5 Growth Strategies Every Startup Should Embrace in 2018
Startups are spreading globally like mushrooms.
This fact solely implicates how fierce the competition is among these new businesses and larger, more established ones. You’ll have to deal with managing limited resources and work your way up in the market with just a little or a non-existent reputation.
But don’t fret. Nothing is impossible. You can still out-compete bigger companies.
So how do you attain your company’s sustainability? The key is through the creation of creative growth strategies.
Although there is never one perfect technique for all businesses, there are, however, certain practices that tend to work for most startups regardless of their niche.
Read through these steps from one to five to discover how embracing creative growth strategies can help your startup in the year 2018.
1. Build your brand.
Startups must strive to make their name stand out in the crowd. Through branding, you can portray what sets you apart from your competition.
You see, brand building can say a lot about a company’s entirety. It is a medium through which the company can reveal to the market what they’re selling and why their product is valuable. It can also help relay the company’s core values and business methods to the market.
Once startups have established their brand, they are obliged to continually review and analyze their objectives to meet the standards they have set-up for the quality of the products or services they are selling.
As they say, there is nothing ever more permanent than change, products or services may revolutionize, teams may change, customers may shift along the way. But you will always be remembered through your brand.
There are very specific ways to stand out from the competition. These include making your customers’ lives easier through products and services that address their pain points and reinforcing your message in everything you do.
2. Bring in qualified employees and keep them for good.
With an increasing number of startups emerging, there is also an equally increasing demand for skilled and qualified talents.
Having a small workforce makes it crucial to hire people suitable for the position. So, how do you ensure which people could generate your company’s desired results?
For some, hiring employees is focused mainly on the applicant’s intellectual ability but for a business that is still starting, it is often best to choose candidates who are flexible and are used to smaller environments.
The ideal candidate should be able to operate with a great deal of autonomy and doesn’t need to be spoon-fed.
As soon as you hire them into your startup company, make sure to provide incentives to your workers. Never forget that they are your best assets. Benefits you ought to provide may include flexible schedules, paid sick days, and available healthy foods at work.
3. Leverage technology to enhance your day-to-day activities.
Technology helps us do things faster and better than usual. In this day and age, startups have been embracing technologies that assist in easing many of their operational activities.
There are a lot of advantages technology brings to any startup’s growth. Project management and collaboration can be made easier as companies learn how to utilize web-based communication and planning tools such as Skype, Trello, and Basecamp.
Good customer service could also result from maximizing channels wherein customers can communicate directly with the company’s customer support team through helpdesk softwares such as Freshdesk and Zendesk.
4. Use affordable but effective marketing strategies.
As you work your way around a small budget, it just but practical that you use inexpensive marketing tactics.
One cheap way for you to advertise your product is through creating infographics. Infographics are an insanely a powerful marketing tool because infographics are very easy to digest and people love to share visuals.
Developing a customer referral program is also a wise way to increase your clientele.
You may offer existing customers free products or a free month of service. Remember that word-of-mouth is pretty influential. Friends telling friends about your business is extremely powerful.
Email marketing is also a great way to get new visitors as well continually sustaining relationships with the existing ones. Slowly nurture your subscribers by offering bonus content pieces as they sign up to your newsletter.
Then you carry on in pampering them through emails until they are ready to become paying customers.
5. Build partnerships with other companies in your industry.
Partnering with an industry-related business will help you get more attention and subscribers as you get to be introduced to wider audiences who are likely to buy from you.
For example, as an automotive dealership partners with an oil company and they both agree to release a joint project like offering free car services or give discounted gas-ups to their customers, both of them will then profit and increase their finances.
Wrap Up
In the coming year 2018, as newer startups continue to surface, the competition will become fiercer and it is inevitable that swift changes will happen in the market. In such a case, branding, hiring the best employees, marketing and partnering will be of supreme significance.
Only startups that are able to establish growth hacks and sustain relationships with their customers and workers by conveying trust and through effective branding, will survive.
