Tips for positioning your company for successful expansion (part two)

There’s no doubt that UK small businesses are driving economic growth. Research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that although high-growth small businesses represent just 1% of UK businesses and only 3.4% of the total UK economy, they generated 36% of UK economic growth in 2014 and created two in three new jobs (68%) between 2012 and 2013. The key, however, is in making sure your company’s growth is sustainable.

In this 2-part series we’ve been looking at 6 steps to ensure you have the infrastructure in place to expand effectively and sustainably. The first 3 steps outlined in our previous post were to articulate your brand and proposition, define your universe of new prospects and get a customer database. The final 3 steps are outlined below:

Generate awareness of your company and your offering

The biggest problem small businesses have when expanding is that no one in the new market knows you. LinkedIn conducted research on the sales cycle and found that just 2% of sales are made on the first contact with a company, whereas 80% of sales are made by the 12th contact. This shows that there are a myriad of different touch points within the purchasing process, and you need to be there at as many as possible.

Those touch points could be reading a story about you in a trade magazine, reading a white paper from your website, or seeing a post on an industry LinkedIn group. All this activity helps position your company as an authority, which psychology research has found to be a key influence on human behaviour (and therefore purchasing decisions).

Once there is awareness in the market, lead generation activity becomes easier and more cost effective.

Put cost-effective lead generation activity in place

Once you’ve defined your universe, you’ll be able to determine the most effective lead generation channels for the different people involved in the decision making process. Do purchasing managers search for suppliers on Google? If so, you need to make sure you’re on the first page of search results. The number one position in Google’s search results receives 18.2% of all click-through traffic. The second position receives 10.1%, the third 7.2%, the fourth 4.8% and all others are under 2%.

Do key managers spend lots of time away from their desk? In that case, email marketing may be more effective than direct mail or telesales.

The key is to think about all of the potential touch points and cover as many of them as possible, always measuring your activity so you can refine your approach and dedicate your resource to what is most effective.

Love your customers to death

The classic 80/20 rule says that 80% of a company’s future revenue will come from 20% of its existing customers. It is particularly important to nurture your existing customers when undertaking expansion, because you don’t want to expand at the expense of retention.

You need to make sure you have the infrastructure – be it distribution, customer service, logistics, production – to serve the customers your sales team converts. And then you need to keep them engaged so that they buy from you again.

From streamlining the quotation, ordering and deliver paperwork through to service level agreements on queries and regular customer newsletters, you need to take every opportunity to show customers you value their business and want to be a long-term partner.

Taking the time to make sure you have the right fundamentals in place will ensure you are targeting the right prospects, appealing to your current customers, using the most cost effective lead generation channels and are ultimately on the right route to achieving sustained growth that will stand the test of time.

We hope this 2-part series has been helpful in positioning your business for expansion. Let us know what you want to find out in our next business tips post in the comments section below.

By Tim Witcherley, Cognition Agency

You read more marketing tips by downloading any of Cognition’s free eguides.

Cognition is a full-service marketing agency and a Funding Circle borrower. It’s known for its commercial approach, linking marketing activity to revenue and growth.

If you’re interested in taking out a Funding Circle business loan, you can apply online at anytime.