Top 5 Business Growth Strategies You Can Implement Today

There are marketing strategies, and there are growth strategies.

“What’s the difference?” you may be asking.

Think of a growth strategy as a series of levers that drive sustainable business growth. Marketing is just one of those levers.

Traditional marketing drive awareness and conversions. Growth marketing drives:

Awareness
Acquisition
Activation
Revenue
Retention
Referrals

The north star metric of any business is growth. Are you growing? If not, why not? You might be feeling stuck or static and need some inspiration.

Perhaps you don’t know where to turn next. Whatever your struggle is, you’re in the right place.

This article highlights five business growth strategies to help you map out a successful path to business growth. The best bit? You can start implementing them today!

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It’s no use developing a strategy if you don’t have foundations first.

Creating a strategy is much easier when you know who you’re trying to reach. And sometimes that changes as the market changes.

Which is why developing buyer personas is a good start. Who is your ideal customer? What are their pain points and desires? Why are you better positioned to solve their problems than your competitors?

Keep updating your persona as the industry changes.

Growth doesn’t happen overnight. In some extreme cases, where a company brings the right product to market at just the right time, you might see massive growth.

But often, it will take time, resources, and an agile approach to build a successful business.

Let’s look at five business growth strategies you can implement today and drive growth in your business.

#1. Organic Marketing

Organic growth is the long-term play in a world of hacks and quick wins. That doesn’t mean it’s slow or less effective.

It means more of your resources are funneled to acquiring and retaining customers. Organic marketing is more of a methodology than a tactic.

You’ll still use similar tactics traditional marketers use, such as email marketing, content marketing, and search engine optimization.

But instead of just focusing on awareness, you’ll collaborate with sales and customer success teams to provide an end-to-end experience for your customers.

That said, writing helpful and relevant content forms the foundation of successful organic marketing.

The play is to attract your ideal customers by providing answers and solutions to their problems. You can easily qualify leads by reaching the people your product helps the most.

Over time, you build authority. You become the expert that customers turn to, and you’ll be top of mind for anyone struggling with the problem you solve.

When you continually educate your customers, do you think they’d be willing to tell their circle about you? That’s how you drive referrals and keep organic leads flowing in.

#2. Website Optimization

Your website is your best salesperson. Or at least it should be. We like to think of a website as a sales funnel. And any sales funnel website should be tailored for your ideal customers.

Each page on your website should direct customers exactly where they need to go.

With regular audits and updates, you can take strategic steps to improve the customer experience and generate qualified leads. Here are some things you can do.

Run split tests to see what resonates with your customers
Optimize pages with better website copy
Audit CTAs to drive more conversions
Start heat mapping to see where you lose customers
Make forms easy
Track and monitor how customers navigate your website

The essential thing to remember is that your website is a sales funnel and should be designed to drive conversions. You need a steady stream of leads to sustain growth.

#3. Strategic Partnerships

Although you might want to go it alone and succeed on your own merits, you miss out if you don’t partner with other brands.

Partnerships are a proven way to expand your customer base, increase profits, and increase your market share. You might even penetrate new markets.

Need proof? Let’s look at four large companies that recently developed a strategic partnership.

Apple and IBM – Apple and IBM formed a strategic partnership in 2014, which allowed IBM to use Apple’s technology to develop enterprise applications.
Microsoft and LinkedIn – Microsoft and LinkedIn formed a strategic partnership in 2016 that allows Microsoft to leverage LinkedIn’s massive user base. Microsoft is largely hands-off.

You might not be the Apples and Microsofts of the world, but a strategic partnership with a company offering a product or service that complements yours brings many benefits.

You could also explore cross-promotional opportunities, licensing agreements, co-marketing, or affiliate marketing.

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#4. Sales Enablement

Traditionally, sales and marketing teams don’t mix very well. Sales teams don’t feel they get enough qualified leads, and marketing teams think they’re largely ignored.

Where is the disconnect? And what’s the solution?

With a sales enablement strategy, sales teams get the tools, information, and resources they need to be successful. With the right materials, they can close more deals. But it takes collaboration.

To collaborate effectively, any high-growth company needs a sales system.

With collaboration, marketing can produce content that’s relevant and helpful to potential customers.

Everyone can get on the same page when the team knows what an MQL looks like and what needs to happen before the hand-off to sales.

A sales system streamlines the sales process.

Instead of various tools and lost data, a single system, with the right processes and on the right platform, maximizes your team’s potential.

For more on what a sales system should look like and include, check out The Best Sales System Your Team Will Want to Quickly Adopt.

#5. Diversification

Business success often ebbs and flows. There are times you’ll struggle and times you’ll thrive.

But you’ll definitely learn a thing or two. Often, ideas spring from the great moments and the setbacks. And sometimes, you’ll realize that while you’re good at many things, you’re great at one thing.

For example, you might work in the marketing industry. Your company is successful, and your methods drive results.

To diversify, you could start offering your expertise to other marketing teams to create another revenue stream.

Adding new products, features, and services to your core offering can increase profitability and drive growth that might not be possible if you don’t diversify.

A good example of diversification in the marketing world is HubSpot. They started as a software solution targeting small businesses.

They launched their free CRM in 2014, and since then, have added an operations hub, a customer service hub, the HubSpot Academy, and they host an annual conference attended by 10,000 people.

That’s business growth.

Business Growth Strategies: Don’t Overthink. Execute!

You can use one of these strategies or all of them. You know your product or service better than anyone else.

Choose a strategy that excites you and will drive growth for your business. And execute it.

Of course, you don’t have to do it alone! At Lean Labs, driving massive growth is our bread and butter.

We guarantee growth for all our clients and know that growth is the #1 metric every company should strive for.

Not sure if you’re ready to partner with a growth team just yet?

You can start by exploring our top marketing plays for free! Check out our Growth Playbook today! Here’s what you get:

The exact principles behind our growth strategies - so you can focus on the right steps in the right order for maximum momentum.
Specific breakdowns of how we budget for growth - so you can see results & ROI starting with a realistic growth budget.
The real secret is how we guarantee results - which is difficult to do, so you'll see our exact policy that has created many wins.

Access the Growth Playbook today to start planning, budgeting, and accelerating your company’s growth.