When your business is established and successful, expanding to keep up with demand and generate more income is natural. However, caution is advised. In Investopedia’s list of top 6 reasons new businesses fail, “expanding too fast” made the cut. Moving too quickly can drain finances and sink the whole
enterprise. It’s no wonder that only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.
Business owners should treat the expansion like they’re starting all over again. This means understanding the area and new market. If you’re expanding the scope of your business, this includes understanding new products, services, and intended consumers as well.
Investing in the right expansion team is especially crucial too. These are the people who will help create the business research, strategy, and planning for new operations to run smoothly.
Website Designer
In today’s digital era, a business website is a cost-efficient means of reaching a wider target audience. As your business expands, your market does too, and it’s thus important that your website upgrades accordingly. This means more than simply updating your catalog, however.
A website designer considers the brand of the business and how to maintain consistency amidst its growth. Rebranding is a common marketing strategy, but the challenge is to still identify with loyal consumers and promise to deliver the same, if not upgraded, quality of service. When done properly with integrated professional tools, creating your own original designs, and generating traffic will be much easier for the rest of the team as well.
IT Consultant
A website isn’t enough to navigate the increasingly growing digital sphere. This is where IT strategies come into play. An IT strategy considers the long and short-term goals of your business, and details how other means of technology will accelerate this progress.
Conferring with an IT consultant will help you identify the right additions for your expanding business, whether this is a new appliance or software installation. IT consultants have a range of responsibilities, from evaluating current systems and processes to acting as project managers. These roles help them make recommendations for improvements in security, upgrades, and new technology
ideal for your business model.
Despite their specialization in technology, it’s important that your IT consultant and website designer also have a basic understanding of business applications and solid communication skills. This will allow them to also submit reports on the system’s performance for the entire team to understand.
Content Strategist
As a marketing expert, a content strategist heavily coordinates with your web designer while independently crafting content for release. This can range from blog posts, videos, to even podcast episodes.
While determining what to create, a good strategy also considers your resources, audience, and expectations. These are all dynamic variables during expansion. However, a content strategist is trained to develop SMART KPIs that are backed by SEO. This will help your growing business establish credibility among your target customer base and industry peers, while immediately shaping consumer
perceptions about your brand.
Financial Advisor
Running your own business as a small entrepreneur is challenging enough, but the critical process of expansion takes the difficulty to another level. Enlisting the help of a financial advisor will make the job easier because they’re equipped with additional expertise and resources.
For one, they can provide operational support. They review your business’ revenue, debts, and expenses, which allows you to focus on your set of job duties and hiring processes for the rest of the team. Together, you can improve your day-to-day processes with contingency plans and operational strategies to maximize profitability.
Hiring these people may seem like additional expenditures, but the investment definitely pays off. With the right team, the growth curve of your business will mature more smoothly and efficiently, making long-term success even more possible.
Article contributed by Rosie Josephine
Exclusively for
