of the latest tech. With this in mind, your brand has to be tech-driven so as to compete better against other businesses in your market. For starters, you can use artificial intelligence to help you with creating and distributing personalized content across all channels. With automation, you can free up time for enhancing other marketing initiatives and handle the actual work that’s involved in growing your brand.
Apart from AI, you can also develop an app that helps bring your brand closer to its current clients. You may have to invest a lot for your own exclusive app, but the long-term benefits are well worth the trouble. Technology becomes even more crucial as your brand expands across different office or store locations. If you are looking to franchise your brand, you will need to acquire the right platforms that will streamline how you manage different branches.
If you are in the food service industry, you can procure a POS for enterprises from TrufflePos that will help ease up franchise operations and attract more franchisees to your brand. Staying current with the latest tools is not just about taking advantage of the tech trends that exist. It’s about adopting the tools that can help your brand achieve faster growth.
4. Aim to be an influencer in your industry
You may have encountered the word “influencer” numerous times already. It refers to a person who has a huge following. In some way, an influencer can be considered as a celebrity. In the context of brand-building, however, becoming an influencer means being a source of knowledge to other players in your industry.
When your brand becomes an influencer, it’s in the best possible position to grow as other brands turn towards it for collaborations and valuable partnerships that add authority. To get to that point, consider joining communities where you can engage with other businesses and share valuable insights about your niche. Apart from that, you can also contribute articles to websites that are relevant to your industry.
If you own a boutique real estate company, you can write articles on Biggerpockets. In case you have something genuine to say about business leadership, look towards sites such as Forbes or The Huffington Post. Being an influencer is all about sharing what you know about your industry and telling everyone else that your brand has the potential to become a leader.
5. Change your tune whenever possible
Whether you like it or not, there is always uncertainty in the business landscape. Without foresight and preparation, your brand will risk losing momentum and putting a halt to your growth prospects. Investing in resilience is the key to making sure that your brand remains on the right track. Apart from knowing what to do in the midst of a disruption, you will also need to be flexible.
The growth of your business will depend entirely on your capacity to adapt, so consider evaluating your activities and processes. You may have to drop whatever doesn’t work in the long run and brainstorm for new ideas that align with the current consumer climate.
Changing your tune doesn’t mean abandoning your goals for growing your brand. It’s about ensuring longevity and maintaining your gains as your business thrives. From there, your business will remain on its growth trajectory despite the challenges that may disrupt the business landscape.
Growing your brand is an uphill climb, but keeping these tips in mind should reduce the time it takes to accomplish such a goal.
